The Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) Anime is a Masterpiece of Adaptation
Although it’s long been overshadowed by fully manga-faithful 2009 successor Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (much-famed #1 rated anime on MAL for years), the original 2003 anime adaptation of Hiromu Arakawa’s 27-volume manga masterwork still holds up today as an emotional and intelligent adaptation of, what was at the time, an incomplete story.
Anime-original endings of manga adaptations are often rightly derided — just look at the shambles they made of Tokyo Ghoul, Gantz, Hellsing and Soul Eater when they ran out of material to adapt. Similarly, long-running shonen anime used to shovel in egregious dollops of anime-original filler to pad out episode counts while waiting for new material. (I’m looking at you, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece…) Thankfully, Fullmetal Alchemist took a different route that I would argue makes it a paragon of creativity and cleverness that reflects as well on the director and screenwriter as it does on the original manga author.
WARNING: ENORMOUS MANGA AND ANIME ENDING SPOILERS AHEAD
Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist manga was published monthly, beginning in August 2001 in the pages of Square Enix’s Monthly Shonen Gangan, and its TV anime premiered just over two years later, running weekly from . Ending on a cliffhanger, the TV anime was succeeded by the concluding movie Conqueror of Shamballa on July 23rd 2005.
Fullmetal Alchemist follows the adventures of the teenage Elric Brothers — elder brother Edward and younger brother Alphonse, who have taught themselves alchemy from the books of their absent father and legendary alchemist, Hohenheim. In this world, alchemical science is a way to alter substances at an atomic level, according the law of “Equivalent Exchange”. For example, one metal can be transmuted into another, rocks can be transmuted into different shapes etc, but alchemy involving living subjects is forbidden.
When their mother dies from unspecified illness, the Elrics unwisely attempt to resurrect her using forbidden human transmutation. The price they pay in “equivalent exchange” is horrific, and bloody, with Edward losing his right arm and left leg, while Alphonse loses his entire body, remaining in the world of the living only because Edward instinctively fuses his brother’s soul to a nearby suit of armour. Of course they fail to resurrect their mother, and the series deals with the aftermath of their mistake, their attempts to atone, and their quest to reacquire their lost body parts, travelling the length and breadth of their home country Amestris. It’s an incredibly dark, but effective, way to start an otherwise fairly upbeat shonen adventure story.
From the outset, with so few manga volumes produced prior to the planning and writing stages of the anime, author Arakawa asked director Seiji Mizushima (Shaman King, Mobile Suit Gundam 00) and head writer Sho Aikawa (Angel Cop, Martian Successor Nadesico), to construct their own story to fill the commissioned 51 episodes. This freed the production from waiting for unpublished chapters. Subsequently, the first half of the anime (up to around episode 25) hews fairly close to the manga, while the second half diverges ever more wildly as it progresses, although it continues to incorporate occasional scenes or characters from later manga volumes where appropriate.
Clues to anime writer Aikawa’s divergent story plans are integrated into the very first cour of the anime, with rogue State Alchemist Shou Tucker’s fate altered from the manga. Whereas in the manga (and Brotherhood) he’s murdered early on by antihero Scar, in episode seven he is now merely arrested so he can return to twist the emotional knife later. Episode nine introduces the seemingly throwaway young female alchemist Lyra, whose role becomes pivotal (and tragic) later.
Compared to Brotherhood which, although a truly fantastic series, smashes through the early manga chapters like an amphetamine-charged wildebeest in heat, the 2003 version takes its time to explore its characters. It takes Brotherhood only up until episode 14 to cover every manga scene the 2003 series takes 40 episodes to adapt. Nowhere does the viewer feel this more keenly than with the fate of Colonel Mustang’s best friend and colleague Maes Hughes. In Brotherhood he’s dead by episode 10, with very few preceding scenes in which to endear himself to the audience. In the 2003 show he appears frequently, and his death in episode 25 is the true emotional turning point of the story. This just isn’t the case in Brotherhood, nor arguably in the original manga.
Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 is certainly a slower-paced show in general than the considerably more action-packed Brotherhood, striking a more contemplative, sometimes even dour tone. The first two cours do contain several episodes one could uncharitably describe as “filler”, something completely absent from Brotherhood. Even so, each of these episodes play an important part in deepening the themes and wordbuilding that the later cours elaborate upon. The very basis of alchemy itself, the “truth” or otherwise of the “law of equivalent exchange”, and the nature of the elusive Philosopher’s Stone are very different in the anime compared to its source, and this changes the tone and philosophy of the show markedly.
Much more attention is paid to the process of producing Philosopher’s Stones, and its steps — including the production of “red water”, and the ubiquitious “red stones”, or “incomplete Philosopher’s Stones”, greedily devoured by the anime’s versions of homunculi (whom we’ll get into in some detail later). In the first cour we even get a two-episode adaptation of the first Fullmetal Alchemist Light Novel The Land of Sand by Makoto Inoue that expands the anime’s Philosopher Stone-related lore, and introduces the recurring Tringham brothers who don’t appear in the manga at all.
After the inflection point of episode 25, where the manga expands its scope and introduces multiple new characters and conflicts, the anime focuses ever more on the characters it has already introduced, and forges new links between them in pleasingly intelligent ways. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the anime versions of the main antagonists — the homunculi. In the manga, we eventually discover the homunculi (who are named for the Seven Cardinal Sins) are all the creations of a creepy non-human thing that calls itself “Father”, who takes a human-like form very similar to the Elric brothers’ father Hohenheim (we’ll get to him later, don’t worry.)
Father is completely absent from the anime, and instead the ultimate big bad is Dante — semi-immortal former lover of Hohenheim, mentor to Ed and Al’s teacher Izumi, and soul-transferring body snatcher who ultimately steals and inhabits Lyra’s body. Dante’s plan is much less grand or world-threatening than Father’s, and she is merely self-interested to the point that she’ll willingly manipulate the military to commit genocide to extend her own life. At least some of the homunculi are hinted to be her own creations, apart from some whose anime-origins are linked to the Elrics, or their friends and family. Dante is a much less potent or terrifying enemy than the manga’s Father, though she’s effective enough for the significantly-less epic anime story.
In the anime, homunculi are the results of failed attempts at human transmutation, soulless, shapeless fleshy blobs that gain a form similar to their former human bodies only when fed “red stones”, the incomplete Philosophers Stones that are produced by sacrificing human souls. They’re also weak to the remains of their original bodies, an entirely anime-only conceit that leads to some disturbing plot twists later.
Ed and Al’s failed transmutation of their mother results in the anime version of Sloth, a painful visual reminder of their failure, their sin. She weaponises her likeness to their mother to gain the upper hand. Likewise, the anime version of Wrath is born from their teacher Izumi’s failed attempt to resurrect her dead baby. Izumi’s price for human transmutation is the loss of her womb and other internal organs, making her infertile and prone to randomly vomiting blood. (Remember what I said about this anime being upbeat? Perhaps I lied…) Wrath somehow also acquires Ed’s original arm and leg from “The Gate of Truth” and disturbingly wants to steal the rest of Ed’s body for himself.
Shapeshifting psychopath Envy is revealed at the show’s conclusion to be the original son of Hohenheim and Dante, and 400 years previously they made the Philosopher’s Stone to attempt to resurrect their dead son. That makes anime-Envy the half-brother of Ed and Al, and gives Envy a powerful reason to hate both Hohenheim and his brothers. Of the remaining homunculi, perpetually ravenous Gluttony is closest to his manga counterpart, though he lacks some of the more… uh… Lovecraftian attributes he develops later in that story.
Pride (Fuhrer King Bradley) in this version is instead named Wrath in the manga (this is where it gets a bit confusing, as manga-Pride doesn’t appear in the anime (well a character that looks like him does, but he’s certainly not a homunculus), and neither does manga-Sloth.) Manga-Bradley/Wrath is otherwise a similar character to anime Pride and with a very similar role.
Greed has a much smaller role in the anime compared to the manga, and he just… sort of gives up and dies after appearing in a few episodes. I mean, something kind of similar happens in the manga, but then a new incarnation arises, who most certainly doesn’t feature in the anime.
Lastly, my personal favourite character (I have really predictable tastes) is femme fatale Lust. She’s a much more sympathetic character in the anime, who survives much longer, and is revealed to have been the failed human transmutation of Scar’s brother’s lover (whom Scar also loved). This additional backstory makes her a more compelling character, whereas in the manga her role is pretty much “badass bitch lady character who gets killed early on in utterly horrific fashion”. In some ways I much prefer the anime versions of the homunculi to the manga or Brotherhood’s because of these extra emotional layers and personal motivations that tie them closer to the protagonists.
A completely anime-original character is Lt. Colonel Frank Archer, a human antagonist introduced in episode 25 following the death of Maes Hughes. He’s a pallid, cold and ruthless career soldier who recruits both the now-disturbingly mutated Shou Tucker (who only in the anime becomes a hideous chimera creature) and the unhinged “Crimson Alchemist” Solf J. Kimblee. Archer loses the left half of his body to an alchemic disaster, but it’s ok, he’s randomly upgraded into a hilariously extra battle cyborg. I’m not sure what Sho Aikawa was smoking when he came up with this plot point, it seems deeply incongrous to the rest of the story. Yes, there is advanced “auto mail” limb replacements in this world, but they gave the guy a mouth-cannon!
Also Kimblee is very different to his manga counterpart. Here he’s a one-dimensional murder-crazed thug, while his manga/Brotherhood version is sneaky, intelligent, and sharply-dressed. This is one character interpretation where I prefer the manga version.
Hohenheim of Light, Ed and Al’s father, is pretty similar in both manga and anime, even if his backstory is very different. The anime only vaguely hints about a country to the East that mysteriously disappeared hundreds of years ago, whereas the manga confirms that Hohenheim was there. The circumstances of Hohenheim’s immortality is also different, and tied to his former lover Dante, who isn’t in the manga. Their secret underground city under Central is also anime-original, though it plays an enormous part in the anime’s backstory and eventual spectacular conclusion in the movie.
Winry Rockbell, the main female character and childhood friend of the Elric Brothers is treated very oddly by the anime. In the second half she hangs around during events that she was absent for in the manga, and has some funny little subplots where she’s often matched up with Sheska, a minor military-related character who disappears from the manga after the first third of the story, but persists until the end of the anime. Unfortunately Winry is really sidelined in the final cour, like the writers couldn’t quite figure out what to do with her. She’s hardly in the last few episodes, and her role in the movie is very small. Also there’s bad news for Ed/Winry shippers, the anime has little interest in pairing them up and (SPOILER) separates them eternally at the very end. I guess they really did prioritise the brotherly rather than romantic relationship for the conclusion.
Otherwise, Winry is a fun character — a female mechanic who is obsessed with her trade, and seems like she should have a life of her own… but spends much of her time waiting for or chasing after the Elric brothers. She has an important story function in that she provides Ed with his replacement automail limbs, but she’s rarely allowed to do her own thing, no-one ever asks her “what do you want to do, Winry,” or “what’s your opinion on this, Winry?” The boys perpetually hide information from her and fail to treat her as an equal. This frustrates me greatly, especially as in the manga when they visit Rush Valley (episode 26 in the anime) she stays behind to do an apprenticeship, while in the anime she continues to follow the Elrics around like a puppy.
A huge change the anime makes in regards to Winry is in the identity of her parents’ killer. They’d served as doctors in eastern frontier region Ishbal several years before the show begins, and were killed. In the manga they’re killed by the muscly Ishbalan antihero Scar, whereas in the anime they’re killed by a conflicted Colonel Mustang under orders from the corrupt military. The anime version is much more interesting as once Winry learns this, she’s conflicted — she respects Mustang, but also hates him at the same time, leading to some fascinating drama. The anime frequently muses on the tensions between individual conscience and military orders. This version of Mustang is deeply damaged and admits to suicidal thoughts because of his actions in Ishbal.
Due to its production in the early 2000s, Fullmetal Alchemist was made during the time of the US War on Terror, with messy conflicts in the Middle East no doubt influencing Aikawa’s story. Even more so than the manga, the anime is decidedly anti-war, and anti-military. Athough individual soldiers are portrayed as noble, good people, they are also shown to be compromised by their orders and slaughtering innocent people. The military hierarchy is interested only in conquest, and uses underhand and overpowered tactics to achieve it (such as hiding alchemy-amplifying red stones in the State Alchemists’ pocketwatches, making them unwitting walking Weapons of Mass Destruction.) There’s a reason Izumi Curtis repeatedly and disparagingly calls State Alchemists “dogs of the military”.
One aspect I particularly appreciate in the 2003 anime is the way it picks up threads laid early on by the manga that are essentially dropped by its source. The case in point is Ed’s actions in the City of Liore, and his interactions with local girl Rose. Late on the anime, to his horror, Ed discovers that with his actions in the very first two episodes, he contributed to destabilising the city, leading to an armed uprising, overly extreme military intervention, and the sacrifice of thousands of soldiers’ lives by Scar to form a new Philosopher’s Stone. (That Al’s body is used by Scar to become integrated with the stone never happens in the manga, and is a truly jaw-dropping plot twist. Scar’s fitting self-sacrifice here is also anime-original, because he survives to the end of the manga/Brotherhood.)
Rose’s fate is upsetting, it’s implied that she was raped by Amestrian soldiers, the trauma making her mute, and she conceived a child from it. This leads her into Dante/Lyra’s disturbing machinations. A parallel world version of Rose is arguably the main female character of the movie, as opposed to Winry. Rose barely features in the manga or Brotherhood following her initial appearance.
The anti-war sentiment is only magnified in the Conqueror of Shamballa movie, which relocates much of the action to our world, something the manga never did. At the conclusion of the TV anime, Edward is sucked through the Gate of Truth to our world — to England during World War I and ends up stuck there after he makes a sacrifice to restore his brother to fully-embodied human life. The movie is set some years later, with Ed now an adult in 1920s Germany, frequently bumping into dopplegangers of people he knows from his own world. Fuhrer Bradley is now Fritz Lang, famous film director. Maes Hughes is alive — but as a nazi sympathiser policeman. There’s even a version of Alphonse that Ed befriends.
In our world, the Nazi-affiliated Thule Society is filled with men and women obsessed with the occult who wish to rip open a gate between our Earth and Amestris and wage pointless war. The plot occurs during real historical events, most notably the 1923 Munich Putsch, a failed insurrection led by none other than Adolf Hitler, that resulted in his imprisonment for 5 years (during which he wrote his book Mein Kampf). Many historical figures appear in the background here, including Adolf Hitler himself, Karl Haushofer and Rudolf Hess. There’s frequent (and appropriately uncomfortable) dialogue from multiple characters blaming Germany’s post-war fallen state on the Jews and the Gypsies. History buffs may get a kick out of multiple references to runaway inflation and the Treaty of Versailles.
Romani character (Rose-analogue) Noah bears the brunt of much of the abuse, as her obviously tanned complexion and dark eyes mark her out for persecution from the paler German characters. In Amestris the persecuted Ishbalan/Liore underclass are depicted very similarly to Romani people, and the movie only makes this link more overt. Seeing the alternate world version of a previously “good” character like Hughes disparaging someone for their skin colour and culture is painful and difficult to witness, but illustrates the point that we’re all a product of our culture, and hatred is learned.
Eckhart, nominal main antagonist of the movie, is a very lightly-sketched character, whose job is essentially to illustrate the petty small-mindedness of white supremacist racists. Her entire motivation and ultimate plan make little sense. She’s a stand-in for not just nazism and fascism, but the flawed human urge to hate, fear and attack anyone who is different. Her comeuppance would be more satisfactory if she was anything more than a cardboard cutout character. Although the movie is an entertaining coda to the entire saga, most of this adaptation’s high points occur during its preceding TV incarnation.
A larger budget does grace the movie with some spectacular action scenes — while the TV show has its moments, its successor Brotherhood outdoes it in terms of smooth, kinetic action. Some dodgy CGI armour-clad mooks aside, the movie’s Gluttony attack sequence is incredible, and there’s some very… uh… smooth animation… when Noah dances at the end.
What intrigues me most about the last few episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is its introduction of parallel worlds, a very sci-fi concept to what is ostensibly a fantasy series. One of the central mysteries of every version of Fullmetal Alchemist is “what is beyond the Gate of Truth?” In Brotherhood and the manga, there is an actual, individual godlike entity called “Truth”. Not so in the first anime. In line with Edward’s oft-espoused atheism, there are no gods here. The Gate functions more like an automated mechanism, or law of nature. Sure, there are odd black creatures within it, but they appear mindless and hungry. In the anime’s world, the gate is the portal from Ed’s world to our world. Our world has no alchemy because the souls of our dead pass through the gate to become energy to fuel Ed’s world’s alchemy.
The ultimate truth of the movie is that Equivalent Exchange is a lie. To produce a Philosopher’s Stone, Alchemists in Ed’s world must sacrifice humans to do so. What they don’t realise is that any alchemy at all is fuelled by the myriad human deaths on the other side of the gate. The anime takes the origin and explanation for alchemy from the manga and makes it so much darker and more disturbing. There’s an element of gothic, almost cosmic horror to the concept of one world’s energy being fuelled by human souls harvested from another. Although Ed and Al manage to close the Thule Society’s artifical Gate at the very end of the film, they cannot destroy the real Gate of Truth, as Hohenheim says, every human being contains their own small version of the Gate. It’s a fact of life in this multiverse. Brrrrr.
Despite all this world-crossing insanity, the story ends with a re-affirmation of the bonds of brotherhood between Ed and Al, despite their multitudes of sacrifices, they survive together, albeit in a world different to their own, separated from their friends and family, and without the crutch of alchemy to support them. I do feel sorry for Winry being left behind, but Ed never gave her any indication he would ever choose her over his brother.
It’s a melancholy place to leave the story, but in many ways, despite its often upbeat and comedic interludes, it’s a deeply melancholic story that heavily features themes of loss, guilt and sacrifice. That the anime manages to deepen these themes in its second half, arguably more so than even the original manga or Brotherhood, means this is a very special show for me, easily one of my top ten anime of all time. I recently shared it with my youngest son, a couple of episodes at a time, over the past month or so. If anything, I think my appreciation for Fullmetal Alchemist has only grown over time, and it was fun seeing my son grow from indifference over the story in the slow first cour to begging me to put on just one more episode in the final. Although it starts off slow and methodical compared to Brotherhood, by the final cour with its anime-original endgame in sight, Mizushima and Aikawa light a rocket under the plot and the intensity barely lets up.
It’s a shame that there’s currently no legal streaming option in North America or the UK for Fullmetal Alchemist 2003, and every home video release is out of print. I have the ancient UK DVDs from MVM/Revelation Films from the mid-00’s, but for the purposes of rewatching it I tracked down secondhand copies of Anime Limited’s more recent Collector’s Edition Blu-rays. Despite its 4:3 pillarboxed screen ratio, the show still looks great considering it comes from the era of dodgy SD-resolution (or poorer) digipaint anime. The more “canon” Brotherhood may have taken its place in the hearts of many anime fans, but for me the 2003 version and its clever, heartfelt adaptations will always be special, in a way that doesn’t detract from the original manga.
Fullmetal Alchemist
Based on the manga by: Hiromu Arakawa
Directed by: Seiji Mizushima
Written by: Sho Aikawa
Production studio: Bones
Original Japanese TV broadcast: Oct 4th 2003 — Oct 2nd 2004
Number of episodes: 51
Languages: Japanese with English subs, English dub
BBFC rating: 15
Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa
Based on the manga by: Hiromu Arakawa
Directed by: Seiji Mizushima
Written by: Sho Aikawa
Production studio: Bones
Original Japanese cinematic release: July 23, 2005
Runtime: 105 minutes
Languages: Japanese with English subs, English dub
BBFC rating: 12
