So WHAT is Full Metal Alchemist About? Here is my personal introduction, starting with a beginning quote of Chapter one of the manga...

A Painless Lesson is one without any meaning. One who does not sacrifice anything cannot achieve anything.

  Interested yet? Or questioning why I posted this quote. This is the basis of Full Metal Alchemist. Alchemy. The Science of making things out of similar matter, a forgotton and mythical science to us, but in the world of Edward of Alphonse Elric (the main characters) it is all too common. The science not only makes the government, but governs society by it's own rules, one of the topmost being: 'never try to transmutate (create) a human, using Alchemy'. When the Elric's brothers' father leaves them, they live out their lives joyfully until one day their mother dies by a disease. In despair, using whatever Alchemy notes in their fathers' notes, they promise themselves to bring her back, using the forbidden art of human transmutation. However, a tragedy befalls them, the attempt to bring back their mother not only produces a monster, but steals from the Elder brother his arm and leg, and from the younger his whole self, leaving his soul locked by blood in a steel armor. Now the Elric Brothers must go through various hardships in finding the legendary 'philosophers' stone, only to discover the deadly secrets that lie in their actions, past, and in these mysterious immortal beings called 'Homonculi'...