Those Who Challenge the Sun

Four years on from the ruinous night they tried to bring their mother back, Edward and Alphonse Elric are chasing rumors of a stone said to magnify alchemy and mend the bodies that ritual cost them. A brief flashback replays the disaster: the two boys attempt the forbidden human transmutation on their dead mother, the rebound rips away Edward's leg and Alphonse's entire body, and the bleeding survivor recoils in horror at the malformed thing their alchemy produced in her place.

In the present the brothers reach Reole, a desert town abuzz over a priest named Cornello who supposedly performs miracles. A mysterious woman at a food stand, whom Edward seems to half-remember, names him the Fullmetal Alchemist, which leads the locals to mistake the armored Alphonse for the State Alchemist and pulls the brothers into the orbit of a young woman named Rose. Rose has been promised the resurrection of her late sweetheart Cain in exchange for her devotion, but when Edward and Alphonse sit in on one of Cornello's Miracle Gatherings, they recognize the so-called wonders as plain alchemy that flouts the discipline's own laws.

Sensing a threat in the Fullmetal Alchemist, Cornello orders the brothers thrown out and confers with the mysterious woman, assuring her he has another way to be rid of them. At a church Edward pushes Rose to see through the scam, setting science against her faith, before one of Cornello's followers, Cray, shoots Alphonse and lays bare the hollow interior of his armor. A terrified Rose flees to the priest, and Edward works out that Cornello draws his power from a Philosopher's Stone, transmuting without a circle and ignoring equivalent exchange. The priest looses a chimera and turns the floor to sand to sweep Alphonse away and stop Edward from drawing a circle, only for Edward to reveal that he too can transmute without one, forging a spear. Cornello answers by swelling the bird on his shoulder into a monstrous attacker. Edward's mechanical right arm and left leg carry him through the assault, he swiftly downs both beasts, and Cornello rightly guesses the brothers once attempted human transmutation, recognizing Edward as the Fullmetal Alchemist.

Although this opens the 2003 series, its events actually fall after Episode 9 in the internal chronology, since Episodes 3 through 9 flesh out the brothers' backstory. The installment draws its material from Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 23. Edward's flicker of recognition on seeing the mysterious woman goes unexplained until Episode 4, set during the brothers' flashback, when it emerges that he glimpsed her once in a graveyard. The oversized bird Cornello conjures, along with his general fondness for parrots, is unique to this adaptation; in the manga and 2009 anime only the waiting chimera fights Edward. Porno Graffitti's Melissa plays over this episode's ending and then becomes the opening theme for the next twelve installments, while Nana Kitade's Kesenai Tsumi serves as the ending song across that stretch.