Full Metal Alchemist General

Here is the link for anyone who wants to buy the 2003 Blu-rays.

Thanks for the link, man.

Collector's Edition is not going to happen but I might get the Limited Edition.

Greed and Gluttony are the most sympathetic of Homunculi to me, the least sympathetic to me is a toss up between Pride and Envy, Lust tends to treat Gluttony well but is too bloodthirsty to be sympathetic, Wrath supported a Genocide, and Father is a mass murdering megalomaniac.

Envy is highly unsympathetic, but it is very entertaining. Pride isn't. He's the worst of all.

Gluttony and Sloth are rather innocent, Greed is not actively villainous. Wrath is probably the most noble out of all the evil homonculi, and Lust seems not to kick the dog that much compared to Envy and Pride.

I should not have laughed. It's horrible.

@LSBK, it wasn't so much that humans were just special that made them better. As Hohenheim put it, humans, no matter how flawed, can at least create if they put their minds to it, the homunculi only destroy.

I think this video explains it and Father rather well [1]

I don't view Wrath as moral at all, capable of empathy maybe, but, I wouldn't call commanding a genocide even a little noble, especially when you know the people cannot fight back.

edited 5th Aug '15 5:38:52 AM by OmniGoat

Plus didn't our flaws give us reason to move forward and improve?

That's Father's fatal flaw. He's static and unchanging. He can't grow or develop or change in any way, because every part of his identity has been ripped out and given to someone else.

Also aren't the homunculi convinced they are perfect, thus they have no real reason to change?

Wrath would just as unpleasant as Envy and Pride if you removed his relationship with his wife, his only other good trait is that he isn't a coward like Pride and Envy.

that one thing is what makes wrath as a character for me. even though he's a cruel genocidal asshat he still has at least some degree of humanity in his relationship with his wife, like a real person.

edited 5th Aug '15 9:10:39 AM by wehrmacht

It's kinda funny though.

Wrath was raised as a weapon (he doesn't even know his real name), which should make him even more inhuman than the Homunculi in a sense (or at least as inhuman as they are), but his ability to value his wife means he's still more human than they are.

For all his cruelty, he's probably more human than anyone barring Greed(even before the latter became bonded to Ling).

I felt like Pride always cared for his mother. Maybe not out-and-out love but he had a weak spot for her.

It's not that they're convinced they're perfect. Maybe Pride is.

It's that they take pride in their own existence. Much like humans value the state of being human, homunculi value the state of being homunculi. Envy excepted, they see no reason to covet the existence of another lifeform.

It was a fantastic subversion of Humans Are Special, particularly the way the first anime played it, which I really appreciated.

On Wrath

Wrath is cruelty. It is his nature.

King Bradley is a human being who never had a chance to live his own life, but was instead raised from childhood to be the host for Wrath.

Bradley and Wrath are the same person, but they are effectively a Composite Character made of one part Father's Wrath and one part a desperate orphan who never had the chance to live. King Bradley loves his wife. Wrath coldly rejected an attempted Heroic Sacrifice because accepting it would mean ending the genocide.

It's this complexity of character that makes it possible to sympathize with Bradley, yet utterly despise Wrath, despite being the exact same character.

edited 5th Aug '15 12:56:12 PM by TobiasDrake

@Tobias Drake

That actually makes sense, humans are flawed but we can learn from their flaws and create.

That's a relatively common theme. I recommend the JRPG Xenogears, which is filled with it.

edited 5th Aug '15 2:33:15 PM by Nikkolas

@Tobias, sound analysis as always, although I did kind of feel bad for Envy too, funny enough, Lust and Pride were the only homunculi I never felt bad for

I'm pretty sure we're supposed to pity Envy,hence why his true form is so small and pathetic. Also why Father is reduced to his dwarf form in the end. Or why he was even in that form to begin with, during his most sympathetic phase.

It's a lot easier to feel sorry for tiny vaguely cute things.

edited 5th Aug '15 3:22:35 PM by Nikkolas

I also felt sympathy for Envy, largely because I've wrestled with issues of envy in the past. As a teenager, between the seven, envy was my most pronounced sin. Because of this, I was able to understand the character's sadism and his rage. He hates the world because he can't be part of it, and he can't be part of it because he's already pre-emptively rejected himself on the world's behalf.

His superiority complex and false pride is a lie he tells himself to feel better about how inferior he feels, because if he can convince you, even for a second, that he's better than you, then he may just start to believe it himself. He's a monster to everyone because he's a monster to himself most of all.

He is the boy who can't get a date or make a friend because he doesn't reach out to people, and who doesn't reach out because he's already decided they'll say no and maybe laugh at him. He is the worker who never gets a promotion because he doesn't put in the effort, because why bother putting in the effort when you know you won't get the promotion? He is the dreamer who never followed his dreams and never will, because he assumes they would fail. The failure stings less when you never try. The misery is comfortable.

FUN FACT: I once named a snake after him.

edited 5th Aug '15 3:32:02 PM by TobiasDrake

I guess I'm alone in thinking that envy and fathers last moments didn't make me sympathize with them.

i think envy being envious of humans is kinda trite honestly, though it does add some dimension to his character.

i pity him more than i sympathize with him, if that makes any sense.

edited 5th Aug '15 3:52:44 PM by wehrmacht

It's not the last moments. If you didn't already sympathize with Envy or Wrath, their death scene probably isn't going to change that.

If you relate to Envy, you caught it long before he explicitly stated it. Similarly, if you didn't sympathize with Wrath's human side during all the scenes he shared with his wife and listening to him talk about her, his last words aren't going to make you start now.

He said Envy and Father, not Envy and Wrath.

I always felt sorry for Father though.

Oh, right. My mistake. We'd been talking about Envy and Wrath and I totally misread.

I suppose Father's last moments might be capable of making him sympathetic but again, I think if you were sympathetic to Father, it happened in the Dwarf in the Flask episode, not there. Wrath and Envy both got a Cry for the Devil death, but Father's just seemed like pure catharsis.

I could be wrong, though.

edited 5th Aug '15 3:56:17 PM by TobiasDrake

@Tobias, another great analysis, I can personally sympathize with Envy, because, I too, deep down inside, despise and envy the popular kids who have friends and happiness, after a while you don't even want what they have, you just want them to suffer for once. Not to mention, like Envy, convinced myself and others I was arrogant and proud.

I didn't sympathize with Father either, he came off as completely vain and self-absorbed, although, you could say it's sad that Father became literally the opposite of what he was shooting for. As the Youtube video outlined, Father sought to become The Übermensch, but, rather than taking it to the last step and helping others (which would truly make him The Übermensch as Nietzsche described) he was completely selfish and destructive, instead making him The Last Man, the powerful, talented, and intelligent individual that cares only for himself, the opposite of The Übermensch.

edited 5th Aug '15 4:08:32 PM by OmniGoat