Full Metal Alchemist: Under the Faraway Sky

Rating All Ages Genre manga Publisher VIZ Media External Links Official Under the Faraway Sky Website

Fullmetal Alchemist is one of the best animes ever made. The powerful story of two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, set within a rich steampunk low fantasy world, is almost perfect. Fullmetal Alchemist grabs you from the start and wastes no time. In the whole show (51 episodes plus a movie) there is only a single episode of filler. The other fifty episodes all advance the central, gripping story.

Fullmetal Alchemist's main plot begins when Ed and Al's mom dies. The Elric brothers, already gifted alchemists despite their youth, decide to try to bring their mother back. Even though they know this technique is forbidden, they make the attempt. The boys learn quickly why such a transmutation is forbidden. When the entire situation settles, Ed has lost an arm and a leg -- for the entire show he has mechanical replacements -- and Al has lost his whole body, able to live on only because Ed attached his soul to a suit of armor. The rest of the show details the brothers' quest to find a way to restore their bodies.

Under the Faraway Sky is a strange part of the Fullmetal Alchemist story. It, along with five other novels, are set within a three-year gap in the show's timeline. Unfortunately, the novel itself, unlike Fullmetal Alchemist the show, is not very good. The story is dull -- Ed and Al meet someone from their childhood and the experience causes them to, again, ponder their unfortunate situation -- and adds nothing to the characters or the larger story.

The second story in this volume, Roy's Vacation, is more amusing than Under the Faraway Sky. It features one of the most stoic characters in the show, Lt. Roy Mustang, and one of the most comedic, Alex Louis Armstrong. It's a good-natured and funny story, but like Under the Faraway Sky it doesn't do that much. Both stories pale compared the rest of Fullmetal Alchemist. They read like attempts to sell products by putting the Fullmetal Alchemist name on them -- and I suspect that is exactly how they came to be.