Spoilers for Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

Did a mistake early in their career actually spell certain doom for the Elric Brothers in Fullmetal Alchemist? After you have enjoyed enough Manga and Anime you are able to read between the lines and can see a detail or two another may have missed. Through this and other detailed evidence you are able to piece together what really happened in a particular series. This results in an abstract idea, a thought which doesn’t have a physical existence but can be speculated. Welcome to Anime Abstract.

Probably should clarify which Fullmetal Alchemist we are talking about. This is not Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which has one of the best endings ever to a series and showcased the Elric brothers winning in a big. No this article focus on the one from 2003. More specifically it focuses on the film, Fullmetal Alchemist The Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa. The film leaves the brothers setting off on their own in a world without alchemy and with the hope of stopping a former opponent’s research from causing further damage. Sad to say, this turns out to become as bad for the pair as Spider-Man failing to stop the robber who killed Uncle Ben.

At the start of the film there is a flashback to early in the pair’s adventures where Ed and Al stop Huskisson, a rogue alchemist who has created a destructive device (which just so happens to be a uranium bomb). Right as Huskisson is about to lose, he opens the gate and disappears to the world without alchemy. In the middle of the film, Ed is shown a picture of the bomb in the hands of the Thule Society, the occult and research group behind the Nazi’s. Ed and Al set off at the end of the film to try and make sure they can destroy the bomb and any research behind it. Unfortunately, the pair don’t succeed at least not according to history.

As the film takes place in the backdrop of a setting which reflects our world, the events of history come into play. The film took place in 1925 as the Nazi Party and the Thule society are in their infancy. In fact the film even recounts the Beer Hall Putsch, the failed attempted by the blossoming party to take the over Munich.

The Nazis would unfortunately regain footing in the country and rise to power. In 1939, Albert Einstein after a visit to Germany wrote the following to President Roosevelt about his findings with the Thule Society and their weapon’s research.

“that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated.”

According to Atomic Heritage (where the above quote was taken) this letter was influential in the United States moving forward with the The Manhattan Project. This historic wartime science development project eventually led to the creation of the atom bombs which became a turning point in not only World War II but human society. The Uranium Bomb which Huskisson built helped to become the starting point for everything.

All of this took place because Ed and Al didn’t stop a villain on one of their earliest assignments. Uncle Ben is a drop in the bucket compared to unintentionally causing the birth of the nuclear age. Anyway you look at it, if you apply history to the end of the film, Ed and Al lost and couldn’t prevent the death and destruction they optimistically believed they could stop.
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What do you think of the original ending to Fullmetal Alchemist? Leave a comment below and let us know.