Term · Fullmetal Alchemist
Automail
Steel limbs wired straight into the nerves, fitted without anaesthetic, and the recovery is worse than the surgery.
In Otakana the clue reads: Mechanical prosthetic limbs wired to the nerves
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Fullmetal Alchemist
- Letters
- 8 · Normal
Automail is this world's answer to a lost arm: a mechanical limb connected directly to the nerve endings, so the user feels and controls it much as they controlled the original. The connection surgery is described as agony, rehabilitation runs to about three years, and the metal aches in cold weather. Edward Elric is wearing two of them before he turns sixteen.
The engineering is not magic. Automail needs oiling, adjustment and spare parts, and mechanics like the Rockbells of Resembool build each one by hand for a particular body. Winry treats a new limb the way other people treat a new engine, which is why the workshop scenes read as domestic rather than clinical. Break one in a fight and somebody will be furious with you.
Arakawa grew up on a Hokkaido dairy farm and draws machinery like a person who has repaired some. That habit is why the setting holds: alchemy is the fantasy element, but the prosthetics obey ordinary rules about weight, maintenance and pain. A country at war produces a great many amputees, and automail carries that fact quietly through the whole series.
Spelling AUTOMAIL
AUTOMAIL is eight letters and splits cleanly into AUTO and MAIL, two ordinary English words, which makes the row easier than its length suggests. The trap is the second half: it is MAIL as in chain mail, not male. The Japanese オートメイル runs roughly as ootomeiru, with a long opening vowel that English drops on the way over.