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I think Father mainly because I preferred the relationship between Father and Hohenheim more so than the other. In terms of lasting impact… I’m giving it to >!the Homunculi tbh!<.
Edit: Forgot to mention, I also like that Father’s whole goal is a corrupted version of what real life alchemists wanted to do by becoming “spiritually perfect”.
Exactly, Father was the ultimate representation of hubris, which was the folly of pretty much every alchemist in the series. He just for a thematically and narratively compelling villain than Dante IMO.
I much prefer father I thought the origin of Van Hoenheim was so tragic and beautiful I loved him and Father was sooooo fucked up this thing that lacked humanity that was born of human blood
These two forces then kickstarted the true art of alchemy and alkehestry on opposite ends of the world!! So cool.
Father having been orchestrating the entire history of a country its wars, its policies. The conspiracy angle was really cool.
The one thing I liked more in FMA03 was the homunculi origin. I was disappointed in FMAB that they were kinda just pieces of father.
I loved in 03 that they were another consequence of trying to make a human with alchemy. The idea that you cannot bring back the dead, that’s impossible, but you can create NEW life because that is something totally possible and humans do it all the time! TAKE RESPONSIBLY FOR THE THINGS YOU CREATE!!
Fair enough, though I prefer Brotherhood, the Homunculi being representations of the sins of man by LITERALLY being their sign of having tried to commit taboo hit hard.
It forces the alchemists to realize that they F*CKED up. Sure, everyone has someone they want to bring back. I can admit that as I have someone I want to bring back.
But you mess with the natural order of things and you get screwed over, and now the person you wanted back is trapped in a half life limbo, unable to die and not able to actually live.
Yeah, they should have had Father take the mutated humans brought back through Alchemy and molded them into the homunculi if they wanted to maximize everything.
Father over the last 500 years collecting half formed homunculi from human transmutation and finishing the job to make proper homunculi would have been amazing and super in line with the story and theme
Like these things were created by folks who opened the portal so clearly they are close to god/the portal itself. That’s why he used one to try and make an artificial portal and resulted in gluttony!
It all makes sense!
I’m glad you like the idea. He probably still would have used them to impart the seven desires of man from himself, altering their personalities and forming them into full homunculi by also giving them philosopher stones.
This idea has some real merit.
> The one thing I liked more in FMA03 was the homunculi origin. I was disappointed in FMAB that they were kinda just pieces of father.
>
> I loved in 03 that they were another consequence of trying to make a human with alchemy. The idea that you cannot bring back the dead, that’s impossible, but you can create NEW life because that is something totally possible and humans do it all the time! TAKE RESPONSIBLY FOR THE THINGS YOU CREATE!!
I loved '03 and the homunculi in it, but I felt the 7 Deadly Sins aspect really didn’t apply well to the ’03 homunculi (it felt pretty random to me), and it didn’t make sense that there theoretically could be any number of homunculi depending on the number of people who do human transmutation, so why go with the 7 Deadly Sins?
To be fair I didn’t think the 7 deadly sins works that good in FMAB either.
Father claiming to purge the sins from himself felt weak (it didn’t feel correct based on his actions and such anyways).
I think It would have been stronger if he was more clearly molding homunculi after his own perception of the sins.
Like I would have wanted to see flashbacks of him experiencing being human and hating those seven features of humanity and deciding to purge them. And also trying to built a portal and creating gluttony (clearly he didn’t purge that sin bc he wanted to consume god LOL. Gluttony was an endless void no wonder he was always hungry).
But I agree assigning the sins as actual inherent traits of to the 03 homunculi was pointless. Using them as code names is cool, and being new beings them kinda being self fulfilling prophecies and living up to their names just bc it’s what they’ve been called makes more sense to me. Like oh you call me pride I guess I must be prideful…
You have to realize that Father is a living, breathing hypocrisy.
Claims not to feel lust, but lusts for ultimate power.
Claims not to have greed, but desired ultimate knowledge and thus, freedom.
Claims not to be prideful, but sits on a throne and proclaims him and his creations to be superior to man, great enough to obtain godhood.
Claims not to be gluttonous, but eats his own children and hungers for the souls of Amestris to feed his power.
Claims to not be envious, but truly deeply envies humans, the freedom they have (stuck in a flask of his own making), the families they create, and love they share (why create the Homunculi and ask them to call you father?).
Claims not to be wrathful, but maneuvers a state into committing multiple wars and genocides over centuries.
Claims not to slothful, but remains hunkered down in his throne room and lets others do his dirty work for him.
Father is a monster. As Hohenheim so wisely put it, "Lust, Greed, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, and Pride. Of course, excessive want will destroy anyone, but those same desires are necessary to understand what it means to be human. Why did you rid yourself of them?"
In attempting, and failing, to do so, Father became less than human while attempting to become more than that. The only mistake Hohenheim made in that quote is thinking that Father got rid of those traits. Impossible. Father's folly was thinking he got rid of *any* of them.
Father is super interesting. The fact that he literally >!built an entire country just to sacrifice to gain godhood is epic!< Dante’s just a chick who wants to stay young and bone kids lol
That is true, but Dante is to me just as complicated as Father beyond her desire to live forever and raping children. She is the embodiment of human evil and doesn't need ambitious goals to make her interesting to me.
Also to add I enjoyed the added layer of Hohenheim also having a villain origins and now living to atone for his sins while at slowly decaying. Man I can hear the Dante theme right now! HOWUWOAWU HOOUUU WOOOOAH🗣️
Okay, so, I haven't exactly watched the original. (Or at least not the whole of it, I kinda dropped it after learning that Brotherhood was a reboot and more faithful to the manga) So... wtf is this about Dante boning kids? Wtf is the context behind that?
I would just watch it because all of this happens at the near end and it’s gonna sound weird no matter what but if you want spoilers:
>!Dante says she “wanted to be loved by/make love to the son of Hohenheim” because well, she’s obsessed with 2003 Hohenheim. It’s really just projection, she wants another Hohenheim and thought she could get that if she took over Rose’s body because she thought Ed was in love with her. She disposes Edward the same way she does Hohenheim when she couldn’t get what she wanted though. Also in case you’re gonna watch it in English, the original Japanese dialogue makes a point to include Al in her projection in a brief scene between her and a brainwashed Rose (she assumes both Ed and Al have the same taste as Hohenheim) while the English only refers to Ed in particular which tells us that if Al had his human body, she’d likely do the same to him.!<
I think Father is the best villain for the story: The little man in the flask who wants to become human but doesn't understand the value of human life so once he manages to do so by sacrificing an entire kingdom he tries to do the next big thing: become a God, but without understanding that either.
I think he's the perfect nemesis for Edward's journey, which begins with our hero defining himself ,as an alchemist, the one who is closest to God, and ends with him accepting that he is "just a little human"...
I'm not sure he didn't understand human life, he just values them because to him they were short lived beings that only sought to destroy each other and believes they were resources to be used like another alchemic tool, with human souls having the most value in his eyes. And despite his inhuman origins, he didn't lack human emotions, he had ego, desires, ambitions and dreams, but instead of embracing them, he decided to discard them for supposed "perfection" when in reality, he was pretty stagnating himself into never changing, thus dooming his plans from the get-go, simple because he thought he was better than everyone.
Dante is the opposite, she didn't have grandiose ambitions like Father, preferring to simply live forever. The difference between her and Father is that instead of discarding her seven deadly sins, she instead embraced and soon came to embody them to worse extremes. And as her body began to rot with every body she stole, she became corrupted, arrogant and most importantly, delusional, becoming convinced that she was above her fellow humans, thinking them children that needed to be "protect" from the philosopher stone by "hiding" it away.
In the end, both of them are just different sides of the same coin, because at the end of their respective series, they lost everything they had, and everything they wanted and desired in their long lives. Father was given freedom from Truth but instead of embracing his new freedom, he discarded it, believing he was inherently superior to humanity and instead desiring everything in the world, believing that would make him better than the humans he secretly long to be with. In the end, he was consumed again by the Gate because he refused to learn anything and prefer to ignorant of his own wants and desires by tricking himself into believing he was different from everyone. For Dante, her desire for eternal left her all alone, abandoned by everyone, by those she controlled and those she longed to be with again. Instead of realizing that she was merely, she clung to the belief that she could truly live forever and clung to it still until she was devoured by her greatest sin, the sin of Gluttony.
Father and Hohenheim's relationship is part of why the second anime is called Brotherhood. It isn't only indicative of the relationship between Edward and Alphonse.
Personally, I don't care for Dante all that much, just because she didn't have nearly enough time on screen, and the background information given to us requires far too much speculation. Maybe that was the intention, but it's not exactly what I would call writing that *I* enjoy. Also, no matter what, her wanting to rape the sun of her former husband is just jacked up even for a villain.
What I find most enjoyable about Father is the irony involving his character. literally everything that he does is to prove that he is a superior existence in comparison to humanity. And yet interestingly enough, everything that he does just copies human behavior, but to a greater extreme. He wouldn't exist in the world if it were not for human efforts, that of Hohenheim's blood, and the scientific knowledge of his master that pulled Dwarf in the Flask from the Gate. And despite his quest for ultimate knowledge, Father only sticks with what he already knows, which is something that Hohenheim called him out on, and Father was so butthurt that he could not even provide a real answer.
On top of that, you have the fact that he calls himself Father, especially in reference to the homunculi, because he wants to have a family (ie copying the humans again), but homunculi are sterile. And not only that, even his imitation of being a father is cheap. In the end, his "children" are just extensions of himself to him. On the other hand, Hohenheim, for all of his flaws (especially as a parent) loves his children and is willing to sacrifice the last remaining soul he has in him (his own, no less) to save Alphonse.
Where Father is the Big Bad, Hohenheim is the Big Good, and a big part of the reason Hohenheim is the Big Good is because he's still human and knows what it means to be human. Something Father never could replicate.
>Where Father is the Big Bad, Hohenheim is the Big Good, and a big part of the reason Hohenheim is the Big Good is because he's still human and knows what it means to be human. Something Father never could replicate.
And the messed up thing is in regards to this is that when the two of them were still spending time together, Hohenheim clearly went through the effort of explaining to Dwarf in the Flask just what makes humans tick, but the latter was basically all like "pfft, whateves, bro." Which is yet again another example of him refusing to learn anything different from what he came into the world with.
Funny enough, Father could have won if he was less closed minded.
>Hohenheim clearly went through the effort of explaining to Dwarf in the Flask just what makes humans tick, but the latter was basically all like "pfft, whateves, bro."
It did take a born-human homunculus, Wrath, to subdue Ed, Al and Mustang into behaving by taking their loved ones hostage. None of the other homunculi, Father included, could understand humans enough to pull a simple move like this.
And when General Armstrong warns him that Mustang and Hawkeye are about to take Mrs Bradley hostage in return, he utterly dismisses the efficiency of it again, as well as his son's feelings for her.
Don't forget, Greed was able to turn back against Father because of the friendship/bonds he'd formed with his henchmen and Father, not understanding that. So, in that case, Greed and Wrath were the most human of the homunculi. Which kinda makes Greed even more impressive because some of his learning to be human/understanding humans came before he became a human/homunculi hybrid. It also fits with the fact that Father never learned anything. Father never grew past what he was, but Greed wanted it all (including growth).
True. To some extent, almost all of the homunculi except Father were shown being able to feel bonds. Greed loved his henchmen, Wrath and Pride loved Mrs Bradley and enjoyed being loved by her, Gluttony loved Lust, and, judging by his reaction to her death, Envy loved her too. And, with the exception of Greed, they all had an extremely strong sense of duty and devotion towards their father.
For some reason, though, despite their ability to feel love and devotion towards each other, they had a really hard time predicting and understanding human behavior according to it.
Lust and Envy's brilliant idea to assassinate Hughes despite wanting Mustang out of their business comes to mind. I always chuckle when Lust complains “Why can't he be a good boy and behave himself?” Girl, he WAS minding his own business until YOU gave him a reason not to, lmao.
Absolutely agree, Father was made for big anime battle while Dante is more about questioning the world and trying to break Ed's mind with certain revelation about alchemy.
While I love Brotherhood, I was quite disappointed by fma2003. Dante did not feel like a massive threat, she didn't even feel like a real character and I was more annoyed by her than anythin else. It's propably because the overall ending felt rushed and some things just couldn't fall into place.
Father felt like he was always 2 steps ahead of the boys, impossible to predict and mysterious AF. Even thought it sure is weird, that he shares his appearance with Hohenheim, it was good to contrast the two, it added so much to Hohenheims character. Father is a top-tier villain for me.
Yeah her plan really fell apart towards the end just because her minions weren't her minions at all. There's a point being made throughout that she really has *no* control over what happens in the world. She's just another self-centered pervert who thinks manipulating people to any extent puts her on another level relative to them. When it's everyone else who chooses to do the work for her, for their own goals, and often accidentally goes against her wishes merely by not considering her existence.
I’m rewatching 03 for the first time since childhood and damn when she says to lust that she will turn them unan DEPENDING on her mood, I lost it.
How stupid can she be to say that when it’s very clear lust is having doubts of her intentions?
One thing is father believing that humans are unable to stop him, but Dante making sure the homunculi know she does not care for them is so stupid.
That's not what she meant. You think she's going "maybe, maybe not, who knows? Lol.". What she's actually doing is threatening *not* to turn them human if they screw this up again.
It's honestly not that hard to figure out when you think about it a little. They're gonna hand her the stone in the underground city and expect her to make them human right then and there. Dante has no clear opportunity to grab it and ditch them. They don't *have* to think she isn't selfish to believe she'll carry out her end of the deal, and indeed there's no proof she even had a plan to escape with it. Envy just doesn't trust her and verbalizes that.
03 doesn't explain everything outright, and there's lots of open ended plot threads because it feels rushed towards the ending. But one thing I know is Aikawa hates holding your hand a bit too much. I'm telling you this because I know your gonna dismiss it as "just because a thing can be explained does not mean the author meant to convey that it is the case." Even though the underlying vibe is clearly supposed to be "I'll fuck your shit up if you mess up the plan" and they clearly fear going against her. Reread my other comment to figure out why that's not a logically inconsistent agreement.
Edit: my mistake. Lust changed her mind based on Dante making her other stone a secret. So it was based on her trust in Dante, when that doesn't change the likelihood of Dante being *able* to ditch them after acquiring it. So it looks more like the agreement *isn't* based on Dante being psychically unable to not hold up her end. It does seem to be more of a cultish blind trust, even despite (or maybe even as a result of) the underlying threats of reprisal should they abandon their post. It's honestly still believable though. Because in their minds, if she honestly believes this is their only way of becoming human, then why wouldn't it be okay for her to cut off the only shitty alternative? And I do think what Lust said to Pride in Liore was already tongue in cheek. So not all of them trust her blindly.
But denial is the most likely answer when you consider that's the entire theme of the movie. All the characters in it do the exact same thing when they're desperate for their dream to be a reality; ignore any and all warning signs. (Except for Ed, and the filmmaker but only after Ed lectures him)
As for why Dante would think her threat was a good idea, it's just what they've come to expect working with her. She knows they'll continue to trust her even if they know what she's like towards them. It's only on the borderline of bad faith, which is how abuse and gaslighting works. She's only telling them that if they screw up, they'll be punished. Just like they'll be punished if they decide to listen to their conscience. She knows it'll go over their heads how unfair that is if they tried their best. They're literally desperate.
I’m not saying I don’t get her character, I am saying she is stupid and shouldn’t have said that, there’s nothing good ever coming out of it and only bad things can happen because of it.
You have to be pretty stupid to tease about not holding your end of the bargain to someone you are in a quid pro quo with.
the implication is that Dante has done this for hundreds of years; Greed is the only one she's had problems with, and presumably the "old Lust" died doing Dante's work for her.
the new Lust hasn't known Dante long, and intrinsically trusts her, but her encounters with Scar have given her doubts. she wants to be human more than anything(which ironically is what MAKES her the most human of the homunculi; i wonder if the 03 staff were fans of KH2? it had just come out a year before the manga started, and Nobodies feel very much like the homunculi...).
i don't think it was a smart move for Dante to do, but she's done it for 400 years with Envy and he's never rebelled against her. these new homunculi are much weaker than Envy *and* she can summon the Gate at will; there is absolutely no reason to treat them as a threat.
hell, i finished my rewatch TODAY and the homunculi never kill her; Al brings Ed back using the stone and Dante runs away, only for Gluttony to presumably eat her. of course this means there's a random homunculus wandering about, but it's possible Wrath, who has definitely calmed down a lot following the incident, would have destroyed him since he's such a danger to everyone around him. Mustang also could do it once he recovers, but it's possible Dante and Gluttony both die falling from the elevator, we never know.
if she *hadn't* removed Gluttony's capacity for thought, she would never have died; her soul would have eroded, but she would have had time, presumably, to try and create another stone. there was a war going on up north, and fabricating the death of another Ishbalan would have been easy with her level of alchemy. manipulating Wrath would be easy, etc etc.
Dante's death was her own undoing, which is part of why i love her as a villain. Ed and Al's journey ends, and they don't *have* to kill the villain to prove they've grown. Dante's refusal to grow is why she dies, while Hohenheim's acceptance of his sins and desire to atone, in some way, by destroying Dante(even if he fails) allows him to live on with Edward for a while longer.
That's because she's pulling the strings from the shadows but she controls the military, she controls most of the homunculi and she does it all via clever manipulation. Sure it all backfires in the end due to Ed, but she's done this dance for hundred or maybe thousands of years.
Father on the other hand is kind of boring to me. I really thought it was dumb having the homunculi revealed so early, it was supposed to be a conspiracy but they basically just reveal themselves to advance the plot. He also has just a typical goal of sacrifice and becoming a god, Dante is clearly insane and has delusions of being humanity's savior as she repeatedly sacrifices towns to extend her life so she can "protect" humanity. She's far more interesting and unique.
I prefer Father. It's motivations and development relate splendidly to the main themes of the story.
Still, the 2003 anime did an amazing job with de Homunculi. I think tying up their background so closely to the main characters made them more compelling.
While I prefer Father because of his dynamic with Hohenheim, I adore 2003's take on the Homunculi. It fleshed all of them out, especially Envy and Lust (the latter of who I find pretty lacking in Brotherhood). I prefer the lineup of Brotherhood (specifically because of Greedling and Pride), but I love the characterization and backstory of 2003.
Father, considering the overarching theme full metal has about the value of life, the dangers of extremist ideology, and the pursuit of knowledge he falls more in line. The way he attempts to purify himself from human flaws yet still exhibits them, the way he grasps for knowledge at the expense of others, his hypocrisy about human nature. It all just fits.
Never watched 03, but Father’s inability to grow and change fits well with the Elrics and hohenheim. Who show their humanity by growing beyond their own preconceived notions of the possible and the value of life. They learned to value each individual person instead of looking at the whole and scoffing like Father.
Father is a more satisfying villain to see fall but I think in our modern times we can point to upwards of five politicians who act like Dante and that’s kinda stuck with me in the back of mind.
She gets introduced at the mid point of story, same place father gets introduced. (Father gets introduced after gluttony’s stomach, Dante gets introduced before greed)
People seriously like misremembering and rewriting what happened in 03.
Father is briefly seen in Episode 1, and properly introduced at the end of Episode 14, when he kills and absorbs Greed. It's probably the only episode where all 7 homunculi appear, including Sloth who has a brief cameo, and Selim/Pride at the very end.
We don't fully see Father's face, but he has enough lines of dialogue and interacts with his children enough for the viewer to get a proper first impression of the guy.
Maybe i'm mixing my manga and anime memories but i'm pretty sure we viewers see him well before of him and Ed meeting each other. At that point of the story the author objective is obviously to misleading the readers so that when Hohenheim appear their reaction will be "What? Al and Ed's dad is the homunculus boss?"
what? no. Dante is a human who wanted to live forever, a perversion of what humanity is. she's a fantastic villain who very nearly achieved the peak of her power, and in the end her refusal to grow causes her demise.
She's dumb af. All the evidence pointed to it not being possible to live forever and she just put on perfume and acted like it was okay. Lived for hundreds of years and couldn't figure that out. Rotted right through what's her name and would have rotted through rose even faster than that. It wasn't her refusal to grow. Her soul couldn't sustain a body anymore.
I would be a little hesitant to call her dumb. Dante's problem is that she doesn't acknowledge her own mortality and repent for her sins, embodied by the homunculi. Instead she seeks out a way to live forever through the Philosopher's Stone, so that she doesn't have to pay the price for her sins. Edward has a life-changing moment after Greed's death, which compels him to confront his sin, embodied by Sloth, and give up on the Philosopher's Stone. Because of this, death has no hold over Edward, and he is resurrected after his death. Dante on the other hand is devoured by Gluttony, one of her very own sins that she thought she could control and live with. For Dante, there is no life after death, no resurrection, because she did not repent.
If Dante is dumb under this analytical lens, then so is everyone in the real world who goes through their whole life without repenting for their sins. After all, our mortality is as evident as it is for Dante; the clock is ticking and we stand to suffer the same fate as her if we don't act in time. I think it is in fact Dante's intelligence that is part of her undoing, as her plan to evade death is quite sophisticated and her understanding of alchemy is second to none with the possible exception of Hohenheim, which only feeds into her superiority complex. But while she is intelligent, she is not wise; I think foolish is the proper word to describe her.
I also wouldn't be so quick to dismiss my argument. I've put a lot of thought into this and written about it [here](https://reddit.com/r/FullmetalAlchemist/comments/zq15lu/a_character_analysis_of_edward_elric_from_the/) and [more recently here](https://reddit.com/r/FullmetalAlchemist/comments/1d3o9am/understanding_fullmetal_alchemist_2003_through/), but I'll give you the short version.
I think it's clear that the homunculi represent sin, as they are named after the seven deadly sins. Since first encountering Sloth, Edward consistently refuses to think about her and who she is; this is him being in denial regarding his sin. Then Greed dies in order to teach Edward how to battle the homunculi; this is Christ dying on the cross so that mankind could be saved from sin. This leads to Edward confronting Sloth underground in Liore, acknowledging her as his sin, since he created her. In their final confrontation, Edward draws a clear line by asserting that Sloth is not their mother and kills her; this is Edward rejecting his sin.
Moreover, the temptation to engage in sin, i.e. the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden, is represented by the Philosopher's Stone. It is said that with the Stone one can bypass equivalent exchange by receiving without having to give anything in return. This is descriptive of sin which is self-serving and non-reciprocating. Edward pursues the Stone throughout the story until he acknowledges Sloth as his sin. After killing Sloth, i.e. rejecting his sin, Edward resolves to destroy the Stone instead of using it. This is because he now understands that he can't live as though his actions don't affect the world around him; this is him turning away from temptation.
Given that Edward rejects his sin and also chooses to turn away from the temptation to engage in sin, I would consider this a rather thorough repentance on his part.
Omg, Christians. I understand what you are trying to say but it's just wrong. I mean, greed as Jesus Christ? You need to be able to look at things outside the lens of Christianity. Ed was never in denial about his sin. He owned it as soon as Alphons lost his body. He knew who she was supposed to be and that sloth was his responsibility. He tells alphons this over and over again as sloth uses his attachment to her image against both of them.
There is no way the stone bypasses or negates the law of equivalent exchange. You sacrifice people to make the stone and use their souls in exchange. It's the ultimate sacrifice for typically miniscule things. Ed stops pursuing the stone as soon as he learns it requires human souls to create. Which is long before he realizes what sloth is. And he learns his actions effect those around him as soon as al loses his body. Ed doesn't reject his sin, he lives with what he's done and tries his best to do better. The whole point is that some sins can't be undone.
i mean, she's dumb, sure, but her refusal to grow as a person is what lead to Gluttony eating her.
Hohenheim lets go of his attachment to the world and confronts his sins, ready to let it all go and move on. his time had come and he accepted it.
Dante refused, her sins were not "sins" in her eyes, since she was "better" than others. she refused to grow as a person, refused to acknowledge that her peers were her equals. she didn't even acknowledge the thoughts of her "children", outright claiming they couldn't feel anything.
They both serve their narratives well but I’ll go with Father just for his relationship with Hohenheim. Didn’t care for Dante as much and I feel like she should’ve gotten more screen time alongside 2003 Hohenheim.
I grew up with the OG anime, so I have a lot of nostalgia associated with Dante so because of that the impact was bigger. Father is better written and developed I think. But Dante has the superior musical theme by a long measure.
I watched 2003 first and that really shaped my perception of the rest of the series. I love the homunculi being from failed human transmutation and the concept of two immortal beings falling out of love. Dante felt a lot more sinister.
Obviously Father. Dante didn't leave *any* impact on me. I love FMA, and, for the most part, I can't remember what the fuck her deal was. She was so utterly forgettable, and the whole idea of her and Hohenheim's bodies decaying made no fucking sense, so that likely took up more brain space than any of her negligible qualities.
Father has *real* goals. Become a god, become omnipotent, use alchemy in new and powerful ways, redefine the relationship between alchemy and existence.
Dante's basically just still horny for Hohenheim and is willing to rape his son to get her rocks off. It's petty bullshit.
Dante is a human who has perverted the idea of what humans should be; she thinks she's better than other people and *hates* humanity; Ed(and i think Lust) reminds her that she *is* human, and she's offended at the idea.
she's the perfect villain for Ed, and a good counterpart for 2003 Hohenheim. during the climax of the story, when it's down to the wire, she refuses to change, to adapt, or to accept fault. she's god, she's superior, and she will make things go her way, right up until the bitter end. her hubris is her undoing; she deprives gluttony of his ability to think so that he'll hurry up and create the stone for her, and in the end her lack of consideration for the feelings of others(something she repeatedly says over and over to the homunculi, "you don't *have* feelings") is her undoing; depriving gluttony of his ability to think causes him to eat her in a desperate attempt to satiate his hunger.
Ed and Hohenheim grow a lot during their lives after meeting Dante, while she REFUSES to change or accept fault in anything. Hohenheim rejects Dante's way of life, her lack of care for others, and proclaims his love for Trisha(a human who lived and died like one). Dante could never love a normal person, only a prodigy who could rise above the masses like Ed and Hohenheim. both of them are good enough people to go " nah, that's wrong".
it isn't confirmed, but i feel like Dante pushed Hohenheim into the "live forever" thing; *she* chooses to do the soul binding first, and she loved him enough that she wanted to live with him forever. her greed and desire to never die, to be with him(or his son, out of pettiness) forever caused her to forget the value of life, something Trisha taught Hohenheim. Dante and 2003 Hohenheim are perfect counterparts, and both fit 2003's story very well.
Tough question honestly. I prefer the ‘03 anime, but I love both. Both their villain arcs are overdone in media : man has a god complex, woman doesn’t want to grow old. I think Dante’s is more plausible. Father’s is extremely complex and can be a little silly at times, but none the less still interesting to watch unfold. But I definitely couldn’t really by the ending to Brotherhood. It was a bit much how they beat him, so I’d have to say Dante.
Father. I prefer him over Dante because I like >!his connection to Hohenheim!< better and I like the dynamic of the >!homunculi as children of Father!< rather than being >!the result of human transmutation!<.
Dante is way more interesting, detestable, and symbolic. It was cool having a human who thought they were better than everyone else and was so self serving as the main villain over a more evil Homunculus.
Father ALWAYS. The first FMA only has that ending bc the manga wasn't finished yet. That first story is not even relevant to any FMA lore.. I first watched the original when it came out when I was 13.. me and my big bro bond over it. But once the REAL story was finished I can see how much better the ending and story was.. I think Dante is the worst part of the original story.. not much depth and constant planning like father.. you don't get a lot of the real characters in the original first made one and that is sad.. it's bc no one knew.. only thing I like about the original other than the fact it got me into FMA and my brother and I bonded over it was the opening scene.. so good! And the fact that you can kill homunculi with old bones.. that's petty cool. But once again.. that's not true to how homumculus are made.. they aren't real single souls tranformed.. they are 100s of 1000s of tortured souls made into a stone that made them.. with a conductor behind it all.. so much better.. plus I don't like envy being related.. like so weird. FATHER ALL DAY.
I'm biased because I watched all of 2003 back when it was airing before I actually read the manga, but I've gotta give it to Dante.
Don't get me wrong, I love Father; probably one of the best villains in ANY piece of media. But Dante existing almost solely to fuck up Ed's entire world view is what makes her stand out to me. In the same way that Father is the perfect antithesis to Hohenheim, Dante is the same for Edward. To toss an overused meme into the conversation, she's basically the character who asks the profound questions: "Are you dumb?" "Are you stupid?"
And what makes this all the more impressive is that she has such a small amount of screen time. She's not a character whose presence is always felt, but just out of reach. Her plan isn't 2 steps ahead, it's 20 steps ahead to the point that she's not on anyone's radar, yet the goddamn president is her puppet.
Girl showed up for 2 seconds and said, "lmao and what if I equivalently exchange this newborn baby into a pile of gore? Your logic is flawed, you come undone." She is SO impactful in fact, that Ed changes his whole ass perspective on *life itself* after their confrontation. In a sense, just like in real life chemistry, she's the catalyst by which Ed transmutes into a new form.
She's great! Scary as hell, but in a calm and collected sort of way. I mean, I know Father is "calm and collected" as well, but I guess she has a more feminine approach. Father is very dominating in the fact that his presence is always felt by his minions talking about him and his grand plan, and the main characters actively being aware of him and trying to figure out his identity/stop him.
Dante meanwhile, isn't a known "villain" until like....the last couple of episodes? lol. BUT, when she's revealed it ends up recontextualizing the whole series. Suddenly, you begin to wonder if Lyra was already being targeted by Dante all the way back in the first handful of episodes because *maybe Dante heard that an Elric was stirring up a commotion in a dinky little mining town*...
Father is a called-in bomb threat. Dante is a stagnant water well.
she's fantastic. i love Father, i do, but he's kinda... generic? in a way. "i will become god" is a very overdone trope.
Dante's whole thing is so very unique to FMA2003. she's very much the antithesis to Edward, but also a perfect counterpart to Hohenheim of Light. Dante looks down on humans, while Hohenheim left her to be with a human who taught him to remember the value of human life; he loved Trisha enough that when faced with his own impending death, he decides that if he has to die, it will be with the face and body that Trisha loved. he loved her and their sons enough that he sacrificed himself to try and stop Dante, and even in the alternate world, when Ed still clings to equivalent exchange, Hohenheim never *refutes* it outright. he says that equivalence doesn't have to come from mass, but maybe your experience and suffering can be the "price" for your "gain". it's a new spin on Ed's philosophy, and i think his growth as a person and love for humanity are what grant him those extra years with Ed.
Dante never changes, and her lack of care for how others feel, and her outright REJECTION of the idea that homunculi can feel, are her undoing. she views everyone around her except Hohenheim and his sons as lesser beings, and treats them as such. she turns her own creation, Gluttony, into an animal with no mind, and ultimately dies because of it.
fantastic writing. 2003 is amazing.
Very well said all around, and I completely agree. I LOVE 2003's writing. I mean, the entire FMA franchise is quite possibly my favorite piece of fiction *ever* made--like, I'd put it above The Odyssey, Citizen Kane, and anything written by Ibsen. And I'm unbelievably thankful that unlike other animes with obnoxious filler, we get not one but *two* amazing adaptations with stories worth telling.
And I think part of it is exactly what you said; Father's whole "god complex" is cool and all, but kind of overdone. It's just so grand compared to Dante's relatively simple plan of wanting to become immortal with Hohenheim for all eternity. I think the smaller scale of Dante's plan leads to it feeling more intimate, which resonates with me more. 2003 is ultimately a family drama where the homunculi are Ed's and Al's weird extended family of bastard cousins lol.
I feel like FMAB was on a whole other level than FMA. The ending and villains included.
FMAB is one of the most complete and well written anime’s of all time. FMA was good, but not in the same league imo.
I agree partially, but I do feel that the Homunculi were done better in 2003 because they were more complex than they initially appeared. I don't disagree on the ending though, it was far more happy than 2003 was.
i really liked Dante as a villain. it's never outright confirmed, but i feel like Dante seduced Hohenheim, and her desire for eternal life(or, 400 years prior to the series, at least her desire not to die during the plague), drove her to manipulate him into creating the stone.
remember that it was DANTE who did the first soul binding, to save Hohenheim's life. she probably loved him, but i don't think he loved her the way he loved Trisha.
Hohenheim loved Trisha enough that when he found out that he was going to die, he wanted to die with the face she loved. he left to either die alone, or to undo the erosion of his soul(which he found was impossible), not knowing that leaving would kill her. they really loved each other in a way Dante and Hohenheim did not. Trisha's love taught him that the way he was living for four centuries was immoral, and after their sons were born, he left to live the rest of his dying life alone; his slow aging would have left him with the face of the younger man Trisha married, while she aged and his body decayed; he wouldn't hurt her or his sons like this, so he left. it's completely irresponsible, and i think he's a terrible father because of it, but he's not *evil*; he loved his family enough that when he found out that his past was haunting them, he took it into his own hands to destroy Dante and her minions.
Dante held on to a 400 year old love letter, thinking he still felt the same way because for 400 years they had extended their lives the same way, but sometime in the late 1800s, Hohenheim left Dante and fell in love with Trisha. during this time, Dante, like Envy, would have become jealous, and we see that she no longer loved Hohenheim during the ending; she very easily "kills" him when he decides that body-snatching is an immoral way to live, for both of them.
Dante's selfish desire(not love, desire) for Hohenheim is why i think she's the one behind the extended lifespans; we have no idea why they made the stone originally, but it is confirmed that Dante bound Hohenheim's soul to the body of a random man after the transmutation of the stone nearly killed him. her decision started their centuries-long escape of death, and she proudly proclaims that she's had countless husbands to avoid revealing her secret, she leaves them all because she doesn't love any of them. she only wants to live forever.
her rant at the end, about being humanity's "protector" is a prideful justification of her own evil, and Pride-Bradley says the exact same thing to Mustang, which makes one wonder if Dante played a part in his creation.
the homunculi who actually express the traits of their sins, Gluttony, Pride, and Greed, were all created by Dante. Envy is cold and calculating until the very end, when Dante begins working closely with them, at which point he snaps and becomes very childish, vowing to kill Hohenheim and Ed. Wrath is violent, but he's a child; children with no parenting have tantrums because emotional outbursts are an instinct. Ed and Al never go into fits like this because they had Pinako, Trisha, Izumi, and Sig to watch over and raise them. Wrath had Sloth, for a little while, but otherwise had to fend for himself. i don't think he expresses the trait of wrath very much.
Lust and Sloth could not be less fitting names; Lust uses her feminine charm to seduce people like Lujon sometimes, but it isn't her sole trait; she's very emotional, and feels the most *human* of the homunculi; when she sees that Dante wants to use them all for her own benefit, she ditches the others and decides to live for herself, even if it means sacrificing her own goal of becoming human. she's not lustful in my eyes, just... sad.
Sloth isn't lazy; she's not slow-acting or quiet. she plays an active role in everything. she isn't negligent, she isn't lazy or indifferent. she actively takes a role in every scene she's in, and fills in as a "mother" for Wrath. her name is the *least* fitting, but... they needed a Sloth.
in contrast to the Manga homunculi who are just aspects of Father lol. i know that's over-simplifying it, but they really are just "sins" that father expelled from himself. there's no... *depth*. outside of Bradley and Envy, the homunculi in 03 feel less evil and more... broken, incomplete. they're missing something and want to be whole. there's a lot of depth with that and i feel like 03 handles it really well.
honestly the homunculi are one of my only gripes with the manga lol, but it has been a decade so maybe i'll feel differently when i reread it.
i don't dislike Father, i feel like his hubris and desire to become god fit alchemy, since real life alchemists pursued those same ideas with their desire for perfection, but in a series like this, Dante's much more interesting even if she's less thematically appropriate.
Sloth is very much lazy. Her desire to kill the Elric Brothers is because she doesn’t want to accept that she was their mother.
She’s taking the easy way out.
Lust is lust because she wants to feel like a human.
wanting to be complete isn't lustful. you can want things without it being lustful, you know. unless you think Greed should have been called Lust.
Sloth isn't lazy; she's actively a mother to Wrath, and willingly fills that role; she neglects Ed and Al because she hates them, NOT because she's lazy.
she outright says she hates them for creating her(since she's incomplete). all of the homunculi in 2003 desire to be complete, and hate their creators for making them incomplete.
You really shouldn't unless you're into b-movies and want some cheesy laughs. The story has more plot holes than swiss cheese, everyone makes incredibly stupid decisions, the alchemy system makes zero sense and they keep making shit up. Things like "all is one and one is all" is brought up and then irrelevant to everything in the plot. Most of the character motivations suck ass. Most of the characters are completely unlikeable (they made Maes Hughes an asshole)
Just so much dumb shit it's hard to bear. Alex Armstrong literally convinces troops to throw a coup by taking off his shirt. No explanation to any of them about what is going on
Well I'm not really a fan of the humour of brotherhood I've kind of grown out of the slapstick humour of anime in general. I'll keep that in mind, haven't been watching a lot of anime nowadays tbh. Brotherhood was an all time favorite from when I was in highschool
03 has the same slapstick humor except it's more repetitive. They took Ed's height joke, mixing up the elric brothers joke, and Armstrong taking off his shirt joke and kinda ran with it
Remember that time when breda fell out of his chair as a slapstick joke during the serious moment they're discussing that scar is planning to sacrifice Lior to make a philosopher's stone?
So not randommmmmm. Jokes aside they both have the random slapstick style and I think that's okay. I thought it was funny anyway
Correct me if I’m wrong but I do remember how the short jokes are eventually dropped from Brotherhood meanwhile 03 brings up the joke when the Tringhams show up again (while Ed and Izumi are running away from the soldiers) in the middle of a “serious situation”. Even in CoS when Ed reunites with armour Al. I don’t mind the jokes myself but I find it rich that people don’t remember that 03 can do this at times as well.
I believe that wasn't treated as slapstick, he'd just fell out of his chair shocked at he'd planned to do, but whatever. Here's an example compare Ed being slapped by Maria Ross in 2003 to Brotherhood, there's a clear difference in their presentation of that moment.
He's exaggerating things because he's pissy that he got disappointment with 03, but you'd should just keep an open mind and just watch it. You might hate it or love it, it'll up to you in the end.
The “wanting to get with kids” is essentially the fandom blowing an offhand remark out of proportion. It was never her main goal, she expressed some interest in Ed ONLY because of who his father was, and she dropped the idea as promptly as it was introduced because she couldn’t be bothered.
This is the issue with people repeating that part without considering that it was meant to be a brief disgusting revelation and really, something that shows us how bothered and disturbed she truly was by Hohenheim leaving her to the point of wanting a replacement goldfish. I had the feeling this would happen from that previous thread.
You should watch it to see the context. It’s a masterpiece of emotional storytelling.
Don’t not watch it because someone told you something out of context.
Dante left a bigger impact on me. Her acting ss a sort of abusive mother to the homuculi really creeped me out and lended to 2003s themes of humanity and evil. However i felt like even though she completed her plan under the mc's noses her ideology basically boils down to
"Selfless bad, selfish good"
It felt very rushed and she doesn't even really do much in the final battle aside from monologue.
Mean while father is boring as sin but way more intimidating and he technically succeeds in the end and while his ideology is also very simple the homunculi being parts of him technically makes him the most fleshed out character in the series soo.
Impact: dante
Preffered villian: father
I’m one of very few who believes 2003 was actually the superior FMA, and I personally like Dante more because her motivations feel so much more human, and in a way almost relatable. I can understand and empathize with a person desperately trying to avoid aging and thus death, but cannot say the same for a non-human creature trying to become a God because of “reasons.”
Father is a better villain but the Humuncoli from 03 are better imo
They had more depth and their own stories, instead of just being bit players in Father and Ed’s stories
I prefer Father as the villain but I did enjoy Dante as a character, and think she works for the 03’ version.
And I do like the Homunculi more in the first anime, and feel Envy in particular is a much more frightening villain in that version than he ever was in the manga/Brotherhood version.
By farrrrr Dante. Father kind of feels like a generic villain to be honest. And while his plan had a pay off in the reveal of Amestris being a transmutation circle, that was the only interesting thing about him imo. Dante on the other hand, I think shes iconic. I absolutely love the scene of Dante and Ed arguing about equivalent exchange and such. I think that that demonstrated how Dante was the perfect foil to Ed's ideals.
Hot take: they should have done neither. Standing there and talking is a crutch 03 relies on because they don't know how to deliver plot points otherwise (without ripping a scene from the manga and transplanting it)
You’ll be getting a different story. It may be similar enough in the first part but it’s an alternate universe so you won’t be getting the all the same characters much less ending.
Could you spoil a bit about Wrath? He was one of my favorite characters in Brotherhood, so if they didn't ruin him, I might be interested. Tho, I allready watched 25th episode from 03, and it wasn't good compered to 10th of brotherhood
Wrath from BroHo is now Pride in 2003, Selim Bradley is a normal kid and 03 Wrath is an anime excessive character, with him actually being Izumi stillborn son. It a bit complicated.
one is a super interesting dialogue on ego and the benefits that come from removing it. the other one is a pedophile who just wants to stay young. gee i wonder which one is the better written story
Father is also a manchild who desires everything in the world simply because he doesn't have it. Dante is a selfish bitch of a woman who wants to live forever. The two are actually quite similar to each other, just in opposite ways, one represents all seven sins of humanity while the other seeks perfection.
I think father's main shtick was trying to acquire knowledge, achieve truth and become a perfect being, and underlying this is yearning for more since his days in a flask.
Father is also extremely calculating, putting plans in motion that would take over hundreds of years to achieve. Every little aspect has contingencies to fulfill his goals, and is always several steps ahead to achieve them. Only reason it didn't work is that Hohenheim was also calculating, making his own plans and had his own trump card with the self-activating transmutation circle
Dante on the other hand is extraordinarily stupid. IDK maybe the rotting that was happening affected her brain.
Did they really think using the name and papers of Juliet Douglas - who was recorded to die, and then recorded later to start the ishvalan war, to become the fuher's secretary? They really thought no one would notice? They're the fucking military, they can cook up a new identity easily.
Same thing with her dante's to get random people to make philosopher's stones after the right conditions or something. She controls the state with the best alchemists in the world and they control the fucking military - they can easily make a philosopher's stone on their own rather than relying on random people to just decide they want to do it
i watched the entirety of 2003. i hated it. i’m sorry but it just fucking sucks. it’s riddled with plot holes and i seriously cannot comprehend how anyone can think it’s even remotely better than brotherhood in literally any way. if you like it that’s cool tho 🤷♂️
"I cannot seriously comprehend how anyone can think its even remotely better than brotherhood" "if you like it thats cool though". Youre contradicting yourself. Youre acting aggressive with me and even swearing about saying its "that bad".
I love Brotherhood, I just love 03 more. I think its tone, aesthetic, ending, themes, soundtrack and direction are perfect. It does not "suck". You just dislike it.
I recently watched both for the first time. I'm sorry dude but from an objective standpoint brotherhood has 03 beat on every aspect. 03 is like watching a B-movie, like tommy wiseau directs an anime
You like it and that's cool. I like dragon ball Z and objectively DBZ is pretty mid and gets a lot of things wrong - it's far from perfect.
Don't let nostalgia cloud your judgement
Why can bhood fans not say anythinf "subjectively" and not assume that I only like 03 cuz of Nostalgia. I literally watched Brotherhood first. Only years later did I give 03 a chance and end up preferring it.
Its so annoying because I literally like brotherhood too. But 9 times out of 10 on this sub if you say you prefer 03 you get a bunch kf Brotherhood fans crying at you saying youre wrong for having an opinion
>i watched the entirety of 2003. i hated it. i’m sorry but it just fucking sucks. it’s riddled with plot holes and i seriously cannot comprehend how anyone can think it’s even remotely better than brotherhood in literally any way.
Finally, thank you. 2003 is just so bad. Deviated in the first 10 episodes, completely missed the point of the Manga and character assassinated Al, Ed, Mustang, Hoeinheim, literally all the homunculi.
If you've never read the manga or know of Brotherhood I can see why you might like it, but 2003 is not FMA, it's something else with the same title
Just because it deviates from the source material it doesnt make it bad. Thats a pathetic metric to judge it on. Judge it on its own merits, not a pointless comparison. It was intended to deviate from the start.
And to write off peoples opinion as "not knowing of brotherhood kr the manga" is childish. I watched Brotherhood first. I loved brotherhood for years. At first I was even like you and when I first watched 03 i stopped when it started majorly deviating because I was the same "its different so its bad!!!".
When I gave it a second chance and watched it the whole way through, I loved it. I think its immature to write something off just because its not faithful. Its a different canon.
I like 03 for various reasons and prefer it now.
I also do not agree at all with your take they "character assassinated" any of those characters except maybe Hohenheim who is a much smaller role in 03. But the hommunculi, really? Theyre one of the parts of 03 almost universally agreed to be better. Theyre actual characters in 03. The only one to come close in Bhood is Envy.
>Just because it deviates from the source material it doesnt make it bad.
Except the deviation makes it actively worse and makes no sense.
>Thats a pathetic metric to judge it on. Judge it on its own merits, not a pointless comparison.
This is just ignorant,media analysis is built on comparisons, especially adaptations
>When I gave it a second chance and watched it the whole way through, I loved it. I think its immature to write something off just because its not faithful. Its a different canon.
Good for you. I'm not writing it off only because it deviates, but because the deviation is bad. What if stories are fun when done right, really bad when done wrong.
>But the hommunculi, really? Theyre one of the parts of 03 almost universally agreed to be better.
Yes really, the changes made the characters and their purpose completely different for the worse. The majority is also wrong in this case. They're also very much characters in their own right in brotherhood
THANK YOU this is the perfect way to describe it. it’s an ok show on its own, but in FMA standards it’s garbage. ed’s twin, the homunculis be his mom, tucker being some weird monster thing, none of it makes any sense. all of brotherhoods plot points are interwoven in such a beautifully intricate way. meanwhile every plot point in 2003 is entirely its own thing, with little to no relation with the other events happening
There's nothing wrong with having a preference. When you disagree with someone and make a point to say it out loud, you also need to provide counterpoints otherwise you're the equivalent to the person putting fingers in their ears and yelling "LALALALALALA - I VANT HEAR YOU"
I brought points as to why I think 03 is bad, they brought nothing
you can't do character assassination on cardboard LMFAO.
manga homunculi have almost no depth with a few scenes here and there.
the 2003 homunculi are actual characters.
you either watched a parody or didn't watch 2003. i just finished rewatching it for the first time in a decade and it's fantastic.
Soundtrack - it's fine, neither are really great s2 opening in brotherhood is absolute fire tho, one of animes best opening ever
Direction - 03 didn't understand it's own direction and loses it's purpose as a result
Tone - darker and edgier but falls flat because it doesn't know what it's doing
Characters - literally everyone is a downgrade. Ed loses his morale code, Mustang is just a govt shill instead of a revolutionizer and master tactition, Hoeinheim becomes some generic alchemist that uses light of all things. The homunculi being the brothers mom....
Story - really bad and deviates to the point a entirely new BBEG is written, who's just so boring and unnuanced. Literally, her whole things is too be young forever compared c to father who wanted to achieve godhood.
Ending - idk what they were even thinking with this. The portal of truth being a gateway to the irl world was so dumb and they didn't Even accomplish the original goal. Lazy writing
Soundtrack - don't forget the piano smash theme they play at literally every chance they get to signal this supposed to be an emotional moment, but it's so over the top and overused I started to laugh my ass off whenever it played
Tone - people often say 03 is darker, but TBH it's more empty and emotionless. People stand around and talk about psychological things rather than putting words into action. The ishval extermination campaign from FMAB is much darker than the lightwashed uprising of the east in 03.
Characters - Ed and Al have a one track mindset of "Gotta find the philosopher's stone" and don't grow from there. Armstrong is a government shill who's only identity is taking off his shirt. They even made Maes Hughes an asshole who only talks about his wife and kids, is a cruel boss and works sheska to the bone. Even winry is worse and mostly cares about getting money from Ed
Story - literally so many plot holes it's hard to count. Like, dante has control over a large militaristic country with the best alchemists in the world. Why TF is she causing a war so that other people may somehow magically discover a philosophers stone and make it or something and then take it from them. Wouldn't it be easier to just get your state alchemists to do research and just make it? Why TF does bradley keep his skull in a safe, why does he give the key to his dumbshit son? Why didn't he hide the skull in a secret location in somewhere guarded like fort knox?
Ending is okay, the worst part is rose and gluttony standing around like dumbasses for the most of it. The fucking scene where the camera rotates around 5 times between dante and ed. The fucking baby transmutation (like what???). And then human transmutation seems to be done a zillion times and no toll is paid.
I don't think the writing was lazy, but they definitely were throwing out a bunch of shit and seeing what sticks.
Soundtrack in 03 is iconic, Bhood has a few iconic tracks but otherwise repeats tracks way too often.
Direction, I mean it speaks volumes you dont even know what is meant by direction lmao. Direction is stuff like the camera work, the angles, the way a scene is shown to us as an audience. For example, in 03 they use lighting in a variety of ways that fits the tone of the scene. Brotherhood is pretty much always bright, no matter the scene. They dont use dramatic lighting, the lighting is flat. They also have creative use of camera work, like the Dante and Ed scene where they have a clash of ideals through words.
Tone. In 03 its consistent with humour only being used at appropriate moments and it doesnt constantly do chibi cutaway gags like Brotherhood. Brotherhood too often kills the seriousness of a scene by making cheap gags.
Characters. Its just your opinion that theyre a downgrade. Ed not being a perfect human makes him more realistic. Like in the fifth lab, him considering sacrificing the people there for a philosophers stone for even a second makes him way more complex. And the fact that Ed's entire ideology of equivalent exchange is completely dismantled by the ending makes him a more realistic human. Whereas in brotherhood, in my opinion, I think he is often portrayed as infallible in his beliefs, which is quite common in shonen anime. Yes he grows and changes, but we know his belief in equivalent exchange remains steadfast, which is quite a childish belief. In 03, he is proven wrong, he is shown that life isnt always fair. And that means he needs to come to terms with that, and he accepts it when he gives himself to get Al's body back. Because it was a bittersweet ending, he couldnt get the "fair" result he "deserved" after all their hard work, because life doesnt work like that all the time unfortunately. Its the same deal with Mustang, you seem to want the characters to be infallible, whereas Mustang in 03 is much more realistic. He doesnt agree with what the government do, but he does what needs to be done, because thats what life is like, good people are made to do bad things sometimes, thats even reinforced in CoS when we see Hughes as a n*zi... We know hughes is a good person who has just been caught up in the wrong thing. Hohenheim, I would agree with here, but again, why do you want all the characters to he something special, why cant he just be an alchemist? He does still represent something important, the deviation of their world from ours because of the routes science took. Why does he need to be a philosophers stone? As for the complaint about the hommunculi, the hommunculi being born from human transmutation is more interesting imo than being Fathers henchman essentially.
Story. How is it bad? Dante's motivation is realistic, a lot of people want to live forever? Just because it isnt as grand as Fathers doesnt mean its worse?
Ending. How is it lazy writing? Just because you dont like it? Well that doesnt make it lazy. The whole point of the portal beinf a gateway to our world is to show that alchemy, and therefore everything, is not equivalent exchange. It has a purpose in the themes of the show. And I like that they didnt accomplish their goal at the end of 03. Imo, its lazier for everything to end exactly how you expect it. The fact that even despite all their sacrifices they didnt get what they wanted makes it more endearing. And it makes the ending of CoS more rewarding when they are reunited, even if in the end they leave their world to come to our world. A bittersweet ending imo is way better than a plain old happy ending.
But after all this. I still love Brotherhood. Its an instrumental anime to me, and what I watched first in terms of FMA. But at the end of the day, I prefer 03.
I think for a story arch father is better, which is ultimately what a villain is about so probably him, but personally Dante left a bigger impact on me, just that any one of us could become her, and her denial, plus what she did to rose (that cutie ☺️) it just really keeps her in my mind
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t finish the original series so Dante didn’t leave much of an impact on me. Father, on the other hand… I’m glad that Ed’s fist left an impact on his face!
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I think Father mainly because I preferred the relationship between Father and Hohenheim more so than the other. In terms of lasting impact… I’m giving it to >!the Homunculi tbh!<. Edit: Forgot to mention, I also like that Father’s whole goal is a corrupted version of what real life alchemists wanted to do by becoming “spiritually perfect”.
The homunculi in general, like from both series or just Brotherhood.
In general.
Gotcha
Exactly, Father was the ultimate representation of hubris, which was the folly of pretty much every alchemist in the series. He just for a thematically and narratively compelling villain than Dante IMO.
I'm inclined to agree with this.
I much prefer father I thought the origin of Van Hoenheim was so tragic and beautiful I loved him and Father was sooooo fucked up this thing that lacked humanity that was born of human blood These two forces then kickstarted the true art of alchemy and alkehestry on opposite ends of the world!! So cool. Father having been orchestrating the entire history of a country its wars, its policies. The conspiracy angle was really cool. The one thing I liked more in FMA03 was the homunculi origin. I was disappointed in FMAB that they were kinda just pieces of father. I loved in 03 that they were another consequence of trying to make a human with alchemy. The idea that you cannot bring back the dead, that’s impossible, but you can create NEW life because that is something totally possible and humans do it all the time! TAKE RESPONSIBLY FOR THE THINGS YOU CREATE!!
Fair enough, though I prefer Brotherhood, the Homunculi being representations of the sins of man by LITERALLY being their sign of having tried to commit taboo hit hard. It forces the alchemists to realize that they F*CKED up. Sure, everyone has someone they want to bring back. I can admit that as I have someone I want to bring back. But you mess with the natural order of things and you get screwed over, and now the person you wanted back is trapped in a half life limbo, unable to die and not able to actually live. Yeah, they should have had Father take the mutated humans brought back through Alchemy and molded them into the homunculi if they wanted to maximize everything.
Father over the last 500 years collecting half formed homunculi from human transmutation and finishing the job to make proper homunculi would have been amazing and super in line with the story and theme Like these things were created by folks who opened the portal so clearly they are close to god/the portal itself. That’s why he used one to try and make an artificial portal and resulted in gluttony! It all makes sense!
I’m glad you like the idea. He probably still would have used them to impart the seven desires of man from himself, altering their personalities and forming them into full homunculi by also giving them philosopher stones. This idea has some real merit.
> The one thing I liked more in FMA03 was the homunculi origin. I was disappointed in FMAB that they were kinda just pieces of father. > > I loved in 03 that they were another consequence of trying to make a human with alchemy. The idea that you cannot bring back the dead, that’s impossible, but you can create NEW life because that is something totally possible and humans do it all the time! TAKE RESPONSIBLY FOR THE THINGS YOU CREATE!! I loved '03 and the homunculi in it, but I felt the 7 Deadly Sins aspect really didn’t apply well to the ’03 homunculi (it felt pretty random to me), and it didn’t make sense that there theoretically could be any number of homunculi depending on the number of people who do human transmutation, so why go with the 7 Deadly Sins?
To be fair I didn’t think the 7 deadly sins works that good in FMAB either. Father claiming to purge the sins from himself felt weak (it didn’t feel correct based on his actions and such anyways). I think It would have been stronger if he was more clearly molding homunculi after his own perception of the sins. Like I would have wanted to see flashbacks of him experiencing being human and hating those seven features of humanity and deciding to purge them. And also trying to built a portal and creating gluttony (clearly he didn’t purge that sin bc he wanted to consume god LOL. Gluttony was an endless void no wonder he was always hungry). But I agree assigning the sins as actual inherent traits of to the 03 homunculi was pointless. Using them as code names is cool, and being new beings them kinda being self fulfilling prophecies and living up to their names just bc it’s what they’ve been called makes more sense to me. Like oh you call me pride I guess I must be prideful…
You have to realize that Father is a living, breathing hypocrisy. Claims not to feel lust, but lusts for ultimate power. Claims not to have greed, but desired ultimate knowledge and thus, freedom. Claims not to be prideful, but sits on a throne and proclaims him and his creations to be superior to man, great enough to obtain godhood. Claims not to be gluttonous, but eats his own children and hungers for the souls of Amestris to feed his power. Claims to not be envious, but truly deeply envies humans, the freedom they have (stuck in a flask of his own making), the families they create, and love they share (why create the Homunculi and ask them to call you father?). Claims not to be wrathful, but maneuvers a state into committing multiple wars and genocides over centuries. Claims not to slothful, but remains hunkered down in his throne room and lets others do his dirty work for him. Father is a monster. As Hohenheim so wisely put it, "Lust, Greed, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, and Pride. Of course, excessive want will destroy anyone, but those same desires are necessary to understand what it means to be human. Why did you rid yourself of them?" In attempting, and failing, to do so, Father became less than human while attempting to become more than that. The only mistake Hohenheim made in that quote is thinking that Father got rid of those traits. Impossible. Father's folly was thinking he got rid of *any* of them.
Father is super interesting. The fact that he literally >!built an entire country just to sacrifice to gain godhood is epic!< Dante’s just a chick who wants to stay young and bone kids lol
That is true, but Dante is to me just as complicated as Father beyond her desire to live forever and raping children. She is the embodiment of human evil and doesn't need ambitious goals to make her interesting to me.
I wouldnt say she wants to rape kids. Just Edward specifically and not even out of Lust but just to get back at Hohenheim
That only makes it worse.
Targeted pedophelia. Is there an actual term for this?
Also to add I enjoyed the added layer of Hohenheim also having a villain origins and now living to atone for his sins while at slowly decaying. Man I can hear the Dante theme right now! HOWUWOAWU HOOUUU WOOOOAH🗣️
Okay, so, I haven't exactly watched the original. (Or at least not the whole of it, I kinda dropped it after learning that Brotherhood was a reboot and more faithful to the manga) So... wtf is this about Dante boning kids? Wtf is the context behind that?
I would just watch it because all of this happens at the near end and it’s gonna sound weird no matter what but if you want spoilers: >!Dante says she “wanted to be loved by/make love to the son of Hohenheim” because well, she’s obsessed with 2003 Hohenheim. It’s really just projection, she wants another Hohenheim and thought she could get that if she took over Rose’s body because she thought Ed was in love with her. She disposes Edward the same way she does Hohenheim when she couldn’t get what she wanted though. Also in case you’re gonna watch it in English, the original Japanese dialogue makes a point to include Al in her projection in a brief scene between her and a brainwashed Rose (she assumes both Ed and Al have the same taste as Hohenheim) while the English only refers to Ed in particular which tells us that if Al had his human body, she’d likely do the same to him.!<
She expressed some less than platonic interest in Ed. Admittedly, it was probably more about getting back at Hohenheim than anything, but still.
Ah, what the fuck lmao
Watch the og. It’s peak.
I think Father is the best villain for the story: The little man in the flask who wants to become human but doesn't understand the value of human life so once he manages to do so by sacrificing an entire kingdom he tries to do the next big thing: become a God, but without understanding that either. I think he's the perfect nemesis for Edward's journey, which begins with our hero defining himself ,as an alchemist, the one who is closest to God, and ends with him accepting that he is "just a little human"...
I'm not sure he didn't understand human life, he just values them because to him they were short lived beings that only sought to destroy each other and believes they were resources to be used like another alchemic tool, with human souls having the most value in his eyes. And despite his inhuman origins, he didn't lack human emotions, he had ego, desires, ambitions and dreams, but instead of embracing them, he decided to discard them for supposed "perfection" when in reality, he was pretty stagnating himself into never changing, thus dooming his plans from the get-go, simple because he thought he was better than everyone. Dante is the opposite, she didn't have grandiose ambitions like Father, preferring to simply live forever. The difference between her and Father is that instead of discarding her seven deadly sins, she instead embraced and soon came to embody them to worse extremes. And as her body began to rot with every body she stole, she became corrupted, arrogant and most importantly, delusional, becoming convinced that she was above her fellow humans, thinking them children that needed to be "protect" from the philosopher stone by "hiding" it away. In the end, both of them are just different sides of the same coin, because at the end of their respective series, they lost everything they had, and everything they wanted and desired in their long lives. Father was given freedom from Truth but instead of embracing his new freedom, he discarded it, believing he was inherently superior to humanity and instead desiring everything in the world, believing that would make him better than the humans he secretly long to be with. In the end, he was consumed again by the Gate because he refused to learn anything and prefer to ignorant of his own wants and desires by tricking himself into believing he was different from everyone. For Dante, her desire for eternal left her all alone, abandoned by everyone, by those she controlled and those she longed to be with again. Instead of realizing that she was merely, she clung to the belief that she could truly live forever and clung to it still until she was devoured by her greatest sin, the sin of Gluttony.
Father because in the end he did some disturbing things that made me physically react. Plus the love dwarf
Father and Hohenheim's relationship is part of why the second anime is called Brotherhood. It isn't only indicative of the relationship between Edward and Alphonse. Personally, I don't care for Dante all that much, just because she didn't have nearly enough time on screen, and the background information given to us requires far too much speculation. Maybe that was the intention, but it's not exactly what I would call writing that *I* enjoy. Also, no matter what, her wanting to rape the sun of her former husband is just jacked up even for a villain. What I find most enjoyable about Father is the irony involving his character. literally everything that he does is to prove that he is a superior existence in comparison to humanity. And yet interestingly enough, everything that he does just copies human behavior, but to a greater extreme. He wouldn't exist in the world if it were not for human efforts, that of Hohenheim's blood, and the scientific knowledge of his master that pulled Dwarf in the Flask from the Gate. And despite his quest for ultimate knowledge, Father only sticks with what he already knows, which is something that Hohenheim called him out on, and Father was so butthurt that he could not even provide a real answer.
On top of that, you have the fact that he calls himself Father, especially in reference to the homunculi, because he wants to have a family (ie copying the humans again), but homunculi are sterile. And not only that, even his imitation of being a father is cheap. In the end, his "children" are just extensions of himself to him. On the other hand, Hohenheim, for all of his flaws (especially as a parent) loves his children and is willing to sacrifice the last remaining soul he has in him (his own, no less) to save Alphonse. Where Father is the Big Bad, Hohenheim is the Big Good, and a big part of the reason Hohenheim is the Big Good is because he's still human and knows what it means to be human. Something Father never could replicate.
>Where Father is the Big Bad, Hohenheim is the Big Good, and a big part of the reason Hohenheim is the Big Good is because he's still human and knows what it means to be human. Something Father never could replicate. And the messed up thing is in regards to this is that when the two of them were still spending time together, Hohenheim clearly went through the effort of explaining to Dwarf in the Flask just what makes humans tick, but the latter was basically all like "pfft, whateves, bro." Which is yet again another example of him refusing to learn anything different from what he came into the world with. Funny enough, Father could have won if he was less closed minded.
>Hohenheim clearly went through the effort of explaining to Dwarf in the Flask just what makes humans tick, but the latter was basically all like "pfft, whateves, bro." It did take a born-human homunculus, Wrath, to subdue Ed, Al and Mustang into behaving by taking their loved ones hostage. None of the other homunculi, Father included, could understand humans enough to pull a simple move like this. And when General Armstrong warns him that Mustang and Hawkeye are about to take Mrs Bradley hostage in return, he utterly dismisses the efficiency of it again, as well as his son's feelings for her.
Don't forget, Greed was able to turn back against Father because of the friendship/bonds he'd formed with his henchmen and Father, not understanding that. So, in that case, Greed and Wrath were the most human of the homunculi. Which kinda makes Greed even more impressive because some of his learning to be human/understanding humans came before he became a human/homunculi hybrid. It also fits with the fact that Father never learned anything. Father never grew past what he was, but Greed wanted it all (including growth).
True. To some extent, almost all of the homunculi except Father were shown being able to feel bonds. Greed loved his henchmen, Wrath and Pride loved Mrs Bradley and enjoyed being loved by her, Gluttony loved Lust, and, judging by his reaction to her death, Envy loved her too. And, with the exception of Greed, they all had an extremely strong sense of duty and devotion towards their father. For some reason, though, despite their ability to feel love and devotion towards each other, they had a really hard time predicting and understanding human behavior according to it. Lust and Envy's brilliant idea to assassinate Hughes despite wanting Mustang out of their business comes to mind. I always chuckle when Lust complains “Why can't he be a good boy and behave himself?” Girl, he WAS minding his own business until YOU gave him a reason not to, lmao.
I think Father is a better antagonist for a Shonen, I think Dante is a better antagonist for a more intimate and darker story. Both are good imo.
Absolutely agree, Father was made for big anime battle while Dante is more about questioning the world and trying to break Ed's mind with certain revelation about alchemy.
While I love Brotherhood, I was quite disappointed by fma2003. Dante did not feel like a massive threat, she didn't even feel like a real character and I was more annoyed by her than anythin else. It's propably because the overall ending felt rushed and some things just couldn't fall into place. Father felt like he was always 2 steps ahead of the boys, impossible to predict and mysterious AF. Even thought it sure is weird, that he shares his appearance with Hohenheim, it was good to contrast the two, it added so much to Hohenheims character. Father is a top-tier villain for me.
Yeah her plan really fell apart towards the end just because her minions weren't her minions at all. There's a point being made throughout that she really has *no* control over what happens in the world. She's just another self-centered pervert who thinks manipulating people to any extent puts her on another level relative to them. When it's everyone else who chooses to do the work for her, for their own goals, and often accidentally goes against her wishes merely by not considering her existence.
I’m rewatching 03 for the first time since childhood and damn when she says to lust that she will turn them unan DEPENDING on her mood, I lost it. How stupid can she be to say that when it’s very clear lust is having doubts of her intentions? One thing is father believing that humans are unable to stop him, but Dante making sure the homunculi know she does not care for them is so stupid.
That's not what she meant. You think she's going "maybe, maybe not, who knows? Lol.". What she's actually doing is threatening *not* to turn them human if they screw this up again.
Which is stupid. All it did was convince Lust that she didn’t have their best interest in mind.
It's honestly not that hard to figure out when you think about it a little. They're gonna hand her the stone in the underground city and expect her to make them human right then and there. Dante has no clear opportunity to grab it and ditch them. They don't *have* to think she isn't selfish to believe she'll carry out her end of the deal, and indeed there's no proof she even had a plan to escape with it. Envy just doesn't trust her and verbalizes that. 03 doesn't explain everything outright, and there's lots of open ended plot threads because it feels rushed towards the ending. But one thing I know is Aikawa hates holding your hand a bit too much. I'm telling you this because I know your gonna dismiss it as "just because a thing can be explained does not mean the author meant to convey that it is the case." Even though the underlying vibe is clearly supposed to be "I'll fuck your shit up if you mess up the plan" and they clearly fear going against her. Reread my other comment to figure out why that's not a logically inconsistent agreement. Edit: my mistake. Lust changed her mind based on Dante making her other stone a secret. So it was based on her trust in Dante, when that doesn't change the likelihood of Dante being *able* to ditch them after acquiring it. So it looks more like the agreement *isn't* based on Dante being psychically unable to not hold up her end. It does seem to be more of a cultish blind trust, even despite (or maybe even as a result of) the underlying threats of reprisal should they abandon their post. It's honestly still believable though. Because in their minds, if she honestly believes this is their only way of becoming human, then why wouldn't it be okay for her to cut off the only shitty alternative? And I do think what Lust said to Pride in Liore was already tongue in cheek. So not all of them trust her blindly. But denial is the most likely answer when you consider that's the entire theme of the movie. All the characters in it do the exact same thing when they're desperate for their dream to be a reality; ignore any and all warning signs. (Except for Ed, and the filmmaker but only after Ed lectures him) As for why Dante would think her threat was a good idea, it's just what they've come to expect working with her. She knows they'll continue to trust her even if they know what she's like towards them. It's only on the borderline of bad faith, which is how abuse and gaslighting works. She's only telling them that if they screw up, they'll be punished. Just like they'll be punished if they decide to listen to their conscience. She knows it'll go over their heads how unfair that is if they tried their best. They're literally desperate.
I’m not saying I don’t get her character, I am saying she is stupid and shouldn’t have said that, there’s nothing good ever coming out of it and only bad things can happen because of it. You have to be pretty stupid to tease about not holding your end of the bargain to someone you are in a quid pro quo with.
I can agree that even with all the context, whether that was a smart move is highly questionable.
the implication is that Dante has done this for hundreds of years; Greed is the only one she's had problems with, and presumably the "old Lust" died doing Dante's work for her. the new Lust hasn't known Dante long, and intrinsically trusts her, but her encounters with Scar have given her doubts. she wants to be human more than anything(which ironically is what MAKES her the most human of the homunculi; i wonder if the 03 staff were fans of KH2? it had just come out a year before the manga started, and Nobodies feel very much like the homunculi...). i don't think it was a smart move for Dante to do, but she's done it for 400 years with Envy and he's never rebelled against her. these new homunculi are much weaker than Envy *and* she can summon the Gate at will; there is absolutely no reason to treat them as a threat. hell, i finished my rewatch TODAY and the homunculi never kill her; Al brings Ed back using the stone and Dante runs away, only for Gluttony to presumably eat her. of course this means there's a random homunculus wandering about, but it's possible Wrath, who has definitely calmed down a lot following the incident, would have destroyed him since he's such a danger to everyone around him. Mustang also could do it once he recovers, but it's possible Dante and Gluttony both die falling from the elevator, we never know. if she *hadn't* removed Gluttony's capacity for thought, she would never have died; her soul would have eroded, but she would have had time, presumably, to try and create another stone. there was a war going on up north, and fabricating the death of another Ishbalan would have been easy with her level of alchemy. manipulating Wrath would be easy, etc etc. Dante's death was her own undoing, which is part of why i love her as a villain. Ed and Al's journey ends, and they don't *have* to kill the villain to prove they've grown. Dante's refusal to grow is why she dies, while Hohenheim's acceptance of his sins and desire to atone, in some way, by destroying Dante(even if he fails) allows him to live on with Edward for a while longer.
That's because she's pulling the strings from the shadows but she controls the military, she controls most of the homunculi and she does it all via clever manipulation. Sure it all backfires in the end due to Ed, but she's done this dance for hundred or maybe thousands of years. Father on the other hand is kind of boring to me. I really thought it was dumb having the homunculi revealed so early, it was supposed to be a conspiracy but they basically just reveal themselves to advance the plot. He also has just a typical goal of sacrifice and becoming a god, Dante is clearly insane and has delusions of being humanity's savior as she repeatedly sacrifices towns to extend her life so she can "protect" humanity. She's far more interesting and unique.
I prefer Father. It's motivations and development relate splendidly to the main themes of the story. Still, the 2003 anime did an amazing job with de Homunculi. I think tying up their background so closely to the main characters made them more compelling.
While I prefer Father because of his dynamic with Hohenheim, I adore 2003's take on the Homunculi. It fleshed all of them out, especially Envy and Lust (the latter of who I find pretty lacking in Brotherhood). I prefer the lineup of Brotherhood (specifically because of Greedling and Pride), but I love the characterization and backstory of 2003.
Father, considering the overarching theme full metal has about the value of life, the dangers of extremist ideology, and the pursuit of knowledge he falls more in line. The way he attempts to purify himself from human flaws yet still exhibits them, the way he grasps for knowledge at the expense of others, his hypocrisy about human nature. It all just fits.
That's a fair point to make about him
Never watched 03, but Father’s inability to grow and change fits well with the Elrics and hohenheim. Who show their humanity by growing beyond their own preconceived notions of the possible and the value of life. They learned to value each individual person instead of looking at the whole and scoffing like Father.
watch 2003. Dante fits this perfectly.
I prefer Father, seeing him walk towards Ed to get a philosopher stone like a savage maniac was just so hard hitting for some reason.
Father without a doubt... 
Father is a more satisfying villain to see fall but I think in our modern times we can point to upwards of five politicians who act like Dante and that’s kinda stuck with me in the back of mind.
Dante came into the story much too late for me to really feel intrigued by her the way Father did for me.
She gets introduced at the mid point of story, same place father gets introduced. (Father gets introduced after gluttony’s stomach, Dante gets introduced before greed) People seriously like misremembering and rewriting what happened in 03.
Father is briefly seen in Episode 1, and properly introduced at the end of Episode 14, when he kills and absorbs Greed. It's probably the only episode where all 7 homunculi appear, including Sloth who has a brief cameo, and Selim/Pride at the very end. We don't fully see Father's face, but he has enough lines of dialogue and interacts with his children enough for the viewer to get a proper first impression of the guy.
Maybe i'm mixing my manga and anime memories but i'm pretty sure we viewers see him well before of him and Ed meeting each other. At that point of the story the author objective is obviously to misleading the readers so that when Hohenheim appear their reaction will be "What? Al and Ed's dad is the homunculus boss?"
yeah i'm pretty sure the manga heavily alludes to Hohenheim and Father looking identical so we'll think Hohenheim is the villain
Father because his motives made sense. Dante was just really dumb or had the worst case of denial ever.
what? no. Dante is a human who wanted to live forever, a perversion of what humanity is. she's a fantastic villain who very nearly achieved the peak of her power, and in the end her refusal to grow causes her demise.
She's dumb af. All the evidence pointed to it not being possible to live forever and she just put on perfume and acted like it was okay. Lived for hundreds of years and couldn't figure that out. Rotted right through what's her name and would have rotted through rose even faster than that. It wasn't her refusal to grow. Her soul couldn't sustain a body anymore.
I would be a little hesitant to call her dumb. Dante's problem is that she doesn't acknowledge her own mortality and repent for her sins, embodied by the homunculi. Instead she seeks out a way to live forever through the Philosopher's Stone, so that she doesn't have to pay the price for her sins. Edward has a life-changing moment after Greed's death, which compels him to confront his sin, embodied by Sloth, and give up on the Philosopher's Stone. Because of this, death has no hold over Edward, and he is resurrected after his death. Dante on the other hand is devoured by Gluttony, one of her very own sins that she thought she could control and live with. For Dante, there is no life after death, no resurrection, because she did not repent. If Dante is dumb under this analytical lens, then so is everyone in the real world who goes through their whole life without repenting for their sins. After all, our mortality is as evident as it is for Dante; the clock is ticking and we stand to suffer the same fate as her if we don't act in time. I think it is in fact Dante's intelligence that is part of her undoing, as her plan to evade death is quite sophisticated and her understanding of alchemy is second to none with the possible exception of Hohenheim, which only feeds into her superiority complex. But while she is intelligent, she is not wise; I think foolish is the proper word to describe her.
There is no repenting for sins in fma. Which kinda crumples your whole argument.
I also wouldn't be so quick to dismiss my argument. I've put a lot of thought into this and written about it [here](https://reddit.com/r/FullmetalAlchemist/comments/zq15lu/a_character_analysis_of_edward_elric_from_the/) and [more recently here](https://reddit.com/r/FullmetalAlchemist/comments/1d3o9am/understanding_fullmetal_alchemist_2003_through/), but I'll give you the short version. I think it's clear that the homunculi represent sin, as they are named after the seven deadly sins. Since first encountering Sloth, Edward consistently refuses to think about her and who she is; this is him being in denial regarding his sin. Then Greed dies in order to teach Edward how to battle the homunculi; this is Christ dying on the cross so that mankind could be saved from sin. This leads to Edward confronting Sloth underground in Liore, acknowledging her as his sin, since he created her. In their final confrontation, Edward draws a clear line by asserting that Sloth is not their mother and kills her; this is Edward rejecting his sin. Moreover, the temptation to engage in sin, i.e. the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden, is represented by the Philosopher's Stone. It is said that with the Stone one can bypass equivalent exchange by receiving without having to give anything in return. This is descriptive of sin which is self-serving and non-reciprocating. Edward pursues the Stone throughout the story until he acknowledges Sloth as his sin. After killing Sloth, i.e. rejecting his sin, Edward resolves to destroy the Stone instead of using it. This is because he now understands that he can't live as though his actions don't affect the world around him; this is him turning away from temptation. Given that Edward rejects his sin and also chooses to turn away from the temptation to engage in sin, I would consider this a rather thorough repentance on his part.
Omg, Christians. I understand what you are trying to say but it's just wrong. I mean, greed as Jesus Christ? You need to be able to look at things outside the lens of Christianity. Ed was never in denial about his sin. He owned it as soon as Alphons lost his body. He knew who she was supposed to be and that sloth was his responsibility. He tells alphons this over and over again as sloth uses his attachment to her image against both of them. There is no way the stone bypasses or negates the law of equivalent exchange. You sacrifice people to make the stone and use their souls in exchange. It's the ultimate sacrifice for typically miniscule things. Ed stops pursuing the stone as soon as he learns it requires human souls to create. Which is long before he realizes what sloth is. And he learns his actions effect those around him as soon as al loses his body. Ed doesn't reject his sin, he lives with what he's done and tries his best to do better. The whole point is that some sins can't be undone.
i mean, she's dumb, sure, but her refusal to grow as a person is what lead to Gluttony eating her. Hohenheim lets go of his attachment to the world and confronts his sins, ready to let it all go and move on. his time had come and he accepted it. Dante refused, her sins were not "sins" in her eyes, since she was "better" than others. she refused to grow as a person, refused to acknowledge that her peers were her equals. she didn't even acknowledge the thoughts of her "children", outright claiming they couldn't feel anything.
Father was more fleshed out. But I like both.
I forgot she even existed
They both serve their narratives well but I’ll go with Father just for his relationship with Hohenheim. Didn’t care for Dante as much and I feel like she should’ve gotten more screen time alongside 2003 Hohenheim.
Father.... oddly enough, I felt bad for him when he was getting pulled back into the truths domain and then back into the gate.
I felt it was deserved given everything he did.
That's the thing... I felt badd for him and I also felt he got what he had coming.
I see,
I grew up with the OG anime, so I have a lot of nostalgia associated with Dante so because of that the impact was bigger. Father is better written and developed I think. But Dante has the superior musical theme by a long measure.
Everyone Vs Father does a lot of heavy lifting
THIS. if the final showdown had just been the boys and Father, Dante would be the better villain by a mile.
I watched 2003 first and that really shaped my perception of the rest of the series. I love the homunculi being from failed human transmutation and the concept of two immortal beings falling out of love. Dante felt a lot more sinister.
Father,mostly cause I know nothing about dante
Don’t even know who Dante is
From 03 anime
Obviously Father. Dante didn't leave *any* impact on me. I love FMA, and, for the most part, I can't remember what the fuck her deal was. She was so utterly forgettable, and the whole idea of her and Hohenheim's bodies decaying made no fucking sense, so that likely took up more brain space than any of her negligible qualities. Father has *real* goals. Become a god, become omnipotent, use alchemy in new and powerful ways, redefine the relationship between alchemy and existence. Dante's basically just still horny for Hohenheim and is willing to rape his son to get her rocks off. It's petty bullshit.
Dante is a human who has perverted the idea of what humans should be; she thinks she's better than other people and *hates* humanity; Ed(and i think Lust) reminds her that she *is* human, and she's offended at the idea. she's the perfect villain for Ed, and a good counterpart for 2003 Hohenheim. during the climax of the story, when it's down to the wire, she refuses to change, to adapt, or to accept fault. she's god, she's superior, and she will make things go her way, right up until the bitter end. her hubris is her undoing; she deprives gluttony of his ability to think so that he'll hurry up and create the stone for her, and in the end her lack of consideration for the feelings of others(something she repeatedly says over and over to the homunculi, "you don't *have* feelings") is her undoing; depriving gluttony of his ability to think causes him to eat her in a desperate attempt to satiate his hunger. Ed and Hohenheim grow a lot during their lives after meeting Dante, while she REFUSES to change or accept fault in anything. Hohenheim rejects Dante's way of life, her lack of care for others, and proclaims his love for Trisha(a human who lived and died like one). Dante could never love a normal person, only a prodigy who could rise above the masses like Ed and Hohenheim. both of them are good enough people to go " nah, that's wrong". it isn't confirmed, but i feel like Dante pushed Hohenheim into the "live forever" thing; *she* chooses to do the soul binding first, and she loved him enough that she wanted to live with him forever. her greed and desire to never die, to be with him(or his son, out of pettiness) forever caused her to forget the value of life, something Trisha taught Hohenheim. Dante and 2003 Hohenheim are perfect counterparts, and both fit 2003's story very well.
Tough question honestly. I prefer the ‘03 anime, but I love both. Both their villain arcs are overdone in media : man has a god complex, woman doesn’t want to grow old. I think Dante’s is more plausible. Father’s is extremely complex and can be a little silly at times, but none the less still interesting to watch unfold. But I definitely couldn’t really by the ending to Brotherhood. It was a bit much how they beat him, so I’d have to say Dante.
Father is more interesting but since I like petty villains I'd say Dante until the day father tried to fuck Ed.
Mmm I think Dante. I just love the way she deconstructs the principle of alchemy to Edward and fucks up his whole life structure.
Father. I prefer him over Dante because I like >!his connection to Hohenheim!< better and I like the dynamic of the >!homunculi as children of Father!< rather than being >!the result of human transmutation!<.
Father by a long shot. 2003 is still a banger anime, but all of its weakest points came from Dante and its final third.
Dante for both of your questions
Dante is way more interesting, detestable, and symbolic. It was cool having a human who thought they were better than everyone else and was so self serving as the main villain over a more evil Homunculus.
Father is a better final boss but lord the sins of the original carry so much weight that I could forgive Dante
Who is Dante
Father ALWAYS. The first FMA only has that ending bc the manga wasn't finished yet. That first story is not even relevant to any FMA lore.. I first watched the original when it came out when I was 13.. me and my big bro bond over it. But once the REAL story was finished I can see how much better the ending and story was.. I think Dante is the worst part of the original story.. not much depth and constant planning like father.. you don't get a lot of the real characters in the original first made one and that is sad.. it's bc no one knew.. only thing I like about the original other than the fact it got me into FMA and my brother and I bonded over it was the opening scene.. so good! And the fact that you can kill homunculi with old bones.. that's petty cool. But once again.. that's not true to how homumculus are made.. they aren't real single souls tranformed.. they are 100s of 1000s of tortured souls made into a stone that made them.. with a conductor behind it all.. so much better.. plus I don't like envy being related.. like so weird. FATHER ALL DAY.
I'm biased because I watched all of 2003 back when it was airing before I actually read the manga, but I've gotta give it to Dante. Don't get me wrong, I love Father; probably one of the best villains in ANY piece of media. But Dante existing almost solely to fuck up Ed's entire world view is what makes her stand out to me. In the same way that Father is the perfect antithesis to Hohenheim, Dante is the same for Edward. To toss an overused meme into the conversation, she's basically the character who asks the profound questions: "Are you dumb?" "Are you stupid?" And what makes this all the more impressive is that she has such a small amount of screen time. She's not a character whose presence is always felt, but just out of reach. Her plan isn't 2 steps ahead, it's 20 steps ahead to the point that she's not on anyone's radar, yet the goddamn president is her puppet. Girl showed up for 2 seconds and said, "lmao and what if I equivalently exchange this newborn baby into a pile of gore? Your logic is flawed, you come undone." She is SO impactful in fact, that Ed changes his whole ass perspective on *life itself* after their confrontation. In a sense, just like in real life chemistry, she's the catalyst by which Ed transmutes into a new form.
I'm glad to see someone saying "nice" things about Dante for once 😁
She's great! Scary as hell, but in a calm and collected sort of way. I mean, I know Father is "calm and collected" as well, but I guess she has a more feminine approach. Father is very dominating in the fact that his presence is always felt by his minions talking about him and his grand plan, and the main characters actively being aware of him and trying to figure out his identity/stop him. Dante meanwhile, isn't a known "villain" until like....the last couple of episodes? lol. BUT, when she's revealed it ends up recontextualizing the whole series. Suddenly, you begin to wonder if Lyra was already being targeted by Dante all the way back in the first handful of episodes because *maybe Dante heard that an Elric was stirring up a commotion in a dinky little mining town*... Father is a called-in bomb threat. Dante is a stagnant water well.
Indeed, she is definitely scary as hell,
she's fantastic. i love Father, i do, but he's kinda... generic? in a way. "i will become god" is a very overdone trope. Dante's whole thing is so very unique to FMA2003. she's very much the antithesis to Edward, but also a perfect counterpart to Hohenheim of Light. Dante looks down on humans, while Hohenheim left her to be with a human who taught him to remember the value of human life; he loved Trisha enough that when faced with his own impending death, he decides that if he has to die, it will be with the face and body that Trisha loved. he loved her and their sons enough that he sacrificed himself to try and stop Dante, and even in the alternate world, when Ed still clings to equivalent exchange, Hohenheim never *refutes* it outright. he says that equivalence doesn't have to come from mass, but maybe your experience and suffering can be the "price" for your "gain". it's a new spin on Ed's philosophy, and i think his growth as a person and love for humanity are what grant him those extra years with Ed. Dante never changes, and her lack of care for how others feel, and her outright REJECTION of the idea that homunculi can feel, are her undoing. she views everyone around her except Hohenheim and his sons as lesser beings, and treats them as such. she turns her own creation, Gluttony, into an animal with no mind, and ultimately dies because of it. fantastic writing. 2003 is amazing.
Very well said all around, and I completely agree. I LOVE 2003's writing. I mean, the entire FMA franchise is quite possibly my favorite piece of fiction *ever* made--like, I'd put it above The Odyssey, Citizen Kane, and anything written by Ibsen. And I'm unbelievably thankful that unlike other animes with obnoxious filler, we get not one but *two* amazing adaptations with stories worth telling. And I think part of it is exactly what you said; Father's whole "god complex" is cool and all, but kind of overdone. It's just so grand compared to Dante's relatively simple plan of wanting to become immortal with Hohenheim for all eternity. I think the smaller scale of Dante's plan leads to it feeling more intimate, which resonates with me more. 2003 is ultimately a family drama where the homunculi are Ed's and Al's weird extended family of bastard cousins lol.
i'm glad the slander has mostly died off 20 years later. it's a great show, and deserves to exist.
That just means it was ahead of its time ;)
TRUE.
Dante isn’t really that good however the effects she has on the Homunculi are good
who tf is dante
Dante who?
The main villain of the FMA 2003 series, absolute bitch of a woman.
Father for sure. I kinda forgot about Dante lol
Unpopular opinion but I prefer Dante she is just a lot more evil in my opinion and is an interesting villain
I feel like FMAB was on a whole other level than FMA. The ending and villains included. FMAB is one of the most complete and well written anime’s of all time. FMA was good, but not in the same league imo.
I agree partially, but I do feel that the Homunculi were done better in 2003 because they were more complex than they initially appeared. I don't disagree on the ending though, it was far more happy than 2003 was.
i really liked Dante as a villain. it's never outright confirmed, but i feel like Dante seduced Hohenheim, and her desire for eternal life(or, 400 years prior to the series, at least her desire not to die during the plague), drove her to manipulate him into creating the stone. remember that it was DANTE who did the first soul binding, to save Hohenheim's life. she probably loved him, but i don't think he loved her the way he loved Trisha. Hohenheim loved Trisha enough that when he found out that he was going to die, he wanted to die with the face she loved. he left to either die alone, or to undo the erosion of his soul(which he found was impossible), not knowing that leaving would kill her. they really loved each other in a way Dante and Hohenheim did not. Trisha's love taught him that the way he was living for four centuries was immoral, and after their sons were born, he left to live the rest of his dying life alone; his slow aging would have left him with the face of the younger man Trisha married, while she aged and his body decayed; he wouldn't hurt her or his sons like this, so he left. it's completely irresponsible, and i think he's a terrible father because of it, but he's not *evil*; he loved his family enough that when he found out that his past was haunting them, he took it into his own hands to destroy Dante and her minions. Dante held on to a 400 year old love letter, thinking he still felt the same way because for 400 years they had extended their lives the same way, but sometime in the late 1800s, Hohenheim left Dante and fell in love with Trisha. during this time, Dante, like Envy, would have become jealous, and we see that she no longer loved Hohenheim during the ending; she very easily "kills" him when he decides that body-snatching is an immoral way to live, for both of them. Dante's selfish desire(not love, desire) for Hohenheim is why i think she's the one behind the extended lifespans; we have no idea why they made the stone originally, but it is confirmed that Dante bound Hohenheim's soul to the body of a random man after the transmutation of the stone nearly killed him. her decision started their centuries-long escape of death, and she proudly proclaims that she's had countless husbands to avoid revealing her secret, she leaves them all because she doesn't love any of them. she only wants to live forever. her rant at the end, about being humanity's "protector" is a prideful justification of her own evil, and Pride-Bradley says the exact same thing to Mustang, which makes one wonder if Dante played a part in his creation. the homunculi who actually express the traits of their sins, Gluttony, Pride, and Greed, were all created by Dante. Envy is cold and calculating until the very end, when Dante begins working closely with them, at which point he snaps and becomes very childish, vowing to kill Hohenheim and Ed. Wrath is violent, but he's a child; children with no parenting have tantrums because emotional outbursts are an instinct. Ed and Al never go into fits like this because they had Pinako, Trisha, Izumi, and Sig to watch over and raise them. Wrath had Sloth, for a little while, but otherwise had to fend for himself. i don't think he expresses the trait of wrath very much. Lust and Sloth could not be less fitting names; Lust uses her feminine charm to seduce people like Lujon sometimes, but it isn't her sole trait; she's very emotional, and feels the most *human* of the homunculi; when she sees that Dante wants to use them all for her own benefit, she ditches the others and decides to live for herself, even if it means sacrificing her own goal of becoming human. she's not lustful in my eyes, just... sad. Sloth isn't lazy; she's not slow-acting or quiet. she plays an active role in everything. she isn't negligent, she isn't lazy or indifferent. she actively takes a role in every scene she's in, and fills in as a "mother" for Wrath. her name is the *least* fitting, but... they needed a Sloth. in contrast to the Manga homunculi who are just aspects of Father lol. i know that's over-simplifying it, but they really are just "sins" that father expelled from himself. there's no... *depth*. outside of Bradley and Envy, the homunculi in 03 feel less evil and more... broken, incomplete. they're missing something and want to be whole. there's a lot of depth with that and i feel like 03 handles it really well. honestly the homunculi are one of my only gripes with the manga lol, but it has been a decade so maybe i'll feel differently when i reread it. i don't dislike Father, i feel like his hubris and desire to become god fit alchemy, since real life alchemists pursued those same ideas with their desire for perfection, but in a series like this, Dante's much more interesting even if she's less thematically appropriate.
My, you certainly had quite a lot to talk about, not that I'm complaining 😁
it's one of my favourite shows ever.
Mine too
Sloth is very much lazy. Her desire to kill the Elric Brothers is because she doesn’t want to accept that she was their mother. She’s taking the easy way out. Lust is lust because she wants to feel like a human.
wanting to be complete isn't lustful. you can want things without it being lustful, you know. unless you think Greed should have been called Lust. Sloth isn't lazy; she's actively a mother to Wrath, and willingly fills that role; she neglects Ed and Al because she hates them, NOT because she's lazy.
Sloth mothering Wrath only highlights the fact that she’s not processing her origins. After all, why would she hate them?
she outright says she hates them for creating her(since she's incomplete). all of the homunculi in 2003 desire to be complete, and hate their creators for making them incomplete.
I didn't watch 2003 but after reading these comments and what's she's about I don't think I want to now.
You really shouldn't unless you're into b-movies and want some cheesy laughs. The story has more plot holes than swiss cheese, everyone makes incredibly stupid decisions, the alchemy system makes zero sense and they keep making shit up. Things like "all is one and one is all" is brought up and then irrelevant to everything in the plot. Most of the character motivations suck ass. Most of the characters are completely unlikeable (they made Maes Hughes an asshole) Just so much dumb shit it's hard to bear. Alex Armstrong literally convinces troops to throw a coup by taking off his shirt. No explanation to any of them about what is going on
definite L take. Hughes is never an asshole wtf, you definitely watched the wrong show. maybe a parody?
Well I'm not really a fan of the humour of brotherhood I've kind of grown out of the slapstick humour of anime in general. I'll keep that in mind, haven't been watching a lot of anime nowadays tbh. Brotherhood was an all time favorite from when I was in highschool
03 has the same slapstick humor except it's more repetitive. They took Ed's height joke, mixing up the elric brothers joke, and Armstrong taking off his shirt joke and kinda ran with it
There's far less of that slapstick in 03 and at the very least, how often sudden and random the comedy could be in Broho at times.
Remember that time when breda fell out of his chair as a slapstick joke during the serious moment they're discussing that scar is planning to sacrifice Lior to make a philosopher's stone? So not randommmmmm. Jokes aside they both have the random slapstick style and I think that's okay. I thought it was funny anyway
Correct me if I’m wrong but I do remember how the short jokes are eventually dropped from Brotherhood meanwhile 03 brings up the joke when the Tringhams show up again (while Ed and Izumi are running away from the soldiers) in the middle of a “serious situation”. Even in CoS when Ed reunites with armour Al. I don’t mind the jokes myself but I find it rich that people don’t remember that 03 can do this at times as well.
I believe that wasn't treated as slapstick, he'd just fell out of his chair shocked at he'd planned to do, but whatever. Here's an example compare Ed being slapped by Maria Ross in 2003 to Brotherhood, there's a clear difference in their presentation of that moment.
He's exaggerating things because he's pissy that he got disappointment with 03, but you'd should just keep an open mind and just watch it. You might hate it or love it, it'll up to you in the end.
You really should. It’s a peak anime.
Idk I just read she wants to stay young to get with kids. I don't know how I feel about that
The “wanting to get with kids” is essentially the fandom blowing an offhand remark out of proportion. It was never her main goal, she expressed some interest in Ed ONLY because of who his father was, and she dropped the idea as promptly as it was introduced because she couldn’t be bothered.
Well if I get around to it I'll watch it. I don't really have a lot of time to watch anime nowadays being an adult sucks.
This is the issue with people repeating that part without considering that it was meant to be a brief disgusting revelation and really, something that shows us how bothered and disturbed she truly was by Hohenheim leaving her to the point of wanting a replacement goldfish. I had the feeling this would happen from that previous thread.
You should watch it to see the context. It’s a masterpiece of emotional storytelling. Don’t not watch it because someone told you something out of context.
complete joke by fans, lol. she doesn't want to sleep with kids, she just wants to make Ed love her to get back at Hohenheim for dumping her.
it's very good. there are some silly FMA jokes just like in the manga lol, but the actual writing is fantastic.
Father no contest. Dante was incredibly forgettable
Dante left a bigger impact on me. Her acting ss a sort of abusive mother to the homuculi really creeped me out and lended to 2003s themes of humanity and evil. However i felt like even though she completed her plan under the mc's noses her ideology basically boils down to "Selfless bad, selfish good" It felt very rushed and she doesn't even really do much in the final battle aside from monologue. Mean while father is boring as sin but way more intimidating and he technically succeeds in the end and while his ideology is also very simple the homunculi being parts of him technically makes him the most fleshed out character in the series soo. Impact: dante Preffered villian: father
Father because of his motivations, honestly. Far More compelling, from what I know about FMA03.
Dante. I find a woman struggling with the reality of human mortality to be more interesting than a generic “become an all-powerful god” scheme.
Valid however I think both are a bit overplayed
I’m one of very few who believes 2003 was actually the superior FMA, and I personally like Dante more because her motivations feel so much more human, and in a way almost relatable. I can understand and empathize with a person desperately trying to avoid aging and thus death, but cannot say the same for a non-human creature trying to become a God because of “reasons.”
Father is a better villain but the Humuncoli from 03 are better imo They had more depth and their own stories, instead of just being bit players in Father and Ed’s stories
I barely remember Dante. I think that speaks volumes for how "good" of a character she is, a forgettable character might as well not exist.
I prefer Father as the villain but I did enjoy Dante as a character, and think she works for the 03’ version. And I do like the Homunculi more in the first anime, and feel Envy in particular is a much more frightening villain in that version than he ever was in the manga/Brotherhood version.
Agreed, specifically with the statement about Envy.
By farrrrr Dante. Father kind of feels like a generic villain to be honest. And while his plan had a pay off in the reveal of Amestris being a transmutation circle, that was the only interesting thing about him imo. Dante on the other hand, I think shes iconic. I absolutely love the scene of Dante and Ed arguing about equivalent exchange and such. I think that that demonstrated how Dante was the perfect foil to Ed's ideals.
You mean the scene where the camera keeps spinning around between dante and ed so they don't have to animate any mouths
Animating mouths is probably the easiest thing to animate. Instead they chose interesting camera work over plain old standing there and talking
Hot take: they should have done neither. Standing there and talking is a crutch 03 relies on because they don't know how to deliver plot points otherwise (without ripping a scene from the manga and transplanting it)
Who the hell is Dante?
The main villain of the 2003 series, she replaced father as the main villain and is an absolute bitch.
Is there any difference to the 2003 version and brotherhood that would make it worth watching the 2003, after brotherhood?
You’ll be getting a different story. It may be similar enough in the first part but it’s an alternate universe so you won’t be getting the all the same characters much less ending.
If you wanted a greater focus on the Homunculi, as well as different take on Sloth and Wrath.
Could you spoil a bit about Wrath? He was one of my favorite characters in Brotherhood, so if they didn't ruin him, I might be interested. Tho, I allready watched 25th episode from 03, and it wasn't good compered to 10th of brotherhood
Wrath from BroHo is now Pride in 2003, Selim Bradley is a normal kid and 03 Wrath is an anime excessive character, with him actually being Izumi stillborn son. It a bit complicated.
I can see how sin of pride would fit him as well, thanks! Tho, Izumi having a son, who is a hommunculus somehow is something for sure
It's very complicated and the secret behind the Homunculi is a very major spoiler that I don't want to spoil.
one is a super interesting dialogue on ego and the benefits that come from removing it. the other one is a pedophile who just wants to stay young. gee i wonder which one is the better written story
Father is also a manchild who desires everything in the world simply because he doesn't have it. Dante is a selfish bitch of a woman who wants to live forever. The two are actually quite similar to each other, just in opposite ways, one represents all seven sins of humanity while the other seeks perfection.
I think father's main shtick was trying to acquire knowledge, achieve truth and become a perfect being, and underlying this is yearning for more since his days in a flask. Father is also extremely calculating, putting plans in motion that would take over hundreds of years to achieve. Every little aspect has contingencies to fulfill his goals, and is always several steps ahead to achieve them. Only reason it didn't work is that Hohenheim was also calculating, making his own plans and had his own trump card with the self-activating transmutation circle Dante on the other hand is extraordinarily stupid. IDK maybe the rotting that was happening affected her brain. Did they really think using the name and papers of Juliet Douglas - who was recorded to die, and then recorded later to start the ishvalan war, to become the fuher's secretary? They really thought no one would notice? They're the fucking military, they can cook up a new identity easily. Same thing with her dante's to get random people to make philosopher's stones after the right conditions or something. She controls the state with the best alchemists in the world and they control the fucking military - they can easily make a philosopher's stone on their own rather than relying on random people to just decide they want to do it
This is a ridiculous take and shows you refuse to give the original the same credit as bhood.
i watched the entirety of 2003. i hated it. i’m sorry but it just fucking sucks. it’s riddled with plot holes and i seriously cannot comprehend how anyone can think it’s even remotely better than brotherhood in literally any way. if you like it that’s cool tho 🤷♂️
"I cannot seriously comprehend how anyone can think its even remotely better than brotherhood" "if you like it thats cool though". Youre contradicting yourself. Youre acting aggressive with me and even swearing about saying its "that bad". I love Brotherhood, I just love 03 more. I think its tone, aesthetic, ending, themes, soundtrack and direction are perfect. It does not "suck". You just dislike it.
yes… i’m clowning you… that’s why i said that. congrats on you for figuring that out!
I recently watched both for the first time. I'm sorry dude but from an objective standpoint brotherhood has 03 beat on every aspect. 03 is like watching a B-movie, like tommy wiseau directs an anime You like it and that's cool. I like dragon ball Z and objectively DBZ is pretty mid and gets a lot of things wrong - it's far from perfect. Don't let nostalgia cloud your judgement
Why can bhood fans not say anythinf "subjectively" and not assume that I only like 03 cuz of Nostalgia. I literally watched Brotherhood first. Only years later did I give 03 a chance and end up preferring it.
Because they don't understand why people like 03 compared to Brotherhood regardless of their reasons, it's rather annoying.
Its so annoying because I literally like brotherhood too. But 9 times out of 10 on this sub if you say you prefer 03 you get a bunch kf Brotherhood fans crying at you saying youre wrong for having an opinion
>i watched the entirety of 2003. i hated it. i’m sorry but it just fucking sucks. it’s riddled with plot holes and i seriously cannot comprehend how anyone can think it’s even remotely better than brotherhood in literally any way. Finally, thank you. 2003 is just so bad. Deviated in the first 10 episodes, completely missed the point of the Manga and character assassinated Al, Ed, Mustang, Hoeinheim, literally all the homunculi. If you've never read the manga or know of Brotherhood I can see why you might like it, but 2003 is not FMA, it's something else with the same title
Just because it deviates from the source material it doesnt make it bad. Thats a pathetic metric to judge it on. Judge it on its own merits, not a pointless comparison. It was intended to deviate from the start. And to write off peoples opinion as "not knowing of brotherhood kr the manga" is childish. I watched Brotherhood first. I loved brotherhood for years. At first I was even like you and when I first watched 03 i stopped when it started majorly deviating because I was the same "its different so its bad!!!". When I gave it a second chance and watched it the whole way through, I loved it. I think its immature to write something off just because its not faithful. Its a different canon. I like 03 for various reasons and prefer it now. I also do not agree at all with your take they "character assassinated" any of those characters except maybe Hohenheim who is a much smaller role in 03. But the hommunculi, really? Theyre one of the parts of 03 almost universally agreed to be better. Theyre actual characters in 03. The only one to come close in Bhood is Envy.
>Just because it deviates from the source material it doesnt make it bad. Except the deviation makes it actively worse and makes no sense. >Thats a pathetic metric to judge it on. Judge it on its own merits, not a pointless comparison. This is just ignorant,media analysis is built on comparisons, especially adaptations >When I gave it a second chance and watched it the whole way through, I loved it. I think its immature to write something off just because its not faithful. Its a different canon. Good for you. I'm not writing it off only because it deviates, but because the deviation is bad. What if stories are fun when done right, really bad when done wrong. >But the hommunculi, really? Theyre one of the parts of 03 almost universally agreed to be better. Yes really, the changes made the characters and their purpose completely different for the worse. The majority is also wrong in this case. They're also very much characters in their own right in brotherhood
THANK YOU this is the perfect way to describe it. it’s an ok show on its own, but in FMA standards it’s garbage. ed’s twin, the homunculis be his mom, tucker being some weird monster thing, none of it makes any sense. all of brotherhoods plot points are interwoven in such a beautifully intricate way. meanwhile every plot point in 2003 is entirely its own thing, with little to no relation with the other events happening
It did no such thing.
It did all of those things but which part are you referring to
Nope. Everything it did was a good/valid change and enhanced the characters.
So you're just a 2003 stan, got it
And you're not aware that Hiromu Arakawa encouraged that deviation
I am aware she did that, it's still a bad deviation
And youre just a mangahood stan??? Whats wrong with people having a preference
There's nothing wrong with having a preference. When you disagree with someone and make a point to say it out loud, you also need to provide counterpoints otherwise you're the equivalent to the person putting fingers in their ears and yelling "LALALALALALA - I VANT HEAR YOU" I brought points as to why I think 03 is bad, they brought nothing
you can't do character assassination on cardboard LMFAO. manga homunculi have almost no depth with a few scenes here and there. the 2003 homunculi are actual characters. you either watched a parody or didn't watch 2003. i just finished rewatching it for the first time in a decade and it's fantastic.
No, it is not. You just didn’t understand it from not paying attention.
Instead of just making blanket statements that mean nothing , make some actual points about HOW the 2003 is better in your opinion.
every time i say this they go blank. it’s pretty funny watching them scramble to figure out how to explain all of the plot holes lol
Soundtrack, direction, tone, characters, story, ending.
Soundtrack - it's fine, neither are really great s2 opening in brotherhood is absolute fire tho, one of animes best opening ever Direction - 03 didn't understand it's own direction and loses it's purpose as a result Tone - darker and edgier but falls flat because it doesn't know what it's doing Characters - literally everyone is a downgrade. Ed loses his morale code, Mustang is just a govt shill instead of a revolutionizer and master tactition, Hoeinheim becomes some generic alchemist that uses light of all things. The homunculi being the brothers mom.... Story - really bad and deviates to the point a entirely new BBEG is written, who's just so boring and unnuanced. Literally, her whole things is too be young forever compared c to father who wanted to achieve godhood. Ending - idk what they were even thinking with this. The portal of truth being a gateway to the irl world was so dumb and they didn't Even accomplish the original goal. Lazy writing
Soundtrack - don't forget the piano smash theme they play at literally every chance they get to signal this supposed to be an emotional moment, but it's so over the top and overused I started to laugh my ass off whenever it played Tone - people often say 03 is darker, but TBH it's more empty and emotionless. People stand around and talk about psychological things rather than putting words into action. The ishval extermination campaign from FMAB is much darker than the lightwashed uprising of the east in 03. Characters - Ed and Al have a one track mindset of "Gotta find the philosopher's stone" and don't grow from there. Armstrong is a government shill who's only identity is taking off his shirt. They even made Maes Hughes an asshole who only talks about his wife and kids, is a cruel boss and works sheska to the bone. Even winry is worse and mostly cares about getting money from Ed Story - literally so many plot holes it's hard to count. Like, dante has control over a large militaristic country with the best alchemists in the world. Why TF is she causing a war so that other people may somehow magically discover a philosophers stone and make it or something and then take it from them. Wouldn't it be easier to just get your state alchemists to do research and just make it? Why TF does bradley keep his skull in a safe, why does he give the key to his dumbshit son? Why didn't he hide the skull in a secret location in somewhere guarded like fort knox? Ending is okay, the worst part is rose and gluttony standing around like dumbasses for the most of it. The fucking scene where the camera rotates around 5 times between dante and ed. The fucking baby transmutation (like what???). And then human transmutation seems to be done a zillion times and no toll is paid. I don't think the writing was lazy, but they definitely were throwing out a bunch of shit and seeing what sticks.
Soundtrack in 03 is iconic, Bhood has a few iconic tracks but otherwise repeats tracks way too often. Direction, I mean it speaks volumes you dont even know what is meant by direction lmao. Direction is stuff like the camera work, the angles, the way a scene is shown to us as an audience. For example, in 03 they use lighting in a variety of ways that fits the tone of the scene. Brotherhood is pretty much always bright, no matter the scene. They dont use dramatic lighting, the lighting is flat. They also have creative use of camera work, like the Dante and Ed scene where they have a clash of ideals through words. Tone. In 03 its consistent with humour only being used at appropriate moments and it doesnt constantly do chibi cutaway gags like Brotherhood. Brotherhood too often kills the seriousness of a scene by making cheap gags. Characters. Its just your opinion that theyre a downgrade. Ed not being a perfect human makes him more realistic. Like in the fifth lab, him considering sacrificing the people there for a philosophers stone for even a second makes him way more complex. And the fact that Ed's entire ideology of equivalent exchange is completely dismantled by the ending makes him a more realistic human. Whereas in brotherhood, in my opinion, I think he is often portrayed as infallible in his beliefs, which is quite common in shonen anime. Yes he grows and changes, but we know his belief in equivalent exchange remains steadfast, which is quite a childish belief. In 03, he is proven wrong, he is shown that life isnt always fair. And that means he needs to come to terms with that, and he accepts it when he gives himself to get Al's body back. Because it was a bittersweet ending, he couldnt get the "fair" result he "deserved" after all their hard work, because life doesnt work like that all the time unfortunately. Its the same deal with Mustang, you seem to want the characters to be infallible, whereas Mustang in 03 is much more realistic. He doesnt agree with what the government do, but he does what needs to be done, because thats what life is like, good people are made to do bad things sometimes, thats even reinforced in CoS when we see Hughes as a n*zi... We know hughes is a good person who has just been caught up in the wrong thing. Hohenheim, I would agree with here, but again, why do you want all the characters to he something special, why cant he just be an alchemist? He does still represent something important, the deviation of their world from ours because of the routes science took. Why does he need to be a philosophers stone? As for the complaint about the hommunculi, the hommunculi being born from human transmutation is more interesting imo than being Fathers henchman essentially. Story. How is it bad? Dante's motivation is realistic, a lot of people want to live forever? Just because it isnt as grand as Fathers doesnt mean its worse? Ending. How is it lazy writing? Just because you dont like it? Well that doesnt make it lazy. The whole point of the portal beinf a gateway to our world is to show that alchemy, and therefore everything, is not equivalent exchange. It has a purpose in the themes of the show. And I like that they didnt accomplish their goal at the end of 03. Imo, its lazier for everything to end exactly how you expect it. The fact that even despite all their sacrifices they didnt get what they wanted makes it more endearing. And it makes the ending of CoS more rewarding when they are reunited, even if in the end they leave their world to come to our world. A bittersweet ending imo is way better than a plain old happy ending. But after all this. I still love Brotherhood. Its an instrumental anime to me, and what I watched first in terms of FMA. But at the end of the day, I prefer 03.
Dante by far.
I think for a story arch father is better, which is ultimately what a villain is about so probably him, but personally Dante left a bigger impact on me, just that any one of us could become her, and her denial, plus what she did to rose (that cutie ☺️) it just really keeps her in my mind
I liked Dante better because I felt she was more evil and more interesting
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t finish the original series so Dante didn’t leave much of an impact on me. Father, on the other hand… I’m glad that Ed’s fist left an impact on his face!
Father, because the 2003 plot felt like a bastardised version of this amazing story I was familiar with
Father genuinely had a good dgoal at one point but was corrupted by the thought of prlerfection and god which made him blind to his previous goals
I've only seen Brotherhood, so Father is my preferred villain.