Full Metal Alchemist General

Yeah well moving on from that cancerous topic, since I'm probably not actually going to watch the first anime, how did Dante compare as villain to Father?

Like many things in the first anime, she hit many of the same bullet points, but from a weaker and/or less compelling perspective.

• Close relationship with Hohenheim, but instead of a Faustian reflection, she's an ex-lover.
• Commands the homunculi, but instead of being broken components of a single identity, they're undead creatures created by human transmutation that she simply recruits, then names after sins onto for thematic lulz.
• Has terrible ambitions for the Philosopher's Stone, but instead of attempting to become God, she steals bodies to cheat death.
• Manipulating Amestris for the aforementioned ambitions, but instead of a grand manipulation of a massive conspiracy buried in the roots of the nation, her methods are somewhere between malicious trolling and Team Rocket - keep causing harm until somebody eventually, of their own volition, decides to make a Philosopher's Stone, then swipe it!
• Shared supernatural origin with Hohenheim, but instead of being living Philosopher's Stones, they're body snatchers who use the Stone to transfer their soul.
• Now an enemy of Hohenheim, but instead of making peace with the souls comprising his Stone and resolving to prevent his adversary from ever doing it again, Hohenheim decided one day that he didn't like being a body snatcher anymore and he's going to make her stop too.

All in all, she's Hohenheim's jilted ex who starts wars in order to spam the wheel of the Xanatos Roulette table in the hopes that, statistically, someone will eventually do what she needs them to do if she just keeps playing long enough.

edited 20th Feb '15 7:59:39 AM by TobiasDrake

bIgBad is the one area I absolutely give to Mangahood. Father was one of the best characters in Mangahood while Dante is one of the weakest characters in the anime.

Had an awesome theme though.

edited 20th Feb '15 11:42:55 AM by Nikkolas

True dat. But nothing will ever top Bratja:

Yeah, Dante was pretty much a waste of paper. Neither she nor Father are especially deep characters, but Father has the advantage of being grandiose and possessed of gravitas. He's not unlike Darkseid, or other similar comic book villains in that respect—fairly basic motivations, flat personality, stereotypically evil goals, but backed up by so much raw power, and so much ham acting that you can easily ignore it. Father dominates almost every scene he's in, and while he'll never win the "most complex character" sweepstakes, he's still a lot of fun to watch.

Dante on the other hand, has all of Father's bad qualities (as a character, that is) and none of his good ones. She's just as flat a character (if not flatter), and just as void of redeeming personality traits, but has smaller, pettier objectives, very little presence, and never really confronts the protagonists physically. The only thing that really makes her standout is how detestable she is, and even then, she doesn't manage to make it into Love to Hate territory.

I kinda liked she never had a big showdown with Ed. Ed in FMA 2003 really wasn't that strong and having him beat up Dante wouldn't have served any purpose. Ed beating the shit out of Father served to drive home a couple themes and it served the narrative while if he had beaten up Dante it wouldn't have done much of anything.

I'm reminded of how Kenshin tells...I think it was Misao, that even if he killed Shishio, it didn't mean Kenshin's ideals were the right ones. I'd say Brotherhood had a very clear message of how beating up Father proved Ed was right and Father was wrong.

He was saying that to Yahiko, but yeah basically.

Didn't Dante take the idea of Equivalent Exchange and deconstruct it? I really liked that scene in the anime.

That was probably my favorite moment with her. Otherwise, she didn't really do much that was noteworthy.

@Nikkolas

Suffice it to say, I don't agree with much of that. It wasn't the fight scene that proved Father was wrong. It was the fact that he was trying to kill millions of people in a mad quest to become God. Father isn't Shishio; there's no moment where the protagonists sit down, look at his ideals, and acknowledge that he might have some sort of a point. He's explicitly villainous and in the wrong from his first appearance.

Similarly—and despite the first anime's claims of moral ambiguity—Ed didn't need to beat up Dante to prove that she was wrong. She's a petty, manipulative sociopath who set up one tragedy after another in the hopes of furthering her own agenda. There's no ideals to deconstruct there, no philosophical outlook that is worth refuting. She's a bodysnatching bitch, and there's nothing more to say on that subject. The reason I noted that she doesn't have a fight with Ed (or anybody else) isn't because I think she needed one so that she could be shown to be wrong (we knew she was) or even because I think she needed a beating (though she did), but because it's simply another way in which she isn't given the chance to impress.

Both versions had the moment where they pointed out the fundamental flaw in Equivalent Exchange: where does the energy come from for the transmutation? The energy required to perform the transmutation seems to just come out of thin air and nobody questions it. And in both cases, it wasn't so much an actual deconstruction of the ideal as it was foreshadowing The Reveal surrounding that question.

In Mangahood, that reveal is that alchemy is supposed to draw geothermic energy from the Earth, but nobody actually knows this in Amestris because Father's been using his gigantic Philosopher's Stone filtered through pipes across the nation to control and manipulate the flow of energy for transmutation. This is what grants him the ability to shut down everyone's alchemy whenever he sees fit; because they're getting their transmutational energy from his Philosopher's Stone instead of the Earth like they're supposed to.

Ultimately, the answer to the question isn't as important as the question itself, and the characters' ignorance of where their energy is coming from. This is foreshadowed repeatedly through the series, not just in this question, but in observations made by the Xingese characters who better understand the relationship of alchemy and the world because they weren't taught a deliberately broken version of it, and in Scar and May's ability to keep transmuting after Father turns off the alchemy.

In the anime, it also sets up a Reveal of where the energy comes from, but that Reveal is that their world exists parallel to ours and everyone who dies in our world is converted into a power source for theirs, and that's why World War II happened: because alchemists needed more mana.

Ultimately, the only character who actually deconstructs Equivalent Exchange is Al in the Mangahood finale, where he's not so much saying, "This is the way it IS," but rather, "This is the way it SHOULD be, and we're gonna do that."

edited 22nd Feb '15 8:15:43 AM by TobiasDrake

Still, I kind of like Equivalent Exchange isn't so much an absolute law as much as a philosophy or school of thought.

Also, I wonder if the Xingese characters just exist so that they could show the Brothers that there is alternative way to do alchemy?

edited 22nd Feb '15 1:19:22 PM by GAP

@ Ambar

I don't think you give Father's character enough credit but even stepping away from that, Father's philosophy vs. Ed's is pivotal to the story. Father, who had relied on Alchemy as the solution to every problem in his life, went to Hell and got nothing while Edward, who abandoned Alchemy forever, got everything he wanted. That was clearly intentional and a good contrast to how Ed, much like Father, spent a good chunk of Mangahood trying to fix his problems with Alchemy.

The Right vs. Wrong element wasn't in regards to morality or ethics as in who was doing right or wrong things. It was in regards to their approaches to achieving their goals. I could easily sympathize with and understand Father's objectives and motivations but he just went about everything in the wrong way.

They exist for a lot of reasons. Ling Yao and May Chang contribute a ton to the complex Ensemble Cast that Mangahood has. May provides an opportunity to humanize Scar without detracting from his vengeful role as He Who Fights Monsters and effectively invents a new faction to the conflict from scratch, while Ling's ambitions and desires for the throne of his own country reflects Mustang and Bradley, forming a thematic triangle between the three characters that explores an important question: what does it truly mean to rule?

Also Ling spends a sizable amount of the story carrying Father's Greed and Greedling is one of the most entertaining characters of either canon, so there's that too.

Mangahood makes fantastic use of its characters. Everyone does something, and usually multiple somethings.

edited 22nd Feb '15 5:51:28 PM by TobiasDrake

I thought Father just put a "filter" of sorts under the ground? When Scar deactivates the filter, everyone is back to using Amestris Alchemy again (and they mention it feels easier to do, now). Surely, if it was Father, then Scar's circle would've done nothing.

So, Father wasn't the reservoir, he was the valves.

Yeah, Equivalent Exchange, as a philosophy, is discussed and found to be flawed in both.

But I like Al's eventual response in the manga; that they'll work as hard as they can to give something back to the world; make 11 out of 10.

Yeah. I like that too.

I think of it as Al's finding a solution to how Ed realized the laws were incomplete in the 2003 anime.

This has the side effect of weakening Father, right? I had forgotten what that was supposed to do.

disable Father's Alchemy cancelling skill,plus buff regular Alchemy.

Right. Father was OP for a lot of reasons, but one of them was his ability to turn off alchemy by cutting off alchemists from accessing the transmutation energy, meaning alchemists can't even fight him at all unless they're using Xingese alkahestry to circumvent his Philosopher's Stone.

Scar's reversal transmutation stripped that from him. It's not quite that it weakened Father; it was a prerequisite to make fighting him possible. He's still as strong as ever, but he lost his Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies auto-win button.

edited 23rd Feb '15 8:21:22 AM by TobiasDrake

Ah, right.

Am I the only one who finds it odd how the depiction of Hughes' death was more Mangahood than what happened in Mangahood?

Remove the Juliet Douglas/Huge-Ass Transmutation Circle divergences...and there you have it.

Mangahood just loved stopping intense build-ups by quick action or wacky humor spots.

Whereas 2003 loved playing up intense scenes to the hilt (YMMV on whether that was good or Wangst).

And yet how the last moments of Hughes played out defied that.

Mangahood:

Lust shows up, impales Hughes through the shoulder,...lots of emphasis on how badly hurt he is and the urgency of the call. Then the way Envy! Ross enters at the phone booth...you know Hughes is pretty much a dead man at that point...if Lust didn't telegraph it. And sure enough, he gets Disconnected by Death

...No slow down, no change in expectations, just build upon build until the climax...just like a typical 2003 moment.

Now look at 2003:

Starts off with Hughes confronting Sloth when suddenly Lust pops out! And then Envy!Ross appears and starts fake shooting as if an ally...but Hughes is momentarily safe.

Then he makes the call, which goes nowhere...bummer

But he manages to kill Envy once, looks like....oh shicks Envy just got back up....oh boy

Matches Mangahood almost perfectly in nature

Oh yeah, even where Mustang is relation is different (so whoever wrote Disconnected by Death under Anime Characters for Hughes...WRONG!). Mangahood has him on the line just after Hughes gets shot

Whereas in 2003, he's on the train trying to get to Hughes after realizing something is really off.

edited 25th May '15 11:56:22 AM by terlwyth

Y'dont need to convince me that the trope entry is wrong. If it is, you can go ahead and remove it.

I'm not quite sure what that post is trying to say, but if you mean that Hughes' death was badly handled in the 2003 Anime... I agree.

I watched that one first, and I kept thinking Hughes wasn't really dead, because killing him clearly wasn't Envy's original intent (Envy saved Hughes' life, and helped him in trying to phone Mustang. Envy only killed him as a response to being found out)... except it turned out, killing him really was Envy's intent all along, so the scene doesn't make any sense.

Could be that not trying to kill him was part of Envy's ruse. Act like someone he can trust long enough to get him in a confined, witnessless phone booth from which he can't easily run, then kill him.