Julie Sadler | Delivered at CripCon 2013 in Syracuse, NY Disability and Biopolitics in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (hereafter FMA:B) is an anime adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist, a popular shonen manga title written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa. Disability figures prominently in the series, as the main character, Edward Elric, is an amputee. The series is deeply concerned with questions of embodiment, violence and biopolitics. Disability initially emerges as a tragic loss, but through the process of the narrative it is denaturalized and contextualized as a social phenomenon that is deeply implicated in issues of violence. The series’ consideration of embodiment and violence extends to fantastic forms of embodiment that push at the question of what it means to be human. Through an extensive consideration of the ethical implications of cyborg embodiment and its relationship to violence, the series comes to an embodied and interdependent ethics that resists the coercive operation of biopower. FMA:B is a complex and tightly plotted series; this paper cannot possibly hope to explicate all the meanings embedded within it. I will be attending most closely to the differing embodiment presented by the two protagonists, Edward and Alphonse, and their relation to social norms and to violence. The series moves in a spiral, introducing concepts and then returning to them multiple times from different angles; of necessity, this paper must borrow some of that structure. Disability is most obvious in FMA:B in its protagonist, Edward. His amputation is originally framed as a tragic loss: he traded his leg for a failed attempt to bring his dead mother back to life, and his arm for his brother’s life, which was forfeit in that same attempt. In the first arc of the show, (episodes 1-10), the brothers’ characterization is primarily around ideas of persistence, hard work and sacrifice. Episode 3 in particular stresses the necessity of moving forward after loss and trauma. These themes resonate with a personal tragedy narrative of 1