Episode 6 (2003 Anime)

In Central City, Mustang introduces the brothers to Shou Tucker, a chimera specialist who won his license two years earlier by producing a creature that could speak. At his estate the boys meet his young daughter Nina and the dog Alexander, and Tucker startles at Al's armored frame. Alphonse asks whether their host is married, but Mustang lets the question drop. The talking chimera, they learn, died soon after it was made, yet Tucker opens his private library of bio-alchemical texts and lets the Elrics stay while they prepare.

On a snowy afternoon Major Hughes turns up to remind Ed that it is his birthday and carries the group off to his own home, where his pregnant wife Gracia is expecting their daughter Elicia. When Gracia goes into labor that night, Hughes braves the blizzard for a doctor and leaves the children to help. In the rush Ed heats a bowl of water using alchemy with no circle at all, surprising them both. The baby arrives safely, and while Ed marvels at witnessing a human come into the world, Alphonse grows quietly emotional at the memory of his own birth.

Back at the mansion, Ed dismisses the circle-free feat as a fluke he cannot repeat. Tucker lays out the exam's shape for them: a written portion, an interview, and a punishing practical, with only a couple of applicants passing from a field of a dozen. The brothers clear the written stage, but Mustang forces Alphonse to withdraw before the physical trial so his hollow body stays hidden, and Ed agrees rather than see his brother bound to the army. Facing Führer King Bradley in the interview, Ed says he made a promise to Al and will take whatever comes with serving.

In the practical, one candidate raises a great pillar and collapses from exhaustion while another builds a hydrogen blimp from water and trees, but the pillar tears the blimp and both begin to fall. Ed intervenes without a circle, unwinding the collapsing structures into a shower of flower petals and earning his place as a State Alchemist. Strolling a sunset boardwalk with Nina and Alexander, the brothers knock fists and swear that this is the turning point toward reclaiming their bodies.

The episode blends material from the manga chapters "The Alchemist's Suffering," "The Value of Sincerity," "I'll Do It for You Guys!" and possibly "Fullmetal Alchemist." It marks the earliest point in the timeline where Ed transmutes by clapping, whereas the manga and Brotherhood have him discover this right after gaining his automail. A report Mustang holds oddly names Britain twice despite the setting being another world, reading like a textbook passage on the Scientific Revolution. Mustang's refusal to answer about Tucker's wife hints he already suspected the truth. The delivery scene reworks the manga's Satella LeCoulte birth, where Winry assisted while the boys watched, into the Elrics helping Gracia bring Elicia into the world.