Fullmetal Alchemist: Finding the truth behind the truth

September 23, 2025 - 16 mins read

I think it’s easy to forget that “truth” has always been contested.

Truth is, of course, underpinned by an observable material reality, but at the same time, truth not a mere reflection of reality so much as it is consensus interpretation of reality. Reality is the world as it exists around us, but truth is how we understand the world; it’s a social process, continually being created and recreated by the social forces that act upon the world. In a way, the whole of human history can be understood as a series of contests over which truth gets to be the one that explains reality.

Much the same can be said for art. Being a process which seeks to reflect reality back at us through the lens of its creator, art is necessarily concerned with communicating truth, even when it doesn’t seek to explicitly convince people of that truth. And if there is one work of art that can be said to be deeply concerned with the contested nature of truth, it’s Hiromu Arakawa’s magnum opus, Fullmetal Alchemist. But even here, the contestation of truth proves inevitable; Fullmetal Alchemist is a story which famously exists twice, and so it holds a unique position by the fact that the truth it seeks to communicate is in turn contested by itself.

Arakawa’s original manga, which began publication in 2001, got adapted into two different anime - 2003’s Fullmetal Alchemist, and 2009’s Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. This is highly atypical when it comes to anime production; see, anime prior to the streaming era had a unique problem: since they were produced for television on a regular ongoing basis, anime adaptations of manga often had to contend with the ever-present threat of literally running out of source material to adapt, which often led to the creation of anime-exclusive story arcs whose primary purpose was to fill for time so that animation studios could wait for more manga chapters. Fullmetal Alchemist was a little different, though - while Brotherhood focused on more closely adapting Arakawa’s original story thanks to that story having been largely complete by the time it started airing, the 2003 adaptation starts with the same characters, setting and general plot beats, but with significantly less source material to work with, director Seiji Mizushima and head writer Sho Aikawa take those elements and spin them out into an entirely different story with an entirely different conclusion. As a result, there are two different stories titled Fullmetal Alchemist, both seeking to communicate their own truth. So what are those truths?

Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist tells the story of Edward and Alphonse Elric, two brothers from the land of Amestris who practice alchemy, a magical science which allows for the controlled deconstruction and reconstruction of matter. The brothers are on a quest to find the Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary item said to be able to bypass the most fundamental principle of alchemy: in order to gain something, something of equal value must be lost - that is the law of Equivalent Exchange. However, the brothers don’t seek the Philosopher’s Stone for power or glory or even just scientific inquiry - they need the power of the Philosopher’s Stone to restore their bodies, and in so doing, undo their greatest mistake - as children, they tried to bring their mother back to life through the taboo of human transmutation, with the whole process leaving Ed less one arm and one leg, Al as merely a soul hastily bonded to a suit of armour, and both of them with a horrifying, barely-alive abomination where their mother should have been.

In order to secure funding and support for their quest, they get themselves involved in the Amestrian military, who also happens to run the nation’s government. As they search for leads on the Philosopher’s Stone, they make numerous friends and enemies both in and out of the military, confront adversaries and troubling histories, and eventually come to learn the truth about the Philosopher’s Stone: countless human lives must be sacrificed as part of its creation. As the two dive deeper into the sordid history of the Philosopher’s Stone, they also learn more about the equally sordid history of Amestris, and uncover another truth - the genocidal war which Amestris waged on the neighbouring nation of Ishval several years prior was simply one part of a grand government conspiracy to create a Philosopher’s Stone so large and powerful that it would allow one man, who had established Amestris in order to monopolise the flow of all alchemical energy in the region, to consume, and ultimately become, the metaphysical manifestation of truth itself. From here, the boys and the countless people they’ve connected with learn overcome their own prejudices and break down the divisions imposed upon them in order to defeat the core of the rotten system that threatens to destroy the world in order to maintain and expand its own power. Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist wants to communicate a truth: a better world is possible, but only if people fight for that world together.

Mizushima and Aikawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist tells the story of Edward and Alphonse Elric, two brothers from the land of Amestris who practice alchemy, a magical science which allows for the controlled deconstruction and reconstruction of matter. The brothers are on a quest to find the Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary item said to be able to bypass the most fundamental principle of alchemy and, indeed, the world’s only universal truth: in order to gain something, something of equal value must be lost - that is the law of Equivalent Exchange. However, the brothers don’t seek the Philosopher’s Stone for power or glory or even just scientific inquiry - they need the power of the Philosopher’s Stone to restore their bodies, and in so doing, undo their greatest mistake - as children, they tried to bring their mother back to life through the taboo of human transmutation, with the whole process leaving Ed less one arm and one leg, Al as merely a soul hastily bonded to a suit of armour, and both of them with a horrifying, barely-alive abomination where their mother should have been.

The boys’ journey is blanketed in a shadow of death which continually challenges every principle they’ve ever held true. Ed is taunted by people who should be dead continuing to make life hell for the people he cares about, only for him to inadvertently kill someone who didn’t even deserve it. The brothers see countless people die for no reason, they learn that countless more people will die as part of a conspiracy to create a Philosopher’s Stone not so the homunculi can live as humans, but purely so one woman can cheat death for a few more years, and finally, the boys learn the world-shattering truth: that there is no “truth”. There is no equivalent exchange. Ed literally dies and learns that what lies beyond his so-called Gate of Truth is another world - our world circa World War II - and that all alchemical reactions are powered by the souls of people from our world that have died and gone to the Gate. And so Ed, coming back to thanks to Al sacrificing himself, returns the favour, bringing Al back, and in so doing sending his own soul through the Gate to live out the rest of his days in Fucking Real Life Germany while his brother has to live on with no memory of what happened, haunted by the feeling that he’s missing something important and –

Mizushima and Aikawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist is a story about… Something. I mean, it has to be, right? There’s clearly some truth this show is trying to communicate, but what is that truth?

It probably won’t surprise you at this point to learn that of the two adaptations of Fullmetal Alchemist, I prefer Brotherhood. But 2003 perplexed me after I was done with it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it - its conclusion was so baffling that it felt like something stuck in my teeth. I knew this story had something to say, but I couldn’t figure out what that was, and I was desperate to make it make sense. I needed an answer.

So maybe the first and most obvious place to look for an answer is in the show’s epilogue film, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa. I still don’t really know what to make of this film, but if there’s one thing I can say to its credit, Shamballa did, in fact, have an answer. Towards the middle of the film, Ed has a conversation with Fritz Lang, a Jewish filmmaker who is the other side’s version of King Bradley. They discuss the concept of parallel worlds, the lines between reality and fantasy, and the present political situation in Germany - primarily the details of the nascent Nazi party and its ethnonationalist political program, along with its plans to drop nuclear bombs through the Gate as a means of gaining control of the world on the other side - the world they call Shamballa - which, according to their more occult beliefs, will allow them to gain control of the entire world. The scene ends with this exchange:

Lang: “I’m one of the Jews that they want to get rid of, and after they’ve exploited my talents, they’d cast me aside. So I cast them off first. Reality is just a knotted mess I choose to avoid.”

Ed: “You think you’re too good for the world, but really, you’re afraid of the risk… just trying to avoid being forced out of your dream.”

Its thesis statement now spelt out for me in no uncertain terms, I realised that the truth of Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is this: you cannot substitute fantasy for reality. You cannot change the world by merely imposing your ideals onto it and expecting it to work out - you have to understand and accept the world as it exists in front of you in order to confront it and change it for the better. I finally had my answer.

But while this exchange was an answer, it wasn’t the answer. In many ways, the knowledge of what the show was trying to say left me with more questions about how it chose to say it. Why is it our world that sits on the other side of the gate? Why is it souls from our side that are the power source for alchemy? Is the contrast between the worlds on both sides of the gate meant to be an allegory for the distinction between an idealised fictional world and the real one? Because if that’s the case - and in many ways, the text seems to indicate that it is - then why did the series bother breaking down Ed’s ideals in the first place? Especially since for all of the knowledge Ed seemingly gained about how the world works, he didn’t really seem to actually learn much of anything.

Okay, I’m going to talk about Brotherhood again, but I promise I’m going somewhere with this. One of the really great things that show does in its back end is it effectively pairs each of its main players with a villain who represents their central character flaw, with their relationship culminating in a final conflict - Mustang (and kind of everyone, but mostly Mustang) has his arc culminate in the confrontation with Envy, where he ultimately realises the need to let go of the darker momentary impulses and prejudices that cloud his vision for the future, allowing his envy to suffocate itself. Scar’s arc culminates in the fight with Wrath, where he learns that while his own wrath is justified, true justice for him and for all of Ishval will require more than just destroying the old - it will also mean creating something new out of it, thus conquering his wrath not by destroying it, but by simply allowing it to fade away. And finally, Ed’s final confrontation is with Pride, because the one thing that Ed spends the entire series learning is to accept help from other people, because even with the power of alchemy, he is just one person, and one person cannot change the world no matter how hard they try. In many ways, the show is about Ed reckoning with the fact that he’s just a human who couldn’t save a little girl - not even with alchemy. That’s why he gives it up at the end of the series; he’s finally learned that he doesn’t need to perform alchemy when he can rely on others to help him and do what he cannot - ironically, he becomes a more complete person by giving up the one thing that has defined him. That’s a huge part of what makes Brotherhood’s ending so satisfying: everyone goes through a complete character arc, learning something about themselves and becoming better people through that process, which in turn allows them to change the world for the better together.

I’m not sure that happens in 2003. Mustang pisses away his chance at creating the future he wants by impulsively fighting and killing Bradley despite no one knowing his nature as a homunculus; Scar turns a whole bunch of Amestrian soldiers into glue at the cost of his own life, ultimately changing nothing about the conflict between Amestris and Ishbal; and Ed just throws his life in Amestris away playing self-sacrificial ping-pong with Al, vowing to find a way back home only for him to conclude that he has to sacrifice himself again once all is said and done, permanently severing himself from everyone who has ever cared about him all to ensure the gate between worlds can be closed for good. He doesn’t learn anything - no one does. One burning question sat at the forefront of my mind: “Why does no one in this show learn their god damned lesson?” And in that moment, I realised that the question contained the answer.

For a while, I thought that the decision to take the story in the direction they did was Mizushima and Aikawa’s attempt at deconstructing Arakawa’s story before she’d even finished telling it. But upon reflection, I remembered that Fullmetal Alchemist was written at a time when Arakawa hadn’t fully set out what each of her characters’ arcs would be, which meant that as the 2003 adaptation was being created, these characters had to be interpreted on the fly. And if you can’t adapt a character arc that doesn’t exist… maybe the next best thing is to examine the effects of that arc not happening. If the beating heart of Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist is its characters coming to understand that solidarity, cooperation - maybe even brotherhood - is what will allow them to change the world, then perhaps Mizushima and Aikawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist is best understood as an examination of what happens when those characters don’t reach that understanding.

Mustang doesn’t learn to see the bigger picture, leaving himself at the mercy of his impulses. Scar allows his fury to take him to the grave because he never learns to envision creation after destruction. Ed’s ideals are constantly challenged because he keeps trying to force the world around him to fit his narrow view of “equivalent exchange,” and he continually comes up short. He tries and tries to stick to his principles, to impose his ideals on the world through alchemy and sheer force of will, only to keep discovering again and again that he does not even understand how the world works, let alone how alchemy works. He falls into the other side of the gate - the real world - for much the same reason that Mustang throws away his ambitions, the same reason that Scar dies needlessly: Ed wants to change the world, but the world is so much bigger than he could even begin to imagine, and it… consumes him. If Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist is about people learning that solidarity and cooperation is how we change the world, then Mizushima and Aikawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist is about people failing to understand the world that they desperately want to change - it’s about good people who don’t learn their lesson until it’s too late.

For all of the ways in which I prefer Brotherhood to its predecessor, there is one criticism that I would be remiss in not levying: Brotherhood is written and produced under the assumption that the viewer has already seen Fullmetal Alchemist. It’s not an unreasonable assumption, but it’s still a decision that has a pretty noticeable affect on the show’s pacing and structure, with the earlier episodes rushing through a lot of key plot points and even just outright cutting some story elements altogether. And yet, the fact that Brotherhood is intentionally a companion piece to the 2003 anime means that the story of Fullmetal Alchemist gets to uniquely exist in conversation with itself, and in effect act as two halves of one whole story - one about the meaning of “the truth”.

A pivotal moment in the early stages of Fullmetal Alchemist is set up by Dr Marcoh asking Ed and Al to uncover “the truth behind the truth”. And while it is primarily a riddle that leads the boys to learn how to interpret his research on the Philosopher’s Stone, I think it’s a question that sets up the audience to consider something fundamental: the difference between knowing the truth and understanding it. Because to know the truth of the world is one thing - to know this truth is to know the world is a deeply cruel and unjust place; to know this truth is to risk succumbing to it. But’s another thing entirely to understand that truth - to understand why the world is so cruel and unjust, and to understand the ways in which that cruelty and injustice can be challenged. And I think that synthesising the two stories titled Fullmetal Alchemist in this way leads us to a conclusion more cohesive than either of those two stories could tell on their own.

Fullmetal Alchemist asks us to reveal the truth of the world, and to face that truth, and all the cruelty and injustice it entails, head-on. But it also asks us to not face that burden alone. It asks us to know our enemies as the arbiters of the system which creates that cruelty and injustice, that “truth”. It asks us to find our allies, however unlikely they may seem, so that we can fight against the “truth” imposed upon us by that system. The truth alone can consume you. But you can change the world, change the “truth”, so long as you uncover the truth that lies behind it.

“Who even needs alchemy when I’ve got them?”