Elon Musk Channels ‘Fullmetal Alchemist’ on Twitter

Elon Musk is a controversial public figure and entrepreneur, and has kept fans and onlookers in suspense numerous times on Twitter. Musk often shares his personal musings on Twitter, and after previously revealing that he was a fan of anime last year his fandom only seems to be building. One of the most popular practices of anime fans on Twitter is using their favorite character as their profile icon, and now Musk has jumped on that trend.

Surprising Fullmetal Alchemist fans all over, Musk channeled the series by replacing his Twitter icon with the series’ main protagonist, Edward Elric. Now fans are just worried he’ll be researching human transmutation next.

Last year, Musk’s praise of Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name prompted the public figure to dish on other anime favorites of his (even prompting a tweet of his wanting anime mecha to become a reality), but Fullmetal Alchemist was never named at the time. Clearly Musk has seen more anime since then, and must be loving Hiromu Arakawa’s series so much that he had to display his fandom through his Twitter account.

Though his new icon remains unexplained, it does come at an odd, coincidental time. The voice actor behind Edward Elric’s English dub voice, Vic Mignogna, has also become the center of fan conversations as he recently filed a suit against former employer Funimation for defamation. This coincidence has definitely heightened the response to Musk’s new icon.

Below you’ll find some of the responses fans are giving about Musk’s new avatar, and let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Fullmetal Alchemist was originally created by Hiromu Arakawa for Square Enix’s Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine in 2001. The story follows two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, who learn alchemy in order to bring back their deceased mother. After a terrible miscalculation, however, the two brothers pay a terrible price with Alphonse even losing his body and linking his soul to a suit of armor. As the two boys search for an alchemy that will restore their bodies to their original forms, they join the military and deal with a whole host of new political, ethical, and moral issues.

Bones’ first attempt at adapting the series into an anime successfully ran for 51 episodes in 2003, but was marred by fans for its pacing issues and deviations from the original source. Bones later produced a more faithful adaptation in 2009 with Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and the series was much better received than its predecessor.

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