Fullmetal Alchemist OG vs. Brotherhood: A Comparative Liveblog

OG 02 vs. BH 03

Continuing from where we left off: Ed has revealed his automail and is ready to throw down with Cornello.

Fullmetal Alchemist Episode 2: "Body of the Sanctioned"

After revealing that they were trying to revive their mother, the Elrics warn Rosé that reviving her boyfriend Cain would result in a similar fate. Cornello attacks the boys to chase them away, and he later show a silhouette of Cain in order to comfort Rosé. He then orders the townspeople to attack and capture the Elrics. Ed transmutes some metal to look like Al, and allows himself to be captured. Cornello then takes the state alchemist pocket-watch from Ed, assuming that it is his secret to performing alchemy without a transmutation circle. Cornello catches Rosé trying to visit Cain and he reveals the silhouette to be a chimera made of birds. He leaves her to be eaten by the chimera, but Al arrives just in time to save her. As Cornello tells Edward his plan to use Lior as the base for world domination, Al broadcasts it across town. Ed then defeats Cornello with his superior alchemy, only to find out that the philosopher's stone is a fake. When Rosé confronts the Elrics about how their exposing Cornello did more harm than his deception, Ed tells her to walk on her own two feet. As the Elrics leave, Lust and Gluttony manage to salvage their plans with Lior by killing Cornello and replacing him with Envy masquerading as the "real" Cornello.

We open with Cornello explaining human transmutation is taboo... but interestingly, he first says that it's also forbidden for alchemists to turn lead into gold. Ed said this in the opening episode too, but I forgot to mention it.

That's a very interesting line if you know anything about chemistry -- if alchemists can change lead into gold, that means they can change elements. In that case, all bets are off -- they shouldn't have any material requirements, they should be able to turn anything into the material they want.

I went back to the first episode with another translation, and there, Al says "the base elements have to be similar" when doing alchemy. What might be going on here is that it is possible to shift elements, but only by a few steps on the periodic table, and, just like real nuclear reactions, it's extremely energy-intensive to the point that only skilled alchemists can do it. So Ed might have been able to turn the silicon of the sand into aluminum or magnesium for his spear -- soft metals that would be crushed more easily than his leg.

(Of course, it now occurs to me there's also no reason to assume that spear was solid metal -- he could have extracted just enough metal impurities from the sand to coat a rock spear with metal plating, as a bluff. And if they understand crystal structures, it would be quite possible to rearrange matter into a configuration that takes up more volume, appearing to make things bigger without actually violating conservation of matter -- and since a more open crystal structure is more brittle, that would even explain why the improvised weapons alchemists make tend to break really easily!)

@astalkingirin brought this up in : It's likely that alchemists aren't totally unlimited by energy requirements, but that there's some limitation on how much energy they can generate (or in OG, channel) at once. Since the Philosopher's Stone acts as a battery, it makes sense that it would let you do these things -- we can assume that the performances of the Philosopher's Stone are theoretically possible, but outside the normal bounds of how much energy humans can provide.

(I think it's also interesting that if you go by real alchemic history, you need the Philosopher's Stone to turn lead into gold. I don't know if it's ever brought up again, but it's possible that, like human transmutation, this is something people have attempted but not actually accomplished.)

Anyway. Al explains they were trying to bring back their mother. Cornello rubs their failure in their face quite cruelly. Ed actually looks somber, and admits not only to his failure but to his recklessness. He turns it into a lesson for Rose, telling her that this is what happens to those who try to bring back the dead.