Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a rollercoaster of emotions. In just one episode, this amazing anime can make you cry tears of joy one moment and sob uncontrollably the next. Over the course of sixty-four episodes, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood tugged at our heartstrings more times than we can count. Aside from the fact that almost every character has a depressing backstory, tons of moments made us bawl our eyes out.
Brotherhood is a highly emotional story at its core and does an excellent job of hitting the audience right in the feels. Here are some honorable mentions: Ed and Al coming home, Riza's throat cut, Roy losing his sight, the nation-wide transmutation circle activated, Hawkeye talks down Mustang, Ed and Al leaving the Portal of Truth, etc. It would be virtually impossible to list every single moment that has made us tear up, so here are the ten that stand out.
10 ED AND AL ATTEMPT HUMAN TRANSMUTATION
Human transmutation. A taboo among alchemists. Strictly forbidden. And impossible because the souls that have left this world can never be called back. Unfortunately, the young Elric brothers who lost their mother couldn’t comprehend this at the time they attempted it. They were just kids. They were alone and scared, and they just wanted to see their mom again.
The brothers researched human transmutation and attempted to bring their mom back to life only to pay the ultimate price for their transgression. Alphonse lost his whole body, while Ed lost his left leg. Watching this scene is crushing. Hearing the boys’ cries and seeing their bodies disintegrate is heart-rending. But, the moment that utterly destroys us is Ed yelling: “Give him back, he’s my brother! Take my leg! Take my arm! Take my heart! Anything! You can have it! Just give him back! He’s my little brother! He’s all I have left!” Yet, Ed musters whatever strength he has left to draw the transmutation circle with his blood and bind Al’s soul to a suit of armor. It’s too much for anyone with a heart to bear.
9 EPISODE FOUR
The fourth episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is depressing, disturbing, and then some. The brothers meet a State Alchemist named Shou Tucker, known for transmuting a talking chimera. They spend some time at his house, conducting research, and playing with his daughter Nina and her dog Alexander.
Though it all seems harmless and sweet in the beginning, it soon becomes glaringly obvious that there’s something amiss with Tucker. With his assessment day coming up, Tucker, having nothing to show for his work, grows desperate. In the show’s most shocking and traumatizing moment, this piece of excrement father actually uses his daughter and her dog to create a chimera. This is an irreversible process, a fact that has haunted the brothers ever since. The Elrics never forgot about Nina, and neither did anyone who’s seen this anime. To say that this episode made us cry would be an understatement. Just talking about it now has our eyes filling up with tears.
8 AL QUESTIONING WHETHER HE’S A REAL BOY
In the show’s eighth episode, Alphonse Elric encounters a hollow suit of armor, proving he’s not the only one whose soul had been bound to an object. The soul bound to the armor is none other than the convicted serial killer, Barry the Chopper. In order to gain the upper hand in their fight, Barry plants a seed of doubt in Alphonse’s mind, making Al question whether he is a real person at all.
The dilemma eats at him as he suffers in silence until he finally confronts Ed about it. Seeing a wonderful, kind-hearted, and too-good-for-this-world boy like Al go through something like this breaks our hearts just as much as seeing a devoted, loving, and brave brother like Ed deal with such insinuations. It’s easy to break down into tears as these scenes play out, especially once we see that the brothers’ fight is having a huge effect on Winry.
7 “IT’S A TERRIBLE DAY FOR RAIN.”
The death of Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes is a pivotal moment in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood as it serves as the incentive for Roy Mustang to set his coup d’etat plans into motion. While the scene in which Envy kills Hughes was certainly sad, the real tearjerker came at Hughes’s funeral. Watching Hughes’s daughter Elicia crying, while everyone else attempts to keep their emotions at bay was heartbreaking.
But, the moments that gets us every single time is when Mustang and Hawkeye are standing by Hughes's grave alone and Mustang says “it’s a terrible day for rain” while tears start streaming down his face. It’s literally the last straw. If we weren’t crying already, this is the moment that is sure to get us bawling our eyes out.
6 HAWKEYE BREAKS DOWN
There’s something unsettling and excruciatingly painful about watching badass characters have a complete breakdown. Hawkeye is simply the kind of person you'd think can’t ever be broken, and when she finally hit her breaking point it’s all that more poignant to watch her crumble and give up.
That is what happened in “Death of the Undying” when we watched in disbelief as Hawkeye literally lost the will to live believing Lust had killed Mustang. Watching the seemingly unbreakable, stoic, and reserved Lieutenant Hawkeye get so emotional, break into tears, screaming and sobbing uncontrollably while firing god knows how many bullets at the monster hits us right in the feels. If Al hadn’t been there to protect her, Riza would have let herself get killed and that thought is terrifying.
5 ED CONVINCES WINRY NOT TO KILL SCAR
In the twenty-second episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Hiromu Arakawa pulls off something pretty damn impressive by crafting a moment that’s heartwarming, a tearjerker, and a moment of awesome all at once. When Winry overhears Elric’s conversation with Scar and finds out that the Ishvalan was the one who killed her parents, her reaction is gut-wrenching.
In a state of despair and deep sadness, she picks up a gun and points it at Scar, prompting Ed to shield her with his own body to stop Scar’s incoming attack. Ed then comforts a sobbing Winry and tells her that she couldn't shoot Scar because her hands weren’t meant to take lives, but to save them, just as she saved him by giving him an arm and a leg. If that speech doesn’t melt your heart we don’t know what will.
4 ED PUNCHING OPEN THE PORTAL OF TRUTH
For the entirety of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, we all lived and breathed for the moment when Al would finally get his original body back so that he can be a normal teenage boy, eat all the food on his list, and live a happy life. Every time the boys would inch closer to their goal our hearts would fill with hope.
In the twenty-sixth episode, Ed opens the Portal of Truth once again and finds Al’s body there. Even though the cruel hands of Truth pull him back, Ed manages to punch open the portal and let his brother know that he is coming back for him. When Ed yells out his message and the door finally starts closing we hear the“Let it All Out” ending start to play it becomes virtually impossible to hold back tears.
3 AL TRADES HIS SOUL FOR ED'S ARM
In the final fight against father, nearly everyone the Elric brothers met on their arduous journey landed a hand in an effort to stop father from achieving his goals. With one of his attacks, father managed to destroy Ed's automail arm, so when another attack pinned his other hand to a piece of concrete, Ed was helpless. Luckily for him, his brother Alphonse, with some help from May, transmuted his soul back to his body that was stuck in the Portal of Truth, giving Ed his right arm back.
The horror and pain in Ed’s eyes as he realizes what’s happening is absolutely soul-crushing. And Al’s subsequent reunion with his body is just as emotional. At this point, we’re crying happy tears, sad tears, we don’t even know what we’re crying for.
2 GREED’S DEATH
The most surprising hero of the Promised Day was the homunculus Greed, who not only joined the fight on the side of the humans, or as he put it – the underdog, he literally laid his life on the line to help the heroes defeat father. In a heart-crushing scene, Greed tricks Ling into thinking they’re gonna fight father together and just when Ling lets his guard down, Greed surrenders himself to father.
In his dying moments, Greed admits that all his life what he really wanted, what he was truly greedy for were friends. Ling breaks down into tears, devastated as father destroys Greed and it’s hard not to shed a tear for this unwitting hero that only wanted to have friends. Of course, the entire time this is happening "Lapis Philosophorum" tugs at our heartstrings.
1 JOURNEY'S END
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood has a happy ending. While there’s certainly a lot of work to be done in order to make everything less wrong with Amestris, our heroes are, for the most part, living happier lives. Yet, when that final episode "Journey’s End” starts playing we can’t help but shed a few happy tears here and there.
The scene that truly gets us going comes at the very end when Ed narrates that iconic closing line: “There’s no such thing as a painless lesson. They just don’t exist. Sacrifices are necessary; you can’t gain anything without losing something first. Although, if you can endure that pain, and walk away from it, you’ll have a heart that’s strong enough to overcome any obstacle. Yea, a heart made fullmetal.” Shut up. We’re not crying. You are.