Fullmetal Alchemist and the hero’s journey: Decoding the monomyth in Hiromu Arakawa’s shōnen masterpiece

Fullmetal Alchemist is a Japanese shōnen manga that is written as well as illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa. The story follows the journey of Edward Elric and Alphonse Elric as they try to regain their original physical bodies, which were altered due to a fatal alchemical procedure to revive their deceased mother. Existing critical studies on Fullmetal Alchemist primarily focus on structural elements, gender, trauma and war. However, no study has been done on the monomyth aspect of the story, and the present study aims to bridge that research gap. Joseph Campbell originally conceived the hero’s journey or ‘Monomyth’ template. However, the present article utilizes Christopher Vogler’s twelve-stage revised version of the Campbellian monomyth as the primary theoretical framework to analyse Edward Elric’s journey in the story. Moreover, critical comments from critics like Angela Drummond-Mathews, Vladimir Propp, Stuart Voytilla and others have been incorporated. Shōnen manga typically follow the hero’s journey structure, but there are exceptions as well. The present study attempts to decode whether Fullmetal Alchemist follows the hero monomyth or negates it.