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So, here we are finally. I wanted to make this CRT several weeks ago after I contacted Ultima about certain details about it, but unfortunately soon after that I was on holiday for three weeks and so this was put on hold. But now I am back, so this can finally happen. However, before starting, I want to give a huge thanks to Ultima himself. I was not very knowledgeable about the current Tier 1 stuff, and still have several doubts about it, so this would have not happened without his clarifications and suggestions about it.
Fullmetal Alchemist is my favorite manga/anime ever, and the scaling for it is completely fine as it is currently, except for a single character: the Truth. Its nature is mysterious and never fully explored, and as such it is not easy to give it a proper rating… But this is where the new Tiering System jumps in, since with it we might finally be able to give it a more solid tiering. But first of all, let’s explains something important …
Why the current rating is wrong
The Truth is currently rated as Low 2-C because of its monologue, which is probably the most well known part about it, that says: “Who am I? One name you might have for me is the World, or you might call me the Universe, or perhaps God, or perhaps the Truth. I am All, and I am One. So, of course, this also means that I am you” (this is taken directly from its page in the wiki). There are different translation that differs for little details, but the meaning remains the same regardless, and this is the reason as to why it is listed as Low 2-C… but it is actually an incorrect rating given the phrase.
Sure, it does say it is “the Universe” and “All”, but it also says it is “the World”, “One” and “You”. A Low 2-C rating would be fine if we take only the first two I listed, but with the rest this becomes an obviously incorrect tering for it, since on top of the Low 2-C rating we should also list it as 5-B for being “the World”, 10-B/10-C or even lower for being “One”, and every single rating on the verse for being “You”, which includes every single character in the verse.
To put it simply, the Truth is not just the “All”, the everything, but it is also the “One”, the single pieces that makes up this everything, both at the same time. So, how would something like this be rated? Well, with the previous Tiering System the only thing we could do was place a Low 2-C rating to it as a sort of “placeholder” … but now, with the new Tiering System, we possibly have a much more solid answer: 1-A. But to explain why, we need to analyze the little informations we have about it.
What is the Truth?
Let’s start with the basics. As the Truth itself says, it is the Universe, the World, God, Truth, the All and the One all at the same time. It actually says this twice, the second time towards the end, just to drive home the point. This in itself means little, but we do have more informations about what this “All” and “One” actually means.
When Izumi sends Edward and Alphonse to a desert island to fend for themselves, she gives them a riddle to solve: “One is All, All is One”, asking them to solve it. After a lot of time, their answer is that this is actually the fundamental law of nature, aka that there is a flow that connects the all and the singular elements that makes up said all, and alchemy is basically the understanding and manipuation of this flow of all things. Given that the Truth clearly says that it is the “All” and the “One”, this makes the Truth both halfs that forms this flow that is the fundamental law of nature and alchemy as a whole.
We also have more about this when we explore more about the “Gate of the Truth”, which contains within it the Eye of Truth and what is basically the real Truth. It is revealed to us that everything and everyone have a Gate within it, and it’s this Gate that allow people to use alchemy in the first place, mainly thanks to the fact that the Gate within oneselves connect them with the flow of “All and One” that is Truth itself. We also know that this is not limited to living beings, given that even entire planets have a Gate, and fully artificial beings like Homunculus have one too, further solidifying the point that the Truth is actually “All” and connects everything. To put it simply, the Gate is the flow that we were talking about earlier.
Another point of great interest is that this flow is not limited to matter, but also metaphysical aspects of being. As shown in the previous scan about the planet's Gate, even a consciousness can have a Gate, and the soul of the deaths go back to the Gate once someone dies. On top of this, Alchemy allows those that uses it to trasmutate souls, either exchanching physical matter for souls or the contrary as seen with Philosopher Stones which are able to create matter from nothingness by consuming the souls stored within them and as seen with Edward, who uses his own soul in a equivalent exchange to make a transmutation, which automatically means souls are also part of the flow that connects the “All” and the “One”, especially given that the Truth is the one that oversees the natural order and the equivalent exchange in itself.
There are a couple more things that I think are of some interest. First, even the Fake Portal within Gluttony, created by the Father with his great knowledge over alchemy and that exists even outside reality as a whole, is still not able to reach the Gate of Truth, meaning it’s unreacheable even from outside reality as a whole. Second, the Truth is also described as the “complete/perfect being” twice, with the term used being the “hermaphrodite” which, as most symbols in FMA, is a real life alchemic symbol that rapresents the opposites that becomes one into a single, perfect being which, while not a lot on his own, can give even more weight to the statements from the Truth about the All and the One.
Conclusions
What does all of this mean? That the Truth is the All and the One, the flow that connect everything and the single parts that makes up said everything throught the Gates that exists within everything and everyone and that, by extension, connects them to itself. To put it simply and taking inspiration from Ultima's word, this mean that the Truth would trascend the distinction between parts (the One) and whole (the All) by virtue of being the flow by which part and whole are in truth one thing. Which means that a 1-A rating is overall believable.
For the question about who scales, the answer is pretty simple: the Truth and no one else. I believe that Alchemy would become 1-A in nature given that it comes from the Gate that each individual have within themselves, but it in itself wont even be close to be 1-A in potency, similiarly to how right now Alchemy is 4-D in nature without actually being 4-D in potency.
And that should be it. Once again, thanks to Ultima for helping me understanding how to rate the informations given about the Truth, and thanks to LordGinSama too for helping me get a couple of scans. I know this might be a controversial thread since this is a pretty popular manga, but I hope this can go relatively well overall.
Agree:
Disagree:
Neutral:
Fullmetal Alchemist is my favorite manga/anime ever, and the scaling for it is completely fine as it is currently, except for a single character: the Truth. Its nature is mysterious and never fully explored, and as such it is not easy to give it a proper rating… But this is where the new Tiering System jumps in, since with it we might finally be able to give it a more solid tiering. But first of all, let’s explains something important …
Why the current rating is wrong
The Truth is currently rated as Low 2-C because of its monologue, which is probably the most well known part about it, that says: “Who am I? One name you might have for me is the World, or you might call me the Universe, or perhaps God, or perhaps the Truth. I am All, and I am One. So, of course, this also means that I am you” (this is taken directly from its page in the wiki). There are different translation that differs for little details, but the meaning remains the same regardless, and this is the reason as to why it is listed as Low 2-C… but it is actually an incorrect rating given the phrase.
Sure, it does say it is “the Universe” and “All”, but it also says it is “the World”, “One” and “You”. A Low 2-C rating would be fine if we take only the first two I listed, but with the rest this becomes an obviously incorrect tering for it, since on top of the Low 2-C rating we should also list it as 5-B for being “the World”, 10-B/10-C or even lower for being “One”, and every single rating on the verse for being “You”, which includes every single character in the verse.
To put it simply, the Truth is not just the “All”, the everything, but it is also the “One”, the single pieces that makes up this everything, both at the same time. So, how would something like this be rated? Well, with the previous Tiering System the only thing we could do was place a Low 2-C rating to it as a sort of “placeholder” … but now, with the new Tiering System, we possibly have a much more solid answer: 1-A. But to explain why, we need to analyze the little informations we have about it.
What is the Truth?
Let’s start with the basics. As the Truth itself says, it is the Universe, the World, God, Truth, the All and the One all at the same time. It actually says this twice, the second time towards the end, just to drive home the point. This in itself means little, but we do have more informations about what this “All” and “One” actually means.
When Izumi sends Edward and Alphonse to a desert island to fend for themselves, she gives them a riddle to solve: “One is All, All is One”, asking them to solve it. After a lot of time, their answer is that this is actually the fundamental law of nature, aka that there is a flow that connects the all and the singular elements that makes up said all, and alchemy is basically the understanding and manipuation of this flow of all things. Given that the Truth clearly says that it is the “All” and the “One”, this makes the Truth both halfs that forms this flow that is the fundamental law of nature and alchemy as a whole.
We also have more about this when we explore more about the “Gate of the Truth”, which contains within it the Eye of Truth and what is basically the real Truth. It is revealed to us that everything and everyone have a Gate within it, and it’s this Gate that allow people to use alchemy in the first place, mainly thanks to the fact that the Gate within oneselves connect them with the flow of “All and One” that is Truth itself. We also know that this is not limited to living beings, given that even entire planets have a Gate, and fully artificial beings like Homunculus have one too, further solidifying the point that the Truth is actually “All” and connects everything. To put it simply, the Gate is the flow that we were talking about earlier.
Another point of great interest is that this flow is not limited to matter, but also metaphysical aspects of being. As shown in the previous scan about the planet's Gate, even a consciousness can have a Gate, and the soul of the deaths go back to the Gate once someone dies. On top of this, Alchemy allows those that uses it to trasmutate souls, either exchanching physical matter for souls or the contrary as seen with Philosopher Stones which are able to create matter from nothingness by consuming the souls stored within them and as seen with Edward, who uses his own soul in a equivalent exchange to make a transmutation, which automatically means souls are also part of the flow that connects the “All” and the “One”, especially given that the Truth is the one that oversees the natural order and the equivalent exchange in itself.
There are a couple more things that I think are of some interest. First, even the Fake Portal within Gluttony, created by the Father with his great knowledge over alchemy and that exists even outside reality as a whole, is still not able to reach the Gate of Truth, meaning it’s unreacheable even from outside reality as a whole. Second, the Truth is also described as the “complete/perfect being” twice, with the term used being the “hermaphrodite” which, as most symbols in FMA, is a real life alchemic symbol that rapresents the opposites that becomes one into a single, perfect being which, while not a lot on his own, can give even more weight to the statements from the Truth about the All and the One.
Conclusions
What does all of this mean? That the Truth is the All and the One, the flow that connect everything and the single parts that makes up said everything throught the Gates that exists within everything and everyone and that, by extension, connects them to itself. To put it simply and taking inspiration from Ultima's word, this mean that the Truth would trascend the distinction between parts (the One) and whole (the All) by virtue of being the flow by which part and whole are in truth one thing. Which means that a 1-A rating is overall believable.
For the question about who scales, the answer is pretty simple: the Truth and no one else. I believe that Alchemy would become 1-A in nature given that it comes from the Gate that each individual have within themselves, but it in itself wont even be close to be 1-A in potency, similiarly to how right now Alchemy is 4-D in nature without actually being 4-D in potency.
And that should be it. Once again, thanks to Ultima for helping me understanding how to rate the informations given about the Truth, and thanks to LordGinSama too for helping me get a couple of scans. I know this might be a controversial thread since this is a pretty popular manga, but I hope this can go relatively well overall.
Agree:
Disagree:
Neutral:
