#apologies to alphonse for only drawing Ed. i didn’t have a ton of time this year <33

[fullmetalirin]

Fullmetal Alchemist: Battle with Sloth (OG 46-47)

Fullmetal Alchemist Episode 46: "Human Transmutation"

Tucker makes a deal with Alphonse, offering to show Alphonse how to use the philosopher’s stone in exchange for using the stone to resurrect his daughter Nina, while Lust offers to help Edward in exchange for making her human.

Tucker invokes equivalent exchange during his bargain.

We cut to Izumi and Ed discussing Dante. There is a flashback where Izumi argues with Dante about using alchemy for the good of others. Dante tells her to become a State Alchemist if she wants to help people so much… interesting. Izumi asks if she likes people at all, and Dante says she doesn't. She gives a speech that's actually pretty similar to some of the things Envy says in Brotherhood, that humans are violent and savage and will just abuse any power they're given. Izumi shoots back that she herself is human, and Dante doesn't answer. Hmm. I wonder how much is truth and how much is deception? Certainly it would make sense for Dante to want to hoard her power, but I wonder if she really believes what she says – is this how she justifies Amestris to herself, thinking that people would find a reason for war anyway, so they might as well do it for her? Is she projecting her own emptiness onto others? A lot to reflect on here.

Izumi discovered a love letter from Hohenheim to Dante. Good sleuthing! She notices that the date is written in the Christian calendar, and confirms that Christianity is out of practice now. She gives the date as 400 years ago.

Ed seems to come to the conclusion that Hohenheim is the leader of the homunculi. Ah, that's actually a reasonable deduction – he believes Dante was killed by a homunculus, and Izumi just told him there's bad blood between them. But ohoho, how ironic, especially considering Brotherhood.

Ed apologizes to Izumi. Because he's going to kill Wrath?

Mustang pulls strings to keep Fuery out of danger, which is good of him.

He then takes Fuery's glasses and puts them on Riza to assess how she looks, which is kinda creepy. I guess it's reasonable if they are in a relationship, but otherwise, enh.

Bradley promotes both Mustang and Armstrong, and says he hopes the rumors about Mustang are unfounded – that he's planning a coup? So I guess this is some "I know you know" posturing. He goes on to say Archer is still alive – ah, that was the guy missing half his head. I guess he got hit by the edge of the blast.

Bradley has a secret elevator to Dante's mansion underneath Central, which… appears to be part of a city? I think we learn more about that later. Dante confirms that she plans to frag everyone connected to Hughes in the battle.

Envy uses boku? I'm surprised this is the first time I've picked up on that. I guess he does like appearing cute. I suppose it adds a layer of creepy/cute dissonance we English-speakers tragically missed out on.

Envy was supposed to stay in the north, but came to Central because he heard Hohenheim was there. He calls Bradley a "human poseur", and Dante confirms Bradley is a homunculus who can age, "one of [her] masterpieces". I love that that's why he's Pride, by the way – that's utterly brilliant. Dante works very hard on her horrific monstrosities, thank you very much!

Here we get confirmation that Hohenheim was Envy's birth father, and the one who made him. That's a little surprising, I thought that was saved for the very end. I actually do think accompanying that reveal with… everything else that happens in that episode would have greater impact, but I guess some buildup works too.

Bradley asks if Envy misses him, and Envy sends him flying. He then tries to pummel him, but Bradley easily dodges – another nice touch.

Ah, Envy uses ore now. So I guess he switches depending on his mood.

Envy throws a tantrum because he wanted to kill Hohenheim, smashing the floor with his punches. Hm, so he does still have super strength in OG, even though there's less justification for it. I guess we can chalk this up to the homunculi being magic in general.

Dante goads him, and Envy decides he's going to take the Philosopher's Stone from the Elrics before they can use it to restore themselves.

Sloth/Lust/Wrath have broken into the Elrics' room and found a note saying Al is going to meet with Tucker. Wrath is bouncing on the bed, which is cute.

Lust realizes that if Tucker is teaching them to use the Stone, they could use it to humanize the homunculi, too.

Ed returns and gets a faceful of homunculi. He immediately goes for the locket, and makes Lust grab it by accident. Clever!

But then Wrath appears. He absorbs Ed's automail arm. Ed taunts him, saying he'll never be human even if he takes his whole body – even Al, with nothing but a soul, is still more human than him.

Lust turns on Wrath. The automail he absorbed can deflect her spear, which doesn't seem right. Wrath tricks her into impaling the locket, which paralyzes her. Clever!

Wrath breaks off one of her fingers and absorbs it. Yikes!

Ed frees Lust, and now she can impale Wrath through the armor for some reason.

Ed asks why the homunculi want to become human when they're already immortal. Lust says she could say the same thing about Al.

Ed demands to know who the homunculi's master is. Lust says she'll tell him when she becomes human. LOL.

Tucker appears to have succeeded in his human transmutation, but he didn't attach a soul, so that's reasonable. So the Philosopher’s Stone is just to create a proper body. Sloth appears and he freaks out.

Al discovers that a part of his armor has disappeared. Seems like an awful lot just to stitch a body together, considering how much power he's supposed to have.

Fullmetal Alchemist Episode 47: "Sealing the Homunculus"

As Edward, Lust, Wrath, and Sloth all arrive at the factory where Alphonse went to meet Tucker, a climactic battle ensues, as Edward and Alphonse must finally confront their creation.

Time to see how OG handles a boss fight!

Sloth starts acting motherly towards Al. Al appears to buy it, but he's had a hard day, I'll cut him some slack.

As Wrath revives, he appears to dream of outrunning the Gate. I wonder if the Gate tries to pull them in when they die, or maybe just Wrath? It’s a cool depiction, regardless. Rather than just burning power to regenerate, it looks like they’re using the souls in the red stones to actually escape the Gate -- they’re lives, not HP.

Izumi and Sloth blend together in his memories.

Tucker tries to use Al again and Sloth drowns him. The soulless Nina watches impassively.

Ed makes a new arm out of spare metal. He still appears able to move it like normal, so he must have extended the nerve wires somehow. I find that pretty dubious when in the movie he says he doesn’t know how automail works. I guess the writers wanted the drama of him losing his arm but didn’t want the hassle of returning to Winry every time. It keep the plot moving, so it’s allowable, but it still seems a little contrived.

Oh, looks like she didn't kill Tucker. He shows up to creep on Al some more. Ed sees the hole in the armor. Al says it's equivalent exchange.

Ed turns his arm into a gun… I guess he could be extending the metal very thin. He shoots at Sloth, which obviously does nothing. Tucker is somehow able to dodge despite standing right behind her.

Ed jams the box of remains into Sloth, and she melts.

Al yells at Ed for digging up Trisha's grave without telling him. Ed says he's the only one who needed to go through that. What was he expecting, though? He'd have to tell Al eventually.

Lust reflects on her memories. She points out there's no logical reason homunculi should have them. She thinks it might be the memories of the alchemist that are imbued.

Al throws away Trisha's remains because he's stupid. He thinks that since they made her, it's wrong for them to kill her; Ed insists the reverse.

Wrath absorbs the remains into himself.

Wrath sees Lust attacking Sloth. There's a bit too long of a pause as Ed explains what's going on to Al before Wrath attacks. Wrath absorbs the guns in the warehouse to create a massive gun-arm.

Sloth enters Al's armor and starts pupetting him.

I was about to complain that Wrath couldn't hit anything, but Lust actually does eject a ton of bullets. I feel like we still didn't see any of them connect, though.

Wrath brags that he can't die, but Lust says he actually only has as many lives as he has red stones, so she can still brute-force him. Ah, so that does hold true for this continuity too. I guess the idea is that most of them just have an effectively inexhaustible number of lives.

Lust starts using the same wide swipes I complained about in BH 19, but she actually does seem to be extending them. Wrath is only dodging because he's very agile, as previously established.

Wrath comes across the locket, previously discarded, and tricks Lust onto her own transmutation circle. Is it reasonable she'd forget about that? We don't see the circle because of camera angles, but surely she would have? I would think a homunculi would want to steer clear of a sealing circle even if they're sure they're safe.

In an adjacent warehouse, Sloth uses Al to attack Ed. Since contact causes an unstable reaction, Ed has to stay clear. He draws a transmutation circle using tables in the warehouse and uses it to freeze Sloth.

Meanwhile, Lust vomits up her stones. Wrath sneers that she must have wanted to die if she wanted to become human, and Lust wonders if that's true. Wrath kills her, but wonders if that's true for him too.

We get a flashback to the transmutation from Sloth's perspective. Dante arrived apparently the same night to feed her stones. (The question of how she knew to be there is sort of answered by her saying they're Hohenheim's sons so she knew they'd try it.) Dante confirms that all the homunculi were messes to begin with, and only gain complete forms after eating the red stones. Sloth is confused by Trisha's memories, and Dante says she will understand once she becomes human.

Back in the present, Sloth manages to melt herself by… shivering?

Sloth says that she wants to kill Ed so she can be free of her memories. By killing him, she'll prove she's not the person she remembers.

Ed stabs Sloth, and she suddenly explodes. Ed says he transmuted his automail into sodium. Clever!

Wrath fuses himself with Sloth, which paralyzes her because of the remains. Not so clever, Wrath!

Apparently you can't normally transmute a whole body; even Kimblee only transmutes part of the body. The reason Ed was able to break Greed's shield is because homunculi aren't human, and can be wholly transmuted. Ah, that also explains why people can't do what Wrath does. Ed uses this principle to transmute all of Sloth into ethanol, causing her to evaporate. Oh, and it looks like he actually grabs some elements from the ground first, which explains where he's getting the carbon from. Since the inability to turn water into wine was a plot point earlier, it's good that they actually accounted for that.

And… Winry is watching them? We end quite suddenly.

Conclusion

What a fantastic set of episodes! This had wonderful buildup, and the tactics used in the battle were so clever! You can see that the directors went through a lot of trouble to establish where everything was to make the alchemy plausible. Probably why they chose to set it in a warehouse, haha. And the battle is matched in violence by emotion – the brothers finally face head-on their sin and how they feel about it, and we get even more philosophizing from the homunculi's side. As I said last time, the nature of humanity and personhood are crucial themes to OG, and we see that in full display here. I love how we see Lust's humanity contrasted with her still vicious behavior towards Sloth and Wrath, Wrath's mommy issues, Sloth's anti-mommy issues… It's such a rich picture.

My only real criticism, I think, is that I wish there was more of it! Oddly for OG, I think this felt a little rushed, mainly because Ed and Al have avoided the subject for so long. There wasn't really enough time to have both a satisfying battle and to fully address all these issues. I'd have liked to see Ed and Al discuss this a little more beforehand, maybe get a bit more of Sloth too. That might have alleviated some of Al's idiot ball, too – the only excuse I can come up with is that he must still be mentally 11, but you can only lean on that so far.

That, and, I don't know why they're so cordial to Tucker when Ed was totally willing to punch his face in the first time. I'd have liked to see them still angry about Nina, given how that was such a crucial part of their lives; right now, it feels like they've forgotten about her.

Let's update our homunculi list:

Greed is wasted.

Lust defects, and is killed out of vengeance for a loved one.

Sloth is paralyzed.

These two are more poetic than ironic, but I still think they're a lot better executed than Brotherhood's poetic fates. I love that Lust is actually lust – she desires humanity, life, connection, everything that the too-human Dante spurns. So of course she defects. Greed talked a big game about rebelling because he wanted more, but I think Lust has the better, and more meaningful, claim there.

I will admit that Brotherhood!Sloth's fate is probably the most clever of those fates; killing Sloth by outlasting him sort of represents overcoming your own sloth. But agonizingly long battles are not OG's style and, in my opinion, not terribly good storytelling in general, so I find this a much more efficient way of fitting the theme. I do think it's ironic in a more general sense, in that her power is evasiveness: of course she's killed when she's pinned down. Perhaps we could also say that she's sort of killed by anti-sloth, in that she would have survived if Wrath hadn't tried to help, but that's a bit of a reach.

I have to say I'm also finding it interesting how there are strange echoes of Brotherhood in how this plays out. Greed is destroyed by the main villain, the fight moves to Briggs, Ed mistakes Hohenheim for the villain, Sloth is sent to assassinate the heroes and is assassinated herself, Lust brings up the possibility of brute-forcing a homunculi to death… It makes me wonder if these are coincidences, or if they did get a more comprehensive outline than I thought. Or cause and effect could be reversed -- Arakawa may have included those elements later as an homage to the anime.

#fullmetal alchemist #fma #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #fma 2003 #liveblog