Game Theory!

Fullmetal Alchemist's FATAL Mistake

Trigger Warnings:

A lot of math and chemistry

(I would personally recommend watching the actual episode alongside reading this chapter, that way you have the visuals of the formulas and lists that are mentioned throughout)

Hello internet! Welcome to Film Theory! Let's be honest, who doesn't have a crush on Winry, right? I can't be the only one. So, back in our Walking Dead chapter (one I didn't write and honestly don't plan to, sorry) last December, I asked you guys one simple question. Little did i know, it was going to be one of the most divisive, hate-filled, drama-inducing questions to ever be asked on YouTube: Did you want a chapter about Sword Art Online or Fullmetal Alchemist? Let me tell you, it was the anime equivalent of World War 2, reaching Marvel VS. DC levels of aggression. In the comments, over 200,000 of you voted and by a margin of only 10,000 votes, FMA took the day and so here we are. That being said, if you haven't seen the series, why not? It's widely considered to be one of the best, most important animes of all time. Granted, I'll be filling you in on the main details here but be warned, there are some minor spoilers ahead.

So you guys had spoken, but what to do it on? There are so many good topics here! It's a show with everything from living suits of armor to parallel alternate universes with different scientific fundamentals to a main character with an irrational fear of milk. I debated across all kinds of great topics for this first theory on FMA, literally looking at every part of the franchise from the two anime series, the manga, the movie, the ridiculously adorable Alphonse hat collections, and in all honestly it's a series I'm going to want to visit a few more times. But before we get into the multi-dimensional element bending homunculi ridden theories, we have to start with the fundamentals, the inciting action for literally everything that happens in the series: human transmutation and the one big mistake that seals Ed and Al's fates. FMA has been lying to us for years and it's not about the importance of a soul of the girth of Major Armstrong's right bicep, it's something much simpler and simultaneously something much more important.

Now, in the 2003 version of the FMA series, which is the one I'm going to be focusing on today, we learned early on that Ed and Al were both prodigies in the art of alchemy: the science of understanding the atomic makeup of materials, breaking those materials down, then reshaping the components into a new form. Probably the most common example from the show is taking a metal arm and turning it into a metal blade. Most of their early alchemy lessons came from their dad, or more accurately, their dad's library, and the best (or worst) volume in Ol' Hoenheim's collection is his book on human transmutation, a forbidden art in the alchemy world. So good job dad, you leave your book on the most taboo subject in all of alchemy lying around your house with your two kids who basically have zero supervision because you're off doing whatever and their mom seems to constantly be hanging up laundry outside. Like, seriously woman, are there really that many clothes to launder? Anyway, the inciting incident to the whole series is when Ed and Al's mother dies at the hands of the laundry gods I guess, and they try to use human transmutation to being her back to life. needless to say, doesn't go all that well. Ed loses a leg, Al loses his body, and instead of mom, they create the worst Mother's Day ever. This prompts the rest of the series as the two boys try to get their bodies back. 

But, hold on. Why did things go wrong in the first place? Why did their attempt at transmuting mom fail so horribly? The show would have you believe it's because the soul is priceless and that there's no equivalent exchange for it. I would have you believe that that is crap. The solution is much simpler than that: they had the wrong formula. You read me right, the recipe for human transmutation that we hear Ed recite over and over and over throughout the series is just plain wrong. So today, I'm correcting that mistake and showing you what our buddies Ed and Al should have done before they went off resurrecting mom: double-checking their math. Looks like Ol Hoenheim wasn't the brightest bulb in the box.