hontou ni
6Oct/040

Fullmetal Alchemist

And so ends one of the most outstanding productions of Studio BONES. It has been a tremendous journey with Ed/Al. One filled with laughter, mirth, tears, horror and revulsion. Never had there been a series that managed to invoke such a wide spectrum of emotio

ns and with such fiery intensity. FMA resonates strongly with me because it deals with the many themes that humanity has been grappling and still struggling with ever since the dawn of time; the search for immortality, the intrinsic human need for hope, our futile responses to irreconcilable losses and the general darkness/foolishness of the human heart/mind. Using alchemy as a platform, FMA strings together many powerful anthropological tales built into Ed/Al's travels/quests. Personally I would recommend FMA as a must-watch literature 'text' for the young.


However, as with Scrapped Princess and Wolf's rain, I felt FMA's ending suffers from a slight oversimplification of complex issues or story elements introduced in the series. FMA is an intelligent series and has thus drawn a viewership of like profile. Side-stepping some critical story issues is not going to sit well this audience. Well, possibly some issues are left unfinished for closure/expansion in the FMA movie. Either that, the answers were dissipated throughout the series and require a careful viewer to piece together the grand puzzle. If so, that would be one excellent reason to re-watch the series.


~Warning: MAJOR spoilers~

Actually I am most confused on one aspect of the series (not being part of the intelligent audience): the FMA universe. The introduction of WWI Britain as a parallel universe really threw me off-balance. I was not totally shocked as insightful readers at David's blog have already mentioned that some of the images from the gate (earlier FMA eps) included images of our modern world and that of the atomic bomb. But really, is the gate just an inter-dimensional portal between parallel universes or a netherworld time machine that straddles millenniums of the same timeline? After all, Christianity was mentioned in the alchemy world and is thought to be an ancient religion not too far from Hohenhiem's time. So is the Alchemy world actually an extrapolation from the world which once hosted 1921 Munich? We also see Hohenheim back to pioneering transmutation research in this alchemy-less world. [See object of research]. Could this be one of those convoluted time-loop concepts which may be expanded in the FMA movie? If so, it certainly would make Ed and Al's mode of eventual reunion more interesting.


With scientific frontiers on nano-engineering (ie atomic level manipulation) and human cloning, we're actually not too far from 'transmutational' applications. Scientists and legislators in the related fields may want to catch FMA and gain some wisdom on both the beauty and darkness of the human heart (that remains unchanged across universes/millenniums) before delving into the realms of God for human access. Or just catch it anyway because it's one of the BEST titles, anime-dom offers.

Related posts:

  1. Fullmetal Alchemist 11-23
  2. Fullmetal Alchemist 28-30
  3. Fullmetal Alchemist 31-32

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