In Fullmetal Alchemist 2003, Father goes out
to get milk and a pack of cigarettes and never comes back. Actually, he never even shows up in
the first place. Which leaves us with Dante as a villain. In mangahood, meanwhile, Father is the
primary antagonist. Many people have debated about which villain is better. Despite the title of this
video, I’m not really joining in on that debate. Why? Well, because my opinion is about as
boring as it can get: they're both equally fine. (crowd booing) Sometimes sitting on the
fence hurts my butt, but that's just how I feel. Either way, I want to discuss these characters.
Their personalities, weaknesses, and deaths do a good job of reflecting the overall themes of
their respective series, so let's start with Father, above all else, is prideful. The fact
that he attempts to remove his human vices does nothing to change that. By extension, he's selfish
and thinks incredibly little of humans. In fact, he tends to view homunculi and humans alike as
pawns. If they don't serve some purpose to him, well, then they can be disposed of. As Father says
when Ed pleads with him to heal Ling’s injury, “He’s useless to ME.” He he also compares
humans to insects, stating that they're so beneath him that it's impossible to
care about them one way or the other. Basically, he's so far above these humans that he
views them as a waste of his thoughts and energy, even if some of them are
instrumental to his plans. Here, however, his biggest weakness becomes clear:
He's way too self-centered. As such, he views humans in an oversimplified way. By extension, he
thinks that the emotions he's supposedly expelled from himself are hindrances. As Greed's character
change and motivation show us, this is a massive mistake. In the end, because he's so confident
that he can predict Greed's every action, he doesn't predict Greed's act of self-sacrifice.
Of course, Greed’s sacrifice is a very important part of his demise. Without that happening,
he might have succeeded on some level. Similarly, he lets all these
humans roam around: Hohenheim, Ed, Al, Izumi, and Mustang. Even though he could
have found a better way to deal with them, he viewed them as so fundamentally flawed - as
so much weaker than himself - that he thought there was no way they could come up with a
plan to thwart him. As such, when Bradley's wife gets kidnapped, he fails to understand
that even though she doesn't matter to him, she does matter to someone, so she still
has an effect on him and his plans. He's unable to take another person's position
and understand it, and that's his greatest weakness. In essence, he fails to see the bigger
picture. He only sees the one and not the all. As you might expect, this desire and position
clashes with Ed's own experience and his realization that he's nothing more than an
ordinary human. Learning that is part of coming to understand the meaning that “one is
all and all is one.” Understanding that is key to Ed's journey and just the opposite is key to
Father's journey, too. Because he never learns the meaning of that phrase. Much like Father
Cornello in the very first chapter of the manga, Father attempts to become something he isn't.
And where Father Cornello manipulates people into seeing him as a god, Father manipulates people
in his quest to consume God. He does this with the homunculi, humans, and souls swirling inside
him. Father may be able to see that “for every human who dares challenge the natural order, a
fitting punishment is meted out to put them in their place,” but he fails to make one final,
essential step. He fails to apply that rule to himself. For that reason, the Truth punishes
him, trapping him within the gate, consuming him. So why is Father like this?
Well, a chapter of the manga and about two-thirds of an episode of
Brotherhood are dedicated to that. Here, we're shown Hohenheim's flashback of
his life as a slave and, eventually, an alchemist in Xerxes. It's revealed that
Father is a product of an alchemist's experiment. As a result, he's trapped in this flask.
Physically, he's a weak, limited creature. The root of Father's desire is understandable:
He doesn't want to be trapped, and who can blame him? He was trapped in that flask for a long
time, unable to properly move in the world, to have autonomy. However, getting out of the
flask doesn't heal him. No, he needs more. To him, any limitation is a curse, any boundary is
meant to be broken. He's willing to wipe out everyone - everything - just to transcend
what he sees as an overly limited existence. Of course, though this limits him, the truth is
that this is not the source of his mental torment. What torments him is his mindset, is his
focus on his limits instead of his abilities. One big question starts to get explored here,
though: Is there another side to Father? Is there something to him beyond
this desire to rise above the Truth, to become the one who consumed the all.
On the surface, Father doesn't seem to understand Hohenheim's desire to have a family.
However, he chooses to give Hohenheim half of the souls he gets from the people in Xerxes
to also make him a philosopher's stone. As far as I can tell, there are two main reasons
he might have done this: First, maybe he already planned this whole thing out. Maybe he already
decided to use Hohenheim as a sacrifice at that point. This way, granting him an extended lifespan
is a way to guarantee that he'll still be around when Father's plan finally comes to fruition,
that he’ll still be a viable human sacrifice. But the other option is that he didn't
already have this plan, and that he's telling the truth when he says that he's done
this to “thank Hoheneheim for his blood.” If that is the case, then Hohenheim
might not be so wrong when he later asserts that “Father just
wanted a family of his own.” Unfortunately, this potential internal conflict
for Father isn't really explored beyond that. Still, it gives him a bit of depth he otherwise
wouldn't have. Even if he isn't as interesting as some of the homunculi - Greed and
Wrath in particular come to mind - he still functions well as the big bad, as the man
manipulating everything from behind the curtain. Dante has many similarities to Father. She has
large aspirations. She has an immense amount of pride in herself. Her failure to understand her
own limitations, the homunculi’s motivations, and other humans abilities leads
to her downfall. After all, when her new bodies are
decaying faster and faster, she simply tries to get another philosopher's
stone made so she can switch bodies again. She believes she's above other people, that the
rules of the world do not apply to her. Similarly, the fact that she underestimates the homunculi,
that she lies to them and has no intention of making them human (whatever that means) leads
to homunculi like Lust turning against her. Eventually, homunculi stop being useful to her,
and she even alters Gluttony's personality because he's depressed about Lust’s death. This, of
course, leads to her own death. On top of that, other people joining forces, like Mustang and Ed,
creates a situation where she can be defeated. However Dante's relationship to Ed and Al
is more personal than Father's. She needs to manipulate them throughout their journey so that
they'll create a philosopher's stone for her. Meanwhile, Father just needs to keep most of
his human sacrifices alive. In order to get the homunculi to work for her, she lies to them,
raises them from their malformed states, and feeds them pieces of the philosopher's stones. After
that, she uses these homunculi to manipulate Ed. Though Father also uses the homunculi to
keep tabs on all his human sacrifices, Dante makes this more personal by even
using the homunculus that Ed and Al created. Though she doesn't believe in equivalent
exchange, she reinforces their belief in it. This way, she hopes that they will continue
to try to get their bodies back. In turn, they may eventually create a philosopher's stone.
Unlike Father, she seems to go after Ed and Al, at least in part, because of a vendetta.
Though Father knows Hohenheim, that's not the reason why Ed and Al are human sacrifices -
that's just a coincidence. However, Dante hates Hohenheim because he left her for another woman
and turned his back on their ideals. So she has a reason to hurt Ed and Al now that goes beyond
getting immortality. She can get back at her ex-lover. Besides, she wants to get it on with
Ed, which is uh, you know, uh, uncomfortable and unfortunate and all sorts of bad things, but
- but she wants it. (L I C K I N G sound) But, unlike Father, she has strong opinions
about humans that she's willing to voice, and she sees them as fools. When Izumi
asks if she likes them, she simply says, “How could I like them? They are selfish. They
learn how to use a little gunpowder and there is nothing but war. If they were to learn all
the secrets of alchemy, how much calamity do you think would come about?” Here, we're also
introduced to another one of her motivations. She wants to become immortal because she wants
to protect the world and keep humans from doing anything foolish with the philosopher's stone. Of
course, this is incredibly hypocritical. I mean, she's been the cause of widespread war and
destruction and death, but in her mind, her means are justified. She's convinced
herself that, in some weird, twisted way, she's doing the right thing. So yeah, sure,
horrible things are happening, but they're less horrible than what would happen if she weren't
around. From an outside perspective, it's easy to see how ridiculous this line of reasoning
is, but to her, it's an irrevocable truth. Overall, Dante sees herself as above other
people. In fact, she doesn't even consider herself a human. After all, when she tells Ed
this whole thing about protecting the world, he tells her to “cut the crap,” that “she is human,
too.” But she replies by saying, “Not anymore.” Again this is much like Father, but where Father
seeks to consume human souls and use their energy to even consume the Truth, Dante claims that
she's protecting people from their own stupidity. In the end though, it seems clear that they both
just want to transcend their own limitations. Much like Father, she stands in opposition to
Ed and Al’s ideals, too: Specifically, to their belief in equivalent exchange. This is something
I’ll go into more detail about in a future video, but I want to discuss it a bit here.
Basically, she thinks equivalent exchange is a lie made to comfort weak people, to make
them feel like the world is fair. Of course, this means that she thinks that if
she's smart enough and strong enough, she can take however much she wants from others
without consequence. At least on that level, she's wrong. She can't achieve immortality, regardless
of whether equivalent exchange is true or not. In my opinion, one of the most important
differences between Father and Dante is their backstory. Through a flashback, we get to see
some of Father, but the same isn't true for Dante. Sure, this sequence is fantastic - one
of my favorite moments aesthetically in the whole show - but it's still Dante saying
what she thinks about herself and her past. We never get beyond that facade. We never get
to see her past actions from a different angle. Now, of course, it's not necessary to see that.
It's not necessary to have her backstory shown through a flashback. But I think that would
have been great. I mean, imagine an episode where we get to see her and Hohenehim together,
trying to create a philosopher's stone during the black plague. It would have added a lot
to both hers and Hohenheim's character. There we could have seen who they were before.
We could see what exactly drove them to create the philosopher's stone. We could see what
moment led to their separation. I think that detour from the central plot of the story would
have been well worthwhile if handled correctly, and would have made Dante a far more
compelling villain than she currently is. Even so, like Father, I find
her to be a functional villain. She’s also not as compelling as
many of the homunculi, but she works because her viewpoint and actions
counter Ed's, pushing him as a character. Though she herself might not seem interesting,
she makes Ed far more interesting. By extension, she makes the moral landscape of
2003 more complex and that's good enough for me.
I'm a fan of Dante, so I'll have to check this out. Thanks!
No one gonna talk about Dante's face in the thumbnail?