It Begins with Fullmetal Alchemist

AMV Fullmetal Alchemist + "Requiem for a Dream" (created by netslums)

Adult Swim has brought back Fullmetal Alchemist to its weeknight post-midnight anime lineup. I humbly suggest that you check out this anime series. It's on at 12:30 and 3:30 a.m. PST.

Fullmetal Alchemist is the show that made me an anime fangirl. Sure, I watched Voltron as a child and Cowboy Bebop and Spirited Away as an adult, but I didn't get truly hooked on the genre until about two years ago. I was in grad school and maintained a schedule that involved staying up until 3 a.m. reading media criticism while watching Adult Swim and then switching over to Conan O'Brien after Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Once, though, I didn't switch channels.
"Mother" was airing. Despite being the third episode of Fullmetal Alchemist , is the piece that gives the audience the background on the story. I struck by the horrible sadness of the storyline and the teary-voiced characters and couldn't pull myself away from the television set. From that moment forward, I was addicted to the saga of the Elric brothers.

Fullmetal Alchemist is a fantasy anime with steampunk leanings. It's set in a parallel world just prior to the onset of World War I. In this alternate version of early-20th century earth, alchemy goes far beyond trying to turn mere metal into gold. Edward and Alphonse Elric, the protagonists of the story, are the sons of a famed alchemist who split when the boys were quite young. Several years later, their mother died. The grief-stricken brothers (who are only 11 and 10 at the time) had dabbled in alchemy all their lives and decided to use the ancient art to bring their mother back from the dead. The problem with this, though, is the first law of alchemy-- equivalent exchange, which maintains that in order to get something, you have to give up something of equal or greater value. In the case of the Elric brothers, this almost meant Alphonse's life, and the only reason why that was spared was because Edward, the elder brother, gave up two limbs in order to attach Al's soul to a suit of armor. I should note, though, that Al is not the fullmetal alchemist, even though he is literally composed entirely of metal. The term is actually from a Japanese slang word that means something along the lines of stubborn, which Edward certainly is. (Edward also has a metal arm and a metal leg.)

After the brothers' misfortune, they become State Alchemists, essentially military figures, so that they can further their study of alchemy and hopefully regain their former bodies. As State Alchemists, the two travel across their world and become embroiled in a series of situations that cause them to rethink their views on alchemy. Most of the situations are tied together in a web of government intrigue involving various aspects of alchemy and its practitioners. It's a show filled with suspense and as Fullmetal Alchemist progresses, the series gets darker and themes of abuse of power in both a political and spiritual sense grow more apparent.

Fullmetal Alchemist is an extremely popular anime. You can probably tell that just by searching through the AMVs (anime music videos) on YouTube and realizing that most of the songs used were probably selected by teenagers. And if you ever talk to an anime fan, it's fairly likely (at least in my experience) that Fullmetal Alchemist will come up in conversation, perhaps even more likely than mentions of mega-popular shows Naruto and Bleach.

Since discovering Fullmetal Alchemist, I've become something bordering on an anime nerd. Hell, I went to my first con in January and I have an Al keychain hanging from my Birkin-esque bag, so I probably jumped right over that line into fangirldom.