Fullmetal Alchemist

Fullmetal Alchemist

鋼の錬金術師
2003 -2004 Bones MBS 51 episodes Completed
Action Adventure Drama
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Details & Synopsis
The year is 1910, approximately. The country is Amestris, approximately. Two boys in a rural town teach themselves alchemy from their absent father's books and decide to do the one thing every alchemical text agrees cannot be done, human transmutation, the resurrection of the dead. Their mother. They are children. They do not survive the attempt intact.
Edward Elric loses his right arm and left leg. Alphonse Elric loses everything, his entire body, seized by the Gate, leaving behind only a soul that Ed binds to a suit of armour in the seconds before he loses consciousness. The exchange is the series' foundation and its recurring nightmare: the law of equivalent exchange, the principle that underpins all alchemy, applied to the thing it was never meant to touch. They paid. They did not get what they paid for.
Produced by Bones and directed by Seiji Mizushima, Fullmetal Alchemist aired on MBS from 2003 to 2004. Fifty-one episodes. It began adapting Hiromu Arakawa's manga faithfully and then, as the weekly production overtook the still-running manga, gradually moved into an original storyline. What followed is one of the most remarkable pivots in anime history: the production team, with Arakawa's blessing and a handful of her discarded plot threads, invented their own story. Their own villain. Their own ending.
The ending they arrived at is darker than Brotherhood's. More ambiguous. More interested in the cost of the boys' choices than in the resolution of the world's politics. Dante. The Gate. What is on the other side of it. A finale that refuses the comfort of restoration and insists that some debts cannot be paid back, they can only be carried forward.
Brotherhood is the manga. Faithful, complete, structurally confident, the story Arakawa intended. This is something else. A parallel history. A what-if that the people who made it took entirely seriously. Both versions are essential. They are not the same show wearing the same premise. They are two writers asking the same question and arriving at different answers about what human beings owe each other and what alchemy, the science of transformation, of making one thing into another, actually costs when the thing being transformed is a person.
Watch both. Then argue about which one broke you worse.
Alt Title 鋼の錬金術師
Studio Bones
Network MBS
Aired 2003 - 2004
Episodes 51
Genre Action, Adventure, Drama
Status Completed
← All lore

Combat Ledger

How to Read FMA Combat

Fights Matter Here Because Somebody Usually Learns Something Ugly

SPOILER!
FMA 2003 is not built around a clean ladder of stronger opponents. Its best fights expose a rule, force a moral choice or make a character confront what their alchemy actually means.

This ledger keeps the confrontations where the battle itself teaches the viewer something important.

Early Confrontations

Edward & Alphonse vs. Scar

SPOILER!

Episode 14 · Central · Result: the brothers discover how badly outmatched they are

Scar attacks the Elrics as State Alchemists and tears through Edward's automail before either brother understands the full mechanism of his right arm.
The Breakdown
Scar does not need a flashy exchange of techniques. He analyzes the structure he touches and stops the alchemical process at destruction. The fight works because Ed's normal improvisation suddenly has no time to become clever: contact itself can end the battle.
Why it matters
This is the moment Scar stops being a rumor attached to dead State Alchemists and becomes Edward's personal evidence that the title he fought to earn has made him somebody else's legitimate target.
Edward Elric Alphonse Elric Scar

Laboratory 5

Edward vs. the Slicer Brothers

SPOILER!

Episodes 19–20 · Laboratory 5 · Result: Ed survives two souls in one armor

Edward enters Lab 5 expecting guards and finds an alchemical variation of his own brother instead: two convicted killers bound into a single suit of armor.
The Breakdown
The fight becomes a problem of blood seals rather than conventional anatomy. Destroying the armor is not enough, and discovering two separate souls forces Ed to rethink how reproducible Al's condition may be.
Why it matters
The battle turns soul binding from the desperate miracle Ed performed once into technology other people have learned to weaponize.
Edward Elric Alphonse Elric

Alphonse vs. Barry the Chopper

SPOILER!

Episodes 20–21 · Laboratory 5 · Result: Barry attacks Al's identity instead of only his armor

Barry is another soul bound to armor, but unlike Al he is delighted by what he has become and has no interest in behaving like the human being he once was.
The Breakdown
Barry finds Al's weakest point and attacks it verbally: if a soul can be attached to armor, perhaps Ed simply fabricated Al's memories as well. The fight becomes harder the more Al doubts himself.
Why it matters
Barry nearly wins by making Al question whether there is an Alphonse Elric to defend. It is one of the few fights in the series where the decisive weapon is an idea.
Alphonse Elric

Greed

Edward vs. Greed

SPOILER!

Episode 34 · Dante's mansion · Result: Edward kills a Homunculus for the first time

Greed's Ultimate Shield initially makes Edward's attacks useless. Edward eventually realizes the shield is carbon-based and changes its structure through alchemy, creating an opening.
The Breakdown
Ed wins by understanding the material instead of trying to overpower it. The more important lesson comes immediately afterward: Greed reveals the weakness created by a Homunculus's connection to the remains of the person it resembles.
Why it matters
The fight gives Edward both a kill he did not emotionally expect and the rule he will later need against Sloth.
Edward Elric Greed

Liore

Scar vs. Kimblee

SPOILER!

Episode 42 · Liore · Result: Scar survives long enough to complete the Stone

Kimblee turns bodies and surroundings into explosives while Scar's right arm destroys through deconstruction. Their fight is two State-alchemy histories colliding inside the city being prepared for another massacre.
The Breakdown
Kimblee represents the military violence Scar has spent years answering. Scar's victory does not end the larger mechanism around Liore, but it clears the path for the transmutation he has already chosen.
Why it matters
The confrontation is not a clean revenge payoff. Scar is defeating one architect of violence while preparing to use the lives of other soldiers as material himself.
Scar Zolf Kimblee

Final Arc

Edward vs. Sloth

SPOILER!

Episodes 46–47 · Result: Ed destroys the Homunculus created from Trisha

Sloth can turn her body into water and repeatedly uses Trisha's face against the brothers emotionally as much as physically.

Edward ultimately uses the remains connected to their mother to weaken Sloth and forces himself to finish the fight.
The Breakdown
The mechanics and the character problem are the same thing. The object capable of weakening Sloth is proof that Trisha died and that the being standing in front of Edward is somebody else.
Why it matters
Winning requires Ed to stop treating resemblance as resurrection. He cannot undo the original human transmutation until he accepts what it actually created.
Edward Elric Alphonse Elric Sloth

Edward vs. Envy

SPOILER!

Episode 50 · Result: Envy turns family history into the opening

Edward can fight Envy's transformations until Envy reveals the face connected to Hohenheim's dead son and the 2003 anime's hidden family history.
The Breakdown
The decisive move is emotional rather than technical. Edward hesitates when the fight stops looking like hero versus Homunculus and suddenly looks like something his father created through the same forbidden grief that created Sloth and Wrath.
Why it matters
Envy's hatred of Edward is finally exposed as personal. The Homunculus conspiracy and the Elric family story become the same problem at the worst possible moment.
Edward Elric Envy Van Hohenheim

Roy Mustang vs. Pride

SPOILER!

Episodes 50–51 · Führer's residence · Result: Mustang kills Bradley and nearly dies doing it

Mustang confronts King Bradley after learning the Führer is Pride. Bradley's speed and regeneration make ordinary flame attacks insufficient until the remains tied to Pride's creation become part of the fight.Mustang's climb toward the top of the military ends with him literally fighting the Homunculus occupying that office. The institution he wanted to reform has a monster at its head, and removing it costs him almost everything.
The Breakdown
Once Bradley is weakened, Mustang burns through the Red Stones sustaining his regeneration and finishes the battle with the same alchemy the State once ordered him to use in Ishbal.
Roy Mustang King Bradley

Debut: Ep 050 - Death