Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood

Full Metal Alchemist 

Seriously one of my favorite animes out there...I would however recommend watching 'brotherhood'...it seems to follow the storyline better.

FMA deserves the full 10 our of 10 for best anime so far....I have seen many different series and this one had me on the edge of the seat till the end.

The series focuses on the lives of two young brothers who live in a small house in the country. Their father is a master alchemist and he travels the world...leaving the young boys at home with their mother. The boys spend a lot of their time studying their fathers alchemy books and they slowly learn the art of transmutation. Eventually the mother grows sick and she dies, leaving the boys all alone.

Basic Alchemy

The young brothers attempt a forbidden transmutation that they learned from one of the many books in their fathers library. Young Edward and Alphonse attempts to bring their mother back from the dead. The boys dig through their fathers library in order to find the ingredients and the proper circle to complete the transmutation. The human body is made up of a collection of elements...not as much as you would think considering 75% is already H2O ...that only leaves 25% to be other stuff ....carbon, calcium, iron etc...so Edward and Alphonse collect the precise amount of ingredients to make another body and place it in the middle of the circle.

The energy generated from the circle versus the energy needed to bring a soul back from across the underworld do not match up...leaving the brothers to be additional sacrifices to complete the transmutation.

young boys with a transmutation circle

Edward and Alphonse go through the 'portal', and are taken to a place with no light or darkness...in this space between places there is the one being, Edward and his gate. Once an alchemist goes through the portal he or she learns quite a bit about the science behind alchemy and some other fundamental rules....however there is always a price.

Edward had to lose his arm in order to get back through the portal...and Alphonse, was less lucky. His entire body was taken to the place between places. Edward does some quick thinking and managed to bind his brothers soul to a suit of armor....unfortunately this is another form of the taboo human transmutation and he must sacrifice his leg in order to complete the transmutation.

That is pretty much where the series starts off....Edward gets new limbs from their neighbors, who specialize in 'automail'....prosthetics and such....but this automail is technologically advanced even to our standards today. Poor Alphonse has to live the rest of his life in a suit of empty armor. The boys make a pact then and there to never forget what happened the night of their failed alchemy and will figure out how to make their bodies hole again....they leave town in order to peruse the libraries of the state alchemist, which is like a major in the army, so they can begin to unravel the mysteries of transmutation....more importantly the Elrich brothers begin their hunt for the philosophers stone.

A philosophers stone

The tale of the philosophers stone is one always shrouded in mystery and soaked in blood. Nothing good ever came from the use of a philosophers stone...a fact the young brothers take too long to figure out....
From reanimated corpses to engineered immortal humans the philosopher stone knows no boundaries.

These images intrest me...they are called transmutation circles.

These are from an anime I like very much. Its called Full Metal Alchemist and in his world its the art of science that allows them to use "magic". There is a huge amount of energy in the crust of the earth. The Alchemists gather that extra energy from the earth through a circle and then the energy is free to use however the Alchemist wants.

 With this circle in particular one can use the energy locked inside a human and transform that energy into something more potent. This is the basis of the entire series and I would not like to ruin it for anyone.










I've begun new research in transmutation check out the next post.

The Theory of Transmutation

Human transmutation is a taboo art however there are those who use humans as a sacrifice to gain power

These symbols are truly interesting. Symbols like these are found on the bodies of a homunculus or rather a human that was engineered rather than made.
The serpent that ate its own tail....







This idea is very interesting to me....maybe the ravage direction will take me further along in this journey

Transmutation Circle - Master Howl uses them too

I have been compiling information on transmutation circles...they seem to keep popping up everywhere I look close enough and recently I have found another example.

Howl's Moving Castle - Transmutation Circle

In the movie Howl's Moving Castle the wizard master Howl even uses a transmutation circle in order to make a massive change to his moving fortress. He has to use his fire demon familiar to initiate the the spell however this circle defines and contains the magical power needed to preform the spell.
It seems to me if these circles keep appearing across all sorts of different platforms...then possibly these symbols are the key to channeling the earths energy.

Howls Moving Castle - Transmutation Circle

This specific circles are not as detailed as the ones found in Full Metal Alchemist however if we look closely there are plenty of similarities to be found.