Fullmetal Alchemist[1] is a story about the journey of the Elric brothers. Edward and Alphonse Elric are brothers, alchemists, and orphans. Their father left them and their mother and their mother died a short time after that. The boys found a teacher and learned alchemy determined to bring their mother back from the dead. When the brothers try to bring their mother back the transmutation (alchemic process) goes terribly wrong. Alphonse (the younger brother) loses his entire body and Edward loses his left leg. Edward quickly sacrifices his right arm to attach Alphonse’s soul to a suit of armor. Edward is outfitted with artificial limbs called auto-mail and the brothers decide that trying to bring anyone back from the dead, even the mother they missed so much, was a mistake they would never make again. They set out on a journey to restore their physical bodies back to normal. They seek the philosopher’s stone, a legendary stone said to grant the user the ability to bypass the laws of equivalent exchange that anchor alchemy in balance. The brothers discover along the way that the main ingredient to the philosopher’s stone is live human beings. The brothers almost give up on their quest after refusing to sacrifice anyone to get back what was taken from them as punishment in the first place. At this point their teacher returns to teach them once again that, “All is one, one is all.”[2] As the brothers nearly reach their goal it is revealed to Edward that the gate he first saw when he and Alphonse failed to bring their mother back is the gateway between two worlds: the world of alchemy and the world we live in. This gate is the same gate that gave Edward his ability to transmute without a circle, something that cannot be done without the knowledge gained from the gate. Furthermore, Edward’s father explains that the gate not only contains great knowledge but the energy with which alchemists perform their transmutations: the souls of the people who die in our world.
THESIS
“Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only truth.”[3] This philosophical theory applied as law to the mystical science of alchemy is a statement made to lead the viewer to question the nature of existence and how it relates to equivalency and equality. Human lives are equal despite their unique nature: this is the difference between equivalence and equality. No human life is more or less valuable than the next, but one cannot be substituted for another. The alchemy in Fullmetal Alchemist approaches this unique relationship with laws that enforce balance. However, the Elric brothers’ journey reveals that the relationship is not so simple. The question of difference between equivalence and equality in regards to human life shades a black and white system of balance with a tremendous amount of gray. This uncertainty leads one to doubt whether human equivalence can be entirely free of human equality, and if it is the human need to feel unique that defines the common misguided view of the human equivalence/human equality relationship. The human need to feel unique is caused by a fear that we are, in fact, not; Fullmetal Alchemist offers a critique on this fear by questioning whether a human being can escape the equalizing demands of the postmodern global market.
(Figure 1)
MOTHER: EQUIVALENCE AND EQUALITY ARE SEPARATE
When the Elric brothers try to bring their mother back from the dead they still believe that one human soul is equal to the next; Edward says, “What’s a soul really? When you take out the myth it’s just the spark that starts life.” Edward and Alphonse proceed to offer a drop of blood each from their fingers (See Figure 1) as worthy materials for the transmutation, “This is our blood, from her blood.”[4] As empirical young scientists the brothers have a overly logical definition for the human soul. However, they believe that since it was their mother who gave them life then their blood is from her blood and therefore the right blood to use for specifically bringing back their mother. This offers a mixed interpretation of the value of a human soul. The Elric brothers believe that their mother’s soul is special in that it requires the souls of her children to bring her back, but a soul is treated by the brothers as a measurable substance. It is after the brothers fail to revive their mother that they see there is a difference between equality and equivalence. However, the brothers take this realization and create an ultimatum from it: equality and equivalence in regards to human life are completely separate. This narrow definition of the equality/equivalency relationship is reinforced when the brothers discover the key ingredient for the philosopher’s stone.
Users of the stone and those who pursue it after discovering the truth clearly do no differentiate from equality and equivalency since they believe that one soul is exactly as same as the next. The brothers come to understand the there is no defying the balance alchemy’s laws enforce, because even the philosopher’s stone follows these laws. It is with the power of human life stored within the stone that transmutations appear to ignore balance; with the human life being equal and not equivalent the power is endless but a balance still exists because the power gained is power taken from live human sacrifices. It is important to note that it is living human sacrifices because that indicates the power stored in the stone is not gained from the human body but from the soul which can only be found in a living human. This asserts that the human soul is what makes an individual human special and unique, but Alphonse’s condition is a challenge against this.
(Figure 2)
Alphonse is a ‘living suit of armor’. The only thing keeping his soul in the realm of the living is the blood seal Edward used in his transmutation (See Figures 2 and 3). Alphonse’s physical appearnence is very important in placing emphasis on the human soul as the deciding factor to human uniqueness and therefore the irreplaceable nature of human life, because Alphonse is alive without having a human body to live in. Alphonse cannot age, he cannot get sick, he never gets tired, and he never gets hungry or thirsty. On the surface this partial invulnerability implies that Alphonse has surpassed innert human weaknesses. However, it is far more important that Alphonse can still feel emotionally even though he cannot feel the wind against his artificial body. The director at times has Alphonse express these emotions while the expressionless armor stays stoic. I find that these moments are for more effective in placing the importance of human value on intangibles such as feelings can sometimes be, because while the helmet is incapable of expressing emotions Alphonse still is. His emotions can be heard in his real, human voice. Also, Alphonse’s body may be artificial but his soul is still able to use it to express body language. The important thing to note is how similar the armor is to an actual human body. Without our souls the human body is a lifeless heap of flesh and bones. Without our souls are bodies are simply, “Water, 35 litres. Carbon, 20kg. Ammonia, 4 litres. Lime, 1.5kg. Phospherous, 800g. Salt, 250g. Saltpeter, 100g. Sulphur, 80kg. Flourine 7.5g. Iron, 5g. Silicon, 3g. And trace amounts of fifteen other elements.”[5]
(Figure 3)
It is our souls that bring purpose to the body greater than just being a collection of elements, our bodies become houses for our souls and in turn our souls give life to our otherwise lifeless bodies. The co-dependency between the human body and the human soul is reflected in Alphonse’s unique situation, because without his soul the armor is lifeless, but without the armor Alphonse’s soul would leave the realm of the living.
Despite this co-dependency it is still the soul that defines human life more so than the body. Alphonse’s life is still his despite being a suit of armor, because it is far more important that he is still human as defined by his soul. Alphonse grows to doubt this definition of the human identity, believing that his so-called soul is actually a collection of memories weaved together by his older brother to fabricate a fake existence. It is not being a suit of armor that makes Alphonse doubt whether he is human it is not being sure if soul is genuine, as can been seen in the following scene when Alphonse confronts his brother about these thoughts:
Maybe you can go back to normal brother and I hope you do, but I’m not sure I ever can… After all memories are just information you can reference like a cabinet of files. As skilled an alchemist as you are you could have created any memories you wanted me to have… I can’t remember parts of my past because they never happened. My memories and my soul are fake, something you created. I know what the truth is, the person known as Alphonse Elric never existed at all… How can I believe anyone when there’s no way to prove it, when I’m just a hollow shell… What’s the point of living this lie?[6]
This is profound because it internalizes the conflict between the human body and soul and which defines human life and its worth. Alphonse believes he is, “an empty shell” because he cannot be sure if his soul his genuine and not because he is literally an empty suit of armor. There are times when normal human lives are attacked by alienation when an individual too feels like an empty shell because they feel they have lost or never had their own special purpose for being alive.
YOCK ISLAND: EQUALITY AND EQUIVALENCE ARE CONNECTED
This feeling of being special, important even in the smallest of ways is so often a crucial factor in a happy and fulfilled feeling about one’s own existence. While some claim that they do not need to feel special to be happy, that they are happy being a part of the crowd or no crowd at all, the truth is that human life is worth far more than some fool themselves into believing. This is where the difference between equality and equivalence is key and it is also where the lesson of, “All is one, one is all” becomes a lesson worth learning. Since each human life is worth the exact same as the next it can be hard to identify individual importance. Fredric Jameson discusses postmodernism in regards to its impact on aesthetics, “What has happened is that aesthetic production today has become integrated into a commodity production generally… (from clothing to airplanes), at ever greater rates of turnover, now assigns an incresingly essential sturctural function and position to aesthetic innovation and experimintation.”[7] Expanding this reality beyond the artistic expression and technological advancements of humankind to include the very worth of an individual human, I believe that one finds that while equality does not constitue equivalency, the two are connected just as something as romantic as art has been given worth as an exchangable item of the global market. The Elric brothers learn from their teacher during their training on Yock Island that being special does not absolve you from being an equal part of the world:
Edward: We talked about what would happen if we died here remember?
Alphonse: Yeah a lot of people would be sad.
Edward: That’s a subjective opinion, but look at it objectively. If I died the world would continue to move on as if nothing had happened.
Alphonse: Because you’re just a small part of it.
Edward: When the small part, in this case me, dies the body remains.
Alphonse: Water, carbon, ammonia, lime, phosphorous, salt, saltpeter, sulfur, magnesium, fluorine, iron, and aluminum right?
Edward: Right, the body is only a combination of those elements, nothing more. We are destined to be decomposed by bacteria and become nutrients for plants and you follow the process further those plants nourish herbivores.
Alphonse: And those herbivores nourish carnivores even others like us and though we lose awareness our lives keep moving through the system.
Edward: The great flow that maintains the universe, call it the cycle of life, the course of nature, each of us is just a small part of that current, one in the all; in the end without all the individual ones the all can’t exist. This world flows by following grander laws we can’t even imagine. To recognize that flow and work within it, to decompose and recreate that is alchemy.[8]
The Elric brothers realize that each human life is equal including their own and their late mother’s and at the same time they are not equivalent because each individual human life is necessary in the continuing balance of existence. However, this connection can lead one to question whether or not equality and equivalence can be connected without human life being not only being equal but equivalent.
THE GATE: HUMANS ARE EQUIVALENT
Jameson aruges that postmodernism must be addressed as a system that allows for difference, “It seems to me essential to grasp postmodernism not as a style but rather as a cultural dominant: a conception which allows for the presence and coexistence of a range of very different, yet subordinate features.”[9] This is a postive outlook on postmodernism considering that people are often in support of not only variety and tolerance for the variety, but a union formed in respect and understanding. Unfortunately, this is utopian prospect that could only occur if postmodernism was a perfect system. Jameson asserts that it is not, “I have felt however, that it was only in the light of some conception of a dominant culture logic or hegemonic norm that genuine difference could be measured and assessed.”[10] This argument is key in understanding why humans have such a need to be unequivalent and yet equal at the same time and how that is at least partially impossible.
(Figure 4)
Edward Elric encounters this dillemma within the equality/equivalence relationship when his father explains to him the nature of the gate (See Figure 4). The idea that no transmutation can occur without the energy provided by the souls of those who die on our side of the gate is profound in that it removes the possibility that human life can be equal without being equivalent. The gate is not biased; no matter who someone is when they die on our side of the gate their soul becomes energy. Therefore, our soul, this part of us that is supposed to be the piece that makes us unequivocal is in fact no different from the next person’s soul. This idea is represented symbolically with the gate. Before Edward finds out about the other side he and his teacher discuss what might be inside:
Izumi: You remember it though, don’t you Edward?
Edward: Yes, the gateway. I remember; how could I not? The truth, that’s what was in there.
Izumi: The truth…
Edward: I couldn’t understand what was going on. It was as if a vast amount of information was being implanted directly into my mind, and suddenly I-I knew things about alchemy that I’d never learned, everything, and I knew I was just one step away from achieving a complete human transmutation. I understood when I was inside that gateway if I acted now there was still time.
[Edward quickly applies the blood seal he learned about in the gateway and applies it to the suit of armor and performs the transmutation]
Edward: I saw the truth while inside that gateway. That’s why I’m able to transmute without a circle and how I bonded Al’s soul to the suit of armor. I learned it all in there.
Izumi: You really think it’s the truth that’s beyond that gateway?
Edward: Of course; what else could it be?
Izumi: I don’t know, a shortcut, the secret to a magic trick.[11]
The important thing to take note of in this conversation is how Edward claims he, “was just one step away from achieving a complete human transmutation.” This is important because Edward has ironically been performing human transmutations every time he transmutes because he’s been using the energy created by a human soul or possibly souls (the exchange rate is never specified). One could argue that this upsets the balance that the laws of alchemy are supposed ot enforce. However, I argue that the laws of alchemy represent the need for humans to believe that they are unequivocal to one another and the gate represents the truth just as Edward called it, but not how he described it. Because Edward has, this entire time, been performing human transmutations it only makes since that the gate would lead him all the way up to the last step for a complete human transmutation. The reason the gate stopped there is because Edward, being human, would not be able to understand the last step, which I argue is to realize that human beings are actually equivocal and they are so due to their own complacency. I argue that if Edward were to accept this fact he would be able complete his human transmutation and bring his mother back, but equivalency is about exchange and it would cost one human soul in return. The unfortunate truth is that it does not matter which soul.
In this frame of mind the philosopher’s stone can be seen as something not so evil. After all, the philosopher’s stone uses the energy from the souls of the people in the world of alchemy, sparing the souls of those who die on our side. The philosopher’s stone simply enables its user to choose from where he or she is getting the souls needed for their transmutations. This further supports the idea that human lives are actually equivocal since one can choose which ones to use from two mass selections. This is a dangerous reality that while in the anime seems to be no more than an explanation for a mystical science, but outside the show it is a eye-opening critique of the world’s current value of human life as decided upon by humans.
CONCLUSION: HUMAN WORTH IN A POSTMODERNIST SOCIETY
So what’s the point to it all? Why place such deep, philosophical elements in an anime? The author of the original manga – Hiromu Arakawa – clearly inspired the director of the anime to send a message with this anime: humans are equivalent no matter how unique anyone is and the sad truth of the matter is that this is a new condition brought on by ourselves. The global market of the postmodernist era demands that trade not end at products and items; people are assigned worth according to their contribution to a world that continuously progresses towards a complete, dominate global economy. Timothy Brennan reflects on this harsh reality in his analysis of Hardt and Negri’s Empire, “Empire’s rule has no limits… [It posits a regime that effectively encompasses the spatial totality… an order that effectively suspends history and thereby fixes the existing state of affairs for eternity… [and] operates on all registers of the social order extending to the depths of the social world… Power [cannot] mediate among different social forces.”[12] This global economy that as a society we have constructed has gained too much power, so much so that we feel that we have no choice but to apathetically succumb to its marginilizing affects of the many while exhalting the few. This financially driven, global competition is the threat to our uniqueness represented by the laws of alchemy and the Elric brothers’ enlightening, yet futile journey to finding a way to defy those laws in Fullmetal Alcchemist.
It is the futility of the Elric brothers’ attempts that is meant to act as the warning to the viewer. When going up against the most powerful economic system of the time one cannot help but feel insignificant and when things as priceless as our artisitic expression – which is a core piece to our uniqueness – are priced and compared across the planet, equivocating human worth is not much of stretch. This type of alienating effect is best explained by Karl Marx in his Early Writings, “From political economy itself, using its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity, and moreover the most wretched commodity of all.”[13] We as citizens of this alienating global economy must find a way to exist within its undefiable structure, in order to find a way to hang on to our uniqueness despite the equivocating effects postmodernism has on something previously seen as undefinable as human-to-human equivalency.
NOTES
1. Fullmetal Alchemist is originally a manga series written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa, published by VIZ, LLC. The version of Fullmetal Alchemist analyzed in this paper is the anime series directed by Seiji Mizushima, a total of 51 episodes long the showed originally aired from 4 October 2003 – 2 October 2004, Produced by Bones Animation Studio. While both versions start out very similar there are significant differences between the two versions as the plot progresses.
2. This lesson was first taught to Edward and Alphonse when they trained under Izumi and was later taught to them again when the brothers had lost sight of their responsibilities as alchemists.
3. This is the opening line for each episode of Fullmetal Alchemist narrated by the character Alphonse Elric.
4. Edward Elric in Volume 1 – The Curse, Episode 3 – Mother, 1:00:53-1:01:02
5. These are the ingredients of the average human body as listed by Edward Elric a few different times in the show.
6. Alphonse Elric in Volume 6 – Captured Souls, Episode 23 – Fullmetal Heart, 1:06:47-1:09:06.
7. Jameson, Fredric – The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism – Page 4
8. Edward and Alphonse Elric in Volume 7 – Reunion on Yock Island, Episode 28 – All Is One, One Is All, 1:30:24-1:32:07.
9. Jameson, Fredric – The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism – Page 4.
10. Jameson, Fredric - The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism – Page 6
11. Edward Elric and Izumi Curtis in Volume 8 – The Alter of Stone, Episode 29 – The Untainted Child, 13:34-16:57
12. Brennan, Timothy – The Empire’s New Clothes – pg. 350 – Critical Inquiry, Winter 2003
13. Mark, Karl – Early Writings – pg. 322
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