Written by Hannah Dang with support from the DAC Team
DISCLAIMER: The following blog post contains spoilers for the manga/animated series Fullmetal Alchemist / Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. If you prefer not to be spoiled, I highly recommend reading the manga series and watching the shows for the full experience. Thank you.
Since I was about thirteen and watched A-1 Pictures’ adaptation of Sword Art Online by Reki Kawahara and then Wit Studio’s adaptation of Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama, I have dived deep into the rabbit hole known as Japanese anime and manga. Over the past eight years, I have watched hundreds of shows and read even more series, but if someone were to ask me what my favorite anime and manga series is, my answer would be without fail Fullmetal Alchemist.
Arguably considered to be one of the greatest Japanese animated shows and manga series, Fullmetal Alchemist was originally a manga series authored by Hiromu Arakawa. First serialized in 2001 and then completed in 2010, the series takes place in the fictional country of Amestris and follows two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, on their quest to find the legendary Philosopher’s Stone to reclaim their bodies. At the start of the story, Edward and Alphonse are established as brilliant alchemists, practitioners of science, but upon losing their mother to a disease, the brothers commit the ultimate sin: human transmutation, or in other words, attempting to revive the deceased. Due to their folly, Edward paid the price of losing a leg, and Alphonse loses his body, but in a last ditch attempt to save his brother, Edward sacrifices his arm to bind Alphonse’s soul to a suit of armor. Later on, the brothers learn of the Philosopher’s Stone, an artifact with properties rumored to be able to break the rules of alchemy, and make it their life’s mission to find the stone and restore their bodies.
Arakwawa’s manga received critical acclaim, and it was adapted into an animated series by Studio BONES in 2003. Because the show veered off-course from the original plot due to the show catching up to the serialization of the manga, a remake was released in 2009 by the same studio and was renamed to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Later on, the work expanded to include video games, a live-action film trilogy, an animated movie, and several fandom works. Every version of the series was beloved and criticized by the fans not only for the art style, the fluid animation, or even the rounded characters and gripping plot, but for the series’ exceptional handling of themes of disability, especially in Edward’s and Alphonse’s characters.
By combining the story’s inclusion of science, philosophy, religion, and more, Edward’s, Alphonse’s, and the rest of the casts’ disabilities play an important role in their characterizations as well as contribute to the complexity of Arakawa’s worldbuilding and themes. I will then segway to the topic of this blog post, the role of prosthetics and disabled characters in Fullmetal Alchemist and what it says about our reality.
Both the animated series and the manga have merits and flaws, but each play to their strengths as different mediums of storytelling. In the opening arc of the manga and the 2003 animated version (the remake kickstarts the show with a studio-original episode), the series’ main characters, Edward and Alphonse Elric, travel to the fictional city of Libero in their search for the Philosopher’s Stone. Near the end of the arc, the Elric brothers have a stand-off with Father Cornello, a priest who possesses a copy of the Philosopher’s Stone and abuses the artifact’s power to bend Libero to his will. During the final battle, Father Cornello uses the Philosopher’s Stone to command his chimera and transmute his pet bird into a monster to kill the brothers. As Edward is fighting off Father Cornello’s beasts, the chimera’s fangs tear through Edward’s clothing, exposing Edward’s prosthetic arm and leg. Edward then reveals Alphonse’s soul is bound to a suit of armor, to which Father Cornello calls the brothers as “sinners.” This portrayal paints the priest as an ableist and a hypocrite. Back in the Middle Ages, there were some priests and scholars who believed people with disabilities were being punished by God for committing sins. Both revelations shock Rose, one of the citizens of Libero, who was manipulated into believing Cornello was able to raise the dead. Edward uses his body as an “object of horror” to demonstrate the consequences of human transmutation to Rose. Enraged at being exposed for his lies, Father Cornello transmutes his own body into a weapon, but as his Philosopher’s Stone is a fake, his body suffers a rebound from the stone, disfiguring his hand. As Father Cornello’s true colors polarize the Elric brothers, we realize Father Cornello is who the brothers could’ve become if the brothers were consumed by power. Both characters mirror one another, but there is one key difference: the Elric brothers committed the ultimate sin to revive their mother due to love, but Father Cornello abused the stone in an attempt to seize power due to greed.
By the time the battle is resolved, Rose is devastated as she, and everyone else in Libero, were tricked by Father Cornello. She even goes as far as to threaten to shoot the brothers for the Philosopher’s Stone, believing the brothers planned to use the rest of the stone’s power to restore their bodies, but truthfully, Father Cornello’s copy dissipated after being used up at the end of the fight. Rose asks the Elric brothers for a reason to live, and Edward states, “You’ll have to decide for yourself. Walk on your own. Move forward. You’ve got a strong pair of legs, Rose. You should get up and use them.”
One of my favorite parts of the series is Arakawa’s approach to the inclusion and usage of prosthetic limbs in the story. Of course, Edward’s prosthetics are far more advanced than the prosthetics we have in reality, but his prosthetics have very realistic drawbacks. The series contains a fictional material called “automail,” which is used to make the artillery prosthetics the main characters use in battle. Some of its drawbacks include being heavy, expensive, and extremely painful to install. If installed incorrectly, the weight of the prosthetic has the potential to stunt the user’s growth–which causes Edward’s short stature. Not only that, but the standard model must also be swapped if used in extreme weather conditions for fear of complications as the prosthetic is directly attached to the human nervous system. As prosthetics are extremely complex machines, each user needs a skilled mechanic to keep the prosthetics functional. To add on, Arakawa makes sure each of the character’s prosthetics don’t act or look exactly like an ordinary limb. Oftentimes, writers fall into the trope of making their characters’ prosthetics negligible or invisible, making the audience fail to remember the character is disabled, but in Edward’s case, a major part of his character design is his prosthetics. In the series, Edward does wear long-sleeved clothing and gloves, but as the series progresses, Edward’s prosthetic limbs become more and more exposed.
In Arakawa’s world and her characters, prosthetics are a very important element. Winry Rockbell, Edward’s mechanic and childhood friend, runs a mechanic shop alongside her grandmother for making prosthetics. Later on, Winry becomes a student under the tutelage of Mr. Garfiel, a genius mechanic, in Rush Valley, a fictional city renowned for housing the greatest mechanics in the country, and there, we see several characters who have prosthetics. From this, we can surmise there are prosthetics for ordinary citizens who don’t have to be equipped for battle like Edward, and even for animals. Throughout the story, Winry’s dog, Dennis, is shown with a functioning prosthetic leg. All this is important to represent because more people than meets the eye have prosthetics for various reasons, and this includes being born without a body part or losing a body part sometime during your life. Down below, I have included some shots of some of the characters in the show who have prosthetics.
For there to be accurate and good representation of a minority or ethnic group, there must be more than one example of representation. Another strength of Hiromu Arakawa’s manga is her inclusion of different kinds of disabled characters besides the Elric brothers who contribute to the story and are not only unnamed characters in the background. Other characters include Captain Buccaneer and Lan Fan who both have a prosthetic arm; Paninya, who has a prosthetic arm and leg; Izumi Curtis, who is missing some of her internal organs; Jean Havoc, who suffered a spine injury and became wheelchair-bound; Roy Mustang, who is blinded; and General Louis Armstrong, who has PTSD along with several other characters.
Since I have mainly placed emphasis on Edward’s character and disability, I wish to analyze the ways in which Alphonse, Edward’s younger brother, exudes the series’ genius in portraying disabled characters. For most of the story, Alphonse is a human soul bound to a suit of armor. As his humanity was preserved, Alphonse can think, speak, and control the armor as if it were an actual human body. Although he is considered to be practically immortal because his new body doesn’t require sustenance or sleep, Alphonse longs to have his human body back and enjoy experiencing earthly pleasures. Not only that, Alphonse carries an internal guilt as Edward sacrificed his arm to bind his soul to the suit of armor. On the other end of the spectrum, Edward doesn’t care about his body. He only wants to return what belonged to Alphonse as Edward blames himself for persuading Alphonse to perform human transmutation when the brothers were children. Deep down, Edward has internalized ableism and believes he deserved to lose his limbs for attempting to play God.
Towards the later half of the story, Edward and Alphonse realize Alphonse’s suit of armor would eventually “reject” Alphonse’s soul the longer he remained bound. At the same time, Alphonse begins to become wary of his friends and Edward because he believed his memories were fabricated and “implanted” into his body. As Alphonse is insecure about his body, he even started to believe Edward created Alphonse to be his servant and find the Philosopher’s Stone, but Edward immediately shut Alphonse’s thinking down. In a way, Edward and Alphonse mirror English novelist Mary Shelley’s Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the “Creature” in Frankenstein (as Victor Frankenstein’s father was named Alphonse Frankenstein, I believe Arakawa was inspired by Mary Shelley). Because both sets of characters attempted to reanimate a corpse, both suffer the heavy consequences of messing with people’s lives. In Frankenstein, Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s and the Creature’s tales end in tragedy because neither character understood the other, but Arakawa undergoes a different route for her story. To Edward and every other character, Alphonse was never only a suit of armor, but a friend, a family member, and a brother. Through Alphonse’s kindness, his intelligence and drive to learn more about alchemy, his wit, and the way the other characters, especially Edward, love Alphonse for who he is, Arakawa repeatedly reminds her readers, Alphonse never loses his “humanity” simply because he doesn’t have a human body. Dr. Victor Frankenstein never saw the Creature as human but a monster, but Alphonse has always been human.
In a way, Alphonse’s soul being attached to a suit of armor, a symbol of strength and protection, is a metaphor for disability. Some people and some characters view Alphonse as weak as his prowess for alchemy isn’t as strong as Edward’s, but in actuality, Alphonse is the strongest of all for enduring the difficulties that might arise while living as a suit of armor. Not only that, Edward states several times in the franchise that Alphonse, in spite of his armored body, is the better fighter between the brothers. By the time Alphonse’s original body is recovered from the Gate of Truth, the source of alchemy and the entrance to God’s domain, he returns with a frail body due to the body being neglected and malnourished for a long period of time. Edward theorizes his younger brother’s body wasn’t being preserved in status, and therefore, after being released, Alphonse has to work to bring his body back to full health. Alphonse’s experience is similar to the experiences people have after waking up from a coma (Oakwrym).
Opinions on the ending of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood are split between viewers, but there is no denying the relationship between the Elric brothers and the way Arakawa handled it was effective and compelling. In the ultimate battle against the series’ main antagonist, Father, a homunculus intent on becoming God-incarnate, Edward and the other alchemists were fighting Father, Father destroyed Edward’s automail arm, inhibiting his ability to perform alchemy. To save his brother, Alphonse exchanges his soul for Edward’s arm. Edward’s arm is returned, but because there is leftover automail in his shoulder, the arm grows over the automail, but the nails protrude his skin. To some, removing Edward’s need for an arm prosthetic equates to Edward no longer being a disabled character and ruining the theme of the story, but I believe the exchange was fair and makes sense in the context of the story. For one, Edward still has his prosthetic leg, and even if his arm was returned, he still has a long road to recovery. He would have to undergo surgery to safely remove the automail in his shoulder, and even then, his arm will never be the same as it used to be.
Not only that, upon defeating Father, Edward performs his final transmutation circle and trades his ability to perform alchemy for his brother’s soul, passing the ultimate test of humanity created by the Gate of Truth. Losing his ability to perform alchemy, a skill anyone is capable of learning in Arakawa’s world, is another metaphor for having a disability; however, as Edward learns and portrays, he doesn’t need alchemy to lead a fulfilling life. As both brothers choose to sacrifice themselves for the other repeatedly throughout the series and at a critical point in the story’s climax, Arakawa depicts what true brotherhood is.
Arakawa’s series could have easily subjected itself to the “disability as punishment” narrative, but the series portrays the disabled characters not as victims but as pillars of humanity, especially in the face of science, philosophy, religion, and even God itself. We see the characters be kind, make us laugh, love, hate, struggle, cry, and we applaud the author for bringing to life the disability representation we deserve.
WORKS CITED:
Oakwyrm. “Fullmetal Alchemist vs. Disability.” YouTube, 5 May 2022, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj80CtEmM34. Accessed 01 Mar. 2024.
Disability & Access Collective 