Scar

Scar is a character from the Fullmetal Alchemists anime and manga.

Scar is a nameless lone serial killer and vigilante who targets State Alchemists for his own brand of lethal justice in accordance with the fundamental tenets of his religion and for the revenge of his slaughtered people and family. An Ishvalan survivor of the Ishvalan Civil War, Scar's moniker comes from the large X-shaped scar on his forehead and sports a conspicuous and intricate alchemical tattoo on his right arm, which originally belonged to his older brother, and which he uses as his murder weapon of choice.

In the AWA fics, Scar is a student at the AWA Academy and is part of Class 3.

Appearance
Being a native Ishvalan, the man known as Scar carries the dark complexion and distinctive red irises of his people. He is fairly tall with a muscular build and his hair is shaved close on the back and sides, leaving a silver-colored crown on top. In the manga and 2009 anime storyline, this crown sticks up a bit, while the 2003 anime series depicts it as relatively flat and spread out. Scar's right arm is adorned with a thin scar stretching entirely around the limb where the bicep meets the shoulder and, from that mark all the way down to the wrist, is nearly covered with a complex tattoo. The upper portion of his face is disfigured with a large X-shaped scar which stretches across his forehead and down over his eyes into his upper cheekbones. The manga storyline portrays Scar as being in his early- to mid-thirties while the 2003 anime depicts him as being roughly ten years younger. In the early part of either series, Scar wears sunglasses to hide his red eyes from view and bears a distinctive gold-colored jacket emblazoned with a cross on the back and sleeves. Additionally, he sports a pair of black slacks with a white cross on the left leg and a white stripe running down the right.

Personality
Scar is a decidedly brooding, vicious, and angry man, almost totally consumed by hatred toward the people who destroyed his homeland. Knowing full well that his actions go against many of the teachings of his religion, he still fashions himself an agent of God's divine punishment and takes out his fury on State Alchemists; as a result, he abandons his birth name which Ishvalans consider gifts from God. Unfortunately, this escalates into a monomaniac hatred of State Alchemists, to the point he even targets Edward Elric who was never part of the war and is a champion of the people.

However, vestiges of his former life's kinder nature are prone to seep through. Even in the middle of his bloody vengeance, Scar is willing to show compassion toward others, honoring last requests and offering a chance to pray before dying. He is reasonably wise and a skilled rhetorician, though his misguided thirst for vengeance clouds his greater judgment and leads his arguments in circles. Having had his people and his family stolen from him, Scar sympathizes with those who care for their loved ones and looks after those who have lost their place in the world. Additionally, he is very protective of his surviving kinsmen and takes all their words of encouragement or chastisement to heart.

Abilities
As a former warrior of Ishbal, Scar is quite adept at hand-to-hand combat, boasting significant strength and stamina, remarkable agility and reflexes and deceptive speed. Though the 2003 anime shows him as a young armed combatant during the war, in the manga he displays his abilities on the field by subduing a number of armed Amestrian soldiers using only melee tactics. Scar's killing spree throughout Amestris itself is proof of his skills, as he manages to murder ten State Alchemists (including Basque Grand, who had been hailed as a combat specialist) and is able to hold his own against combat-based alchemists like the Elric brothers and Alex Armstrong. In addition, Scar proves himself capable of taking down inhuman beasts such as chimeras and Homunculi. Most impressively, through a combination of luck and skill, he managed to gain a pyrrhic victory over a severely wounded Wrath.

Scar is also reasonably intelligent, able to comprehend some more complex alchemical texts and concepts despite having never studied the craft and an adequate tactician capable of immediately identifying and assessing his opponents' weaknesses in combat.

Use of Alchemy
While his physical prowess and intimidating figure are frightful in and of themselves, Scar's most dangerous element is his right arm, which is able to destroy anything with which it comes into contact by way of the intricate and arcane Transmutation Array tattooed thereupon. As a fundamentalist opponent of alchemy, Scar does not consider himself an alchemist in the traditional sense, but the strain of alchemy that his arm itself allows him to produce is powerful, advanced and unique. As observed by those who have seen it in action and lived to tell the tale, Scar's method follows the cyclical flow of transmutation, but only takes into account the first two steps - comprehension and deconstruction. By "stopping at the second step", the physical structure of whatever he targets is broken down and not reshaped, essentially reducing it to debris. By applying this method to his victims, he destroys their internal systems instantly while circumventing both Human Transmutation and the Ishvalan stigma associated with giving new form to one of God's creations. Still, for all the serial killer's anti-alchemical posturing, the fact that he is unable to deconstruct an object whose composition he does not comprehend suggests that Scar does have a fair bit of alchemical knowledge and must actively identify, or at least make educated guesses at, the makeup of objects he wishes to destroy; despite his repeated assertion that the arm (and not himself) is the one performing alchemy, Scar is an amateur alchemist by practice.

The origin of the markings on Scar's arm differ somewhat between the manga and 2003 anime story-lines of the series, but in both it was originally the right arm of Scar's older brother, transferred from one sibling to the other in an emergency procedure during the Ishval Civil War.

Scar's arm array is the deconstruction half of a two-piece complementary set designed by his older brother. By studying both Amestrian alchemy and Xingese alkahestry, Scar's elder brother was able to find similarities between the two and combine them into an array that incorporated their strengths. The right arm, marked with "TERRA" (the Latin word for "Earth") and "AER" (the Latin word for "Air"), carries an array incorporating twin snakes in a Caduceus pattern surrounded by reptilian scales which may represent the "Dragon's Pulse" of alkahestric origin and a series of tribal arrows leading down to the wrist, representing an outward flow. This arm is designated for deconstruction. The left arm, designated for reconstruction, is marked with the same array turned upside down to represent an inward flow and with the Dragon's Pulse tattooed in white ink rather than the black ink of the right arm. Its inward flow completes the cyclical pulse of full transmutation and it is marked with "IGNIS" (the Latin word for "Fire") and "AQUA", (The Latin word for "Water") completing the elemental tetrad.

After an attack by State Alchemist Solf J. Kimblee left the young Scar dying from exsanguination due to the loss of his right arm, his older brother used the Alkahestric properties to transfer his own right arm to his brother's body in exchange for his life. Though Scar is unable to transmute past the deconstruction stage with this arm, the Alkahestric nature of the array makes his transmutations immune to Father's alchemy-sealing ability.

Scar reveals in Chapter 103 that he had, at some point in the previous several months, deciphered the deconstruction array enough to accurately recreate the reconstruction array that had been on his brother's left arm. Now, with his own left arm marked with the same array, he is finally able to create in addition to being able to destroy and can perform full transmutations with the full power of his brother's extensive research. Though new to the craft, not having had enough confidence to even make an attempt before The Promised Day, Scar proves himself able to create large spikes from the ground similar to those used by the Elric brothers and Alex Louis Armstrong. However, instead of being conical, Scar's spikes take the form of hexagonal pyramids.

Trivia

 * In the first anime, Scar died without his name ever being revealed. However, the author planned to reveal Scar's name before the manga finishes (in the "extras" at the end of volume 15, Arakawa states she has a name for Scar, but it's a secret). In chapter 102, when Wrath asks Scar what his name is, Scar replies he has no name and abandoned it long ago. As of Chapter 108, Scar officially has no name, stating that after dying twice, he no longer exists. It is unknown if his name will ever be revealed.
 * As a joke in the non-canon 4-Koma Theater, it is stated that Scar's real name is Jugemu-jugemu Gokōnosurikire Kaijarisuigyo-no Suigyōmatsu Unraimatsu Fūraimatsu Kūnerutokoroni-sumutokoro Yaburakōjino-burakōji Paipopaipo-paiponoshūringan Shūringanno-gūrindai Gūrindaino-ponpokopīno-ponpokonāno Chōkyūmeino-chōsuke, derived from the Japanese folktale "Jugemu." The joke also states that King Bradley, another character whose real name is unknown, shares the same name.
 * In the dub this is changed to Percival-ramteen-gregory-nikolai-jack-skozer-leonardo-gabriel-socrates-meanviktor-nostradamus-alistair-podisha-vladimir-steepler-rasputin-boromir-wallawalla-shidiga-alexander-oliver-abelard-arnesto-zippy-zappy-angel-eyes.
 * In the 2003 anime, Kimblee personally gave Scar the X-shaped scar on his face and removed his arm. In the manga, both injuries were inadvertently caused by the explosion that Kimblee set off to murder the surrounding group of Ishvalans.
 * In the 2003 anime Scar is much younger than he is in the manga and the 2009 anime adaption (appearing to be a man around his early to mid 20's).
 * In the compiled volumes of the manga, Arakawa draws her boss as a shadowy, angry version of Scar.
 * In some volumes of the manga, his ability for destruction is often joked about in the omakes, in which he is asked by an irritated Hawkeye (vol 14) to destroy a bathhouse that won't let people with large tattoos go in, and by an irritated Alphonse (vol 15) to destroy a convenience store that won't let people with helmet/head protectors in. In volume 16, a spoof of Scar mutilating Marcoh's face and May healing it is shown, with the spoof resembling an advertisement for a plastic surgeon, claiming it to be the "Fullmetal Plastic Surgery Clinic" (in which Marcoh's face, instead of healed into a scarred, deformed figure, is turned into a handsome, bishounen-style face), and for the newest popularity poll, killing Arakawa in cow form after finding out they both share the same rating in popularity (17th).
 * Scar is one of three people to have single-handedly dealt a defeating blow to a Homunculus, the others being Roy Mustang and Edward Elric.
 * Ironically, or perhaps fittingly, the Homunculus killed represents his biggest vice, his wrath.
 * Although he didn't actually kill a Homunculus in the 2003 anime, the locket Scar retrieved in Ishval which contained the pieces of hair from the woman that Lust was modeled after was eventually used by the 2003 anime version of Wrath to kill her.
 * In an omake, it is revealed that Scar has a soft spot for cats like Al.
 * At one point in the manga, and 2009 anime Roy Mustang mentions a rumor, where Scar has been seen feeding cats.
 * Although not appearing canonically until the second volume of the manga, a shadowy Scar is seen breaking into Arakawa's office (presumably to attack her) with a document labelled "photo typesetting" in the omake section of volume 1.