If, as Baudrillard claims, the postmodern era is that which is marked by the hyperreal, the substitution of the Real with signs for the Real, an inability to access the Real because our images and symbolic structures (systems of substitution) have superseded the Real, then what can we say about those artifacts of pop culture that wish to examine the Real via substitutions, by animation or performance—that is, how do our representations which have displaced the Real now attempt to explain that which we cannot know?
Fullmetal Alchemist is a rich text for its questioning of science, religion, and militarization. It also, however, begins to make an argument about the nature of the Real in its final episodes (48-51). When Hoenheim of Light appears to explain to Edward and Alphonse about the Philosopher’s Stone (a dense manifestation of the Real), he also hints at, but does not fully explain what exactly happened to Ed and Al when they attempted human transmutation. Edward is haunted still by the images of “The Gate” (or Door, depending on your translation) where some omnipotent Gatekeeper controls the flow between dimensions.
Edward is isolated by his connection to the Real, his memory of the Gate which controls material and temporal existence for two worlds. Alchemy, which on Earth never yielded any fruits and was replaced by the more scientific Chemistry, flourishes in Ed and Al’s world, Amestris, and is the legitimated form of science and power. Alchemy is how the people understand their world: through Equivalent Exchange (or Trade), where “humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return,” the people (for the most part) organize their philosophies and values. Alchemy, not the hard science we know on Earth, orders language and government. Alchemists transmute everything from water to radios (never gold, however—like the Middle Ages here on earth, transmuting gold is a crime), and are the privileged class for their knowledge about the universe.
But Ed and Al soon discover that there is more to Alchemy than drawing Transmutation Circles around the matter they wish to re-order when Ed attempts to transmute his mother’s remains into a living, souled person again. Despite drawing an intricate circle with all of the elements of fire, life, water, etc, despite using his own blood as catalyst, despite his knowledge and research, Ed fails at his attempt at human transmutation: it is not possible, he learns later, because there is no equivalent trade for a soul.
The attempt, however, is the closest anyone has gotten in years. Ed and Al managed to create a being, a mass of flesh and bone that groaned in pain before Ed destroyed it. And that being was created because Ed’s Circle managed to open and make manifest the Gate in his barn.
The Gate is left unexplained for most of the series. It appears as hands grabbing, little black homunculi babies with white eyes reaching for flesh—for the material of human bodies. These homunculi steal Al’s body as part of the Equivalent Exchange for his mother’s body, and use it to create the human-like homunculus named Sloth. Al’s mind is left at the Gate (this is never explained), but Edward, also at the Gate, manages to capture Al’s soul and tie it to a piece of armor by drawing a transmutation circle on the armor with his own blood.
Ed does not escape from his encounter with the Gate unscathed. His right arm and left leg are taken by the homunculi (later given to the homunculus named Wrath) and the images of the homunculi tearing his flesh flash throughout the series in short scenes. Mostly this encounter is left as a nightmare; despite the fact that it begins the series, Ed and Al’s foray into human transmutation and the resulting encounter with the Real are left unexplored until the end of the anime, when their father, Hoenheim returns.
When the nature of the Gate is explained as a conduit between worlds, as a transformation station of souls and matter, Edward begins to understand why human transmutation cannot work without a Philosopher’s Stone, which is itself made up of thousands of human bodies and souls, compressed into a small (blood)red gem. Edward is only 15, however, and since the series is conducted through his point of view, much is left unexplained and unsaid.
What is explained, however, is why Edward, unlike other Alchemists, does not need a transmutation circle to do alchemy. By simply clapping his hands and thinking of what he wants to happen, Edward is able to perform alchemic changes in an instant. Transmutation circles can take minutes or hours to draw (or longer, depending on the complexity of the transformation), but Edward no longer needs to draw out the relationships between the elements he plans to use. Transmutation circles can be seen as what Baudrillard calls “the visible machinery of icons [which] substituted for the pure and intelligible idea of God” (4). In fact, Edward refuses to believe in God after his encounter with the Gate: all is material presence to him. Icons, as representation of the real which supersede the real, like Transmutation circles, are simulacra; they get in between us and the Real and in doing so erase the Real completely. For the most part, humans are happy with this.
If Transmutation circles are simulacra that the humans of Amestris replace the Real with, it only makes sense that after his encounter with the Real at the Gate Edward no longer needs the circles to perform Alchemy. Whereas the circles mediate the Real so that Alchemists do not have to touch it (the Real, the Gate) directly, Edward’s “small inner Gate” (as Hoenheim explains) has been opened and thus Edward has immediate access to the Real. In exchange for this access, however, he loses his limbs and his ability to identify with the outside world. He becomes isolated and withdrawn, and it is only as his quest for the Philosopher’s Stone draws to an end--when he believes he may be able to stop using Alchemy someday—that he begins to reenter into the symbolic order by forgiving his father (or at least speaking to him) and hinting at his love for his childhood friend Winry.
Iconography marked Alchemy’s period here on Earth and the images of that time are still with us. The snake and pole which were symbols for renewal and rebirth became the caduceus of medicine, the five pointed star (representing the unity of the five elements) became a satanic symbol of inversion. These symbols are now simulations and parodies of their original meanings, back when we believed we could control the material world, the Real, by recombining its elements. When we codified matter into zodiac symbols and created a sign or representation for everything. Alchemy attempted to change the material world by working with the signs that simulate it. These signs, icons, at times sacred symbols, have stayed with us and have accumulated meanings—but not materiality. Symbolicity has not led us to the Real, but has led us to erase it.
Fullmetal Alchemist as a series resonates with us not only for its action/adventure treasure hunt for the Philosopher’s Stone or its detective story unveiling of Ed and Al’s father’s past actions, but for its attempt to explain Earth’s interaction with the Real, for our failure to conquer Alchemy. When Hoenheim explains to Ed that Earthling’s souls are the medium of transmutation, Ed is horrified: that is what he is touching when he claps his hands and imagines a transmutation, that is the purpose of the Gate—to regulate the flow of soul, body, and mind between dimensions of Being. The Gate that haunts Ed is the “desert of the real,” the unmapped, uncharted desert, the desert before we could represent it, pure materiality without symbols. The space of the Gate is white, sound echoes to an infinity, and the Gatekeeper’s being-ness is questionable. It is both nowhere and everywhere, nothing and everything, and the Truth that Ed claims to have seen there is so overwhelming it makes him sick. His father has passed through this Truth so many times that his physical body has begun to rot into its constituent molecules. Al’s mind resides somewhere there, in the inaccessable real.
If Baudrillard is correct in his assertion that postmodernity has led us to a kind of simulacra of simulacra, a disconnect with history and space, then how do we account for paranormal TV shows that attempt to explain the Real, to recover a division between reality and fantasy, to explore textuality and symbolicity in all their complicated glory? Fullmetal Alchemist is, of course, an uncanny text: the world of Amestris is so similar to Earth, yet the presence of Alchemy makes it strange. There is a historical resonance with the Middle Ages that cannot be ignored; FMA doubles the past and places it in the present. The story of the Philosopher’s Stone is fairly well known, and this retelling is an adaptation of an original tale. And the level of representation is further complicated by the medium: FMA is an animation created from a manga text. As a member of that genre called anime, FMA simulates the ur-anime text (whatever that may be) in its stylization. And, since Alchemy is a Western tradition, and anime is an Eastern one, there is some cultural translation (itself a reproduction/simulation) that causes a strange resulting representation. All of these factors of simulation, reproduction, and translation come together in a text attempting to discover/uncover/recover the Real by breaking down symbol systems (transmutation circles, bodies, cities), yet remaining within a readable language. How then, can any text explore the Real?
Much has been left unsaid in the series; startling images at the Gate are not verbally explained, but left only as iconography. While the FMA movie, The Gate of Shambala, attempted to delve further into this realm, it has served only to increase fan speculation about what the Gate “really” is and how it “really” works; the explanations were unsatisfactory even though the visuals were stunningly beautiful. It is unlikely that the “Truth” that Ed claims to have seen will ever be revealed to the viewers: it is something only Ed could see, as he was one of only a few to actually experience the Real of the Gate. As Baudrillard says, “It is always the goal of the ideological analysis [read: the fan interpretations] to restore the objective process, it is always a false problem to wish to restore the truth beneath the simulacrum” (27).
Poot--tee--weet.
