"Fullmetal Alchemist" Vol. 1-3 Review

As someone whose been recently getting more and more into manga, it was inevitable that I’d read this.

Hiromu Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist follows the Elric brothers, Edward and Alphonse, who have messed up their bodies after attempting to use alchemy to bring their mother back to life. Alchemy involves the conservation of matter, so in order to create one thing something else needs to be sacrificed. So, in this resurrection attempt, Alphonse (or Al) lost his body and Edward (or Ed) lost his arm, and then sacrificed his leg in exchange for Al’s soul which was transmuted into a suit of armor. After this, Ed and Al are seeking a way to regain their old bodies and potentially still find a way to resurrect their mother.

I think there’s two things that really worked for me about this manga: for one, there’s a great balance between comedic moments and incredibly dark moments, and secondly, the overall more mature themes compared to other similar manga.

I was actually first introduced to this series by watching the anime years ago, and I think I wasn’t as into the comedic scenes in animation. They felt very jarring and out of place to me, but in the comic I think they work much better. Arakawa’s simplified cartooning of the characters in scenes had me actually laughing out loud, and in print it doesn’t linger as much, which I think also helps. Especially because the book does get incredibly dark at times. One of the darker moments of the book is in the second volume when Ed and Al meet a biological alchemist and become friends with the man’s daughter and dog. It’s then revealed at the end of the story that this alchemist, in an attempt to impress the government and keep his state alchemist license, combines his daughter and dog into a monstrous creature. It’s a really upsetting story, and it’s definitely the one that stuck with me the most.

I’m glad Arakawa isn’t afraid to shy away from these heavy ideas, especially since this series seems targeted towards readers of other similar Shonen series’ like Naruto and One Piece. But this series seems a bit darker from the jump; I mean even the motivation behind the main villain in the second volume, “Scar”, is that he’s killing state alchemists because they were behind the genocide of his people. That’s quite heavy for young people.

There’s also a lot of murder and death in just the first three volumes. People are dying left and right, and I’m here for it if I’m being honest. It feels like there’s genuine stakes for the characters—I know Ed and Al are most likely safe, but there’s are a lot of good side characters that I don’t want to see bite the dust (in particular Armstrong, the military official that saves Ed and Al from Scar and always takes off his shirt and flexes, I love that guy).

But yeah, I think this is the great start to a series. The action is great, there’s a great balance between comedy and horror, the dynamic between Ed and Al is excellent, and there are already interesting themes surrounding life, death, religion, and imperialism, which I’m looking forward to seeing further develop. Good stuff.

9 shirtless Armstrongs out of 10.

Till next time!

-RD