Sorry for the long wait on this one. To be honest, this video isn't as long as I would have liked after such a lengthy wait, but after some consideration I moved a good amount of content from this video to a later video in the series. While I don't want to give a date for the release of the next FMA video, I'm confident in saying that the wait won't be as long as the wait from the homunculi video to this one (multiple months). Either way, I hope you enjoy what's here. Thanks for watching, and I hope you have a great day :)
I did an the wait was worth it I can't wait to see your version of what character was add to fma 2003 and what was not and there importants to the story
@@SPFLDAngler The comment section is pretty civil here. People are just expressing their opinions, but you make it seem like people are having heated debates about dumb topics.
Villains Wiki described Dante's true form as only ever being shown in flashbacks and that "the old lady and Lyra are just victims" what really got me their was "the old lady" part. We don't even know who she is and what's hiding behind that face is actually an evil soul, almost as if Dante is masquerading as a corpse. That's what makes her so terrifying.
@@EyreKneeSA hohenheim also switches bodies to stay alive until he leaves dante and decides to stay in the last one he took. The body that fathered ed and al is just some guy. Not the original body he had.
@@baldman7738 That's definitely true and it also makes me shutter to think that they technically aren't Hohenheims biological children. But I dont think hohenheims left Dante while he was in the body that he had during the series run. He has said to left right after he created Envy (almost 400 years ago, which is why envy holds an enormous amount of contempt for him) and he even asks Dante how many bodies she's stolen over the years, to which she replies that it was less than 10, making it pretty obvious that he left her 100s of years before the show began and met trisha much later down the line
I like father more because of his relationship with hohenhiem, it also gives more of a reasoning for the homonculis naming scheme, although I appreciate how much care they are given in 2003
@@alexkrasnic3850 I mean, Hohenheim seems to be the person Father has come the closest to respecting, displaying confusion at the fact that Hohenheim would remain remorseful and care so much for humans despite being a superior creature in Father's eyes. He also shows some lighthearted delight at seeing Hohenheim had children, even if it's very superficial appreciation, and let's not forget Father was the one who gave Hohenheim the drive to be more than just a slave, and supposedly made the deliberate choice of giving Hohenheim half of Xerxes' souls. I'd definitely say Hohenheim cared more about Father than the latter did about the former, but they did have an interesting relationship.
@@alexkrasnic3850 Eh, a "closer" relationship does not always mean better or more effectively executed. Don't get me wrong Hohenheim and Dante's relationship is pretty interesting, but it has a different theme and nature to that of Hohenheim and Father's and some people might find one or the other to be more effective or intriguing. My preference for Father isn't solely based on his relation to Hohenheim anyways, I'm not the one who wrote the original comment. Also, "closer" can be debated. Yeah, there's a greater sentimentality to Dante and Hohenheim, but Father was the one who started everything about Hohenheim's passion for learning and improving. He was the one who gave him a name, a proper identity, the chance to aspire to be more than a slave. You can argue that Father was the one who gave Hohenheim his sense of "self" in the first place, which one might argue is more relevant than a centuries-old romance. Both Dante and Father had a tremendous impact on Hohenheim's extremely long life in very different ways, and their respective relationships to him are an integral part of his character that never loses relevance.
I'd say that the biggest difference between the two villains of both "Fullmetal Alchemist" lies in how their most obivous differences hide in plain sight their most stricking similarities. ======= *Dante* What we learn in the original Fullmetal is that "Dante" was a human woman that DID succeed at crafting the philosopher stone BUT, by causing the unforeseen death of the man she loved (Hoheinheim), ended up immediatly using it's power to transfer his soul onto another man's body to save his life, essentialy achieving a form of immortality through theft - a flawed version of immortality that causes the hijacked body to rot and die, disregard how healthy the body is. Worse, the more the soul is transfered to the next body, the faster it rots. This puts Dante on a race against time, where she does everything she can to find a way to keep death at bay : doing human experiments, conspiring against entire country to cause war, orchestrating genocide to get the necessary components to make a new, purer philosophical stone to save her skin (both litteraly and figuratively.) While disguising her absolute selfishness as self-righteous altruism ; presenting herself as the shepard of humanity. Despite her litteraly manipulating the figurative albeit physical manifestation of human sins, under the form of Homonculus, with the promise of using the philosopher stone to give them the humanity their existence is devoided off yet long for, yet never having the intention to be true to her word. In other words, Dante is a human being. More so : she's the archetype of the selfish, entilted, self-styled superior human that think herself better than everybody else (to the point of not seeing herself human anymore, so much she think herself above all), that yet ultimately only act on the most basic and superficial desires that define the humanity she denies herself to belong to. Yet does. Only to have that very sin being paid back in full when the last of her sin standing, Glutonny, whose insatiable hunger was kept in check by his human-like infantile innocence, was released of his shackles due to her ridding him of emotions and devored her whole. Leaving nothing behind. *Father* What we learn in "Brotherhood" is that "Father" was an entity birthed by humans during their research on "the Truth" and confined within a flask to serve as a mean to discover and achieve immortality BUT, through manipulations and cleverly crafted promises, ended up turning the tide upon it's masters in an otherwordly ceremony and expeding their live as both fuel to reach his own immortality and freedom from the confine of his flask, as he craft himself a body molded after that of the slave that helped him getting up to his point (Hoheinheim) ; the same slave that he went on sharing is immortality with as an earnest form of gratitude (from his inhuman perspective). All this event barely serving as a premise for his great ambition of creating a big country with the intent of sacrifying the life of every human living in it in an even bigger ceremony to assimilate "The Truth" (also known as "God") and achieve godhood of his own. Seeing both humans and even emotions themselves as nothing but hindrances to be discarded by default or using as tool (at best) to fulfill his ambitions, completely detached from everything else. In other words, "Father" is an inhuman being whose pettyness is only matched by his ambitions and whose very existence is a contradictions, in both acts and words, against everything and everyone, whose sole intent is to stand above all. Yet ultimately being denied everything at the most critical point, by the very everyone he continuously looked down upon ; ending up being himself judged and condemn by "The Truth" he worked to hard to overcome and being locked back behind it's doors as the mere being he was and was never meant to come out. ======= From this premises, serving as comparison material between both characters, we can immediatly realize the one critical point they both share : they serve both as the epitome of "Heresy" for their respective worlds. (From Greek _hairesis_ : _"a taking or choosing for oneself, a choice, a means of taking; a deliberate plan, purpose; philosophical sect, school."_ Itself coming from _haireisthai_ which means _"take, seize"._ Middle voice of hairein _"to choose."_ ) Dante symbolise the being belonging to the realm of humans denying humanity. And "Father" is the being belonging to the realm of the divine ("The Truth/God") denying divinity. Whereas Dante is petty and selfish as a mortal, "Father" is petty and selfish as an immortal. Whereas Dante hypocritically deceive herself to act as caretaker of mankind (donning the role of a "Mother" wtihout saying so), "Father" honestly looks down on it without the slightest form of pretense (while taking a name implying to do so.) Whereas Dante looked forward achieving immortality, transcending her humanity, "Father" looked forward absorbing "God", transcending the divine. Whereas Dante did refine and made use of other people's sins, "Father" only ever made use of those he discarded from himself. Whereas Dante used a very litteral philosopher stone to transfer Hoheinheim's soul into a new body, "Father" turned Hoheinheim's original body into a full fledged philosopher stone. Whereas Dante original human identity and face has never been revealed, that of "Father" reveals a silhouette with no identity. Whereas Dante challenges Edward's understanding of "Equivalent exchange" with arguments (people attemtping the state alchemist exam only to fail, disregard the efforts put into succeeding at it), "Father" challenges Edward's understanding of Alchemy with facts (Mustang paying the price of human transmutation despite not causing it.) Both are complete parallel opposites of heresy. Clashing with all established standards on pretty much every single front. And both architects of their own downfall, on their very own terms. When you think about it, it's a very impressive duality that Arakawa created between the two antagonists. They are so removed from one another that it looks like they got nothing in common. Yet under closer inspection, they share so many mirrored similarities that they might as well be one and the same. Simply brilliant.
@@N3XTREVOLUTION I sincerely decline. Re-reading my post, i realized having committed some severe grammatical and syntax errors that are simply inexcusable to be found within such a lengthy text. As such, i am no one to look after for example.
@@johnnyciobanas5298 but that's what makes her a amazing antagonist for me, not everyone has their goal as to gain power above all else, it's not as compeling as a more grounded reason like "I just want to survive as long as i can, and take revenge on someone at the same time".
I have to disagree about your assertion that Dante would be more interesting with a flashback. One of the biggest crutches in writing today is to have a backstory that "will totally explain everything about why this character acts this way, I mean it!" when ambiguity can be just as (if not more) effective. Dante explains her backstory, never letting the audience forget that *this is how Dante sees herself.* That alone tells you more about her than Father's backstory episode that gives much more information, but far less emotion. By letting Dante explain her own story, we learn more about her hatred of Hohenheim and Ed than we would if we saw events play out objectively. It seems like an inverse "tell and don't show," but that isn't true. Instead, we are being shown what her mind is by how she chooses to frame her own story. An objective flashback would be much more in line with telling and not showing, by giving us all of the info but not necessarily showing us how Dante personally interprets these events. You can absolutely do both very well, but I want to defend the decision to leave ambiguity about specifics and let Dante's interpret her own past into her own narrative.
That's totally fair. My desire for a flashback is totally subjective and I agree that explaining everything about the character can be enormously detrimental. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I enjoyed reading them :)
But the thing is even with an objective flashback we would still have an understanding of how she frames her past, none of that changes with the addition of an objective flashback. If anything it would add more to her character since we can see the facts that she may have chosen to ignore with her own interpretation. Ambiguity is all fine and dandy but I think the addition of actual events would do wonders for her character since we could see her entire line of reasoning for how she came to frame her past.
@@breakpoint43 I'd argue that the issue is pacing. If we've already seen an objective flashback, having Dante tell us her story is just repeating what we already know. Yes, it may give a little bit more nuance to her, but it grinds the story to a halt. If this was a Rashomon-style story in which several characters tell us about the events of FMA and that is the meat of the story, that would be fine. But this isn't Dante's story, and devoting that much time to her is ultimately a poor decision, imo. Not that the show gets pacing perfect, by any means. The whole Dante section is admittedly rushed. But I think that she is far more important (and interesting) as a foil to Ed than as a character in her own right. Let's look at Lust and compare her to Dante for a second. Lust got a backstory episode that did a good job of developing her, but I think that she is more central to the plot and she functions differently as a foil: Dante is there to test Ed's core beliefs in equivalent exchange (IIRC, it has been years since I watched the show), while Lust is exhibit #1 on the human cost of the Philosopher's Stone. Lust's backstory helps show the dangers of Ed's quest, while Dante's backstory is there to give her a little bit more depth as she challenges Ed's worldview. We only need to know her mindset, not get a full backstory and her own interpretation of that backstory and maybe even Hohenheim's view of the story. It would be diluting her purpose as a device in the narrative. I may be making all of this up, as specifics are eluding my memory. But eh, it sounds right. :D
@@breakpoint43 Oh, oh! I just came up with an example of what I'm talking about with Dante being important as a foil to Ed, but not really being an important character in her own right. Consider Darth Vader. Spoilers for Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back below... for all two people in the world living under a rock. The big twist of the whole SW saga is the reveal of Vader being Luke's father. SUPER IMPORTANT! Earth shattering revelation. But how much does it tell us about Vader? Honestly, pretty much nothing. He's still the scary bad guy in black. What does it tell us about Luke? *Everything.* Luke has based his whole life on being a hero like his father, trusting Ben and his uncle, fighting for the rebellion to be just like Dad. And then the harsh, crushing truth: Everything he ever believed was a lie. His father wasn't murdered by Darth Vader. Ben and Uncle Owen lied to him. He was kept on that farm for his whole life, hating the Empire. He watched Vader kill Ben in front of his eyes, and joined a resistance group to destroy the murderer of everyone he ever loved (for the Empire is also behind Owen and Beru's deaths). To hear Vader make this proclamation makes Luke question everything he believes. We don't need three movies to tell us everything about Vader and how he became the villain of the story. We don't need him to say much of anything. We just need one sentence to make Luke doubt everything he has ever believed. That is the importance of Vader's backstory. His existence is a challenge to Luke's belief in the Force, in his friends, in his whole growth as a person. Dante serves the same role, although not as successfully. Her sole purpose in the story is to challenge Ed's belief system, much like Vader (true, Vader is also a scary antagonistic force, but he's a pretty flat character prior to this statement... and doesn't grow that much, imho). Unlike Vader's big pronouncement, her backstory is pretty well superfluous. She could be a homunculus in a flask trying to preserve eternal life, and it wouldn't matter much. The importance is what she means to Ed: Hence trying to give her some personal pull by making her Hohenheim's lover, which is kind of interesting but doesn't really develop into much of anything. But giving her more backstory doesn't change what she means to Ed: She is the antithesis of his belief in equivalent exchange. She is entropy, a force that always takes more fuel than the energy it puts out. That is what is important, and her backstory is just enough to illustrate this without belaboring the point.
I always loved the romantic idea of two lovers sacrificing an entire city to sustain themselves. Much like their love the city that was sacrificed is destroyed and hidden.
I'm pretty much with you on the neutral stance, when comparing these villains. While I do like Father more as a character, due to his design, powers, and more developed back story, I give Dante points for being just so hatable. She's an extremely selfish woman, and while she claims her actions better the world, really, she's only concerned with her own self-preservation at the cost of others. She isn't presented in a cool frame, as opposed to villains like Madara, Sephiroth, and Vader. Dante is just a horrible human being, and that alone sums up her character perfectly. Both types of villains have their advantages, for scenes with Father, I am going to be amazed by the power and presence he has, while with Dante I am going to be frustrated and bitter at her, for all the right narrative reasons.
I've been waiting for this :). What separates the two villains the most is possibly how human Dante is and how inhuman the Father feels. They instigate different reactions in the protagonists and the audience. The division in the fandom is the result of the preference they have, I guess.
Father is interesting in that on the surface he feels nonhuman but the more you look the more ironically human he really is. He just never learns from his flaws like actual humans do
What we see from the other Homunculi (especially Greed, though not exclusively) along with some of his own behaviors that persist after making them is is that Father clearly was more human than he seems, despite his efforts to not be. This is something that the Truth even calls him out on before banishing him to the Gate Father's motivations are pretty much entirely based on petty things, like having things Hohenheim has (or could have naturally as a human) that he never could. He's so obsessed with being free of limitations because he envied Hohenheim's relative freedom compared to his own (even as a slave). He had the seven deadly sins call him "Father" because having a family was something Hohenheim could do that he couldnt (but he also longed for family himself to some extent, and he turned his "brother" against him with his deception and destroying Xerxes). When he finally achieves his perfected state and could look like anything he wanted, he doesnt choose an inhuman form like his original appearance (which he supposedly took a lot of pride in)--he *chooses* to look like a hotter version of young Hohenheim At a glance, Father seems less human than Dante, but in some ways, he was actually moreso than she was. All of the Homunculi are just pieces of himself, and there are some recurring patterns in their personalities and motivations that align with Father's backstory and actions when you actually look more closely at them.
I’ve seen comments about how Dante’s aspirations are more human and personal then Dwarf I. The flask/father, but I think they misunderstand who homunculus was. His aspirations were personal. He wanted to be “free”. No consequence, no judgement, to no longer be constrained... but it was never enough. He gets free from the portal, but now he wants out of the flask. He gets free from the flask but now he wants to be god. He made homunculus “children” in order to fill the void. No matter what it would never be enough. His aspirations are pure vanity, he’s a tragic character doomed to fail. It’s psychological and probably the most human thing I’ve seen. The “if only...” mindset. If I had this or that then everything would be good. But like Truth said, he never grew past being the dwarf in the flask
this is why he's a great villain. He's a being who wants more, who cna never be satisfied, and cannot stand feeling inferior to everything, so he al;ways strives to be above everything, because otherwise he'll jsut be a small 'dwarf in a flask'. Even his attempts to create a family of hommunculi are also done in service of making himself 'above' regular humans by purging himself of his 'imperfections', but he cna never truly fully remove those parts of himself, that's a delusion. Father is a man who who is constantly lying to himself because being honest means accepting his weaknesses.
I think the main reason I prefer Father over Dante is because a lot of people tend to forget that the homunculus are all technically extensions of his being and character. Envy. Gluttony. Greed. Lust. Pride. Sloth. Wrath. They all came from Father and whatever you liked about them also existed in father. So it’s best to see them together as one combined character.
I never forgot that. I just think it's a bit cringe, personally. I prefer the homunculi being a direct consequence of the actions of humans - a final punishment for the sin of human transmutation. As someone else in these comments put it, in BH they only exist because "black goo hates humans" and to me, that's boring as hell. I'm sorry.
Finally! Somebody brought this up! His children, like he said out of his own mouth are pieces of his own soul. And their behavior reflects part of who he is, whether he knows it or not. It is shown multiple times throughout the second anime that many of the homunculi are not aware of their own contradictory nature. Especially anything that ties them to the human race. Envy is the biggest example of this.
@@LordofFullmetalthere are already enough consequences for human transmutation. Homunculi being the result of that just undermines the point and creates issues. You can’t create humans. Homunculi being Father’s separated desires created in his pursuit of becoming above humans does for a much better thematic work.
@@3601-c3k okay so a couple of things here. Firstly on the consequences part, while in both versions it has consequences on the individual who performed the transmutation that is as far as the consequences go, this is thematically at odds with the series focus on the interconnected nature of the world and the responsibility we have towards it. I think it was a brilliant decision in 03 for the consequences of going against the flow of the world to be broader reaching than the limited scope of our characters bodies being impacted, it does a great job playing into the themes of the one and the all and Ed’s journey towards accepting his place in it. As for the part about creating people. In all versions it is possible to create homunculi who are by definition “artificial humans” who are for all intents and purposes human in appearance, cognitive ability, and even elemental composition. In both versions it still remains impossible to bring back the dead. The homunculi in 03 are not the same people as who were attempted to be brought back. In concept I think the examination of the sins as distilled components father excised from himself is interesting as well, (though I do think the execution fell short at times, in particular with father being supposed to demonstrate the necessity for the sins being unable to relate to humans without them etc… but every action he makes is directly motivated by the sins undercutting this whole concept.) Still I do like the thought and some of the homunculi it examined with it (wrath, greed and envy) I really enjoy. Overall I like both concepts and how both shows approached the thematics from different angles even if I have a preference for 03’s approach and think it was better executed.
I was always salty about how the story did not explore Father's loneliness. To me, it always felt like he did want a family and connection yet, mostly because of the King, he received a lot of bad influence from the humans and thus grew into something evil. To me, the most painful part of Father's character is that he is a very human person who attempts to achieve greatness through desperately disregarding his humanity, even though his human flaws are the source of his desires, while in the end, he fails because the true way to greatness was through embracing humanity, not rejecting it.
I feel the same about all the homunculi. I think they could really benefit from a spin-off/prequel showing how Father created them and Amestris and how they interact with each other. Also to add some more depth like idk Lust wanting a lover or Envy showing little signs of jealousy.
''Sometimes sitting on the fence hurts your butt.'' One can only sit on the fence so long without hurting. Being indecisive for too long will often incur a cost with it. Most people will hate you, if you don't take their side.
The reason I enjoyed Father more wasn't really because I think he's a better villain... but because the overall story appealed to me more. His place in the narrative fitted the themes and the ending was more satisfying, because the manga had one of the best, well thought-out plots I've ever seen in fiction. Dante's still pretty cool though.
One is unique and thematically interesting(Father) while the other is personally more intimate but largely a little dull when it came to the endgame(Dante)...a mixture of both of these villains would work perfectly in a live-action TV series, Dante being a homunculus dwarf in the flask before van Hohenheim and the destruction of Xerxes, which gives her a female body whom van Hohenheim initially fell in love with and entered into a whirlwind romance with her that would give birth to a child. This child and they lived happily till the child died of mercury poisoning and van Hohenheim would try to use human transmutation to bring the child back. Creating a deformed and bloody humanoid with a piece of the child's soul still inside him. Envy is the first human-based homunculus, unable to face up to what he had done to his son, van Hohenheim would abandon both Dante and envy. Envy would be a malformed humanoid form for a few years, unable to speak, but constantly bleeding and crying as Dante rearranged his body with all the skill of a mad chiropractor, feeding him small fragments of her Philosopher's Stone every few days to relieve the pain just enough for him to sleep until she discovered how to make mass quantities through the slaughter of many, which allowed him to take on a proper human shape and finally take away the physical pain, the abandonment of Hohenheim and envy's creation would cause dante to decide to absorb god and become immortal and creates amestris precisely for that purpose. Envy's hatred for his father and need to kill him would be intact and it will be his main goal. Whereas the rest just want to serve Dante in her quest to absorb God, envy wants to kill van Hohenheim. His hatred for doctor Marco being rooted in the fact that all alchemists remind him of his father. His killing of the ishvallan girl being rooted in intense jealousy of seeing her with her parents. His hatred for Edward being rooted in the fact that the Elric brothers received the fatherly love that he never did
@@gijane2cantwaittoseeyou203 IS he though? I hear this arguement a lot but yeah he spends a lot of time sitting on his ass and ultimately wants to 'eat god', I don't feel these make him 'typical shonen trash'. His motives are pretty interesting once you think about them, and his relationship with his minions is QUITE interesting and different.
This is pretty frickin' great, really. What are some of your other ideas for a FMA series? Mine is like a mix between Brotherhood epic lore, and 2003's haunting, personal tale, and waaay more serious with the tone, ala 2003. But in my version, Dante and Father are kept separate entities. But yours is even better! If you'd like, we can share some ideas!
Father is designed to draw a comparison between the two extremes of understanding Alchemy or just life and the universe in general, with the other extreme being Ed. It's the most apparent in the last scenes of Ed and Father w/ the "Truth' respectively. Their attitudes to life led them to different endings when confronting "Truth", and the point the author wants to draw out is her preferred explanation to the saying "one is all, all is one". To understand the universe, you must be part of it, and not try to go beyond it. To better yourself, one must accept your own shortcomings, and not try to ignore or cut it off, because they too are part of yourself; to cut them off would only mean cutting off part of yourself, and not bettering yourself. And from their respective endings, you can obviously tell Ed's answer was considered correct, while Father's wasn't. Dante has a more apparent personality and relatable goal and all that, but it falls short when you consider what Father stands for in the entire story. --not to mention Father hella hot, hoooo boy--
One thing to note in the Anime, Father tells Greed "if you wanted something I wanted it first" Greed then realizes that friends are what he wanted so this begs to raise a question did Father only want a friend but was blind to what he truly wanted?
the main reason why I like Father more as the big bad is that I like that his plan is more thought out, there's a reasons for EVERYTHING he does, and even the hommunculi have some role in that plan of his (be it specifics, or just because he expelled them from himself to 'purify' himself). Every awful terrible thing that happens as a result of his actions all play into his ultimate plan, every person a chess piece to be moved and sacrificed for this one grand plan. Comparatively, Dante's plan is...less compelling, to me. It's way less controlled and thought out, the homunculi have a much smaller role in said plan and her plan is ultimate just to make a philosopher's stone to switch bodies with someone, which is underwhelming since she's been giving people stones willy nilly for no damn reason, or at least for no reason that would actually HELP her plan. I also find the strange hints of Father's depths and ambiguity more interesting than Dante's personality, who's mostly just a vain asshole pissed off at her ex-boyfriend, with any other depth to her left largely unexplored or relegated as a lie she tells herself.
Great video, I thought you had stopped making these! I loved the body swapping aspect of Dante one of the coolest villan concepts of all time. With that said I felt she was introduced to abruptly and to close to the end for us to get a proper understanding of her as a character, and what is her true motivations, this uncertainty made her scary in a sense but a little too shallow for my liking
dante wins for me just because of her music. also she was a lot more unsettling to me than father, maybe because she's undeniably human (also the creepy come ons)
Truthfully I always preferred 2003 because it was more about questioning things than brotherhood did. In 2003 I always wondered what was the right path Science or God, but in Brotherhood we're told Science works because of god and nothing was really left up to interpretation.
Interesting point that i think of when i see Father in FMA. He is so deadset on removing his human emotions. But he displays all of those emotions just as and in some ways more strongly than his homonculus. He is ruled by his emotions, while they actually are led by their brains, twisted as they may be (with the exception of gluttony). Pride: he displays this through his arrogance about the homonculus being superior and being disgusted by Greed ignoring his "homonculus pride" but as soon as he is challenged he gets scared and all that pride goes away. Father: Displays his Pride by perceiving himself as the superior lifeform of all, by believing he is effectively god and can become god, his Pride is what makes him so arrogant as to not believe that the Elrich brothers will find a way to stop him, which inevitably means his Pride causes his downfall. Lust: We never actually see her controlled by her lust, she is sexy no doubt, but she never makes orgasm references, doesn't get off, and as far as we see doesn't seem to indicate a want for sex. She doesn't even really lust after power, this is purely a construct of souls that know how to use sex to manipulate others. Father: While he doesn't want to bang, he does lust, more than any other. He lusts for power, all of the power to the point that he gets himself killed pursueing it. Gluttony: This character is ruled by his emotion, so he is a bit of the exception to this. Father: This is admiteddly harder to say, but i would perceive him as gluttoness, either a glutton for power, or glutton for human souls since he feeds on so many of them. Gluttony is a part of him for sure but admittedly maybe not quite as blatantly as the others Wrath: Wrath displays this in his combat and violence, but is not ruled by it, and continues rule patiently. He is a quite smoldering anger, but in addition to that, as you mention in your previous video he does things such as potentially love his wife (maybe) and takes pride in things, and enjoys when the humans surprise him. His anger allows him to be motivated to what could have been noble qualities, if he didn't still hate all humans Father: He displays his rage when fighting against the humans, he is angered by their belief they can stop him, and of course when they actually begin to stop him. He also seems angered by Greed rebelling against him, as well as he was angered when he in the flask, his wrath, is his hatred, for humans, for limits and for the weak little dwarf he used to be. Like Napolean Greed: As you mention in your previos video Greed displays his namesake in what he wants, but in subtle ways as well such as craving friends, a purpose, happiness, not wanting to lose anything, being greedy and wanting to be his own master. Things that are noble and not, but almost never immoral. In the end he proves he is not ruled by greed when he sacrifices himself to save his friend. Father: Father is the epitome of greed. Wanting all the power for himself, inevitably choosing to sacrifice his only friend in Hoenheim to gain more power and eventually attempt to consume the truth, the all. In the end his Greed kills him. Sloth: This is displayed in his slow mind, and assumedly slow movement. Sloth is similair to Gluttony in that he is a great example of emotion without much contradiction, admittedly a very weak character but he serves his purpose as a intimidating opponent. Father: On the otherhand Father ironically displays sloth much more then well Sloth. He could have done so much more with his power, yet chooses to sit around for the vast majority of the time content to do nothing to acheive his goals. He is easily the most lazy character in the show, this laziness arguably causes his death, while he needed to manipulate things to acheive his goals so he could not have done everything himself, he is not a generic supervillain that way, he still could have been more involved. This lack of involvement until the end also leads to his demise. Envy: Envy was well covered in your previous video as well, so i don't want to go into it too much. Suffice it to say to be envious of others you must have some self-loathing, and envy certainly does. She hates humans and others who remind her that she hates herself for her limited emotions, limited happiness, her appearance and in general lack of humanity. Father: Father is also the best example of this. The entire reason he broke out of the flask was due to being envious of the humans who created him, once he broke out of that he wanted more and more power, as he saw the entity of the next step as something he envied because he loaths his own weakness, his own limits. At the end of the day his self-hatred is what causes the events of the entire show. He could have gotten out of the flask and lived on freely. But instead because he hated his own weakness so much to pursue more power he pursued more until it killed him. To me a big theme of this show is acceptance. Accepting your flaws, your emotions, your wrongs, your rights, and your history. The show is constantly showing characters who have tragic histories, character flaws, have commited haenous actions or terrible mistakes. By the end though, the characters who come out stronger and win, are the ones who accept all of these things and move beyond these things while not ignoring these flaws. But Father and the homonculus who continue to follow him, all show that not accepting your faults lead to ruin. I know this was long but i am very interested in how you would respond to this so if anyone else or Lowart have an opinion on this i am curious.
I personally found Dante far scarier and more realistic. The way she would manipulate things from the shadows, leaking just enough knowledge to just enough people to get what she wants, rarely having to involve herself as she takes advantage of those who grieve and steals the results of the many people who sacrificed everything in order to have a chance at seeing a loved one again but never actually achieving it because they didn't have all the information... yeah, she really left an impact when I first saw FMA 2003, and it stuck with me.
I also like how the homunculus are represented in both series. Those of the first FMA are treated as the present tragedies for breaking the Taboo, while those of the Brotherhood are the truths behind all those past tragedies.
The fact that the Homunculi manipulated humans for their own ends and called them foolish for their selfish motivations in 2003 was hypocritical especially since they wanted to be humans.
Envy and Bradley hated humans. The only hypocrites that manipulated humans and wanted to be humans were Lust and Sloth. Greed and Gluttony really didn't care, and Wrath never manipulated anyone.
The thing with og FMA, it felt more fleshed out with the dramatic tensions and the stakes are higher to a degree. For example, battling the homunculi requires you knowing their original remains and destroy them just to kill one. But in Brotherhood, you just wear our their philosopher’s stone by killing them as many times as it takes. It’s an easy thing if you’re Roy Mustang, for others that depends. Not to mention the homunculi in the first FMA series are created through the sins of the alchemists that tried to play God and paid the price so it feels more personal. Both series are great on their own. It all comes down to personal preferences.
I think the concept of killing them multiple times until they stay dead still happened in 03, it's just that no one (in both series) knows how much you need to throw at til their life force runs out, and that because it's hard to determine how many times you need to keep killing a fully charged homonculi just gives the illusion that they are indeed immortal. Lust almost fully killed Wrath when she kept shredding him to bits, and at that point onwards I don't think he ever consumed anymore red stones again. Then there was the original Pride (I can't remember whether he was still made into a hybrid human/homonculi in the 03), the only way he was killed was due to the remains that kept him paralyzed and burned to death (possibly for an extended period of time like keeping). You don't exactly need the remains to kill them, Alchemy was involved for both sides (whether they're forced to vomit out their red stones, or eradicate the souls in the philosopher stone by Dr Marco). But it makes it easier to take them out since their original source will physically haunt them, and even so it's no easy feat to even have possession of it unless you know who it was originally from. Though I agree with what you said: It all comes down to personal preferences, and that og had more going on with them.
My take ? * Father The good ? That whole flashback sequence in the city of Xerxes when he was the midget in the flask. That section in the manga was definitely interesting and Father had a "deal with the devil" quality to him, leading him to manipulate a whole civilization into giving him more power. UNFORTUNATELY, he decides to have an ultimate goal to end all ultimate and throws away anything that makes him even potentially charismatic. He's just in the end a powerful piece of cardboard, sitting on his ass until the promised day. Then in the final battle he has the power of GAWD so that he stands around and let the protagonists gang up on him. He was even more of a letdown than Hades in Saint Seiya... so yeah, he's massively powerful. Wooptee-fucking-doo. Except he's not eldritch enough to be truly frightening and LACKS the proper showmanship to be genuinely entertaining. I've seen him compared to 80's cartoon villains which is complete bullshit ! THEY ARE ENTERTAINING and MEMORABLE while he's like Exdeath's boring insipid cousin ! You can be a one-note character and STILL BE AWESOME, But you have to swing for the fences and OWN IT ! Father, much like the initial version of Dracula, defangs himself too fucking much as the tale goes on for me to care... * Dante Ah yes, the one people went on and on about how lame she was... Turns out I feel for her the same way I do for Dio Brando; their vileness only equates their greatness as antagonists and predators to humanity ! FIRST OFF, Dante might still have a modicum of have feelings for Hoenheim but they are not so deep as to keep her from being an absolute monster. In fact, THAT meeting is the only time she shows genuine concerns... and it did not stop her from throwing him beyond the fucking gate without so much a second thought. Secundo, she is ACTUALLY SCARY. Dante is scuzzy as all get out with rape undertones hidden in the package of a nice old lady or a beautiful young girl. I love how even despite her skill at alchemy, she has feet of clay so she has to resort to cunning and pulling strings from behind the curtains to get what she wants. Terzio ? Her motivation... NOT FUCKING DYING. Yeah it's simple and seen elsewhere but, you know, most of us are fine with that as a motivation even if it costs a civilization or 2 to achieve. And the best thing about her for my money ? THIS SPEECH ! "...People work because they believe it will pay, for 'equal effort' does not always mean 'equal gain' ... Consider the state alchemy exam that you passed with flying colors. How many others took the test that day? Spent months, years preparing, some working much harder than you. Yet you were the only one who passed. Where was their reward? Is it their fault they lacked your natural talent? Or what about the equal value of each person's life? If I clap my hands, the baby won't survive. And if I do that, where is the world's balance in that? Does that mean the baby's only worth in being born is so that it can die? It's doing all an infant CAN to survive, breathing, crying for help. But what does it get in exchange? People can say there is a balance, a logic that everything happens for a reason. But the truth is far less desired. No matter how hard you work; when you die, you die. Some spend their entire life trying to scratch their way to the top and still die in poverty while others are born into wealth without ever lifting an arm. It's a cruel and random world, but the chaos is oh, so beautiful. ...Equivalent exchange is a myth. A contrived order to give sense to a world that has none. Can you accept that now or do you need another lesson? " Oh and their homunculi, the former had jobbers, the latter had MONSTERS. Just my 2 cents...
Agreed. Father felt more like a cool and fun 2 dimensional villain. Dante felt more relatable. She had an overwhelming fear of death, so she had to do extremely bad things to get the power to prolong her life. She likely told herself that all humans are bad and that life is a cruel meaningless joke to feel morality justified in doing what she does. I thought Father was awesome, but I could sum him up in one sentence. Dante needs more than one to understand her character.
I kind of wondered if there's a way to make a compelling Fullmetal series that utilizes both Father and Dante. Personally I would favor the method of Failed Transmutation but that wouldn't prevent Father from commanding the other Homunculi. I would say he could either A. Create them through the same process or B. rally them using their malice for the former makers. I would probably have Dante as the secondary Antagonist but could also serve as a usurper depending on how events would go. Her almost predatorial thoughts towards Ed I consider another from of Spite towards Hohenheim. Dante not only has a direct reason to antagonize Ed, it's also understandable to believe she would sabotage Fathers actions. Now for the Homunculi themselves, we'll have to pick and choose which ones we like better. Unless you go by the idea forging new ones to replace the defeated.
I only watched FMAB. After seeing your analyze of the both villains, It seems dante is more interesting character than The father. For some weird reason she reminds me of lord voldamort from Harry potter..LOL.
A reddit user who goes by JulietDouglas made a post actually comparing the parallel and in some opposite aspects of fma03's ending and Harry Potter's, I'd definitely recommend checking that out
Damn bro I need more. Never get enough of your stuff, especially when you're on about Fullmetal which is like part of my identity- Keep being you 🥺💯 Stay at it King 👑
Excellent video and while I do have a lot to add from my own thoughts, I won't bother on boring people with wall of text (or one that is even longer than what I'm about to write). However I will share my personal preference between the two villains. Father, no matter his character and reasons, is a video game boss at the very end. Someone to be shot at and punched at. He is an obstacle that was physically (for the most part) beaten down. A boss with a health bar, if you may. He is a villain that works and has interesting ideas, but he is something that has been seen before many times and there isn't anything wrong about that though he doesn't feel special even if there are special points to his character. I find his connectiong to Ed's father, the way he cuts off his emotions by creating living beings out of them, as great but he isn't truly personal villain to the brothers. The way he doesn't come across as threatening is that he is solely dependent on the human sacrifices which he can't harm and it takes the tension out of it as well. Dante, with simple human needs and fears, is someone whose plans are ruined but she isn't beaten down like a boss and instead of challenging the heros in might she challenges them with her mind. Dante is personal villain who makes Ed see the world differently by countering the equilevant exchange and it is far more interesting (to me personally than being shot by artillery fire and punched at). She brought down her own fall with her actions in the end. She also is a villain we have seen before many times, but she has unique twists to that. In the sense of her category Dante could be said to be a vampire. Though in her case she is a body swapping vampire who can't do so without a magical item and that is a great twist on the old formula. She also isn't dependent on the brothers (or human sacrifices) as she can have anyone try to attempt to create the philosopher's stone for her so the threat she (and her underlings) pose is far more tense since she doesn't need to hold herself back like Father. I do understand that isn't enough for everyone, but I do hope my thoughts will help to clarify some personal preferences people have between the villains.
To be honest, Father is more sympathetic than Dante. I read the manga and watched Brotherhood, and NEVER once did I think I would be content to live forever in a flask. The King of Xerxes is responsible for Xerxes. All Father did was take advantage of a selfish human. But the King’s court never once tried to talk the King out of sacrificing their nation. I can’t blame Father for Xerxes. I do blame him for everything after. But even then, the Homunculus had no idea what it was to be free. To live. By his nature and isolation, Father was born without hope or options.
The odd thing about The Dwarf from fmab is that many call him dull and disapointing for not having enough human moments interacting with characters beyond being the big bad if the story. I've always found this strange because every homunculus is an extention of that character. They are explicitly called such by the dwarf on multiple occasions, even telling greed that there is nothing he has ever desired that he didn't desire first. Greed! The guy who found that all he wanted was geuine companions. I think that this connection informs us a whole lot more about the dwarf's character than anything else. Sloth found life itself to be almost unbearable. Gluttony seemed innocent and childlike, but destroyed and devoured everything and everyone around him with his endless hunger. Pride pretends strength and superiority, but deep down is a coward and a slave to the ambitions that created him. Each homunculus represented the dwarf in different ways, each one showed us a facet of his mind. And the most damning thing of all, and the part that makes the character of the dwarf the most poignant and enjoyable as a villain to me, is how his gate of truth was completely blank. Each gate we see is totally unique tot the individual, representing their life experiemces and outlook on the world as well as their alchemical knowledge. The dwarf, as Truth said, didn't actually know anything beyond what he already did upon his creation as an alchemical AI cheatsheet. The reason I like the dwarf as a better villain is because he better fits the overall theme of the story than Dante does.
In terms of personality both are as interesting as wet toilet paper, but I'd say Father is the better overall villain because he put more effort to his goals. Managed to trick an entire kingdom while being a speck in flask, taught a form of alchemist he could disable on a whim, literally shaped the country for his philosopher stone, forced the physical embodiment of Sloth to continually dig tunnels for the transmutation circle to work, had the other homunculi perform tasks to aid the process, etc. His only flaw was not having all five sacrifices accounted for before the eclipse. Dante's plan was just cause as much misery as possible in the hopes that an alchemist would create a philosopher stone. She put no real effort towards her goals and just hoped that things would turn out her way. And for what, to body hop and live forever? For what purpose? At least a grab at godhood is something of a unique goal, even if Father only held it for a little bit.
In the absence of a specific goal, the basis of Dante's character. This is her danger. In the banality and meaninglessness of evil. She's focusing on this topic and challenging Edward's philosophy of life. She says there are no goals worth pursuing in a world where your efforts are worthless. If she can kill a baby, does that mean it had to happen, or did it not make sense in the first place, like everything else in this world?
I feel that father had to split half of the souls with hoenheim because he needed someone to hold him/bring him to the proper center of the transmutation circle. Trapped in a flask necessitated it.
I've always preferred Dante to Father. Their final fights really cemented that for me. Father and Ed's final battle is a big dumb Shonen Dragon Ball Z action-fest, while Dante and Ed's final battle was more of an intellectual battle of words and philosophies.
There are two Humonculi I prefer in the 2003 version: Sloth and Greed. Sloth because having the Elric brothers have to confront their past sin is far more interesting than "the big strong guy who's always sleepy and forced to dig tunnels". Greed not so much for the character himself, but for the character development he provides Ed. I love the moment when Edward kills Greed and suddenly realizes he has become a cold blooded killer. I loved Edward having to cope with having killed Greed and it does so much for the character.
tbh I think Father just needed someone to hold his flask in the right place and the alchemic reaction just naturally split up the souls between everyone standing at the center. He just SAID it was a gift to Hoenheim.
Father made sure him and hoenheim were stand at the true middle of the circle. Even at the end othe series when he opens the earth gate he had to be at the middle.
I hope you’re doing a 2003 Envy vs. Brotherhood Envy! I think they’re both amazing antagonists, but I kinda feel like 2003 Envy deserves some respect to his name.
Father may be more powerful and badass, but Dante accomplished something that not even Father could achieve-she destroyed Ed's philosophical beliefs and proved him wrong. Sure, she still got defeated in the end, but Ed had to acknowledge that Equivalent Exchange was not always correct.
We do get backstory for dante, She was hohenheim's ex gf and they had a kid together at some point also they made the philosopher stone couple of times so to switch bodies to keep on living. her motivations are that she wants to mate with edward as the man she did like, ed's dad left her for another woman
She didn't randomly get them. She made 3 herself and purposely looked for more. I gotta give Dante her props her plan was pretty good. Judging from her conversation with Pride, she'd already been successful before. The homunculi are born as blank slates and she's manipulative enough to sway them to do her bidding.
2003 literally shows Dante looking for potential homunculi, and even states herself that she created three of them. I swear most people who shit on 2003 haven't actually watched it.
Right. Made 3; yet named them in a way to suggest she would have a total of 7. No more no less. If she found a 8th, since that's out of her control, whats her plan? Ignore it till one dies Father knew how many he would end up with, a part of him, his naming makes sense
Villains like Father and Dante aren't the types we can simply brush off. They are Final Fantasy-tier demons who may actually be capable of breaking Kingdom Hearts heroes not just through skill and power, but in intelligence and philosophy.
Personally, I think they're both great. But I'm on Team Father because Father served as a much better foil to Ed and Al. Especially such a clever one that's more than just "I'm you but evil." Dante felt more like just an angry, arrogant person. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just less interesting than what Father ended up being
Both character's motivations are understandable to me. Dante seeks self preservation, father seeks to ascend to a higher being. Both desires are utterly and entirely human.
I think on a fundamental level in Brotherhood, Father is obsessed with transcending limitations because in his mind he is always caught in the flask no matter how powerful he becomes much like how Hoinheim says all these years and you never grew beyond your days in the flask. To Father the only thing he understands are power relationships and he thinks attaining power will grant him godhood and freedom when all he needed to do was embrace humanity which he was incapable of doing because its likely since he was created by humans and hated them he thought he was better than them and thus did not have to live by their rules. Kind of like perhaps how Artificial Intelligence would be insanely intelligent but still have a human mind and way of thinking Father likely saw deeply into the human condition and hated it so much that he wanted nothing to do with it. Its really tragic because I see him more like a traumatized little child acting out of fear. Basically on some level he cannot accept that raw intelligence and power do not elevate him above other beings, that his quest to consume god and become as god was flawed from the start because he was not a god and cant become one. He never understood the all is one and the one is all concept, that love and unity are essential to understanding and working within our flaws by working with other people not using them. That the path of selfishness leads to self destruction. There is no peace or stability in seeking power only destruction.
Dante's motivations are extremely petty & vain in nature but also relatable. Her sheer humanity is what makes her such a monster, and that's why she's the better villain.
Possibility #3 that Hoenheim got half the souls of the people of Xerxes: He was standing in the center of the circle, same as the Drawrf in the Flask, and the 50/50 split was out of Homunculus' control.
So in this video and in the one comparing the Homunculus there's a connection to Van Hohenheim who I'm just going to refer to as Van cause that's easier to spell... which you BARELY even mention... You mention him a couple times in this video but don't really go into detail what exactly his connection to these villains is. In the 2003 Anime Van and Dante had a child together. That child became the first Homunculi of that series, Envy who is technically Ed and Al's half brother due to sharing the same father but having a different mother. It's through the death of their son and the failed Transmutation to bring him back that they end up separating. I actually agree that it would of been great to see this story play out in a flash back. This is after all a visual media and the general rule is show don't tell... instead we're given an exposition dump as Dante explains her back story. At least she's explaining things to characters who don't already know the story so as far as exposition dumps go it's a well written one. In Brotherhood, Father actually starts out as that formless thing in the flask. He manipulates Van to help him gain a body and escape the flask. Because Van's blood was used Father became essentially a clone of Van which is why they look identical. For part of the series up until the back story was revealed I actually thought that Father WAS Van. One thing I wish they did differently with him is, I wish Scott McNeil, the original voice of Van in the 2003 Anime had been brought back to voice BOTH characters in this series. Van and Father have different voice actors and I think it actually would of been better given how Father is essentially an evil mirror of Van if he also copied Van's voice, not just his looks. Another interesting change would be if Van wasn't an absent Father, if he actually had a relationship with his sons so that it would be even more creepy when they eventually have to fight someone who is a copy of their own father. This could of mirrored their relationship with Sloth in the 2003 series but sadly it really doesn't mean much to Ed or Al that their big bad is wearing their father's face. It makes the whole taking his form thing kind of pointless. I found Dante to be slightly more compelling due to her relationship with Van, Envy, and the Elric Brothers. Father should be the more interesting of the two but they don't really do anything with his likeness to Van so they could really change his appearance entirely and nothing would be lost. There's almost no reason for him to have a history with Van at all.
i think 03 offers a great, alternative point of view on everything fma (the manga, and subsequently, the 09 adaptation) has to offer. this adaptation did an amazing job with what little they had at the time of production (the manga was far from being finished by that time), and dante is a great villain that leads the story into something completely different yet just as amazing as the source material. both adaptations are great on its own right, eventhough i prefer the 09 one since i love the manga, but thats up to personal taste.
Something I noticed about 2003 that I'm kind of surprised you didn't mention, though I think its a bit of a small detail but alas. Why are the Homunculi named after the seven deadly sins in 2003? This is something I've heard people ask, mainly as an attempt to discredit 2003 and point it out as a flaw, but given Dante's personality, how she sees herself as above humans and even grows to despise them, I could see Dante raising these Homunculi and naming them after the sins since they are the creation of failed human transmutations, which is a taboo/sin among alchemists, and then use them to further her own ends. Almost as sort of poetic justice, where she uses the sins of mankind against them, though this also further highlight's Dante's hypocrisy since one of the sins, Envy, is her own son. Also, I find it interesting that while Mangahood has Father, 2003 has Dante... or should we also say, Mother. This last one is just a fun little observation.
D-Skull Gaming That being the reason for why they’re named after the seven deadly sins is interesting! It would have been interesting as well if the reasons for their creation were also tied to their respective sin, which I guess you can make a case for each of them? But it would have been cool to explore that more. (Forgive me if it was explored, I haven’t watched 2003 in a while and don’t remember all of the specific plot details.)
03 never goes into why She names Homunculi after sins. There's a fair amount of theories/speculation for it. In Fma 03, Christianity exist. The concept of seven deadly sins originate from Christian theology. There's implication that Dante and Hohenheim may practice the religion. Dante hideout entrance is located in a christian Church. The church of Leto is modeled after that church. Another possible hint is her Flamel symbol, which is essentially a stylized cross.
Initially, I had a section about that in here, but it felt out of place in this video (it made Dante's section about twice as long and involved discussing Dante's Divine Comedy, which I didn't feel I had a good enough grasp of yet to include in a video). However, I might make a video about Dante and the Divine Comedy later.
@@gguitarguy9549 Honestly, for some reason, I had completely forgotten that Christianity was meant to exist in world of FMA prior to the existence of Alchemy, but that is a great point.
@@nyabis8044 Don't worry, FMA 2003 doesn't dive deep into each Homunculus' creation, except for Slot, Lust and Wrath. Though it would have been nice to see it for others, particularly Greed, I think that air of mystique is a what makes a lot of the Homunculi in 2003 so interesting.
Hey Lowart. Do you think a tiny mini-series following Hohenheim would be a good idea? Following young Von Hohenheim and how he interacts with Dante and what would be envy 400 years ago. And some of the stuff Dante did because Greed, Gluttony, and Pride are all her creations. In fact Greed was based on a lover of Dante after Hohenheim. Just a thought 😂
Honestly, the main story reason why I strongly prefer Brotherhood is because of 2003's ending. To go through the whole series in this fantasy world where people can do a sort of magic which is thinly veiled as a science, and then suddenly, in the final episodes, we're suddenly in real-world London during WWII?? It was just too jarring of a transition for me, and I did not like it one bit. On top of that, a lot of things, to me personally, felt rushed and shoehorned about 03's ending, both with the pacing compared to how it was leading up to it, and weird things like Envy turning out to be... Well, I'm not even sure, really. I never understood that when I watched way back when. He was, like, a secret third son that Hoinheim had?? So, Ed and Al's long lost brother?? Everything just seemed to come completely out of left field to me, and suddenly it was just over. Meanwhile, brotherhood takes a lot more time to build up to what, to me, felt like a much more satisfying ending. Plus, I mean, I really liked the art style, awesome animation, and actual HD resolution of Brotherhood, haha. I guess none of that has much to do with which VILLAIN I prefer, but I guess it should be obvious that I prefer Father, since Dante is a 2003-exclusive character. I think that has more to do with Father getting more buildup and backstory, though, by nature of just having a longer series to work with.
I believe Envy (or at least Envy before he became Envy) was the son of both Dante and Hohenheim. Yeah for me that honestly felt like it came out of nowhere just to shock Ed enough so that Envy was given a chance to kill him. Though I guess it added stuff to Envy’s character? Maybe? At least it makes sense as to why he continued to follow her while the others kind of did their own thing.
Actually, to be fair, Envy being related to Hohenheim was foreshadowed ever since the 5th laboratory. While I agree that the parallel world thing is sorta out of nowhere (a world with European inspired setting where the leader of the country is referred to as Fuhrer kinda makes it add up) Envy's reveal wasn't.
D-Skull Gaming Ah I haven’t watched 2003 in a while and don’t remember all the details. Thank you for telling me about the foreshadowing at the 5th laboratory!
Arguably the Gate of Truth does foreshadow the real world early on. When Edward is being fed knowledge a lot of photos of real-world events and science are being shown. Hohenheim even mentions this latter when he brings up the Atomic Bomb. I understand why you dislike this aspect, and for me personally, it probably is the weakest aspect of 2003's ending. However, ignoring COS, The other word being Earth doesn't affect all that much, the world could have been any other dimension and it would have had essentially the same effect on the plot.
@@nyabis8044 no problem, its kind of subtle because not much is done until dante and Hohenheim hit the scene (naturally) but in the 5th lab Envy does tell Ed "I can never forgive you for carrying that bastard's blood in your veins!" While not necessarily hinting that Envy is Hohenheim's son, it does hint that Envy knows Hohenheim and had a history with him. Not to mention Envy's anger over not getting to kill Hohenheim.
I actually dropped 2003 FMA because that character annoyed me and felt like a weird self-insert at the start, had no idea she was actually the villain lol
That's because Dante just does not have the presence of a main villain. She's not around anywhere near long enough to make the viewer feel like she is that kind of a threat.
Yo wtf is full metal alchemist. I haven't seen it but the stuff i know were resurrecting your parents by drawing a mini crop circle and sacrificing a couple children probably and now Dante from the devil may cry series is canonically fighting my dad who went to the store and never came back while the thumbnail shows us dark matter from Kirby trapped in a crystal ball marrying some woman that is probably very integral to the actual story. Now I have to watch it
I'm convinced the reason anime fans like Father better is because he follows the conventional shonnen anime trope better; Big bad trying to be God and his hands are all over most of the hero's journey. The climax of the story also encapsulates that he's just a typical shonnen style final boss
I definitely get a more shounen vibe from father. Some comments here have listed reasons they like father better and it's the aspects that make him fitting as a shounen anime villain. Overall Brotherhood is the shounen it was meant to be and 03 is not. Pretty much two different anime sharing similar titles as a result.
I like him because I find his motives more interesting and his plan is way more thought out and all ecnompassing, and even how he treats the homunculi is more interesitng to me.
Overall people who prefer FMAB do because it's a classical shonen (more actions, less tragedies, less mature content, happy ending, not complex, etc). It's like a cultural thing, many people dont like mature or psychological content
@@sessishownu3196 though weirdly Kimbley's MUCH more complex in Brotherhood/manga than in the more 'complex' 2003 anime, where he was simply just a murdery psycho.
@@sarafontanini7051 that's just an example though. You can't put complex in scare quote when FMAB fans themselves always say that FMA03 is too complicated. And Kimblee did have a good finale speech as a nihilist,altough he deserved more obviously.
For me there is no comparison!! Father is definitely a better main villain than Dante (and overall for me the 2003 version doesn't hold a candle to Brotherhood) but I have to say that I didn't mind the first version of the anime either, in fact I found it a good alternative version!!
Ngl I completely forgot about Dante.... existing. Tho I do remember poor Rose being heavily implied to have been sexually assaulted to the point of going mute. I’ll... I’ll never forget that.
I argue that in their respective universes, they're the perfect villain. Dante builds off the theme of "human transmutation" while Father builds off of the concept of truth and the macguffins systems and limitations.
I love how Dante simply breaks ed's beliefs about the equivalent exchange in a way that leaves him (who is always bragging about that) speechless, besides de fact that she is constantly pushing him and showing how much he is just naive despite his prideful personality But Father has better fight scenes and is a genuine anime villain who has multiple overpowered final forms so people usually just remember him But the video raises interesting points about father that I haven't thought about before, maybe I'm being too "I prefer the serious fma over the happy ending one"
Honestly for all intents and purposes 03 was the better series until the final few episodes (fuck the higher ups for canning the actual ending to rush things)
it's interesting cause a lot of people say that Father is bland and has no depth, and thus why many people prefer dante, but it's just that Father DOES have depth its just not entirely spelled out too much asie from Hohenheim openly quesitoning Father directly about why he had his minions call him 'Father'.
Better fight scenes isn't really a motivating factor for my preference. Also if this stuff is new to you it suggests you haven't really looked int it, that was some pretty basic stuff about Father.
...Why did Dante suddenly want to, as you say, *get it on* with Ed? If it was to create a new child, then why? Did she ever explain why she needed a child? Was it so she had a body to jump to when the time came? Did she want a family this whole time but Hohenheim denied her just before that could happen? In a weird way, it reminds me of Tekken. The Sumo Wrestler Ganryu was in love with Michelle Chang, but when his feelings were rejected, her daughter Julia became his new crush. But realizing this just makes me really need to know... Is this why she kidnapped Rose? Rose would be the body for her to jump to so she could have Ed? It just makes me wonder why she wanted someone so against her ideals.
In Liore Dante comments on how much Ed reminds her of Hohenheim. This isn’t something tied to her grand scoping plans, but more of just something she’d like to pursue. The desire for a family is an interesting reading into her character and is a valid interpretation. I can neither confirm nor deny whether or not that is case, but that reading definitely sheds some light on why she keeps envy around.
Dante represents denial and cognitive dissonance. She tells Ed straight up equalvant exchange is a lie. He reflexively denies this parroting off his childhood lesson. But once she says "equal effort does not always mean equal gain" if you look at Ed's face, his expression is priceless, like in spite in believing, he has some doubt. Dante proceeds bring up example after example of clear unrewarded effort, and Ed has *no* rebuttal. The brilliant irony of this is this mirrors the first episode where Ed was talking down to Rose, lording his science and alchemy over Roses "pointless" and "irrational" beliefs in a god she couldn't see and all her actions were in based on her belief like a puppet. Yet here Ed is talking to Dante, thinking he was following the truth, when like Rose, was only following a flawed belief, having absolutely nothing to say. Just denial. This is made even worse because his father shows him, scientifically, that equivalent exchange still requires extra energy to change the matter and is therefore not "equivalent". And even having this explained to him pedantically and in detail, he walks away from that *still* believing in equivalent exchange. Even in the last episode, still parroting off equivalent exchange this. Equivalent exchange that. It mirrors Rose finding out that Father Cornello was a fraud. She could not let her belief go. She had invested too much of herself in the belief for it to be false, dispute all evidence against it. It couldn't be wrong as that would mean she wasted all that time believing. Sunk cost fallacy. And Ed fell for it just like Rose did. His God was just called equivalent exchange. _A Rose by any other name is just as sweet._ Ironic really. The whole series was Ed attempting to come to terms with this belief and it's contradictions. Ed accepted early on "a life is not worth a life," yet still believed in "equivalence". How does he reconcile these 2 contradictory beliefs? Denial. Dante is just like this. She rationalized mass genocide was justfied to prevent mankind from destroying itself. Yet this was an excuse to hide from herself that she is simply scared of death. She needed to frame genocide as virtue, so she can live forever. There's a good reason... but then there's a reason. She was suffering from extreme cognitive dissonance. Denial.
Can we get an amen in here? I don't think Dante is a great character (she's too rushed and crammed for that), but she's a great antagonist, a creature whose purpose is to be the counterargument to Ed's whole belief system. Entropy vs. Equivalence, Faith vs. Fact, Hard Truths vs. Easy Lies. As that counterbalance, she's spectacular.
Excellent analysis. Dante fears death just like Ed fails to accept death and he learned the hard way that to fight death, more sacrifices need to be done, ironically. And yeah, I also cringed when Dante pretended to defend humans all In the while sacifying them, she was quite dishonest, or delusional, here. But she falls onto the catégory of people who are so narcissistic that they think that the pain they inflict is a blessing, which makes sense in her case, because she keeps on living but yet cant find a real reason to explain her will to live, and lacks the ability to be self critical as she just continues to live to protect her ego (a fragile ego since she thinks nothing she does is wrong and that her life is more worth than a whole village). Her psychology was quite interesting.
Even though I consider Brotherhood the superior adaptation, I think the idea of the homunculi as a consequence for trying to play god is more fitting than some black goo that hates humans. Also Lyra is cuter than Father.
Yeah that was chilling. I also love the parallels between him and Hohenheim as well. Though I do think a younger lady in the equivalent of a ball gown is also chilling. But Father and Hohenheim mirroring each other while basically being on opposite sides of the spectrum of their beliefs was haunting.
Yeah that’s why I prefer father and brotherhood in general, it makes a lot more sense in many situations, tho there are some things 2003 handles better I think
@@V2ULTRAKill i don't see how she mirror ed. She was rush to be a bad guy to end the series and ultimately she eaten by a mindless gluttony another victim.
I really liked how neither would exist without the other. Without the Homunculus in the flask, Hohenheim would have been content to remain as Slave 23, with no identity or real desires of his own. And Homunculus/Father was from the beginning created from Hohenheim's blood. In a way, their whole identities in relation to each other are an example of equivalent exchange
Honestly this is 100 percent the most unbiased comparison between the 2 shows on youtube where you can tell with other youtubers that they clearly have a bias towards one show and just want to put down the other you can tell lowart is truly passionate about both and just wants to share what he finds to be so great in both shows while also pointing out the flaws he finds in both.
@@Lowart I personally think Father is a better Villain because I think he was set up better and had more screen time to be intimating and one of my complaints of the 2003 FMA anime finale is twists like Dante, Envy's true identity, and what's on the other side of the door didn't have proper setups and came out of nowhere. I don't think Dante is a bad villain it's just we didn't get much time to see her as a Villain.
Anime Robot so you’re saying the pacing and timing was better with Brotherhood. I can respect that. I’m personally not bothered by the pacing of fullmetal alchemist, in fact I think the last 10 episodes are the best ones for showing the themes and wrapping up the story. But brotherhood had much more time to plan out how the story was done from the start so it would inevitably be better at that. So I agree but I don’t think it’s really a huge downside to Dante as a villain or FMA 03 as a whole.
@Venn its not even like that though, 03 was being produced alongside the manga so when the show reached the most recent point, they had to start making stuff up. It slowly branched off and created something entirely different from the original story. I believe they did a good job with what they had. If only they gave themselves more time to produce a less rushed and included less filler then 03 might've been better then brotherhood.
The fascinating, frankly brilliant side of Dante to me is you would expect someone willing to screw with the nature of the undead, fling countries into an endless war, endorse genocide, all that stuff, would be someone with a deep, complex motivating drive. But Dante is a great villain in how ridiculously petty she is. All that war, all that destruction, not for a messed up understanding of morality, not to justify a meaningful end. Just to preserve her pathetic life just a little longer.
That's honestly the reason I prefer Dante to Father. It's not because I find Father particularly poorly written or anything, but simply because, no matter how good a villain he is, he's still the "bad guy becomes god and the heroes have to use the power of friendship to punch god in the face" archetype. Dante is such a refreshing character for just being such a petty bitch. Also, I like how her backstory contributes to the lore of 2003. The world, as far as we'd seen, seemed to mostly just be Amestris, with hints at neighboring countries, but not much else. That is, however, until Dante shows up and explains how the humans in FMA and the humans in our dimension were actually following identical paths until Hoenheim used alchemy for the first time to make the philosopher's stone. Then that diverged the entire history of FMA's world to be about one geared toward Alchemy, whereas our world veered away from "magic" and into science. I think that's a neat idea, and the use of real world tragedies like the Salem Witch Trials and the Bubonic Plague as fuel for the philosopher's stone is an interesting way of linking our world to the world created in FMA.
Interesting, I think this explains why I don't really like her. It felt so petty. Like all that grand shit for that. I preferred Father because his goals were so ridiculously hard (even tho they stem from petty insecurity) it stayed coherent with the grand and bombastic events of the show. Idk probably just me
Back when I first watched FMA03 I thought Dante as a rather boring main villain, but after re-watching the show couple more times, and falling in love with it even more over time, I actually think she's a pretty terrifying villain. Her parasitic nature of literally stealing lives and bodies of others makes my skin crawl. And I think her real motivation of destroying civilizations isn't doing humanity a favor as she claims, but just to stay alive. It's a simple motive but also very relatable and human. All in all, I now think Dante is one of the most underrated anime villains I've come across.
Yeah, I feel like Dante could have been a much more memorable villain had everything around her been much better villain. For me personally, it was hard for me to remain invested in her when her best moment(her speech about debunking equivalent exchange) happens after seeing cartoon terminator man attack Mustang's group and shortly before Ed gets sent into an alternate dimension where zeppelins are attacking London.
@@isauldron4337 If we wanna go ACKSHUALLY about it lol 03 outpaced the manga, which is why it has an anime only ending. But 03 is easier to say anyway :p
Father and Dante are very similar characters in certain ways. 1. They both seek to use the philosopher's stone at the cost of countless lives to become more than what they are. 2. They both take advantage of the homunculi and never think of the possibility that their motives and emotions will conflict with the plan. This ultimately leads to their downfall when they are destroyed by a homunculus. 3. They both have a certain pride in themselves (despite one trying to remove it) and think that they are above humans. They see life as a resource. 4. They both create a philosopher's stone with Hoenhiem. 5. Both take a form that isn't their own.
They also both have human origins that they reject I know that point 3 technically covers that but i think the fact they came from humans in some way (dante literally being a human that swaps bodies over and over again, father being a homunculus that came from an humans blood )
Thinking of every humonculi other than Lust and Sloth in Brotherhood, the idea that Father wanted a family and to be able to make connections is believable. Greed's ultimate wish, Pride's love (if you can call it that) for his mother, Wrath's love for his wife, Envy's jealousy of the connection of the main cast, and Gluttony's love for Lust. I doubt he could handle that and viewed all those emotions as limitations and began shedding his sins. In doing so, he lost any chance of understanding all is one and one is all. I also like the execution of Father's attempt to transcend and the line about how he just wants to get out of his flask when Hohenheim asks what his wish is. Dante, on the other hand, was just too creepy to me (mostly bc of the thing with Ed bc otherwise she was the right amount of creepy) and seemed less above those limitations than she claimed to be. When Father compared humans to insects, it felt more justified. However, that's only bc Dante is just a human, so her looking down on humanity just felt petualant to me. I actually do like Dante in the original though, and I'm glad the anime got past the manga bc the whole different angle of the show was great to me. I found Dante compelling, but I have a bit of a peeve about human character pretending they are above humanity. As you can probably tell, I prefer Father.
I prefer Father too but for different reasons. I thought things in the 2003 FMA finale were rushed and pulled out of nowhere like Dante's origins, Envy's identity, and the world beyond the gate of truth. If they had more time to develop and explore the ideas it could've worked but it felt very rushed.
Dante sucks... her world, doesn´t. She could be a lot more compelling by being sincere with herself: "i don´t want to die", that should be good enough, no need to justify yourself... By having father as a villain, though, you suddenly can focus all the evil and sins to the point a sniper with the proper knowledge could end it all from the start of the series. Dante´s world, in the other hand, is a lot messier, less shonen plot (if that makes sense).
Same here. I thought Dante was pretty bland and uninteresting tbh but the video changed my mind a little bit. Overall I don't think 03 holds a candle to Brotherhood or the Manga, but honestly 03 is still better than most conventional shounen
The dwarf in the flask at the gates meeting the truth is a scene that makes me tear up every time because he asks a fundamental question of why do I exist. He didn't really know what to do with himself after getting out of the flask but picked this goal that he thought was what he was put on earth for, to cast off his sins and become a perfect being. When he meets the truth he can't understand what he did wrong, what mistakes he made, he is desperately crying out to god for guidance on why he was here and what he did wrong but god makes no reply, Its both satisfying comeuppance and incredibly sad to see someone who was so sure of their ideals realise they were wrong but wonder why. Both why he failed and why his entire philosophy in life was wrong in the first place. He was made to play a game, and he essentially became the best player, but he never knew the rules and he never knew how to win.
That was the ironic thing about him. Because he was a piece of what is beyond the Gate, he had an incomparable amount of scientific knowledge. But the problem is, he didn't have one drop of emotional intelligence to go along with it. And he chose to stay that way for 400 years. Which is exactly what Truth mocked him for. He had all the freedom that he wanted, but he ignorantly chose not to use it to grow.
And to make matters worse For all his massive knowledge, he never learn anything new in all his life. His gate is blank, he learnt nothing in all those years While ed in the end ended up outsmarting truth and getting complimented by god Father only got mocked by god and dragged to his self inflicted hell@@SnowyWolborg
Fuck, but I miss both of these shows now. I wish there was something on the same level as this Fullmetal Alchemist. Anything. That's not to say that it's perfect. But it really is one of a kind. Watching FMA for the first time is a feeling I just haven't had since, but left such a strong impression that I can still remember to this day.
I'm surprised that there aren't many female anime main antagonists like Dante in recent media. Even though she is a scripted villain she still stands as one the best underrated anime villains of the early 21st century.
Dante is scarier as a villain to me because she is so human. There are people like her throughout the world in positions of power and influence that do heinous things.
@@DataZahard i think what op means by "she is so human" is that she is more realistic. She is selfish & prideful yet still believes she is doing something for the greater good like many of the people in power today, there aren't many people scheming to devour god and planning to cause human extinction are there ?
Dante is indeed scarier cause it feels like if Alchemy existed in our world many high power people will easily do the things that Dante does in the anime. Dante is literally if the Kardashians had alchemy lol
I think the thing about Father is that his aspirations are so big, where is Dante’s aspirations are so tiny and personal, that it’s really just exploring the evil in being selfish and hypocritical. She doesn’t want to take over the world or anything like that - she wants to be immortal and possibly have sex with Ed/Hohenheim while she’s at it. In a story that’s far more intimate (seriously am I the only one who notices that 2003 is more about the Brothers than the one called Brotherhood) it’s how small and dangerously personal she is that makes her genuinely horrifying. She sees the absolute worst in humanity will be going herself as above human and not noticing that she is the worst in humanity. And she has the better theme music.
The Awesamazing Eden For me, the Brotherhood in the title is less about the literal brotherhood between Edward and Alphonse. But more represents the brotherhood between both them and the rest of the cast, as it feels the manga emphasizes the importance of connection between humanity creating strength and making the journey worth it. Which 2003 also touches upon, but in a more personal way I feel like.
I've said the exact quote "2003 is ironically more about the brothers than the show actually called Brotherhood" many, many, MANY times. I also thought I was the only one who noticed that 😂
Heh I like both vilains but I feel like they have a lot of wasted potential, I like that Father is the opposite of Hohenheim (and mangahood is about Hohenheim as much as it is about Ed and Al imo) in pretty much every way except physical Unlike Hohenheim who just wanted to be free from slavery and have a normal life Father just wants to be above god, being the living representation of how Alchemy and alchemists are seen as in Amestris (unlike in Xing, where Hohenheim taught them a way to use alchemy mostly for medicinal purposes) and of course where Father doesn't care about his "children" and just uses them to reach his goals, Hohenheim despite being understandably distant genuinely cares about Ed and Al but yeah while these elements are here, mangahood doesn't really do enough with it, which is probably why he's often seen as "generic anime vilain who want to rule the world or something" And yeah Dante is great too, she's in a way the opposite of Al, she wants an immortal body (like Al in 2003) even if it isn't hers and has to hurt and kill others to do it, her goals are less generic than Father (tho not by much) and are much more personnal but I feel like they just don't do enough with her, she's introduced relatively late into the story (compared to Father) and even later as an antagonist, she shares one short scene with Hohenheim before he's yeeted into the other world and as Lowart says we're told about her and Hohenheim's backstory but barely see any of it (and of course we don't need to know everything about her but I feel like in this case we have what could be an emotional and much more interresting story but barely anything is done with it besides Dante explaining it to us, it's as if we were quickly told about Ed and Al human transmutation instead of showing it to us), her relationship with Envy is also not really explored like it is with let's say Sloth and Ed/Al, she's a good vilain but god damn she could have been so much better Also totally agree that Dante has the better theme but that's a regular thing with 2003
I think Father was some one who secretly felt so insecure about being a tiny thing in a flask that could die if the container broke- leaving him with an intense fear of death and incredible isolation that nothing really filled the void even what he did get was particularly impressive. Becoming a genuinely intimidating older looking man who looked like the traditional depiction of God with no perceived limit on how strong his Alchemy mastery that far outclassed everyone outside of Hohenheim was outside of it not being the Truth and having a family that was mostly loyal to him outside of one exception and having an even stronger form behind it that would warp matter and himself without apparent limits, with an nonspecific lifespan that seemed almost endless outside of intense injuries is impressive for any villain. Yet, he still felt it wasn't enough and he get for the Sun/The Truth, and in the end it burned him metaphorically as he spent too much time on an unattainable ideal, not accounting for the humans and his own child that would undermine him, making his ultimate goal, being in theory more powerful than before, an inevitable death, even without Greed's interference as he would've run out of souls to avoid a rebound that would drag him back into nothingness.
I just finished watching FMAB for the first time and your last paragraph struck a note with a thought I had afterwards, in particular about the rebound and running out of souls to maintain The Truth/God within his body. Was it a fundamentally flawed idea for Father to gain that sort of power even if it meant he couldn’t contain it indefinitely? Definitely something to mull over while I start up FMA 03 now!
@@Runescapevidproducer Yes, the few decades he did the first time theoretically worked because it was just a small nation that even centuries later no one truly knew about, of surprisingly trusting people that he could take advantage of and it worked because no one suspected anything and as far we knew, it gave him a very powerful body with very varied abilities as the Homunculi demonstrate and an undefined lifespan almost limitless given he didn't gravely injure himself. He finally had a body, yet he looked to the stars and wanted more. The next time wasn't so lucky as he now had with centuries, people beginning to pick up on the conspiracy and people he inadvertently created a problem- literally or metaphorically that undermined him. And because he gave up more and more of himself to be his eyes and ears because he never learned to trust humans (who normally would be very against his plans unless they were fanatic cultists) ironically, in the pursuit of perfection, he was left with a shell of his peak centuries earlier that would've been more helpful in containing God and would've halted the rebound. He was his own worst enemy.
One thing I wanna talk about: At the start of the 1st few episodes of FMAB, they had a manly sounding voice talking about the laws of equivalent exchange and the philosopher's stone followed by intense music In 2003 FMA, they had Alphonse talking about it, and soon Edward aswell, with peaceful sounding music I like how FMA (the variant where everything is a bit more dark and melancholic) has the more peaceful and cute approach to explaining the laws of equivalent exchange
The manly voice in FMAB is Father's, no? I think that was quite deliberate, as was the choice of having Al do it in '03. Aesthetically, I agree with you; I like Al's better. But in terms of the themes of both shows, both decisions make sense to me
I definitely thin the choice in 2003 is great, not only with the ending to contextualize it but also showing us their ideal and naive impressions of the world on this very harsh coming of age story.
Later in like the last 20 episodes I think of 03 It starts as normal with a framed picture of the family with honiems face obscured by the sun But then the original picture is replaced instantly with a picture of ed and al, that starts to catch fire
Sorry for the long wait on this one. To be honest, this video isn't as long as I would have liked after such a lengthy wait, but after some consideration I moved a good amount of content from this video to a later video in the series. While I don't want to give a date for the release of the next FMA video, I'm confident in saying that the wait won't be as long as the wait from the homunculi video to this one (multiple months). Either way, I hope you enjoy what's here. Thanks for watching, and I hope you have a great day :)
Thank You so much man. I have been watching these videos since 2017. I really appreciate the thought and quality you put into this.
I haven't been watching for as long as future wiz, but I agree
Thank you
I did an the wait was worth it I can't wait to see your version of what character was add to fma 2003 and what was not and there importants to the story
I would also like to see the comparison to FMA movie and FMA
Me too
Everyone in this comment section could be an author...writing whole paragraphs…
They do be writing essays better than me tho-
NO U >:[
@@SPFLDAngler The comment section is pretty civil here. People are just expressing their opinions, but you make it seem like people are having heated debates about dumb topics.
@@SPFLDAngler Majority of the comments I’ve seen are of them are just having harmless discussion. Nobody is trying to force a headcannon as you say.
@Yuri Markov We have reached peak big brain. **hovers into the air with an angelic choir singing in the background**
Villains Wiki described Dante's true form as only ever being shown in flashbacks and that "the old lady and Lyra are just victims" what really got me their was "the old lady" part. We don't even know who she is and what's hiding behind that face is actually an evil soul, almost as if Dante is masquerading as a corpse. That's what makes her so terrifying.
That applies to hohenheim as well. Like technically ed and al aren't even biologically related to the original hohemheim
@@baldman7738 ...go on. I've only followed the 2 anime series. Where'd that come from?
@@EyreKneeSA hohenheim also switches bodies to stay alive until he leaves dante and decides to stay in the last one he took. The body that fathered ed and al is just some guy. Not the original body he had.
@@baldman7738 That's definitely true and it also makes me shutter to think that they technically aren't Hohenheims biological children. But I dont think hohenheims left Dante while he was in the body that he had during the series run. He has said to left right after he created Envy (almost 400 years ago, which is why envy holds an enormous amount of contempt for him) and he even asks Dante how many bodies she's stolen over the years, to which she replies that it was less than 10, making it pretty obvious that he left her 100s of years before the show began and met trisha much later down the line
@@brandynlovett4054 03 just continues to add new depth to each main character. Idk i just prefer it over the straight forward brotherhood.
I like father more because of his relationship with hohenhiem, it also gives more of a reasoning for the homonculis naming scheme, although I appreciate how much care they are given in 2003
03 had so much potential that was ruined by executives
Father just clones his body. I wouldn’t call that a relationship
@@alexkrasnic3850 I mean, Hohenheim seems to be the person Father has come the closest to respecting, displaying confusion at the fact that Hohenheim would remain remorseful and care so much for humans despite being a superior creature in Father's eyes. He also shows some lighthearted delight at seeing Hohenheim had children, even if it's very superficial appreciation, and let's not forget Father was the one who gave Hohenheim the drive to be more than just a slave, and supposedly made the deliberate choice of giving Hohenheim half of Xerxes' souls. I'd definitely say Hohenheim cared more about Father than the latter did about the former, but they did have an interesting relationship.
Javier de Prada by that same principle, you should think dante is better since they had an even closer relationship
@@alexkrasnic3850 Eh, a "closer" relationship does not always mean better or more effectively executed. Don't get me wrong Hohenheim and Dante's relationship is pretty interesting, but it has a different theme and nature to that of Hohenheim and Father's and some people might find one or the other to be more effective or intriguing. My preference for Father isn't solely based on his relation to Hohenheim anyways, I'm not the one who wrote the original comment.
Also, "closer" can be debated. Yeah, there's a greater sentimentality to Dante and Hohenheim, but Father was the one who started everything about Hohenheim's passion for learning and improving. He was the one who gave him a name, a proper identity, the chance to aspire to be more than a slave. You can argue that Father was the one who gave Hohenheim his sense of "self" in the first place, which one might argue is more relevant than a centuries-old romance. Both Dante and Father had a tremendous impact on Hohenheim's extremely long life in very different ways, and their respective relationships to him are an integral part of his character that never loses relevance.
I'd say that the biggest difference between the two villains of both "Fullmetal Alchemist" lies in how their most obivous differences hide in plain sight their most stricking similarities.
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*Dante*
What we learn in the original Fullmetal is that "Dante" was a human woman that DID succeed at crafting the philosopher stone BUT, by causing the unforeseen death of the man she loved (Hoheinheim), ended up immediatly using it's power to transfer his soul onto another man's body to save his life, essentialy achieving a form of immortality through theft - a flawed version of immortality that causes the hijacked body to rot and die, disregard how healthy the body is. Worse, the more the soul is transfered to the next body, the faster it rots. This puts Dante on a race against time, where she does everything she can to find a way to keep death at bay : doing human experiments, conspiring against entire country to cause war, orchestrating genocide to get the necessary components to make a new, purer philosophical stone to save her skin (both litteraly and figuratively.) While disguising her absolute selfishness as self-righteous altruism ; presenting herself as the shepard of humanity. Despite her litteraly manipulating the figurative albeit physical manifestation of human sins, under the form of Homonculus, with the promise of using the philosopher stone to give them the humanity their existence is devoided off yet long for, yet never having the intention to be true to her word.
In other words, Dante is a human being. More so : she's the archetype of the selfish, entilted, self-styled superior human that think herself better than everybody else (to the point of not seeing herself human anymore, so much she think herself above all), that yet ultimately only act on the most basic and superficial desires that define the humanity she denies herself to belong to. Yet does. Only to have that very sin being paid back in full when the last of her sin standing, Glutonny, whose insatiable hunger was kept in check by his human-like infantile innocence, was released of his shackles due to her ridding him of emotions and devored her whole. Leaving nothing behind.
*Father*
What we learn in "Brotherhood" is that "Father" was an entity birthed by humans during their research on "the Truth" and confined within a flask to serve as a mean to discover and achieve immortality BUT, through manipulations and cleverly crafted promises, ended up turning the tide upon it's masters in an otherwordly ceremony and expeding their live as both fuel to reach his own immortality and freedom from the confine of his flask, as he craft himself a body molded after that of the slave that helped him getting up to his point (Hoheinheim) ; the same slave that he went on sharing is immortality with as an earnest form of gratitude (from his inhuman perspective). All this event barely serving as a premise for his great ambition of creating a big country with the intent of sacrifying the life of every human living in it in an even bigger ceremony to assimilate "The Truth" (also known as "God") and achieve godhood of his own. Seeing both humans and even emotions themselves as nothing but hindrances to be discarded by default or using as tool (at best) to fulfill his ambitions, completely detached from everything else.
In other words, "Father" is an inhuman being whose pettyness is only matched by his ambitions and whose very existence is a contradictions, in both acts and words, against everything and everyone, whose sole intent is to stand above all. Yet ultimately being denied everything at the most critical point, by the very everyone he continuously looked down upon ; ending up being himself judged and condemn by "The Truth" he worked to hard to overcome and being locked back behind it's doors as the mere being he was and was never meant to come out.
=======
From this premises, serving as comparison material between both characters, we can immediatly realize the one critical point they both share : they serve both as the epitome of "Heresy" for their respective worlds. (From Greek _hairesis_ : _"a taking or choosing for oneself, a choice, a means of taking; a deliberate plan, purpose; philosophical sect, school."_ Itself coming from _haireisthai_ which means _"take, seize"._ Middle voice of hairein _"to choose."_ )
Dante symbolise the being belonging to the realm of humans denying humanity. And "Father" is the being belonging to the realm of the divine ("The Truth/God") denying divinity.
Whereas Dante is petty and selfish as a mortal, "Father" is petty and selfish as an immortal.
Whereas Dante hypocritically deceive herself to act as caretaker of mankind (donning the role of a "Mother" wtihout saying so), "Father" honestly looks down on it without the slightest form of pretense (while taking a name implying to do so.)
Whereas Dante looked forward achieving immortality, transcending her humanity, "Father" looked forward absorbing "God", transcending the divine.
Whereas Dante did refine and made use of other people's sins, "Father" only ever made use of those he discarded from himself.
Whereas Dante used a very litteral philosopher stone to transfer Hoheinheim's soul into a new body, "Father" turned Hoheinheim's original body into a full fledged philosopher stone.
Whereas Dante original human identity and face has never been revealed, that of "Father" reveals a silhouette with no identity.
Whereas Dante challenges Edward's understanding of "Equivalent exchange" with arguments (people attemtping the state alchemist exam only to fail, disregard the efforts put into succeeding at it), "Father" challenges Edward's understanding of Alchemy with facts (Mustang paying the price of human transmutation despite not causing it.)
Both are complete parallel opposites of heresy. Clashing with all established standards on pretty much every single front. And both architects of their own downfall, on their very own terms.
When you think about it, it's a very impressive duality that Arakawa created between the two antagonists. They are so removed from one another that it looks like they got nothing in common. Yet under closer inspection, they share so many mirrored similarities that they might as well be one and the same. Simply brilliant.
i finally understand the 2003 anime
How does this comment not have a million likes... I appreciate and adore your perspective.
Your literary skills are beautiful. Please teach me.
@@N3XTREVOLUTION I sincerely decline. Re-reading my post, i realized having committed some severe grammatical and syntax errors that are simply inexcusable to be found within such a lengthy text. As such, i am no one to look after for example.
Too much warehouses in your essay, my friend.
Let's not forget Dante gets one of the coolest and most haunting melodies in the series.
yeah but she has a extremely petty reason for it all. I prefer father's motives over hers any day
True
@@johnnyciobanas5298 but that's what makes her a amazing antagonist for me, not everyone has their goal as to gain power above all else, it's not as compeling as a more grounded reason like "I just want to survive as long as i can, and take revenge on someone at the same time".
@@johnnyciobanas5298 "I WANT TO BE A GOD!!" Pretty basic villain to be honest.
To be fair father's less centered on being god and more about getting all knowledge and having no limits@@basicsimp8798
I have to disagree about your assertion that Dante would be more interesting with a flashback. One of the biggest crutches in writing today is to have a backstory that "will totally explain everything about why this character acts this way, I mean it!" when ambiguity can be just as (if not more) effective. Dante explains her backstory, never letting the audience forget that *this is how Dante sees herself.* That alone tells you more about her than Father's backstory episode that gives much more information, but far less emotion. By letting Dante explain her own story, we learn more about her hatred of Hohenheim and Ed than we would if we saw events play out objectively.
It seems like an inverse "tell and don't show," but that isn't true. Instead, we are being shown what her mind is by how she chooses to frame her own story. An objective flashback would be much more in line with telling and not showing, by giving us all of the info but not necessarily showing us how Dante personally interprets these events.
You can absolutely do both very well, but I want to defend the decision to leave ambiguity about specifics and let Dante's interpret her own past into her own narrative.
That's totally fair. My desire for a flashback is totally subjective and I agree that explaining everything about the character can be enormously detrimental. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I enjoyed reading them :)
Completely True.
But the thing is even with an objective flashback we would still have an understanding of how she frames her past, none of that changes with the addition of an objective flashback. If anything it would add more to her character since we can see the facts that she may have chosen to ignore with her own interpretation.
Ambiguity is all fine and dandy but I think the addition of actual events would do wonders for her character since we could see her entire line of reasoning for how she came to frame her past.
@@breakpoint43 I'd argue that the issue is pacing. If we've already seen an objective flashback, having Dante tell us her story is just repeating what we already know. Yes, it may give a little bit more nuance to her, but it grinds the story to a halt. If this was a Rashomon-style story in which several characters tell us about the events of FMA and that is the meat of the story, that would be fine. But this isn't Dante's story, and devoting that much time to her is ultimately a poor decision, imo.
Not that the show gets pacing perfect, by any means. The whole Dante section is admittedly rushed. But I think that she is far more important (and interesting) as a foil to Ed than as a character in her own right. Let's look at Lust and compare her to Dante for a second.
Lust got a backstory episode that did a good job of developing her, but I think that she is more central to the plot and she functions differently as a foil: Dante is there to test Ed's core beliefs in equivalent exchange (IIRC, it has been years since I watched the show), while Lust is exhibit #1 on the human cost of the Philosopher's Stone. Lust's backstory helps show the dangers of Ed's quest, while Dante's backstory is there to give her a little bit more depth as she challenges Ed's worldview. We only need to know her mindset, not get a full backstory and her own interpretation of that backstory and maybe even Hohenheim's view of the story. It would be diluting her purpose as a device in the narrative.
I may be making all of this up, as specifics are eluding my memory. But eh, it sounds right. :D
@@breakpoint43 Oh, oh! I just came up with an example of what I'm talking about with Dante being important as a foil to Ed, but not really being an important character in her own right. Consider Darth Vader. Spoilers for Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back below... for all two people in the world living under a rock.
The big twist of the whole SW saga is the reveal of Vader being Luke's father. SUPER IMPORTANT! Earth shattering revelation. But how much does it tell us about Vader? Honestly, pretty much nothing. He's still the scary bad guy in black. What does it tell us about Luke? *Everything.* Luke has based his whole life on being a hero like his father, trusting Ben and his uncle, fighting for the rebellion to be just like Dad. And then the harsh, crushing truth: Everything he ever believed was a lie. His father wasn't murdered by Darth Vader. Ben and Uncle Owen lied to him. He was kept on that farm for his whole life, hating the Empire. He watched Vader kill Ben in front of his eyes, and joined a resistance group to destroy the murderer of everyone he ever loved (for the Empire is also behind Owen and Beru's deaths). To hear Vader make this proclamation makes Luke question everything he believes.
We don't need three movies to tell us everything about Vader and how he became the villain of the story. We don't need him to say much of anything. We just need one sentence to make Luke doubt everything he has ever believed. That is the importance of Vader's backstory. His existence is a challenge to Luke's belief in the Force, in his friends, in his whole growth as a person.
Dante serves the same role, although not as successfully. Her sole purpose in the story is to challenge Ed's belief system, much like Vader (true, Vader is also a scary antagonistic force, but he's a pretty flat character prior to this statement... and doesn't grow that much, imho). Unlike Vader's big pronouncement, her backstory is pretty well superfluous. She could be a homunculus in a flask trying to preserve eternal life, and it wouldn't matter much. The importance is what she means to Ed: Hence trying to give her some personal pull by making her Hohenheim's lover, which is kind of interesting but doesn't really develop into much of anything.
But giving her more backstory doesn't change what she means to Ed: She is the antithesis of his belief in equivalent exchange. She is entropy, a force that always takes more fuel than the energy it puts out. That is what is important, and her backstory is just enough to illustrate this without belaboring the point.
I always loved the romantic idea of two lovers sacrificing an entire city to sustain themselves. Much like their love the city that was sacrificed is destroyed and hidden.
I'm pretty much with you on the neutral stance, when comparing these villains. While I do like Father more as a character, due to his design, powers, and more developed back story, I give Dante points for being just so hatable. She's an extremely selfish woman, and while she claims her actions better the world, really, she's only concerned with her own self-preservation at the cost of others. She isn't presented in a cool frame, as opposed to villains like Madara, Sephiroth, and Vader. Dante is just a horrible human being, and that alone sums up her character perfectly.
Both types of villains have their advantages, for scenes with Father, I am going to be amazed by the power and presence he has, while with Dante I am going to be frustrated and bitter at her, for all the right narrative reasons.
I've been waiting for this :).
What separates the two villains the most is possibly how human Dante is and how inhuman the Father feels. They instigate different reactions in the protagonists and the audience. The division in the fandom is the result of the preference they have, I guess.
Father is interesting in that on the surface he feels nonhuman but the more you look the more ironically human he really is.
He just never learns from his flaws like actual humans do
Dante is weird pedo lady
Father is Satan without the Satan
What we see from the other Homunculi (especially Greed, though not exclusively) along with some of his own behaviors that persist after making them is is that Father clearly was more human than he seems, despite his efforts to not be. This is something that the Truth even calls him out on before banishing him to the Gate
Father's motivations are pretty much entirely based on petty things, like having things Hohenheim has (or could have naturally as a human) that he never could. He's so obsessed with being free of limitations because he envied Hohenheim's relative freedom compared to his own (even as a slave). He had the seven deadly sins call him "Father" because having a family was something Hohenheim could do that he couldnt (but he also longed for family himself to some extent, and he turned his "brother" against him with his deception and destroying Xerxes). When he finally achieves his perfected state and could look like anything he wanted, he doesnt choose an inhuman form like his original appearance (which he supposedly took a lot of pride in)--he *chooses* to look like a hotter version of young Hohenheim
At a glance, Father seems less human than Dante, but in some ways, he was actually moreso than she was. All of the Homunculi are just pieces of himself, and there are some recurring patterns in their personalities and motivations that align with Father's backstory and actions when you actually look more closely at them.
I’ve seen comments about how Dante’s aspirations are more human and personal then Dwarf I. The flask/father, but I think they misunderstand who homunculus was. His aspirations were personal. He wanted to be “free”. No consequence, no judgement, to no longer be constrained... but it was never enough. He gets free from the portal, but now he wants out of the flask. He gets free from the flask but now he wants to be god. He made homunculus “children” in order to fill the void. No matter what it would never be enough. His aspirations are pure vanity, he’s a tragic character doomed to fail. It’s psychological and probably the most human thing I’ve seen. The “if only...” mindset. If I had this or that then everything would be good. But like Truth said, he never grew past being the dwarf in the flask
Father in the end was just like humans
this is why he's a great villain. He's a being who wants more, who cna never be satisfied, and cannot stand feeling inferior to everything, so he al;ways strives to be above everything, because otherwise he'll jsut be a small 'dwarf in a flask'. Even his attempts to create a family of hommunculi are also done in service of making himself 'above' regular humans by purging himself of his 'imperfections', but he cna never truly fully remove those parts of himself, that's a delusion.
Father is a man who who is constantly lying to himself because being honest means accepting his weaknesses.
I think the main reason I prefer Father over Dante is because a lot of people tend to forget that the homunculus are all technically extensions of his being and character.
Envy. Gluttony. Greed. Lust. Pride. Sloth. Wrath. They all came from Father and whatever you liked about them also existed in father. So it’s best to see them together as one combined character.
I never forgot that. I just think it's a bit cringe, personally. I prefer the homunculi being a direct consequence of the actions of humans - a final punishment for the sin of human transmutation. As someone else in these comments put it, in BH they only exist because "black goo hates humans" and to me, that's boring as hell. I'm sorry.
Finally! Somebody brought this up!
His children, like he said out of his own mouth are pieces of his own soul. And their behavior reflects part of who he is, whether he knows it or not. It is shown multiple times throughout the second anime that many of the homunculi are not aware of their own contradictory nature. Especially anything that ties them to the human race.
Envy is the biggest example of this.
That moment when you realize greed means Father once wanted friendship@@SnowyWolborg
@@LordofFullmetalthere are already enough consequences for human transmutation. Homunculi being the result of that just undermines the point and creates issues. You can’t create humans. Homunculi being Father’s separated desires created in his pursuit of becoming above humans does for a much better thematic work.
@@3601-c3k okay so a couple of things here. Firstly on the consequences part, while in both versions it has consequences on the individual who performed the transmutation that is as far as the consequences go, this is thematically at odds with the series focus on the interconnected nature of the world and the responsibility we have towards it. I think it was a brilliant decision in 03 for the consequences of going against the flow of the world to be broader reaching than the limited scope of our characters bodies being impacted, it does a great job playing into the themes of the one and the all and Ed’s journey towards accepting his place in it.
As for the part about creating people. In all versions it is possible to create homunculi who are by definition “artificial humans” who are for all intents and purposes human in appearance, cognitive ability, and even elemental composition. In both versions it still remains impossible to bring back the dead. The homunculi in 03 are not the same people as who were attempted to be brought back.
In concept I think the examination of the sins as distilled components father excised from himself is interesting as well, (though I do think the execution fell short at times, in particular with father being supposed to demonstrate the necessity for the sins being unable to relate to humans without them etc… but every action he makes is directly motivated by the sins undercutting this whole concept.) Still I do like the thought and some of the homunculi it examined with it (wrath, greed and envy) I really enjoy.
Overall I like both concepts and how both shows approached the thematics from different angles even if I have a preference for 03’s approach and think it was better executed.
I was always salty about how the story did not explore Father's loneliness. To me, it always felt like he did want a family and connection yet, mostly because of the King, he received a lot of bad influence from the humans and thus grew into something evil.
To me, the most painful part of Father's character is that he is a very human person who attempts to achieve greatness through desperately disregarding his humanity, even though his human flaws are the source of his desires, while in the end, he fails because the true way to greatness was through embracing humanity, not rejecting it.
I feel the same about all the homunculi. I think they could really benefit from a spin-off/prequel showing how Father created them and Amestris and how they interact with each other. Also to add some more depth like idk Lust wanting a lover or Envy showing little signs of jealousy.
''Sometimes sitting on the fence hurts your butt.''
One can only sit on the fence so long without hurting. Being indecisive for too long will often incur a cost with it. Most people will hate you, if you don't take their side.
The reason I enjoyed Father more wasn't really because I think he's a better villain... but because the overall story appealed to me more. His place in the narrative fitted the themes and the ending was more satisfying, because the manga had one of the best, well thought-out plots I've ever seen in fiction. Dante's still pretty cool though.
One is unique and thematically interesting(Father) while the other is personally more intimate but largely a little dull when it came to the endgame(Dante)...a mixture of both of these villains would work perfectly in a live-action TV series, Dante being a homunculus dwarf in the flask before van Hohenheim and the destruction of Xerxes, which gives her a female body whom van Hohenheim initially fell in love with and entered into a whirlwind romance with her that would give birth to a child. This child and they lived happily till the child died of mercury poisoning and van Hohenheim would try to use human transmutation to bring the child back. Creating a deformed and bloody humanoid with a piece of the child's soul still inside him. Envy is the first human-based homunculus, unable to face up to what he had done to his son, van Hohenheim would abandon both Dante and envy. Envy would be a malformed humanoid form for a few years, unable to speak, but constantly bleeding and crying as Dante rearranged his body with all the skill of a mad chiropractor, feeding him small fragments of her Philosopher's Stone every few days to relieve the pain just enough for him to sleep until she discovered how to make mass quantities through the slaughter of many, which allowed him to take on a proper human shape and finally take away the physical pain, the abandonment of Hohenheim and envy's creation would cause dante to decide to absorb god and become immortal and creates amestris precisely for that purpose. Envy's hatred for his father and need to kill him would be intact and it will be his main goal. Whereas the rest just want to serve Dante in her quest to absorb God, envy wants to kill van Hohenheim. His hatred for doctor Marco being rooted in the fact that all alchemists remind him of his father. His killing of the ishvallan girl being rooted in intense jealousy of seeing her with her parents. His hatred for Edward being rooted in the fact that the Elric brothers received the fatherly love that he never did
That's brilliant
Dante is more realistic. Father is typical shonen trash evil guy
Dante is waaay better
@@gijane2cantwaittoseeyou203 IS he though? I hear this arguement a lot but yeah he spends a lot of time sitting on his ass and ultimately wants to 'eat god', I don't feel these make him 'typical shonen trash'. His motives are pretty interesting once you think about them, and his relationship with his minions is QUITE interesting and different.
This is pretty frickin' great, really. What are some of your other ideas for a FMA series? Mine is like a mix between Brotherhood epic lore, and 2003's haunting, personal tale, and waaay more serious with the tone, ala 2003. But in my version, Dante and Father are kept separate entities. But yours is even better! If you'd like, we can share some ideas!
Father is designed to draw a comparison between the two extremes of understanding Alchemy or just life and the universe in general, with the other extreme being Ed. It's the most apparent in the last scenes of Ed and Father w/ the "Truth' respectively.
Their attitudes to life led them to different endings when confronting "Truth", and the point the author wants to draw out is her preferred explanation to the saying "one is all, all is one". To understand the universe, you must be part of it, and not try to go beyond it. To better yourself, one must accept your own shortcomings, and not try to ignore or cut it off, because they too are part of yourself; to cut them off would only mean cutting off part of yourself, and not bettering yourself.
And from their respective endings, you can obviously tell Ed's answer was considered correct, while Father's wasn't.
Dante has a more apparent personality and relatable goal and all that, but it falls short when you consider what Father stands for in the entire story.
--not to mention Father hella hot, hoooo boy--
Yes! Father got alchemy plastic surgery before the last fight lol.
father: darth sidious from star wars
dante: the architect from matrix
choose your own poison
Father makes Hohenheim a philosopher's stone because he needs a witness. His pride won't allow his grandeur to go unremembered and unappreciated.
Man FMA 03's aesthetic and directing are phenomenal
Dante is just Orochimaru, just without the snake motif.
One thing to note in the Anime, Father tells Greed "if you wanted something I wanted it first" Greed then realizes that friends are what he wanted so this begs to raise a question did Father only want a friend but was blind to what he truly wanted?
the main reason why I like Father more as the big bad is that I like that his plan is more thought out, there's a reasons for EVERYTHING he does, and even the hommunculi have some role in that plan of his (be it specifics, or just because he expelled them from himself to 'purify' himself). Every awful terrible thing that happens as a result of his actions all play into his ultimate plan, every person a chess piece to be moved and sacrificed for this one grand plan.
Comparatively, Dante's plan is...less compelling, to me. It's way less controlled and thought out, the homunculi have a much smaller role in said plan and her plan is ultimate just to make a philosopher's stone to switch bodies with someone, which is underwhelming since she's been giving people stones willy nilly for no damn reason, or at least for no reason that would actually HELP her plan.
I also find the strange hints of Father's depths and ambiguity more interesting than Dante's personality, who's mostly just a vain asshole pissed off at her ex-boyfriend, with any other depth to her left largely unexplored or relegated as a lie she tells herself.
Great video, I thought you had stopped making these! I loved the body swapping aspect of Dante one of the coolest villan concepts of all time. With that said I felt she was introduced to abruptly and to close to the end for us to get a proper understanding of her as a character, and what is her true motivations, this uncertainty made her scary in a sense but a little too shallow for my liking
dante wins for me just because of her music.
also she was a lot more unsettling to me than father, maybe because she's undeniably human (also the creepy come ons)
Dante's theme is the only good thing about her
The character is a mess
Lyrics:
Who oooh whoa wow whoa
Hooow wow whoa oh wow
Whoa oh wow whoa whoa whoooooa
Truthfully I always preferred 2003 because it was more about questioning things than brotherhood did. In 2003 I always wondered what was the right path Science or God, but in Brotherhood we're told Science works because of god and nothing was really left up to interpretation.
Interesting point that i think of when i see Father in FMA. He is so deadset on removing his human emotions. But he displays all of those emotions just as and in some ways more strongly than his homonculus. He is ruled by his emotions, while they actually are led by their brains, twisted as they may be (with the exception of gluttony).
Pride: he displays this through his arrogance about the homonculus being superior and being disgusted by Greed ignoring his "homonculus pride" but as soon as he is challenged he gets scared and all that pride goes away.
Father: Displays his Pride by perceiving himself as the superior lifeform of all, by believing he is effectively god and can become god, his Pride is what makes him so arrogant as to not believe that the Elrich brothers will find a way to stop him, which inevitably means his Pride causes his downfall.
Lust: We never actually see her controlled by her lust, she is sexy no doubt, but she never makes orgasm references, doesn't get off, and as far as we see doesn't seem to indicate a want for sex. She doesn't even really lust after power, this is purely a construct of souls that know how to use sex to manipulate others.
Father: While he doesn't want to bang, he does lust, more than any other. He lusts for power, all of the power to the point that he gets himself killed pursueing it.
Gluttony: This character is ruled by his emotion, so he is a bit of the exception to this.
Father: This is admiteddly harder to say, but i would perceive him as gluttoness, either a glutton for power, or glutton for human souls since he feeds on so many of them. Gluttony is a part of him for sure but admittedly maybe not quite as blatantly as the others
Wrath: Wrath displays this in his combat and violence, but is not ruled by it, and continues rule patiently. He is a quite smoldering anger, but in addition to that, as you mention in your previous video he does things such as potentially love his wife (maybe) and takes pride in things, and enjoys when the humans surprise him. His anger allows him to be motivated to what could have been noble qualities, if he didn't still hate all humans
Father: He displays his rage when fighting against the humans, he is angered by their belief they can stop him, and of course when they actually begin to stop him. He also seems angered by Greed rebelling against him, as well as he was angered when he in the flask, his wrath, is his hatred, for humans, for limits and for the weak little dwarf he used to be. Like Napolean
Greed: As you mention in your previos video Greed displays his namesake in what he wants, but in subtle ways as well such as craving friends, a purpose, happiness, not wanting to lose anything, being greedy and wanting to be his own master. Things that are noble and not, but almost never immoral. In the end he proves he is not ruled by greed when he sacrifices himself to save his friend.
Father: Father is the epitome of greed. Wanting all the power for himself, inevitably choosing to sacrifice his only friend in Hoenheim to gain more power and eventually attempt to consume the truth, the all. In the end his Greed kills him.
Sloth: This is displayed in his slow mind, and assumedly slow movement. Sloth is similair to Gluttony in that he is a great example of emotion without much contradiction, admittedly a very weak character but he serves his purpose as a intimidating opponent.
Father: On the otherhand Father ironically displays sloth much more then well Sloth. He could have done so much more with his power, yet chooses to sit around for the vast majority of the time content to do nothing to acheive his goals. He is easily the most lazy character in the show, this laziness arguably causes his death, while he needed to manipulate things to acheive his goals so he could not have done everything himself, he is not a generic supervillain that way, he still could have been more involved. This lack of involvement until the end also leads to his demise.
Envy: Envy was well covered in your previous video as well, so i don't want to go into it too much. Suffice it to say to be envious of others you must have some self-loathing, and envy certainly does. She hates humans and others who remind her that she hates herself for her limited emotions, limited happiness, her appearance and in general lack of humanity.
Father: Father is also the best example of this. The entire reason he broke out of the flask was due to being envious of the humans who created him, once he broke out of that he wanted more and more power, as he saw the entity of the next step as something he envied because he loaths his own weakness, his own limits. At the end of the day his self-hatred is what causes the events of the entire show. He could have gotten out of the flask and lived on freely. But instead because he hated his own weakness so much to pursue more power he pursued more until it killed him.
To me a big theme of this show is acceptance. Accepting your flaws, your emotions, your wrongs, your rights, and your history. The show is constantly showing characters who have tragic histories, character flaws, have commited haenous actions or terrible mistakes. By the end though, the characters who come out stronger and win, are the ones who accept all of these things and move beyond these things while not ignoring these flaws. But Father and the homonculus who continue to follow him, all show that not accepting your faults lead to ruin.
I know this was long but i am very interested in how you would respond to this so if anyone else or Lowart have an opinion on this i am curious.
I personally found Dante far scarier and more realistic. The way she would manipulate things from the shadows, leaking just enough knowledge to just enough people to get what she wants, rarely having to involve herself as she takes advantage of those who grieve and steals the results of the many people who sacrificed everything in order to have a chance at seeing a loved one again but never actually achieving it because they didn't have all the information... yeah, she really left an impact when I first saw FMA 2003, and it stuck with me.
I also like how the homunculus are represented in both series. Those of the first FMA are treated as the present tragedies for breaking the Taboo, while those of the Brotherhood are the truths behind all those past tragedies.
The fact that the Homunculi manipulated humans for their own ends and called them foolish for their selfish motivations in 2003 was hypocritical especially since they wanted to be humans.
Envy and Bradley hated humans. The only hypocrites that manipulated humans and wanted to be humans were Lust and Sloth.
Greed and Gluttony really didn't care, and Wrath never manipulated anyone.
@@whichDude yeah also both Lust and Sloth lacked self awareness. Especially Lust Who was trying to find out why she was unhappy
The thing with og FMA, it felt more fleshed out with the dramatic tensions and the stakes are higher to a degree. For example, battling the homunculi requires you knowing their original remains and destroy them just to kill one. But in Brotherhood, you just wear our their philosopher’s stone by killing them as many times as it takes. It’s an easy thing if you’re Roy Mustang, for others that depends. Not to mention the homunculi in the first FMA series are created through the sins of the alchemists that tried to play God and paid the price so it feels more personal. Both series are great on their own. It all comes down to personal preferences.
I think the concept of killing them multiple times until they stay dead still happened in 03, it's just that no one (in both series) knows how much you need to throw at til their life force runs out, and that because it's hard to determine how many times you need to keep killing a fully charged homonculi just gives the illusion that they are indeed immortal. Lust almost fully killed Wrath when she kept shredding him to bits, and at that point onwards I don't think he ever consumed anymore red stones again. Then there was the original Pride (I can't remember whether he was still made into a hybrid human/homonculi in the 03), the only way he was killed was due to the remains that kept him paralyzed and burned to death (possibly for an extended period of time like keeping).
You don't exactly need the remains to kill them, Alchemy was involved for both sides (whether they're forced to vomit out their red stones, or eradicate the souls in the philosopher stone by Dr Marco). But it makes it easier to take them out since their original source will physically haunt them, and even so it's no easy feat to even have possession of it unless you know who it was originally from. Though I agree with what you said: It all comes down to personal preferences, and that og had more going on with them.
My take ?
* Father
The good ? That whole flashback sequence in the city of Xerxes when he was the midget in the flask. That section in the manga was definitely interesting and Father had a "deal with the devil" quality to him, leading him to manipulate a whole civilization into giving him more power. UNFORTUNATELY, he decides to have an ultimate goal to end all ultimate and throws away anything that makes him even potentially charismatic. He's just in the end a powerful piece of cardboard, sitting on his ass until the promised day. Then in the final battle he has the power of GAWD so that he stands around and let the protagonists gang up on him. He was even more of a letdown than Hades in Saint Seiya... so yeah, he's massively powerful. Wooptee-fucking-doo. Except he's not eldritch enough to be truly frightening and LACKS the proper showmanship to be genuinely entertaining.
I've seen him compared to 80's cartoon villains which is complete bullshit ! THEY ARE ENTERTAINING and MEMORABLE while he's like Exdeath's boring insipid cousin ! You can be a one-note character and STILL BE AWESOME, But you have to swing for the fences and OWN IT ! Father, much like the initial
version of Dracula, defangs himself too fucking much as the tale goes on for me to care...
* Dante
Ah yes, the one people went on and on about how lame she was... Turns out I feel for her the same way I do for Dio Brando; their vileness only equates their greatness as antagonists and predators to humanity !
FIRST OFF, Dante might still have a modicum of have feelings for Hoenheim but they are not so deep as to keep her from being an absolute monster. In fact, THAT meeting is the only time she shows genuine concerns... and it did not stop her from throwing him beyond the fucking gate without so much a second thought.
Secundo, she is ACTUALLY SCARY. Dante is scuzzy as all get out with rape undertones hidden in the package of a nice old lady or a beautiful young girl. I love how even despite her skill at alchemy, she has feet of clay so she has to resort to cunning and pulling strings from behind the curtains to get what she wants.
Terzio ? Her motivation... NOT FUCKING DYING. Yeah it's simple and seen elsewhere but, you know, most of us are fine with that as a motivation even if it costs a civilization or 2 to achieve.
And the best thing about her for my money ? THIS SPEECH !
"...People work because they believe it will pay, for 'equal effort' does not always mean 'equal gain'
... Consider the state alchemy exam that you passed with flying colors. How many others took the test that day? Spent months, years preparing, some working much harder than you. Yet you were the only one who passed. Where was their reward? Is it their fault they lacked your natural talent? Or what about the equal value of each person's life? If I clap my hands, the baby won't survive. And if I do that, where is the world's balance in that? Does that mean the baby's only worth in being born is so that it can die? It's doing all an infant CAN to survive, breathing, crying for help. But what does it get in exchange? People can say there is a balance, a logic that everything happens for a reason. But the truth is far less desired. No matter how hard you work; when you die, you die. Some spend their entire life trying to scratch their way to the top and still die in poverty while others are born into wealth without ever lifting an arm. It's a cruel and random world, but the chaos is oh, so beautiful.
...Equivalent exchange is a myth. A contrived order to give sense to a world that has none. Can you accept that now or do you need another lesson?
"
Oh and their homunculi, the former had jobbers, the latter had MONSTERS. Just my 2 cents...
Agreed. Father felt more like a cool and fun 2 dimensional villain. Dante felt more relatable. She had an overwhelming fear of death, so she had to do extremely bad things to get the power to prolong her life. She likely told herself that all humans are bad and that life is a cruel meaningless joke to feel morality justified in doing what she does. I thought Father was awesome, but I could sum him up in one sentence. Dante needs more than one to understand her character.
Oh you again
This is a really good comment, agree 100% with you
I kind of wondered if there's a way to make a compelling Fullmetal series that utilizes both Father and Dante. Personally I would favor the method of Failed Transmutation but that wouldn't prevent Father from commanding the other Homunculi. I would say he could either A. Create them through the same process or B. rally them using their malice for the former makers. I would probably have Dante as the secondary Antagonist but could also serve as a usurper depending on how events would go. Her almost predatorial thoughts towards Ed I consider another from of Spite towards Hohenheim. Dante not only has a direct reason to antagonize Ed, it's also understandable to believe she would sabotage Fathers actions.
Now for the Homunculi themselves, we'll have to pick and choose which ones we like better. Unless you go by the idea forging new ones to replace the defeated.
I only watched FMAB. After seeing your analyze of the both villains, It seems dante is more interesting character than The father. For some weird reason she reminds me of lord voldamort from Harry potter..LOL.
A reddit user who goes by JulietDouglas made a post actually comparing the parallel and in some opposite aspects of fma03's ending and Harry Potter's, I'd definitely recommend checking that out
An amazing continuation to this series. I honestly didn't know of the similarities between Dante and Father. But you layed them out pretty well.
Damn bro I need more. Never get enough of your stuff, especially when you're on about Fullmetal which is like part of my identity-
Keep being you 🥺💯 Stay at it King 👑
Excellent video and while I do have a lot to add from my own thoughts, I won't bother on boring people with wall of text (or one that is even longer than what I'm about to write). However I will share my personal preference between the two villains.
Father, no matter his character and reasons, is a video game boss at the very end. Someone to be shot at and punched at. He is an obstacle that was physically (for the most part) beaten down. A boss with a health bar, if you may. He is a villain that works and has interesting ideas, but he is something that has been seen before many times and there isn't anything wrong about that though he doesn't feel special even if there are special points to his character. I find his connectiong to Ed's father, the way he cuts off his emotions by creating living beings out of them, as great but he isn't truly personal villain to the brothers. The way he doesn't come across as threatening is that he is solely dependent on the human sacrifices which he can't harm and it takes the tension out of it as well.
Dante, with simple human needs and fears, is someone whose plans are ruined but she isn't beaten down like a boss and instead of challenging the heros in might she challenges them with her mind. Dante is personal villain who makes Ed see the world differently by countering the equilevant exchange and it is far more interesting (to me personally than being shot by artillery fire and punched at). She brought down her own fall with her actions in the end. She also is a villain we have seen before many times, but she has unique twists to that. In the sense of her category Dante could be said to be a vampire. Though in her case she is a body swapping vampire who can't do so without a magical item and that is a great twist on the old formula. She also isn't dependent on the brothers (or human sacrifices) as she can have anyone try to attempt to create the philosopher's stone for her so the threat she (and her underlings) pose is far more tense since she doesn't need to hold herself back like Father.
I do understand that isn't enough for everyone, but I do hope my thoughts will help to clarify some personal preferences people have between the villains.
What a timely upload! Watching Shamballa a second time, liking it even more now.
To be honest, Father is more sympathetic than Dante.
I read the manga and watched Brotherhood, and NEVER once did I think I would be content to live forever in a flask.
The King of Xerxes is responsible for Xerxes. All Father did was take advantage of a selfish human. But the King’s court never once tried to talk the King out of sacrificing their nation.
I can’t blame Father for Xerxes. I do blame him for everything after.
But even then, the Homunculus had no idea what it was to be free. To live.
By his nature and isolation, Father was born without hope or options.
They are both pure evil.
The odd thing about The Dwarf from fmab is that many call him dull and disapointing for not having enough human moments interacting with characters beyond being the big bad if the story. I've always found this strange because every homunculus is an extention of that character. They are explicitly called such by the dwarf on multiple occasions, even telling greed that there is nothing he has ever desired that he didn't desire first. Greed! The guy who found that all he wanted was geuine companions. I think that this connection informs us a whole lot more about the dwarf's character than anything else. Sloth found life itself to be almost unbearable. Gluttony seemed innocent and childlike, but destroyed and devoured everything and everyone around him with his endless hunger. Pride pretends strength and superiority, but deep down is a coward and a slave to the ambitions that created him. Each homunculus represented the dwarf in different ways, each one showed us a facet of his mind.
And the most damning thing of all, and the part that makes the character of the dwarf the most poignant and enjoyable as a villain to me, is how his gate of truth was completely blank. Each gate we see is totally unique tot the individual, representing their life experiemces and outlook on the world as well as their alchemical knowledge. The dwarf, as Truth said, didn't actually know anything beyond what he already did upon his creation as an alchemical AI cheatsheet.
The reason I like the dwarf as a better villain is because he better fits the overall theme of the story than Dante does.
In terms of personality both are as interesting as wet toilet paper, but I'd say Father is the better overall villain because he put more effort to his goals. Managed to trick an entire kingdom while being a speck in flask, taught a form of alchemist he could disable on a whim, literally shaped the country for his philosopher stone, forced the physical embodiment of Sloth to continually dig tunnels for the transmutation circle to work, had the other homunculi perform tasks to aid the process, etc. His only flaw was not having all five sacrifices accounted for before the eclipse.
Dante's plan was just cause as much misery as possible in the hopes that an alchemist would create a philosopher stone. She put no real effort towards her goals and just hoped that things would turn out her way. And for what, to body hop and live forever? For what purpose? At least a grab at godhood is something of a unique goal, even if Father only held it for a little bit.
In the absence of a specific goal, the basis of Dante's character. This is her danger. In the banality and meaninglessness of evil. She's focusing on this topic and challenging Edward's philosophy of life. She says there are no goals worth pursuing in a world where your efforts are worthless. If she can kill a baby, does that mean it had to happen, or did it not make sense in the first place, like everything else in this world?
I feel that father had to split half of the souls with hoenheim because he needed someone to hold him/bring him to the proper center of the transmutation circle. Trapped in a flask necessitated it.
I've always preferred Dante to Father. Their final fights really cemented that for me. Father and Ed's final battle is a big dumb Shonen Dragon Ball Z action-fest, while Dante and Ed's final battle was more of an intellectual battle of words and philosophies.
There are two Humonculi I prefer in the 2003 version: Sloth and Greed. Sloth because having the Elric brothers have to confront their past sin is far more interesting than "the big strong guy who's always sleepy and forced to dig tunnels". Greed not so much for the character himself, but for the character development he provides Ed. I love the moment when Edward kills Greed and suddenly realizes he has become a cold blooded killer. I loved Edward having to cope with having killed Greed and it does so much for the character.
tbh I think Father just needed someone to hold his flask in the right place and the alchemic reaction just naturally split up the souls between everyone standing at the center. He just SAID it was a gift to Hoenheim.
Father made sure him and hoenheim were stand at the true middle of the circle. Even at the end othe series when he opens the earth gate he had to be at the middle.
I hope you’re doing a 2003 Envy vs. Brotherhood Envy! I think they’re both amazing antagonists, but I kinda feel like 2003 Envy deserves some respect to his name.
He already did make a brief comparison of the two in his Homucli video.
He already compared them. Also 03 Envy is fucking AWESOME, the other one is such a jobber...
Father may be more powerful and badass, but Dante accomplished something that not even Father could achieve-she destroyed Ed's philosophical beliefs and proved him wrong.
Sure, she still got defeated in the end, but Ed had to acknowledge that Equivalent Exchange was not always correct.
i want to see a rap Battle between them
I haven't watched 2003 version but Dante sounds like such an interesting antagonist.
Very nice and well thought out video, I have more appreciation for these characters now (because I like really didn't get Father as much before tbh)
We do get backstory for dante, She was hohenheim's ex gf and they had a kid together at some point also they made the philosopher stone couple of times so to switch bodies to keep on living. her motivations are that she wants to mate with edward as the man she did like, ed's dad left her for another woman
Dante randomly getting enough hencemen to name after the sins makes no sense vs father casting his sins into human form.
She didn't randomly get them. She made 3 herself and purposely looked for more. I gotta give Dante her props her plan was pretty good. Judging from her conversation with Pride, she'd already been successful before. The homunculi are born as blank slates and she's manipulative enough to sway them to do her bidding.
2003 literally shows Dante looking for potential homunculi, and even states herself that she created three of them.
I swear most people who shit on 2003 haven't actually watched it.
Right. Made 3; yet named them in a way to suggest she would have a total of 7. No more no less. If she found a 8th, since that's out of her control, whats her plan? Ignore it till one dies
Father knew how many he would end up with, a part of him, his naming makes sense
Villains like Father and Dante aren't the types we can simply brush off. They are Final Fantasy-tier demons who may actually be capable of breaking Kingdom Hearts heroes not just through skill and power, but in intelligence and philosophy.
Personally, I think they're both great. But I'm on Team Father because Father served as a much better foil to Ed and Al. Especially such a clever one that's more than just "I'm you but evil."
Dante felt more like just an angry, arrogant person. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just less interesting than what Father ended up being
Both character's motivations are understandable to me. Dante seeks self preservation, father seeks to ascend to a higher being. Both desires are utterly and entirely human.
10 seconds in and I already laughed, your writing improves with each video Lowart, good shit
I think on a fundamental level in Brotherhood, Father is obsessed with transcending limitations because in his mind he is always caught in the flask no matter how powerful he becomes much like how Hoinheim says all these years and you never grew beyond your days in the flask. To Father the only thing he understands are power relationships and he thinks attaining power will grant him godhood and freedom when all he needed to do was embrace humanity which he was incapable of doing because its likely since he was created by humans and hated them he thought he was better than them and thus did not have to live by their rules. Kind of like perhaps how Artificial Intelligence would be insanely intelligent but still have a human mind and way of thinking Father likely saw deeply into the human condition and hated it so much that he wanted nothing to do with it. Its really tragic because I see him more like a traumatized little child acting out of fear. Basically on some level he cannot accept that raw intelligence and power do not elevate him above other beings, that his quest to consume god and become as god was flawed from the start because he was not a god and cant become one. He never understood the all is one and the one is all concept, that love and unity are essential to understanding and working within our flaws by working with other people not using them. That the path of selfishness leads to self destruction. There is no peace or stability in seeking power only destruction.
YESSS I WANTED MORE FMA.CONTENT AND YOU DELIVERED. thank c;
Dante's motivations are extremely petty & vain in nature but also relatable. Her sheer humanity is what makes her such a monster, and that's why she's the better villain.
Father was also human and pure evil
Possibility #3 that Hoenheim got half the souls of the people of Xerxes:
He was standing in the center of the circle, same as the Drawrf in the Flask, and the 50/50 split was out of Homunculus' control.
Fma: Mother
Fma: Father
So in this video and in the one comparing the Homunculus there's a connection to Van Hohenheim who I'm just going to refer to as Van cause that's easier to spell... which you BARELY even mention... You mention him a couple times in this video but don't really go into detail what exactly his connection to these villains is.
In the 2003 Anime Van and Dante had a child together. That child became the first Homunculi of that series, Envy who is technically Ed and Al's half brother due to sharing the same father but having a different mother. It's through the death of their son and the failed Transmutation to bring him back that they end up separating. I actually agree that it would of been great to see this story play out in a flash back. This is after all a visual media and the general rule is show don't tell... instead we're given an exposition dump as Dante explains her back story. At least she's explaining things to characters who don't already know the story so as far as exposition dumps go it's a well written one.
In Brotherhood, Father actually starts out as that formless thing in the flask. He manipulates Van to help him gain a body and escape the flask. Because Van's blood was used Father became essentially a clone of Van which is why they look identical. For part of the series up until the back story was revealed I actually thought that Father WAS Van. One thing I wish they did differently with him is, I wish Scott McNeil, the original voice of Van in the 2003 Anime had been brought back to voice BOTH characters in this series. Van and Father have different voice actors and I think it actually would of been better given how Father is essentially an evil mirror of Van if he also copied Van's voice, not just his looks. Another interesting change would be if Van wasn't an absent Father, if he actually had a relationship with his sons so that it would be even more creepy when they eventually have to fight someone who is a copy of their own father. This could of mirrored their relationship with Sloth in the 2003 series but sadly it really doesn't mean much to Ed or Al that their big bad is wearing their father's face. It makes the whole taking his form thing kind of pointless.
I found Dante to be slightly more compelling due to her relationship with Van, Envy, and the Elric Brothers. Father should be the more interesting of the two but they don't really do anything with his likeness to Van so they could really change his appearance entirely and nothing would be lost. There's almost no reason for him to have a history with Van at all.
i think 03 offers a great, alternative point of view on everything fma (the manga, and subsequently, the 09 adaptation) has to offer. this adaptation did an amazing job with what little they had at the time of production (the manga was far from being finished by that time), and dante is a great villain that leads the story into something completely different yet just as amazing as the source material. both adaptations are great on its own right, eventhough i prefer the 09 one since i love the manga, but thats up to personal taste.
Something I noticed about 2003 that I'm kind of surprised you didn't mention, though I think its a bit of a small detail but alas. Why are the Homunculi named after the seven deadly sins in 2003? This is something I've heard people ask, mainly as an attempt to discredit 2003 and point it out as a flaw, but given Dante's personality, how she sees herself as above humans and even grows to despise them, I could see Dante raising these Homunculi and naming them after the sins since they are the creation of failed human transmutations, which is a taboo/sin among alchemists, and then use them to further her own ends. Almost as sort of poetic justice, where she uses the sins of mankind against them, though this also further highlight's Dante's hypocrisy since one of the sins, Envy, is her own son.
Also, I find it interesting that while Mangahood has Father, 2003 has Dante... or should we also say, Mother. This last one is just a fun little observation.
D-Skull Gaming
That being the reason for why they’re named after the seven deadly sins is interesting! It would have been interesting as well if the reasons for their creation were also tied to their respective sin, which I guess you can make a case for each of them? But it would have been cool to explore that more. (Forgive me if it was explored, I haven’t watched 2003 in a while and don’t remember all of the specific plot details.)
03 never goes into why She names Homunculi after sins. There's a fair amount of theories/speculation for it.
In Fma 03, Christianity exist. The concept of seven deadly sins originate from Christian theology. There's implication that Dante and Hohenheim may practice the religion. Dante hideout entrance is located in a christian Church. The church of Leto is modeled after that church. Another possible hint is her Flamel symbol, which is essentially a stylized cross.
Initially, I had a section about that in here, but it felt out of place in this video (it made Dante's section about twice as long and involved discussing Dante's Divine Comedy, which I didn't feel I had a good enough grasp of yet to include in a video). However, I might make a video about Dante and the Divine Comedy later.
@@gguitarguy9549 Honestly, for some reason, I had completely forgotten that Christianity was meant to exist in world of FMA prior to the existence of Alchemy, but that is a great point.
@@nyabis8044 Don't worry, FMA 2003 doesn't dive deep into each Homunculus' creation, except for Slot, Lust and Wrath. Though it would have been nice to see it for others, particularly Greed, I think that air of mystique is a what makes a lot of the Homunculi in 2003 so interesting.
Never heard of Dante. Thx for that. ;D
One of these days I wanna watch 2003 FMA but I don't think it's soon
Hey Lowart. Do you think a tiny mini-series following Hohenheim would be a good idea? Following young Von Hohenheim and how he interacts with Dante and what would be envy 400 years ago. And some of the stuff Dante did because Greed, Gluttony, and Pride are all her creations. In fact Greed was based on a lover of Dante after Hohenheim.
Just a thought 😂
Honestly, the main story reason why I strongly prefer Brotherhood is because of 2003's ending. To go through the whole series in this fantasy world where people can do a sort of magic which is thinly veiled as a science, and then suddenly, in the final episodes, we're suddenly in real-world London during WWII?? It was just too jarring of a transition for me, and I did not like it one bit. On top of that, a lot of things, to me personally, felt rushed and shoehorned about 03's ending, both with the pacing compared to how it was leading up to it, and weird things like Envy turning out to be... Well, I'm not even sure, really. I never understood that when I watched way back when. He was, like, a secret third son that Hoinheim had?? So, Ed and Al's long lost brother?? Everything just seemed to come completely out of left field to me, and suddenly it was just over.
Meanwhile, brotherhood takes a lot more time to build up to what, to me, felt like a much more satisfying ending. Plus, I mean, I really liked the art style, awesome animation, and actual HD resolution of Brotherhood, haha.
I guess none of that has much to do with which VILLAIN I prefer, but I guess it should be obvious that I prefer Father, since Dante is a 2003-exclusive character. I think that has more to do with Father getting more buildup and backstory, though, by nature of just having a longer series to work with.
I believe Envy (or at least Envy before he became Envy) was the son of both Dante and Hohenheim.
Yeah for me that honestly felt like it came out of nowhere just to shock Ed enough so that Envy was given a chance to kill him.
Though I guess it added stuff to Envy’s character? Maybe? At least it makes sense as to why he continued to follow her while the others kind of did their own thing.
Actually, to be fair, Envy being related to Hohenheim was foreshadowed ever since the 5th laboratory. While I agree that the parallel world thing is sorta out of nowhere (a world with European inspired setting where the leader of the country is referred to as Fuhrer kinda makes it add up) Envy's reveal wasn't.
D-Skull Gaming
Ah I haven’t watched 2003 in a while and don’t remember all the details. Thank you for telling me about the foreshadowing at the 5th laboratory!
Arguably the Gate of Truth does foreshadow the real world early on. When Edward is being fed knowledge a lot of photos of real-world events and science are being shown. Hohenheim even mentions this latter when he brings up the Atomic Bomb. I understand why you dislike this aspect, and for me personally, it probably is the weakest aspect of 2003's ending. However, ignoring COS, The other word being Earth doesn't affect all that much, the world could have been any other dimension and it would have had essentially the same effect on the plot.
@@nyabis8044 no problem, its kind of subtle because not much is done until dante and Hohenheim hit the scene (naturally) but in the 5th lab Envy does tell Ed "I can never forgive you for carrying that bastard's blood in your veins!" While not necessarily hinting that Envy is Hohenheim's son, it does hint that Envy knows Hohenheim and had a history with him. Not to mention Envy's anger over not getting to kill Hohenheim.
I actually dropped 2003 FMA because that character annoyed me and felt like a weird self-insert at the start, had no idea she was actually the villain lol
That's because Dante just does not have the presence of a main villain. She's not around anywhere near long enough to make the viewer feel like she is that kind of a threat.
Yo wtf is full metal alchemist. I haven't seen it but the stuff i know were resurrecting your parents by drawing a mini crop circle and sacrificing a couple children probably and now Dante from the devil may cry series is canonically fighting my dad who went to the store and never came back while the thumbnail shows us dark matter from Kirby trapped in a crystal ball marrying some woman that is probably very integral to the actual story. Now I have to watch it
That's basically it
Father was a broken mirror for the main characters. It shows how twisted you can be if you just break your moral little more.
at 4:14 lapis philosophurus (or something) start splaying i and just wet my pants. damni luv that sound track
I like both versions of the show a lot. 03 has more emotion while brotherhood has better narrative. Both are so good.
Imagine if they had somehow both existed and had their own arcs?
Can you do a video comparing the Homunculi? I think that is where 2003 really shines.
I'm convinced the reason anime fans like Father better is because he follows the conventional shonnen anime trope better; Big bad trying to be God and his hands are all over most of the hero's journey. The climax of the story also encapsulates that he's just a typical shonnen style final boss
I definitely get a more shounen vibe from father. Some comments here have listed reasons they like father better and it's the aspects that make him fitting as a shounen anime villain. Overall Brotherhood is the shounen it was meant to be and 03 is not. Pretty much two different anime sharing similar titles as a result.
I like him because I find his motives more interesting and his plan is way more thought out and all ecnompassing, and even how he treats the homunculi is more interesitng to me.
Overall people who prefer FMAB do because it's a classical shonen (more actions, less tragedies, less mature content, happy ending, not complex, etc). It's like a cultural thing, many people dont like mature or psychological content
@@sessishownu3196 though weirdly Kimbley's MUCH more complex in Brotherhood/manga than in the more 'complex' 2003 anime, where he was simply just a murdery psycho.
@@sarafontanini7051 that's just an example though. You can't put complex in scare quote when FMAB fans themselves always say that FMA03 is too complicated.
And Kimblee did have a good finale speech as a nihilist,altough he deserved more obviously.
Always love your FMA content
Also Dante > Father, dont @ me
For me there is no comparison!! Father is definitely a better main villain than Dante (and overall for me the 2003 version doesn't hold a candle to Brotherhood)
but I have to say that I didn't mind the first version of the anime either, in fact I found it a good alternative version!!
Ngl I completely forgot about Dante.... existing. Tho I do remember poor Rose being heavily implied to have been sexually assaulted to the point of going mute. I’ll... I’ll never forget that.
I agree with you. Honestly, I find them both scary by their own rights.
I argue that in their respective universes, they're the perfect villain.
Dante builds off the theme of "human transmutation" while Father builds off of the concept of truth and the macguffins systems and limitations.
I love how Dante simply breaks ed's beliefs about the equivalent exchange in a way that leaves him (who is always bragging about that) speechless, besides de fact that she is constantly pushing him and showing how much he is just naive despite his prideful personality
But Father has better fight scenes and is a genuine anime villain who has multiple overpowered final forms so people usually just remember him
But the video raises interesting points about father that I haven't thought about before, maybe I'm being too "I prefer the serious fma over the happy ending one"
Honestly for all intents and purposes
03 was the better series until the final few episodes (fuck the higher ups for canning the actual ending to rush things)
it's interesting cause a lot of people say that Father is bland and has no depth, and thus why many people prefer dante, but it's just that Father DOES have depth its just not entirely spelled out too much asie from Hohenheim openly quesitoning Father directly about why he had his minions call him 'Father'.
Better fight scenes isn't really a motivating factor for my preference. Also if this stuff is new to you it suggests you haven't really looked int it, that was some pretty basic stuff about Father.
@@V2ULTRAKill "(fuck the higher ups for canning *the actual ending* to rush things)"
What are you referring to? And please post links to sources.
man the soundtracks of brotherhood and 2003 are amazings
...Why did Dante suddenly want to, as you say, *get it on* with Ed? If it was to create a new child, then why? Did she ever explain why she needed a child? Was it so she had a body to jump to when the time came? Did she want a family this whole time but Hohenheim denied her just before that could happen?
In a weird way, it reminds me of Tekken. The Sumo Wrestler Ganryu was in love with Michelle Chang, but when his feelings were rejected, her daughter Julia became his new crush. But realizing this just makes me really need to know...
Is this why she kidnapped Rose? Rose would be the body for her to jump to so she could have Ed? It just makes me wonder why she wanted someone so against her ideals.
In Liore Dante comments on how much Ed reminds her of Hohenheim.
This isn’t something tied to her grand scoping plans, but more of just something she’d like to pursue.
The desire for a family is an interesting reading into her character and is a valid interpretation. I can neither confirm nor deny whether or not that is case, but that reading definitely sheds some light on why she keeps envy around.
Great video. I always remembered Father more, great tool to convey the story overall themes.
Dante represents denial and cognitive dissonance.
She tells Ed straight up equalvant exchange is a lie. He reflexively denies this parroting off his childhood lesson. But once she says "equal effort does not always mean equal gain" if you look at Ed's face, his expression is priceless, like in spite in believing, he has some doubt.
Dante proceeds bring up example after example of clear unrewarded effort, and Ed has *no* rebuttal.
The brilliant irony of this is this mirrors the first episode where Ed was talking down to Rose, lording his science and alchemy over Roses "pointless" and "irrational" beliefs in a god she couldn't see and all her actions were in based on her belief like a puppet. Yet here Ed is talking to Dante, thinking he was following the truth, when like Rose, was only following a flawed belief, having absolutely nothing to say. Just denial.
This is made even worse because his father shows him, scientifically, that equivalent exchange still requires extra energy to change the matter and is therefore not "equivalent". And even having this explained to him pedantically and in detail, he walks away from that *still* believing in equivalent exchange. Even in the last episode, still parroting off equivalent exchange this. Equivalent exchange that.
It mirrors Rose finding out that Father Cornello was a fraud. She could not let her belief go. She had invested too much of herself in the belief for it to be false, dispute all evidence against it. It couldn't be wrong as that would mean she wasted all that time believing. Sunk cost fallacy. And Ed fell for it just like Rose did. His God was just called equivalent exchange. _A Rose by any other name is just as sweet._
Ironic really. The whole series was Ed attempting to come to terms with this belief and it's contradictions. Ed accepted early on "a life is not worth a life," yet still believed in "equivalence". How does he reconcile these 2 contradictory beliefs? Denial.
Dante is just like this. She rationalized mass genocide was justfied to prevent mankind from destroying itself. Yet this was an excuse to hide from herself that she is simply scared of death. She needed to frame genocide as virtue, so she can live forever. There's a good reason... but then there's a reason. She was suffering from extreme cognitive dissonance. Denial.
Such comments made me wish UA-cam would introduce a save comment feature already. What an excellent comment.
Can we get an amen in here? I don't think Dante is a great character (she's too rushed and crammed for that), but she's a great antagonist, a creature whose purpose is to be the counterargument to Ed's whole belief system. Entropy vs. Equivalence, Faith vs. Fact, Hard Truths vs. Easy Lies. As that counterbalance, she's spectacular.
Excellent analysis. Dante fears death just like Ed fails to accept death and he learned the hard way that to fight death, more sacrifices need to be done, ironically.
And yeah, I also cringed when Dante pretended to defend humans all In the while sacifying them, she was quite dishonest, or delusional, here. But she falls onto the catégory of people who are so narcissistic that they think that the pain they inflict is a blessing, which makes sense in her case, because she keeps on living but yet cant find a real reason to explain her will to live, and lacks the ability to be self critical as she just continues to live to protect her ego (a fragile ego since she thinks nothing she does is wrong and that her life is more worth than a whole village). Her psychology was quite interesting.
What a big brain comment.
The one-sided argument with Dante was such a great scene. Honestly, at parts of it it feels like she could be talking straight to the audience.
Even though I consider Brotherhood the superior adaptation, I think the idea of the homunculi as a consequence for trying to play god is more fitting than some black goo that hates humans. Also Lyra is cuter than Father.
Hm I don't know Father's a pretty cute guy if you ask me
@@Lowart It is NGL
Father is kinda hot bro.
I want to touch his beard 🙃🥴
Lowart
The question is. Which Father?
Hohenheim twin? Naked with long hair? Giant black blob with eyes? Or the Dwarf?
I think the fact Father was a mirror of Van Hohenheim made him much more unsettling as a character.
Yeah that was chilling. I also love the parallels between him and Hohenheim as well.
Though I do think a younger lady in the equivalent of a ball gown is also chilling. But Father and Hohenheim mirroring each other while basically being on opposite sides of the spectrum of their beliefs was haunting.
Yeah that’s why I prefer father and brotherhood in general, it makes a lot more sense in many situations, tho there are some things 2003 handles better I think
@@Calebe428 i mean thats the thing Dante was a mirror to Ed in the exact same way
She just wasnt as bombastic about it
@@V2ULTRAKill i don't see how she mirror ed. She was rush to be a bad guy to end the series and ultimately she eaten by a mindless gluttony another victim.
I really liked how neither would exist without the other. Without the Homunculus in the flask, Hohenheim would have been content to remain as Slave 23, with no identity or real desires of his own. And Homunculus/Father was from the beginning created from Hohenheim's blood. In a way, their whole identities in relation to each other are an example of equivalent exchange
Honestly this is 100 percent the most unbiased comparison between the 2 shows on youtube where you can tell with other youtubers that they clearly have a bias towards one show and just want to put down the other you can tell lowart is truly passionate about both and just wants to share what he finds to be so great in both shows while also pointing out the flaws he finds in both.
I'm really happy that comes across. I love the manga, Brotherhood, and 03. I only grow to appreciate each one more when I go back to them.
@@Lowart I personally think Father is a better Villain because I think he was set up better and had more screen time to be intimating and one of my complaints of the 2003 FMA anime finale is twists like Dante, Envy's true identity, and what's on the other side of the door didn't have proper setups and came out of nowhere. I don't think Dante is a bad villain it's just we didn't get much time to see her as a Villain.
Anime Robot so you’re saying the pacing and timing was better with Brotherhood. I can respect that. I’m personally not bothered by the pacing of fullmetal alchemist, in fact I think the last 10 episodes are the best ones for showing the themes and wrapping up the story. But brotherhood had much more time to plan out how the story was done from the start so it would inevitably be better at that. So I agree but I don’t think it’s really a huge downside to Dante as a villain or FMA 03 as a whole.
@@sprawlz6466 yeah I'm sure if the 2003 version had more time it could've executed them a lot better
@Venn its not even like that though, 03 was being produced alongside the manga so when the show reached the most recent point, they had to start making stuff up. It slowly branched off and created something entirely different from the original story. I believe they did a good job with what they had. If only they gave themselves more time to produce a less rushed and included less filler then 03 might've been better then brotherhood.
The fascinating, frankly brilliant side of Dante to me is you would expect someone willing to screw with the nature of the undead, fling countries into an endless war, endorse genocide, all that stuff, would be someone with a deep, complex motivating drive. But Dante is a great villain in how ridiculously petty she is. All that war, all that destruction, not for a messed up understanding of morality, not to justify a meaningful end. Just to preserve her pathetic life just a little longer.
Considering her hatred of people, she also probably takes a lot of pleasure in spreading misery and war among humanity.
That's honestly the reason I prefer Dante to Father. It's not because I find Father particularly poorly written or anything, but simply because, no matter how good a villain he is, he's still the "bad guy becomes god and the heroes have to use the power of friendship to punch god in the face" archetype. Dante is such a refreshing character for just being such a petty bitch.
Also, I like how her backstory contributes to the lore of 2003. The world, as far as we'd seen, seemed to mostly just be Amestris, with hints at neighboring countries, but not much else. That is, however, until Dante shows up and explains how the humans in FMA and the humans in our dimension were actually following identical paths until Hoenheim used alchemy for the first time to make the philosopher's stone. Then that diverged the entire history of FMA's world to be about one geared toward Alchemy, whereas our world veered away from "magic" and into science. I think that's a neat idea, and the use of real world tragedies like the Salem Witch Trials and the Bubonic Plague as fuel for the philosopher's stone is an interesting way of linking our world to the world created in FMA.
The banality of evil
Interesting, I think this explains why I don't really like her. It felt so petty. Like all that grand shit for that. I preferred Father because his goals were so ridiculously hard (even tho they stem from petty insecurity) it stayed coherent with the grand and bombastic events of the show. Idk probably just me
Shes a really really weaker version of kefka
And not a good character writing wise
Back when I first watched FMA03 I thought Dante as a rather boring main villain, but after re-watching the show couple more times, and falling in love with it even more over time, I actually think she's a pretty terrifying villain. Her parasitic nature of literally stealing lives and bodies of others makes my skin crawl. And I think her real motivation of destroying civilizations isn't doing humanity a favor as she claims, but just to stay alive. It's a simple motive but also very relatable and human. All in all, I now think Dante is one of the most underrated anime villains I've come across.
Yeah, I feel like Dante could have been a much more memorable villain had everything around her been much better villain. For me personally, it was hard for me to remain invested in her when her best moment(her speech about debunking equivalent exchange) happens after seeing cartoon terminator man attack Mustang's group and shortly before Ed gets sent into an alternate dimension where zeppelins are attacking London.
@@trevordavis6830 lmfao mans told the truthh
I will forever stan the original. But boi it could have knocked it out the park with a few tweaks.
There are waaay better villains than her with similar motives: Vilgax from Ben 10, dr Weil from megaman Zero
She's just plain boring
@@TheEdwardAlchemist Fma 2003 Is not the original, the manga came first remember that
@@isauldron4337 If we wanna go ACKSHUALLY about it lol 03 outpaced the manga, which is why it has an anime only ending. But 03 is easier to say anyway :p
Father and Dante are very similar characters in certain ways.
1. They both seek to use the philosopher's stone at the cost of countless lives to become more than what they are.
2. They both take advantage of the homunculi and never think of the possibility that their motives and emotions will conflict with the plan. This ultimately leads to their downfall when they are destroyed by a homunculus.
3. They both have a certain pride in themselves (despite one trying to remove it) and think that they are above humans. They see life as a resource.
4. They both create a philosopher's stone with Hoenhiem.
5. Both take a form that isn't their own.
6. Both want to have sex with Ed
Thank you finally I always found it super annoying when people say one is better than the other when they're so similar
They also both have human origins that they reject I know that point 3 technically covers that but i think the fact they came from humans in some way (dante literally being a human that swaps bodies over and over again, father being a homunculus that came from an humans blood )
Thinking of every humonculi other than Lust and Sloth in Brotherhood, the idea that Father wanted a family and to be able to make connections is believable. Greed's ultimate wish, Pride's love (if you can call it that) for his mother, Wrath's love for his wife, Envy's jealousy of the connection of the main cast, and Gluttony's love for Lust. I doubt he could handle that and viewed all those emotions as limitations and began shedding his sins. In doing so, he lost any chance of understanding all is one and one is all. I also like the execution of Father's attempt to transcend and the line about how he just wants to get out of his flask when Hohenheim asks what his wish is.
Dante, on the other hand, was just too creepy to me (mostly bc of the thing with Ed bc otherwise she was the right amount of creepy) and seemed less above those limitations than she claimed to be. When Father compared humans to insects, it felt more justified. However, that's only bc Dante is just a human, so her looking down on humanity just felt petualant to me.
I actually do like Dante in the original though, and I'm glad the anime got past the manga bc the whole different angle of the show was great to me. I found Dante compelling, but I have a bit of a peeve about human character pretending they are above humanity. As you can probably tell, I prefer Father.
I prefer Father too but for different reasons. I thought things in the 2003 FMA finale were rushed and pulled out of nowhere like Dante's origins, Envy's identity, and the world beyond the gate of truth. If they had more time to develop and explore the ideas it could've worked but it felt very rushed.
I would say lust fits too, I mean she was Happy Mustang was the man to kill here so there was some love there imo.
Dante sucks... her world, doesn´t. She could be a lot more compelling by being sincere with herself: "i don´t want to die", that should be good enough, no need to justify yourself... By having father as a villain, though, you suddenly can focus all the evil and sins to the point a sniper with the proper knowledge could end it all from the start of the series.
Dante´s world, in the other hand, is a lot messier, less shonen plot (if that makes sense).
Same here. I thought Dante was pretty bland and uninteresting tbh but the video changed my mind a little bit. Overall I don't think 03 holds a candle to Brotherhood or the Manga, but honestly 03 is still better than most conventional shounen
@@IronFreakV Dante was a pretty forgettable antagonist imo. She's not bad per se but I just didn't care for her motivations or origins.
The dwarf in the flask at the gates meeting the truth is a scene that makes me tear up every time because he asks a fundamental question of why do I exist. He didn't really know what to do with himself after getting out of the flask but picked this goal that he thought was what he was put on earth for, to cast off his sins and become a perfect being. When he meets the truth he can't understand what he did wrong, what mistakes he made, he is desperately crying out to god for guidance on why he was here and what he did wrong but god makes no reply, Its both satisfying comeuppance and incredibly sad to see someone who was so sure of their ideals realise they were wrong but wonder why. Both why he failed and why his entire philosophy in life was wrong in the first place. He was made to play a game, and he essentially became the best player, but he never knew the rules and he never knew how to win.
That was the ironic thing about him. Because he was a piece of what is beyond the Gate, he had an incomparable amount of scientific knowledge. But the problem is, he didn't have one drop of emotional intelligence to go along with it. And he chose to stay that way for 400 years. Which is exactly what Truth mocked him for. He had all the freedom that he wanted, but he ignorantly chose not to use it to grow.
And to make matters worse
For all his massive knowledge, he never learn anything new in all his life.
His gate is blank, he learnt nothing in all those years
While ed in the end ended up outsmarting truth and getting complimented by god
Father only got mocked by god and dragged to his self inflicted hell@@SnowyWolborg
Fuck, but I miss both of these shows now. I wish there was something on the same level as this Fullmetal Alchemist. Anything. That's not to say that it's perfect. But it really is one of a kind. Watching FMA for the first time is a feeling I just haven't had since, but left such a strong impression that I can still remember to this day.
I mean atleast in my opinion there are a couple like beserk hunter x hunter jojo part 7 and death note are in the same ball park
Marco Meijer gae
Sai Jj Dont talk about jojo’s here
@@toolazyforaname As a not big fan of Jojo I can say that Steel Ball Run is genuinely great tho, let it pass
try out snk(skingeky no kyojin), it's amazaing, even better then fma in my opinion.
I'm surprised that there aren't many female anime main antagonists like Dante in recent media. Even though she is a scripted villain she still stands as one the best underrated anime villains of the early 21st century.
Dante is scarier as a villain to me because she is so human. There are people like her throughout the world in positions of power and influence that do heinous things.
Bro father is way worse dude was about to cause human extinction
Father is human though
Homunculus is essentially an artificial human
@@DataZahard i think what op means by "she is so human" is that she is more realistic. She is selfish & prideful yet still believes she is doing something for the greater good like many of the people in power today, there aren't many people scheming to devour god and planning to cause human extinction are there ?
Dante is indeed scarier cause it feels like if Alchemy existed in our world many high power people will easily do the things that Dante does in the anime. Dante is literally if the Kardashians had alchemy lol
The two series are like alternate universes, but more complex than ever elaborated on in the 2003 anime.
I didn't find Dante elaborate. So many of the main characters gets side line in the 2003 version
Christopher Marshall like who there’s literally less characters that get more character development compared to brotherhood
9999 Savage stop the cap
Jacob Baker what are you talking about???
9999 Savage that FMA didn’t have more character development than FMA brotherhood
I think the thing about Father is that his aspirations are so big, where is Dante’s aspirations are so tiny and personal, that it’s really just exploring the evil in being selfish and hypocritical. She doesn’t want to take over the world or anything like that - she wants to be immortal and possibly have sex with Ed/Hohenheim while she’s at it. In a story that’s far more intimate (seriously am I the only one who notices that 2003 is more about the Brothers than the one called Brotherhood) it’s how small and dangerously personal she is that makes her genuinely horrifying.
She sees the absolute worst in humanity will be going herself as above human and not noticing that she is the worst in humanity.
And she has the better theme music.
The Awesamazing Eden
For me, the Brotherhood in the title is less about the literal brotherhood between Edward and Alphonse. But more represents the brotherhood between both them and the rest of the cast, as it feels the manga emphasizes the importance of connection between humanity creating strength and making the journey worth it. Which 2003 also touches upon, but in a more personal way I feel like.
I like Dante so much more exactly for the point you make. Dante's goal is so personal, selfish, human
Father is another shonen uber big final boss
I've said the exact quote "2003 is ironically more about the brothers than the show actually called Brotherhood" many, many, MANY times. I also thought I was the only one who noticed that 😂
YES, Dante's theme is haunting.
Heh I like both vilains but I feel like they have a lot of wasted potential, I like that Father is the opposite of Hohenheim (and mangahood is about Hohenheim as much as it is about Ed and Al imo) in pretty much every way except physical
Unlike Hohenheim who just wanted to be free from slavery and have a normal life Father just wants to be above god, being the living representation of how Alchemy and alchemists are seen as in Amestris (unlike in Xing, where Hohenheim taught them a way to use alchemy mostly for medicinal purposes) and of course where Father doesn't care about his "children" and just uses them to reach his goals, Hohenheim despite being understandably distant genuinely cares about Ed and Al but yeah while these elements are here, mangahood doesn't really do enough with it, which is probably why he's often seen as "generic anime vilain who want to rule the world or something"
And yeah Dante is great too, she's in a way the opposite of Al, she wants an immortal body (like Al in 2003) even if it isn't hers and has to hurt and kill others to do it, her goals are less generic than Father (tho not by much) and are much more personnal but I feel like they just don't do enough with her, she's introduced relatively late into the story (compared to Father) and even later as an antagonist, she shares one short scene with Hohenheim before he's yeeted into the other world and as Lowart says we're told about her and Hohenheim's backstory but barely see any of it (and of course we don't need to know everything about her but I feel like in this case we have what could be an emotional and much more interresting story but barely anything is done with it besides Dante explaining it to us, it's as if we were quickly told about Ed and Al human transmutation instead of showing it to us), her relationship with Envy is also not really explored like it is with let's say Sloth and Ed/Al, she's a good vilain but god damn she could have been so much better
Also totally agree that Dante has the better theme but that's a regular thing with 2003
I think Father was some one who secretly felt so insecure about being a tiny thing in a flask that could die if the container broke- leaving him with an intense fear of death and incredible isolation that nothing really filled the void even what he did get was particularly impressive. Becoming a genuinely intimidating older looking man who looked like the traditional depiction of God with no perceived limit on how strong his Alchemy mastery that far outclassed everyone outside of Hohenheim was outside of it not being the Truth and having a family that was mostly loyal to him outside of one exception and having an even stronger form behind it that would warp matter and himself without apparent limits, with an nonspecific lifespan that seemed almost endless outside of intense injuries is impressive for any villain. Yet, he still felt it wasn't enough and he get for the Sun/The Truth, and in the end it burned him metaphorically as he spent too much time on an unattainable ideal, not accounting for the humans and his own child that would undermine him, making his ultimate goal, being in theory more powerful than before, an inevitable death, even without Greed's interference as he would've run out of souls to avoid a rebound that would drag him back into nothingness.
I just finished watching FMAB for the first time and your last paragraph struck a note with a thought I had afterwards, in particular about the rebound and running out of souls to maintain The Truth/God within his body. Was it a fundamentally flawed idea for Father to gain that sort of power even if it meant he couldn’t contain it indefinitely? Definitely something to mull over while I start up FMA 03 now!
@@Runescapevidproducer Yes, the few decades he did the first time theoretically worked because it was just a small nation that even centuries later no one truly knew about, of surprisingly trusting people that he could take advantage of and it worked because no one suspected anything and as far we knew, it gave him a very powerful body with very varied abilities as the Homunculi demonstrate and an undefined lifespan almost limitless given he didn't gravely injure himself. He finally had a body, yet he looked to the stars and wanted more.
The next time wasn't so lucky as he now had with centuries, people beginning to pick up on the conspiracy and people he inadvertently created a problem- literally or metaphorically that undermined him. And because he gave up more and more of himself to be his eyes and ears because he never learned to trust humans (who normally would be very against his plans unless they were fanatic cultists) ironically, in the pursuit of perfection, he was left with a shell of his peak centuries earlier that would've been more helpful in containing God and would've halted the rebound. He was his own worst enemy.
Jesus man u gotta use more commas
he flew too close to the sun and his wings melted and he came crashing down to earth
One thing I wanna talk about:
At the start of the 1st few episodes of FMAB, they had a manly sounding voice talking about the laws of equivalent exchange and the philosopher's stone followed by intense music
In 2003 FMA, they had Alphonse talking about it, and soon Edward aswell, with peaceful sounding music
I like how FMA (the variant where everything is a bit more dark and melancholic) has the more peaceful and cute approach to explaining the laws of equivalent exchange
The manly voice in FMAB is Father's, no? I think that was quite deliberate, as was the choice of having Al do it in '03. Aesthetically, I agree with you; I like Al's better. But in terms of the themes of both shows, both decisions make sense to me
I agree
I definitely thin the choice in 2003 is great, not only with the ending to contextualize it but also showing us their ideal and naive impressions of the world on this very harsh coming of age story.
There is also the bit with the fact that the quote in 2003 is incomplete for most of the show. It isn't until the end we hear the full one.
Later in like the last 20 episodes I think of 03
It starts as normal with a framed picture of the family with honiems face obscured by the sun
But then the original picture is replaced instantly with a picture of ed and al, that starts to catch fire