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In FMA: Brotherhood, Alphonse recover the memories he lost after going through
the Gate, by having Martel's blood spattered over his own blood seal (the one
that binds his soul to his armor), and is, henceworth, able to use the
knowledge inherent to it, such as using alchemy without transmutation circles.

Is there a reason for which _blood should have been splattered_ over his seal
for him to recover his memories?

Or was it only coincidence/traumatic?


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2014-06-28T00:30:51.930
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fullmetal-alchemist-series fullmetal-alchemist-brotherhood
How did Alphonse recover his pre-gate memories?


The blood acted like a charge and amped up the signal of the seal binding him
in the armor and his body by the gate this is the only thing that makes since


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2014-11-07T00:07:32.297
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Personally, I think it's just the blood splatter itself that "jogged his
memory" so to speak in a similar way as to how the blood splattered from the
transmuted body Al's soul failed to latch onto.

Usually selective amnesia like Al's memory of everything involving the trauma
itself can be brought back into one's conscious memories using a trigger which
is usually something similar to something happening in the lost memory in the
first place (I.e. saying an otherwise insignificant word in the right context
that would explicitly be tied to that 1 memory or catching a smell similar to
the environment that the event took place)

In this case, the trigger that would affect Al and tie his mind only to that
incident is the death that HE experienced when his soul had been so violently
and near immediately rejected from the body. (Which I'm pretty sure would be
the trauma which caused his mind to suppress the whole memory in the first
place. Who wouldn't be traumatized by actually dying?)

Also, the reason it happened when it splashed on his seal and not say...any
other time they might have been fighting and gotten blood on his armor is
because he can't feel it. The blood seal is a direct link to his soul, is the
only thing grounding him to earth. Since his rejection occurred in a different
body he's no longer attached to, it would stand to reason that such a trigger
could only be felt directly by his soul or the body he harbors. The blood seal
acts as that direct touch to his soul. And this is because blood is ones 'life
fluid' and often thought to hold the soul and its direct energy within it
(like our unique DNA and Mei's explanation of the dragon's pulse flowing in
our bodies). But Al's seal is made with Edward's blood, not his own.

As such the defining reason it even managed to latch onto Al's specific soul
and hold it so well and for so long is because their souls were mixed during
the transmutation as Ed explains later. In brotherhood this is even easier to
see with the brief flashback to Al inside the body they made when it bleeds
out rather similarly under an outstretched hand.

That's my take on it anyways.


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2015-11-16T22:02:18.700
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