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Sunday, June 17, 2007
Full Metal Alchemist
Current Mood: CC is listening to: Lullaby--Jim Chappell (Nightsongs and Lullabies) I'm not usually a big fan of anime shows, but there's a series that I absolutely love (and Steve enjoys as well): Full Metal Alchemist.
It's about two brothers that live in a world where people practice alchemy. Their definition of alchemy is a little different from ours: our understanding of alchemy is more the specific "medieval-art-of-turning-lead-into-gold" kind of thing; their understanding of alchemy is more general: being able to break anything down to its molecular level and turn it into something else. Some people are so good at it that they become state alchemists with their own specializations.
A running joke in the series is that people usually mistake the suit of armor, Alphonse Elric, as the Full Metal Alchemist. He's not--it's actually his older brother Edward, who's very sensitive about his height :-).
Anyway, long story short: Ed and Al lost their mother when they were very young. They missed her so much that they decided to perform something forbidden in alchemy: a human transmutation, which is essentially trying to bring someone dead back to life.
Unfortunately, it didn't work (think Stephen King's Pet Sematary) and in the process, Ed lost his left leg, and Al lost his entire body (the law of Equivalent Exchange: to obtain, something of equal value must be lost).
Thanks to Ed's quick thinking, he was able to keep from losing his brother entirely by exchanging his right arm for Al's soul, which he fused into the only thing in the room he could get his hands on: an empty suit of armor.
Now they're looking for the Philosopher's Stone (which bypasses Equivalent Exchange) so that they can get themselves back to normal again without having to pay a price.
Here's a clip of one of the episodes that I found on YouTube :-). Let me set it up really quickly for you: Ed and Al found a chance to make their own Philosopher's Stone. However, it requires human sacrifice. Their enemies (who aren't human but want to be) are blackmailing Ed into creating the Stone by threatening to erase Al's transmutation circle (which is the only thing that's holding Al's soul to the armor--erase that, and he's gone).
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