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Fullmetal Alchemist Anime
Written by Mushroom Pie As the episode begins, we find Ed and Al searching through alchemy books on the shelves of a library, apparently looking for information on the Philosopher's Stone. Al's still discouraged by the fact that Father Cornello's stone was fake, and Ed seems concerned with getting in trouble with some one named Mustang. Suddenly Al stumbles upon a book called "Introduction to Alchemy," which immediately makes the nostalgic memories come flooding back to the brothers. We suddenly cut to a flashback, where we see a little blonde-haired girl watching Ed and Al, who has a human body, as the two young boys draw their first transmutation circle. The girl, who the boys call Winry, complains about it being boring, but the boys insist that they'll like the present they're making her. As they complete the circle, they dump a pile of dust in the middle of it and activate the circle, creating a doll. Winry, however, is afraid of the alchemic reaction and runs off crying. Her parents, as well as the boys' mother, sit her down and explain that they were trying to do something nice for her. The talk is interrupted when Winry's grandmother comes in, holding the doll and noting how great the work on it is, especially for such young children. Their mother agrees, and wonders aloud just how they learned alchemy. She heads outside to find her boys sitting against the house, expecting a punishment. Their mother does no such thing, however, and takes them home. On the way, she asks them when their father taught them how to perform alchemy. "How could we learn something from some one who's never home?" Ed replies, somewhat frustrated. Turns out, they managed to teach themselves. Happy that her sons are learning the science, she permits them to study the books in her husband's lab, much to their joy. A few years pass by via a montage of still images, the most comical and memorable of which being Al showing off the fact that he's taller than his brother. Al narrates it by explaining that the more alchemy the learned, the more their mother smiled, and so they continued to delve ever-further into the "science that made you feel like you were magic." As the montage ends, the boys run up to their mother, showing her little horse statues that they made. Ed's is more or less perfect, but Al's has some flaws in it. Nevertheless, their mother, just as you would expect her to, insists that they're both wonderful. Al asks if she thinks that their dad would be proud of them, and after a moment of hesitation, she replies "Yes. And when he comes home, he'll tell you so himself." Ed, in a sudden fit of frustration, runs off, saying that he's going to Winry's house. Al follows close behind. The two are then seen sitting on a hill, staring down at the town below them. Al asks Ed why he hates their father so much. Ed replies by saying that he ditched them. He admits that he can't really remember enough about him to say that he hated him, but their mother got sad when she thought about him, and that was reason enough for him. Suddenly cheering up, Ed suggests that they head to Winry's for real. They walk in on a moment filled with dispair, as Winry sobs loudly, and her grandmother looks off into space dismally, a crumpled letter in hand. When the boys ask what happened, Winry says through her tears that her parents were killed in a military conflict in a place called Ishbal. Ed questions this, as they were doctors, and not soldiers. Nothing is known other than they were the victimms of a surprise attack when they were treating wounded soldiers. Al tries to comfort her by telling her how they get by without their father. She lashes out at him and points out that their dad just left them, but her parents are gone forever. Ed suddenly says that that may not necessarily be the case. He starts talking about a theory he read in a book about something that he read in an alchemy book about something called a "homonculus," something he describes as a "type of living doll, which doesn't have a soul or any memories at first, but some scholars believe that, through alchemy-" He is suddenly cut off by Winry's grandmother, who scolds him for even thinking of performing the strictly forbidden act of human alchemy. "Alchemy isn't the be-all end-all to human problems! That's why we auto-mail engineers exist!" "Backwards old bat!" The boys are promptly ejected from the house. Ed and Al discuss what happened to Winry, and Al wonders aloud what it would be like if they likewise lost their mother. The two think about it, and then charge towards their mother, who's hanging close outside, and hug her tightly. We then cut ahead another few years, to find Ed at age and Al at age . They're racing each other home, each holding a basket of fresh vegetables. As Ed reaches his door, he yells out to his mother that they're home, but stops short when he sees her lying in a collapsed heap on the floor. We cut ahead to see her lying in bed, with both the boys at her bedside. A doctor is talking to Winry's grandmother outside. He tells her that there's nothing he can do, and that she must have had the disease in secret for years, and was for one reason or another concealing it from everyone. We cut ahead again. Ed has a large pile of letters spread out on a table from Hoenheim Elric, explaining to Al that if they send a letter to each of the return adresses, some one somewhere will surely be able to pass on information to their father about his wife. Ed steadfastly wants him as far away as possible, but knows that it's only right for her mother to see her love one last time. We cut ahead a bit further. Everyone is in the mother's bedroom It is clear that she isn't long for this world. Hoenheim, despite Ed's efforts, is absent. She turns to her sons, and tells them about some money she had been saving for them, and tells them to use it to take care of each other. Ed laughs the statement off, ensuring her that she's going to be fine. As her eyes glaze over, she asks Ed to transmute her one last thing; a ring of flowers, just like the ones Hoenheim used to make. The end of this line is also the end of her last breath. We now see the funeral, where Ed and Al stare unbelievingly at the grave of their mother, Trisha Elric. the narrator Al tells the viewer that they then knew why she liked it when the performed alchemy; it reminded her of her husbad. They stay at the grave all day, unmovingly staring at the carved letters of their mother's name in the tombstone. Finally, Al breaks the silence. "Brother, I'm cold. And I'm hungry. How are we gonna do this? How can we go on without mom?" "We're not, Al," Ed replies flatly. "We're going to bring her back." Al explains during a short montage that they used some of the money their mother had given them to pay for a professional alchemy teacher, and learned the serious principals of the science. Finally, after a few years, they return home, and immediately steal away into their father's old alchemy lab. A familar suit of armor gazes at the viewer from the background as Ed shows Al where their father had written a few notes about the theoretical possibility of reviving a human alchemically. Al points out the forbidden nature of what they're trying to do, but Ed angrily shrugs it off. He explains to Al that alchemists failed to do human alchemy successfully, and so slapped a "forbbidden" label on it to hide their failure. As hesitant as he still is about the whole business, Al agrees to help Ed. They fill a pan up with a large mound of dust, rattling off the same elements that Ed told Rose about in the previous episode. Now, the tricky part. What on Earth do they offer up that's equivalent to their mother's soul? Ed has a theory that he explains to Al as he cuts his and his own fingers, letting the blood drip down into the mixture. "What is a soul, really? When you take out the myth, it's just the spark that starts life. This is our blood, which came from her blood. That's a fair trade." The brothers place the pan of ingredients in the center of a large, complex transmutation circle, and activate it. We cut suddenly to a mysterious man, dressed in a black raincoat, staring at the Elric home. "There's something foul in the air." The entire lab is enveloped in a beautiful white light; it looks like Ed's theory might've been right. But then, the light suddenly turns an ominous purple. Al doesn't think that the transmutation is going right, and his suspicions are confirmed as hideous black tendrils wrap themselves around his arm. Ed gets up and tries to run over and help his brother, but is stopped as the same tendrils grab his left leg. His brother screams, and Ed looks up to see that he's being dragged into the evil column of purple light in the center of the the transmutation circle. Ed reaches desperately to grab his brother, but simply can't reach. The screen goes black. When light returns, Al, who is now the suit of armor that we know him as in the present, sits up, steam from the transmutation still clouding the room. His new body confuses him, but he's first more concerned with finding his brother. Peering through the smoke, he sees a crumpled heap, and immediately runs to it. Ed is lying there, grunting in pain as he holds the bloody stump of his right arm. Al fearfully asks what happened, and Ed explained that he was short on time, so he sacrificed his arm to get Al back. It was only enough to get his soul, though, so he had to attach it to a suit of armor in the corner. Al then asks what became of their mother, and Ed just replies that it's best not to look. Al looks anyway, and as the smoke clears, he's appalled by what he sees. Lying in the pan is a hideous heap of organs and bones, with a gnarled human head staring out at them, with glowing, purple eyes. "What happened, brother? Your theories and equations. They all seemed right." "It wasn't the theories, Al. It wasn't the math. It was us." We cut to Al kneeling at the Rockbell's doorstep, holding Al out to the astounded Winry and Pinako (that's the grandmother's name), begging them to help him before he dies. We cut again, this time to the three sitting at Ed's bedside while he's recovering. Pinako knows what happened immediately, and accuses Al of trying to resurrect their mother. The conversation is interrupted when the man from before walks through the door, presenting a State Alchemist's watch, and introducing himself as Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang. Pinako angrily states that she has no time to entertain dogs. Mustang defends himself by showing Al one of the letters Ed had sent before. He informs him, however, that they haven't the slightest clue as to Hoenheim's whereabouts. Pinako continues to insult him, but he ignores her as he makes a beeline for Ed's bed. He tells them that he's never seen such a violent reaction to human transmutation, and that if the boys can attempt it and survive, then they're much more important to him than their father. Pinako finally orders him to leave, and he complies, telling Al to come talk with him if he's ever in Central City. Cut to the next morning. Pinako is changing Ed's bandages. He mentions that they have some money at the house, and he wants Pinako to take it as payment for auto-mail prosthetics. Ed is determined to set things straight, and make up for the loss he caused his brother. Despite what everyone thought, he was conscious when Mustang was there earlier, and had decided to go to Central and become a State Alchemist. Pinako tries to dissuade him, explaining that State Alchemists are nothing more than the lap dogs of the military, forced to go into battle and kill strangers just because the nation tells them they're bad people. Ed understands this, but he knows that it's the only way he can fix things. "Fix you, or fix the world? Make sure you know which beforehand." Ed never gives her an answer. Cut to the operation room, where Winry and Pinako are hooking up the auto-mail, a terribly painful process. Ed lies there, grimacing in pain. "I'm surprised, Ed. Even adults scream at this stage. We're attaching each individual nerve ending to the auto-mail now." "This pain.... is nothing.... compared to what he lost." We cut to Al awaiting as Ed approaches. "To train the mind, you have to train the mind. That's what Teacher always told us." The two begin to spar, and Ed tells Al about his plan. Al disagrees. He wants to be the one to become the State Alchemist, feeling that he's the guilty party for not acting on his feelings of uncertainty. Ed doggedly refuses, however, and Al finally agrees. "Brother, from now on.... we're all we've got." The final scene shows the boys setting their home aflame. "We knew there would be no turning back, so, we burned down the family home. Because, some memories aren't meant to leave traces." The boys turn solemnly and walk away from the smoldering flames behind them. Roll credits. My opinion: A good episode. It lets you understand the characters of Ed and Al much better, and introduces the character of Mustang. It also alludes to Hoenheim, who plays a vital part later on in the series. I'd imagine following the rest of the series would be pretty difficult if you missed this episode. There's a couple inconsistancies that bug me, though. Mustang says that he's never seen a reaction to human transmutation as violent as Ed and Al's, but then shows surprise that they can live through human transmutation. Doesn't that imply that he's seen a human transmutation violent enough to kill the alchemist attempting it? And when and why the heck has he seen an attempted human transmutation, anyhow? Also, during the sparring scene at the end, Ed knocks Al into the water. Shouldn't that have washed off his blood seal and kill him? I guess he wasn't in there long, but still. It's bothersome. |
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