November, 13 2003 - Originally published in the pages of Shonen GanGan Japan in 2000, Fullmetal Alchemist was created in Manga form by Hiromu Arakawa. The series currently spans over 8+ tankoban volumes and 51 anime episodes.

The use of magic has always been fascinating. Even in our modern times, we are still drawn to the idea that one can create something using internal powers and spells to create or effect something. Much of this thinking is different from the ideals of an Alchemist. Alchemy is a science where one understands the structure of an item, breaks it down and then rebuilds it with the use of his or her special abilities. But the rules here are strict: in order to transform one object you must use another object of equivalent value to perform the manipulation. Therefore, since it's still a science, the rules of nature still apply as you cannot create something without sacrificing another thing.

Full Metal Alchemist (also know as it's Japanese name: "Hagane no Renkin Jutsushi") is the story of the Elric brothers journey to becoming master Alchemists. 15 year old Edward Elric (who at the age 12 is licensed as one of the National Alchemist; a special elite army used by the government for various purposes) and his 14 year old brother Alphonse are both gifted with the innate ability to perform Alchemy, just like their father (Edward is the more gifted of the two). They just recently lost their mother to an illness and one day both came up with the idea of using an alchemy technique called "human transmutation" in order to revive their mother. Unfortunately because of a miscalculation on the brothers' part, things didn't work as planned and the transmutation failed. Not only did their mother look nothing close to human, but both Edward and Alphonse lost something as well. During the process of the failed transmutation, Alphonse lost his entire body and Edward lost his leg. In order to transmute Alphonse body to a metal body armor, Edward had to scarified his arm (thus giving Alphonse the appearance of a man covered in body armor). Afterwards both brothers decided to give up resurrecting their mother, realizing the cost of doing so may be impossible to match by a human, let along anyone else besides God. However Edward wanted to returned to Alphonse what was lost in the failed resurrection. So he had auto-mail applied to his body to replace his missing arm and leg (auto-mail is a pseudo bio-mechanical technology that can be used to replace parts of the body and perhaps other uses as well), and joined the National Alchemist army in order to increase his advance knowledge of Alchemy. He hopes to one day be able to repair the damage that has been done and replace his brother's whole body using Alchemy.

Edward (right) and Alphonse (left) both face many obstacles as they try to help each other fix the damage made to each other from trying to resurrect their mother.

When I first wrote this review early in 2004, I was introduced to the world of FMA by the anime TV series airing at the time. And while the anime followed the manga early in the series, it completely became its own animal as the later episodes continued to air (it stopped following the manga halfway, around episode 25 or so). Now that the anime has completed its run of 51 episodes in Japan, it is completely different from the manga; so different, you might as well say it’s an alternate story. It would seem there was a difference of “opinions” between the manga-ka Hiromu Arakawa and the anime studio producers as they took liberties with the FMA storyline in the anime. That said, I generally like the manga better than the anime. But the anime does have some highlights and is not bad; I love the first 20 episodes. But compared to the manga it simply is not as good. I began to notice the quality of the story in the anime dip in the later episodes; probably around episode 30 or so. Even so, the anime is 10 times better than the common filler episodes we normally see in long running anime shows (e.g. Dragonball, Naruto, etc). So in the long run it’s worth checking out both for you to make your own judgment.

What I like mainly like about the series in general is the theme. The combination of great unique characters and the use of the “alchemy theme” and the military is a good combination and will appeal to anyone who’s into mainstream shonen titles. Don’t get me wrong! Even though the anime and manga are both different, there is enough twists and turns to keep you guessing what’s going to happen next in both (although it is my opinion the manga does this in a much better fashion). I also love the humor in the series. All of the main characters have interesting chemistry together and because of this the series has grown on me. The story is also pretty good setting up some interesting adventures for the Elric brothers. Sometimes the story will exploit what the people in the FMA world consider to be taboo: things like resurrecting the dead and placing human souls in other objects such as animal bodies are often touched upon (the anime displays these ideas in a manner that is more explicit when compared to the manga). These ideas are important themes to the series as Ed and Al piece together clues to put themselves back to normal.

At the start of the airing of the FMA anime, I was instantly drawn into this series; especially since the character and story design is in the "Shonen" style format (the main characters are designed in an appealing way, very much like Shaman King and Naruto). It didn't hurt that the anime’s character design, animation, music and voice acting was all well done. But when I read the manga via the Japanese graphic novels, I was even more impressed with it. Hiromu Arakawa art, style and story are excellent. I would almost say it's nearly as good as Takeshi Obata's Hikaru No Go and Masashi Kishimoto Naruto.

Conclusion: Both the Full Metal Alchemist anime and manga are awesome having rare qualities Shonen fans should like. And although I do favor the manga, they are both excellent and are worthy of investigation. Recommended.

Data Specs

• Genre - Adventure, action, comedy, drama / alchemy theme
• Episodes/Chapters -
  Anime: TV episodes - 51(Complete - Bones)
  Manga: graphic novels - 8+ (still in production - Shonen GanGan)
• US Distributor -
  R1 DVD: Unreleased
  Manga: Unreleased
• Coverage Status: Incomplete -
  Anime: Raw TV series - (51/51)
  Manga: graphic novels (RAW Japanese Shonen GanGan manga) - (5/8+)

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