Scar

The Scarred Man (傷の男, Kizu no Otoko), known more casually as "Scar" (スカー, Suka), is a nameless lone serial killer and revolutionary 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. An Ishvalan survivor of the Ishval Civil War, Scar is so monikered by a large X-shaped scar on his forehead and sports a conspicuous and intricate alchemical tattoo on his right arm, which he uses as his murder weapon of choice.

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 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. However, vestiges of his former life's kinder nature are prone to seep through. Even in the middle of his bloody vengeance, Scar is wont 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 Ishval, Scar is quite adept at hand-to-hand combat, boasting significant strength, remarkable agility and above-average reflexes. 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 Gran, who had been hailed as a combat specialist) and is able to hold his own against combat-based alchemists like the Elric brothers throughout the course of the series. In addition, Scar proves himself capable of taking down inhuman beasts such as chimeras and the Homunculi. More recently, he has shown himself capable of fighting more or less on par with Wrath, who is not only considered to be the second strongest Homunculus (just below Pride), but also one of the most dangerous adversaries in the series in general.

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.

Destruction 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 (having purposely avoided even its study), 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 formless debris. By applying this method to his victims, he destroys their internal systems (general organs in the manga, but the brain specifically in the 2003 anime version) 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 storylines 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.

Manga
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" and "AER", 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" and "AQUA", 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.

2003 anime
The array on Scar's arm is a fragment of a larger array called the Grand Arcanum, which his older brother had tattooed over his entire body after delving into old alchemic methods in a failed attempt to resurrect his late sweetheart. The Grand Arcanum, an ancient and forbidden strain of alchemy native and unique to Ishvalan culture, was designed to create a Philosopher's Stone by reacting with lost souls and other incomplete Stones, absorbing them into the array. After an attack by State Alchemist Solf J. Kimblee left the young Scar dying from the loss of his arm, his older brother regained his senses long enough to transfer his own right arm to his younger sibling at the cost of his own life. As such, Scar's right arm is a incomplete Philosopher's Stone, retaining enough of his brother's full-body Grand Arcanum tattoo to react in the same way. It gives off a scarlet light when used, in keeping with the nature of the Stone, and painfully absorbs Red Stones and the souls of Scar's victims into itself as it attempts to become complete.

The markings on the arm are similar to those in the manga, but are more vague and lack the defined symbology of the Dragon's Pulse arm. Additionally, because of its differing origins, it carries a different meaning. It appears that his arm is able to reconstruct, but is not allowed to by Scar's religious ideology.

Ishval Civil War
As a young warrior monk living in the Kanda region of Ishval during the Ishval Civil War, the man who would later be known as "Scar" personally opposed the assimilation of his homeland into greater Amestris and found his distrust of the central government cemented by the military atrocities that erupted around him each day. His indignation reached a head when he discovered that his older brother had taken up the study of Amestris' craft of alchemy - a practice forbidden by the teachings of Ishvala. The incident occurred as a result of his brother giving up his life and arm to save Scar's after he had been gravely wounded. Enraged by his brother's death at the hands of Amestrians, he goes on a blind rampage and kills the Rockbells, who were treating his injuries, and nearly everyone around him. He is portrayed as more relentless and ruthless in his vengeance, while the anime had him as a good man who was consumed by revenge for his people.

Alchemist Killer
Scar is both a threat to the military and the Homunculi. While he targets primarily State Alchemists in the State military, his relentless quest threatens to destroy all of the Homunculi's precious alchemist human sacrifices. As such, they have made many attempts to kill him, albeit unsuccessfully. Although he is not the prime antagonist in the manga, he establishes himself early on as one of the most often encountered dangers by the Elrics.

Scar attacked the Elric brothers in East City, managing to destroy Edward's automail arm, and shattering Alphonse' armor as well, and is nearly caught by the military, but he escapes into the sewers. Lust and Gluttony find him in the sewers and attack him. Unable to beat them, he blows up the sewer and is washed down the river. Hawkeye finds his bloodied coat and he is assumed dead, but in reality he is being treated at an Ishvalan refugee camp. Yoki, who happens to be present there after his humiliation at the mining town, hires bounty hunters to capture him. Scar easily defeats the bounty hunters and leaves with Yoki, who finds May Chang lying on the streets out cold. When the Elric brothers try to beat him while capturing a homunculus, he is shot by Hawkeye. Just before Ed and Al beat him to the ground for killing Winry's parents, and some of the other state alchemists, May defends him and uses alchemy to escape, and later to heal his wound. He agrees to help May find her pet panda out of pity because May's clan was also under threat of extinction as the Ishvalans were.

Revelations in Central
Scar and May end up stumbling upon the Elric Brothers and Ling/Greed in the Homunculi lair, where Ed revealed to him the fact that Envy sparked the Ishval rebellion. Scar demands an explanation for the act, vowing to send the Homunculi to Ishvala before declaring they deserve even less. Unlike the Elrics, Scar and May are able to use their alchemy when in the lair, and Scar makes use of this to create a dust bomb to cover his handing over of May to Alphonse while he escapes on his own. As he escapes, he hears Dr. Marcoh's voice in Father's hideout. He finds the doctor, who asks Scar to kill him. Scar agrees to fulfill Marcoh's wish in return for the true story behind the Ishval Massacre.

Only in chapter 60, the flashback of the Ishvalan extermination campaign finally reveals the secret to Scar's arm. His brother, who had been doing research on Rentanjutsu (alchemy from Xing) and Renkinjutsu (alchemy from Amestris) in order to help Ishvalans win against the Amestris army, showed Scar and other men the products of his work: two tattooed arms. He explained to Scar the three parts of alchemy (understanding, deconstruction, and reconstruction), and that the tattoos on the right arm cause deconstruction while the left arm causes reconstruction. The significance of this innovation was that Scar's brother could bypass the need for a transmutation circle. While fighting Kimblee in the midst of the extermination, Scar lost his right arm and his brother. With the last of his strength, his brother had attached his own arm, through means of alchemy, to Scar. Even if Scar wanted to finally break Ishvalan teaching and perform transmutation alchemy, he cannot because his right arm is only designed for destroying (or decomposing).

Answers in the North
After learning the truth behind his brother's research, Scar decides to spare Marcoh's life to help him learn more. He uses his right arm to partially destroy Marcoh's face, disfiguring the doctor's skin and thus giving him a disguise. Scar and his group make their way to the North where the secrets of his brother's research are hidden. Scar encounters Kimblee on a train, where they fight, and Scar injures Kimblee and forces him to escape.

By Chapter 69, the four members of Scar's party (Scar, Yoki, May, Marcoh) hold up in a cabin in the snowy region of Briggs. Marcoh and May have recovered Scar's brother's journals, but the most important parts are written in undecipherable ancient Ishvalan writing. Marcoh hopes that Scar, as a warrior priest, can understand them to help their research. This theory is not tested as for the fact that immediately after Scar gets to the cabin with Yoki, he tells his party that they need to move to a new hiding spot.

Later, while Scar is looking for supplies, two central soldiers who he attacked before getting to the cabin, show up and retaliates, performing their capabilities as human chimeras. They are soon subdued by the Elric brothers, who pretend they don't recognize them as their supposed allies. Scar quickly attacks the brothers, but falters as he notices Winry, which allows the brothers to trap him and his arm. Major Miles and his soldiers arrive and order back-up, while Winry questions Scar as to why he killed her parents. Scar claims he has no legitimate reason and that Winry has every right to take her revenge.

Winry, however, chooses to endure and not exact revenge on Scar and even bandages him, stating that it would be something her parents would do. Nevertheless, she still does not forgive his actions. Major Miles then laments his condemning of a fellow Ishvalan and Scar has a flashback of his master, preaching that even though what the Amestrian military has done to them is unforgivable, as humans, they must endure it so as to sever the bond of hatred and keep their own dignity so they won't be the same as vengeful beasts, and that his brother's theory about the flow of energy in the world, will grow positive if people build positive feelings and become able to hold negative feelings.

However, when Scar is about to be taken, Marcoh appears, begging them not to take him yet. Marcoh asks Briggs' authorities to let Scar go, at least for a while. Miles asks Scar to swear upon his Ishvalan blood to give himself over after his part is done, which Scar agrees, and Miles lets him go, although Ed strongly opposes it. When they find out that Kimblee is near, to cover all of them, Winry then proposes herself to being used as a "hostage" by Scar to provide cover for the Briggs army and Elric brothers, and to secure herself from Central's grasp. Scar swearingly agrees to protect her, and Ed grudgingly accepts it. In the end, he goes together with Dr. Marcoh, May, Winry, and the two chimera soldiers who have chosen to defect from Kimblee's authority, guided by Yoki, through an unused mine tunnel under the city.

March Toward the Future
More recently, Scar has allied himself with Edward, Hohenheim, Mustang, Greed, Grumman, and Olivier Armstrong, the group leading the rebellion set to strike on the 'promised day'. In chapter 84, he shows incredible growth in his character by stating, although he is not here to save Amestris, he is here to change it and destroy the corruption, along with his tribe leader and most of the refugee village. Consequently, Scar has quite possibly developed the most of all the characters over the course of the series, as he was initially a serial killer but now works towards the common good.

In chapter 102-103 Scar is currently engaged in a battle to the death with Wrath, who is still majorly wounded from his previous battle with Fu, Buccaneer, and Greed/Lin. Before the battle fully commences, Wrath asks what Scar's real name is, to which he states he doesn't have one, as he's abandoned his name long ago. Wrath is pleased with this, as Wrath himself does not have a name and the battle is between two nameless warriors.

However, in Chapter 103, things look to be going Wrath's way as Scar is pinned to the ground, with Wrath about to kill him. However, spikes suddenly impale Wrath's sword arm, and when greeted with Wrath's look of shock (Wrath thought that Scar could only use deconstruction), Scar states that he had finally unlocked how to use reconstruction, courtesy of his brother's research notes.

In chapter 104, both Scar and Wrath are show being engulfed in a black dome summoned by Father activating the transmutation circle. He and Wrath survive and continue their duel, with Scar eventually emerging victorius after destroying Wrath's hands. He then activates the Alkahestric Reverse, giving Amestris back its Alchemy.

Although quite harsh and cruel, Scar has an affinity for cute animals, similarly to Alphonse Elric. He seems to attract small children as followers, and is rescued by a child more than once.

In the compiled volumes of the manga, Arakawa draws her boss as a shadowy, angry version of Scar.

In latest volumes of the manga, his ability for destruction is often joked about in manga omakes, in which he is asked by an irritated Hawkeye (vol 14) to destroy a bathhouse who won't let people with large tattoos go in, and by 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).

Anime
Scar is an Ishvalan, a group of religious people who take their name from the god they worship, Ishvala. In particular, the art of alchemy (known to Ishvalans as the "Grand Arcanum") was considered one of the greatest taboos of Ishvalan culture (as it implies that humans can better upon God's creations). Scar's elder brother Mattias broke this taboo by attempting the most dangerous form of alchemy, human transmutation, in an attempt to resurrect the deceased woman that both he and Scar had loved. As is the way of such things, the attempt failed (leading to the creation of the Homunculus, Lust), causing Mattias to lose his grip on sanity, and seek the legendary Philosopher's Stone, in hopes of successfully accomplishing his task. Realizing that the key ingredient in the forging of the stone was human lives, Mattias tattooed his body with the necessary transmutation symbols that would allow him to absorb lives and become a living Philosopher's Stone himself. The lives in question were those lost in a massacre of the Ishvalan people by the State Military, but as Scar and his brother attempted to escape after the attack, they were pursued by State Alchemist Solf J. Kimblee, who used his alchemic powers to give Scar his eponymous disfigurement, and to blow his right arm off his body. Mattias dispatched Kimblee by robbing him of the power-enhancing Red Stone he was wielding, and then fused his own right arm to Scar's body before dying. Due to the type of Transmutation Circle on his brother's arm, Scar has a partial Philosopher's Stone always ready to be used.

Mattias's right arm bore the symbols necessary for the first two portions of an alchemic transmutation - the understanding of an item's molecular composition, and the deconstruction of that matter (with the third step being the reconstruction of the matter into a new form). Unaware of this particular detail, Scar traveled to the city of Central, in hopes of using the information in the State Library to discover the nature of the symbols. His entry to the library barred, Scar clashed with young State Alchemist, Edward Elric, who inadvertently tore his shirt and exposed his arm, causing him to flee. Not long thereafter, while ruminating in an alleyway, Scar was approached by Nina Tucker, a young girl who had been turned into a chimera by her father, and discovered the power within his arm when he deconstructed her body, killing her out of mercy.

Some background information about the symbol on the arm. Within the symbols on the arm are two statements of Latin origin, one running horizontal and one vertical. The statements are "dop la TERRA sie ca" and "TERRA A Ndan, colla" both using the main word "terra" which contains multiple meanings The earth/life/us/everything. These are statements describing the basics of alchemy and explaining that there is no way in which the laws of equivalent exchange can be broken. "dop la terra sie ca" in this context translates to "In the end everything will return" meaning that eventually everything will return back to the cycle of matter. "terra a ndan, colla" translates to "Life in Death, contributes" this is in reference to the philosophers stones nature in that in order to create the stone living souls must be taken and with every soul the stone becomes more powerful.

Now aware of the power he wielded, Scar embarked on a campaign of revenge against all State Alchemists over the course of the next three years, killing many by exploding their brains within their skulls. In tracking and killing the "Iron Blood Alchemist," Basque Grand, Scar crossed paths with Edward Elric (and his brother, Alphonse) once again, who attempted to prevent Scar from killing Tim Marcoh, another State Alchemist who had participated in the Ishval Massacre. The fight was interrupted by Major Alex Louis Armstrong, who held off Scar long enough for Elric and his brother to escape, but it was a brief respite - Scar soon tracked them down, and shattered Edward's arm, and a large portion of Alphonse's body. Reminded by them of his relationship with own brother, Scar promised not to kill Alphonse (as he was not a State Alchemist), but before being able to kill Edward, Marcoh confronted him with an incomplete Philosopher's Stone, which Scar's arm absorbed (as per its purpose to absorb souls). Unaware that this was the purpose of his arm (and that it appeared to cause him pain as it was absorbed), a suffering Scar fled.

When the Elrics later broke into the military's Laboratory Five, to uncover the twisted alchemic experiments that had been conducted there, Scar followed them, saving Alphonse from serial killer Barry the Chopper and battling the Homunculi Lust and Gluttony. When Edward was presented by the Homunculi with the chance to obtain a Philosopher's Stone by killing the prisoners held within the laboratory, he refused, and, noting this act of nobility, Scar held back from killing him.

Nursing injuries from this encounter, Scar returned to the refugee camp occupied by the remaining Ishvalans, only for it to be attacked by mercenaries posing as the State Military. Scar escaped with two children and an Ishvalan elder, and promptly ran into Alphonse once again, who was at the time separated from his brother after a disagreement. The younger of the children, Rick, was then captured by the mercenaries, and Alphonse and Edward reached an uneasy truce with Scar to work together and rescue him.

Through further study, Scar eventually came to realize the true nature of his arm as an incomplete Philosopher's Stone, containing the souls of all those who had died during the Ishval Massacre. Concluding that he needed the stone to stop the action of the State Military, he decided to finish what his brother had started, and traveled to the war-torn desert city of Lior and inscribed a gigantic transmutation circle around the city itself by dragging a rock through its dirt streets. Learning of his presence there, the State Military arrived in force, along with the Elrics, who feared that he planned to sacrifice all the inhabitants of Lior to create the stone. Once again, Edward and Scar battled, with Edward repeatedly transmuting the matter of his mechanical arm to prevent Scar from deconstructing it. The subsequent arrival and defeat of Lust delayed the fight, which was then halted by the arrival of Rose and Lyra, prompting the revelation that Scar, in actuality, intended to safely evacuate the inhabitants of Lior and use the invading military as his sacrifices instead. He also managed to clear Lust's thoughts on her past human life, and admits that he loved Lust's human form; he also claims to have loved his brother, but hated him for his negligence and ignorance.

Solf Kimblee led a small army of chimeras into Lior, and with the evacuation nearly complete, Scar and Alphonse engaged him in combat, only for Scar to have his left arm be transformed by Kimblee's alchemy into a living bomb. Scar sacrificed his arm, deconstructing it off of his own body, to prevent it from exploding, and blasted a hole in Kimblee's chest. Kimblee, however, proved able to cling onto life long enough to transmute Alphonse's body into explosive material. Lust told him to wait for Edward's arrival, as the only way to save Alphonse was to transmute his body into a different material, which Scar lacked the knowledge to do. To save him, Scar transmuted his remaining arm, and all the power and souls within it, into Alphonse's armoured body. Finally, he got Lust to take Kimblee's dead body into the sight of the military amassed around the city, prompting them to attack. Suffering bullet wounds in protecting Lust, Scar used the last of his strength to complete and activate the transmutation circle around the city, dying as the transmutation took place, and the Philosopher's Stone was completed - within Alphonse, saving his life(since his body had now been transmuted into a different material). Scar's real name is never revealed, as he states that he no longer deserves one.

Last Words: "A Man who inflicts suffering can not rest. His guilty mind won't allow it. But today I can finally close my eyes to the living nightmare and lay down, knowing that I won't wake again. Brother..."

In the movie sequel, Conqueror of Shambala, a parallel universe version of Scar is seen near the end driving a truck with Gypsies next to an alternate version of Lust, probably suggesting they developed a relationship in our world.

Trivia

 * In the first anime, Scar died without his name ever being revealed. However, the author plans 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 is a secret). In chapter 102, when Wrath asks Scar what his name is, Scar replies he has no name and abandoned it long ago. Whether or not this will affect his having a real name remains to be seen.
 * In the 2003 anime, Kimblee personally give Scar the X-shaped scar on his face and removed his arm. In the Manga, both injuries were caused by an explosion that Kimblee had caused.
 * In the 2003 anime Scar is much younger than he is in the manga and the 2009 anime adaption.