Friday, June 1, 2012

The Dangers of Knowledge

After reading Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, it's obvious that knowing too much could, to put it bluntly, lead to really bad things.  In my paper, I related this concept to Fullmetal Alchemist, a very popular long running franchise in print (manga, or comics, published since 2001) and animation (a 50+ episode series running from 2003-2004 with its remake of 60+ episodes in 2009-2010, each followed by feature length films in 2005 and 2011).


The narrative is essentially about two brothers, Ed and Al Elric, who learn alchemy.  Their mother dies suddenly when they're very young.  Having learned alchemy from the materials left behind from the father who left the family, the brothers attempt the forbidden act of resurrecting their mother.  Disaster strikes, as the resurrection is impossible; you can't bring back the souls of the dead.  The brothers are permanently scarred with Ed losing an arm and a leg, and Al losing his entire body and having his soul bound to a suit of armor.  Despite all this, they embark on a journey to find the Philosopher's Stone to restore their bodies... and in pursuit of more knowledge, they find more suffering...

Below is an English dubbed trailer by Funimation (inferior to the original Japanese version, but the only Japanese ones I can find are from the official website and they don't have subtitles...):


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