Character · Fullmetal Alchemist
Scar
Nobody in the story ever learns his name. They learn what his right arm does to whatever it touches.
In Otakana the clue reads: Ishvalan man who destroys with his right arm
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Fullmetal Alchemist
- Letters
- 4 · Normal
Scar is an Ishvalan survivor hunting State Alchemists one at a time, and he is very good at it. His right arm carries a tattooed array that performs the first two steps of alchemy and then stops: it takes matter apart and never puts anything back. Applied to a person that is quick. Applied to a wall it is extremely loud.
The X across his forehead is where the nickname comes from, and the series never gives him another one. Amestris destroyed his people in a campaign the military files as a rebellion and the survivors call extermination, and his revenge comes with theology attached. He believes he is carrying out God's work. His own faith, as he keeps discovering, mostly disagrees.
What makes him work is the refusal to let him be simply right or simply wrong. He kills people the audience likes. He also has an argument the story cannot dismiss, and the second half of Fullmetal Alchemist puts him in rooms with the people who gave the orders rather than the ones who carried them out.
Spelling SCAR
SCAR is four letters, an ordinary English word, and the character is called nothing else in the entire series. The Japanese writes it スカー, Sukaa, with a long final vowel that English drops. Nothing doubles and nothing is silent. Short rows punish wrong guesses hardest, so the SC opening is worth committing to early.