Yes, Netflix’s ‘Fullmetal Alchemist’ Includes The Anime’s Most Depressing Moment

Fans of Fullmetal Alchemist have been worried about the state of the live-action adaptation, and now that it’s available to stream on Netflix in the United States, fans are discovering what fans in Japan have been raving about for quite a while.

But one thing fans have been worried about, however, was whether or not the film would adapt the series’ most emotional moment. And yes, they did. Naturally, spoilers for the film are below.

In the anime and manga series, there’s a state alchemist named Shou Tucker who has a young daughter named Nina and a dog named Alexander. He’s famous in the military for experimenting with talking chimeras and is stressed that his latest evaluation is coming up and he doesn’t have anything to present.

Later, he shows Edward a new chimera he’s created. This one can talk, and when Edward introduces himself to it, it says “Play with me Edward!” Suddenly, Edward realizes that Tucker had transmuted his daughter and pet dog into a chimera, and has even done the same to his wife in the past.

In the film, this happens in exactly the same fashion and is just as much of a bummer as it is in the original series. The film’s great looking CG helps emphasized how disfigured the new chimera is, and thus hits that much harder when it’s not an animated or drawing of a person becoming a monster.

For those unfamiliar with Fullmetal Alchemist, the series was first created by Hiromu Arakawa. 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.

The series ran in Square Enix’s Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine from August 2001 to June 2010. It was collected into 27 volumes, and was localized for an English language release by Viz Media. It has sold 67 million copies worldwide, and was later adapted into two anime series from studio Bones.

Bones’ first attempt in 2003 successfully ran for 51 episodes, but was marred by fans for its pacing issues and deviations from the original source. Bones produced a more faithful adaptation in 2009 with Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and most fans assumed the live-action film would parallel this series since it was pretty much beat for beat with the original source.