Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) Meta
Jun. 23rd, 2020 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quietmoonI see two main themes in FMA: desire, and death. Through different characters' journeys, motivations, and eventual fates, it explores these themes from a bunch of different viewpoints. I think it takes quite a pessimistic stance, having a fair bit to say about the inevitability of tragedy in human desire, but we'll get to that. The main discussions of theme don't include the ending in Conqueror of Shamballa, but I'll touch on that at the end. (ღゝ◡╹)ノ♡ ｡ﾟ･
Desire: The Homunculi
So we've got the Homunculi, who are physical manifestations of desire in different forms, taking the name of the cardinal sin they most embody: Pride, Greed, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth. Their entire story throughout the anime explores all of them going after what they want with single-minded focus but it always being at any cost, and they're punished for it accordingly.
Greed's mistake was to not give in to his desire at all; while all the other homunculi wanted to be human, he rejected this base desire. However, at the same time he more than any of them craved freedom and used it to do whatever he wanted; unlike the others, he didn't consider himself beholden to any rules, and he was imprisoned for his craving for freedom in all it's forms — directly contradicting that very wish.
Lust wanted to be human, to have a human life, no matter what. This was twisted and revealed to have actually been a desire for human death, or the resignation to it. I think her story highlights the 'be careful what you wish for' idiom.
Gluttony was the simplest of them all, wanting only to eat things, and caring only about his friend Lust. Deprived of his own mind and personality, in the end he was reduced to nothing but appetite, and in this happening it was revealed to the audience how despite his apparent simplicity, despite what appeared at first to be a one-dimensional character who wanted to eat, that wasn't what he was at all. Only now that he's been deprived of all of those things do we see that he did have a life, humanity, and a personality the whole time, and this serves to make us doubt the veracity of the Homunculi claim that they don't have souls after all. They certainly seem to live and feel as humans do; they aren't monsters as they are because Gluttony is changed to become one.
Wrath was desperate for a mother. He wanted love, care, and acceptance. Before he properly realised his desire, he was living in comparative peace despite his loneliness, but once he realised, it led him on a path of tragedy (re: the moment his eyes turn purple) and he decided that he wanted to become human because that would make him worthy of love and acceptance, and thus he decided that the only route to this was by stealing Ed's body. In the end, he did have exactly Ed's body, automail limbs and all, but lost Sloth — his surrogate mother — in the process. In going after what he thought he wanted, he lost what he already had, which was what he'd wanted all along. And even then he rejected companionship at the end, and elected to return to his life in the woods — back where he started with only pain to show for his journey.
King Bradley seemed to have the perfect life. What anyone else might want, he had: he had power, respect, a family (and what looked like a very loving relationship with a son who idolised him) and most importantly, he seemed human. He was living what seemed to everyone like a human life; he even gets shit about it from Envy because it's so convincing. And despite this, he's loyal to Dante because he wants to become human, ignoring all around him the signs that he already has this. In chasing this hollow desire, he destroys his life by his own hand (very literally, re: strangling his son). He tried both to have that life, but also destroy it. I think he epitomises the 'grass is greener on the other side' idea.
Sloth is a bit harder to pin down. The strongest sense I got from her is imitation of the human she once was. She pretends to be wrath's mother, she pretends to be an ordinary woman (Juliet), she pretends to be Ed's and Al's mother, she pretends she can't remember being their mother — her entire existence is an imitation. In the end, her final words (re: her confession to Ed as she was evaporating that she did hold memories of their mother) suggest that it was the truth she had been running from all along, and using the fake front of running towards her goal of becoming human as something to hide behind as she did. In the end, she wanted to be herself, only herself, and couldn't accept that part of that was someone with the memories of the Trisha. So she tried to destroy that in her quest, but couldn't accept until the end that that meant destroying herself.
Envy had an overwhelming desire to cause pain to humand and specifically Hohenheim. He isn't shown to have any other motivation other than revenge, and it's shown to be enough to have driven him for centuries already. It brings to mind the Ishbal proverb 'those who cause pain cannot sleep' because he never seemed happy or comfortable or satiated; he always, always wanted to hurt more people. It wasn't enough to hurt Hohenheim, he had to kill him; and it wasn't enough to kill him, he had to hurt his other sons, etc. His apparent rejection of his own identity suggests to me that his desire to hurt others was an expression of his own self-loathing. At the very end he's revealed to have been jealous of the brothers receiving Hohenheim's love while he was rejected by him, and he expressed that jealousy by trying to destroy that which he wanted: the chance of familial acceptance. He even rejects the Homunculi around him, refusing to form bonds.
All of the sins wanted what they didn't have, and got it in the form they didn't want, as self-hatred and self-rejection turned outward.
- Greed wanted freedom. He'd rather die than return to being imprisoned. So he died.
- Lust wanted humanity. It was implied by the end that the Homunculi were human in every way except their immortality, and so she got the only thing she was missing: a human death.
- Gluttony wanted to eat non-stop. His fate became just that, at the cost of everything else.
- Wrath wanted Ed's body. He now mirror's exactly that, but he's back where he started, because in going after it he sacrificed the love of a parent that he actually wanted.
- Bradley wanted a human life, and wanted to sacrifice everything to get there. So he sacrificed everything (despite the irony of him seemingly already having it).
- Sloth wanted to reject the memories of Trisha, and be only herself. She succeeded in destroying them, but because they were part of her, she destroyed herself, too.
- Envy rejected familial bonds in any capacity despite it being what he craved. All he wanted was to kill Hohenheim, and he ended up sacrificing himself to do it.
Death: Humanity
All of the characters are haunted by death. Initially I had this as 'loss' and although it can be seen in this way, I think it isn't just loss but specifically death: the tragedy of it, the permanence, the inevitability, the mystery, the intrinsic bond between being human and facing death.
We're introduced to this early with Winry and her parents, and of course the death of Trisha soon after. In fact, it's rare to meet children who haven't been affected by death in some way; most are without parents or people, and those who aren't lose pets or siblings.
Mustang is haunted by the Ishbal Massacre. His PTSD is referenced early, and we see flashbacks later of how far it pushed him to the brink of committing the sin of trying to use alchemy to bring back the dead, not out of desire to have someone back, but to absolve himself from the guilt of murdering so many. War features a lot in FMA, and I think Mustang is the spearhead through which the theme is explored: we see nothing of his life but his dedication to the military, but he is traumatised by that very same thing.
The Ishbal people, again, carry an air of death around them. Every time we speak to any Ishbal, it is in reference to the genocidal massacre they were victim to. And a big plot thread in FMA is about the mystery surrounding the event: why did so many people have to die? It's a question returned to again and again: why do people die? Why is life unfair? If life is supposed to operate on the principle of equivalent exchange, why does justice not exist? By the end in my opinion we do see that actually life doesn't work that way, but the brothers choose to view that it does because it contextualises the tragedy around them in a way that can be lived with. Through their subjective view of the world, they tell themselves that somehow this must make sense, because otherwise wouldn't it all just be too terrible?
Scar's plot was weak. The whole 'I will make a Philosopher's Stone because ?power?' idea was pretty thin at best, but it does draw a circle to his story thematically, and I think that's the only good part about it. He initially starts as someone bent on revenge — but unlike Envy, whose motivation is powered by desire, Scar has more in common with Mustang. He wants to kill State Alchemists because he thinks it's his duty to: he wants to be absolved of his guilt as a survivor, his guilt over his brother, and his grief regarding his people. By the end, again, he's not creating the stone because he wants power, nor to bring his people back; he's doing it in that same duty-bound way. He decides that he'll do the unspeakable, he'll be someone 'who doesn't sleep' because death haunts him in such a way that there's nothing left for him but to continue down this track with single-minded focus. The cycle of death and war continues: as the Ishbal were massacred, so the military was massacred, and so Liore was next on the list. Death coming round and round again and eating up a new group of victims.
The Homunculi play a big role in orchestrating all of this, of course, but the 'how did we get here' isn't always important when talking about theme. Also, because, as stated multiple times in my liveblog, I hated so much of FMA's plot gymnastics lol. What I think is very relevant in this discussion regarding the Homunculi is how they conversely seem haunted by their own immortality; Lust, especially, but all of them embody this in their quest to become human. I think it's just interesting to draw the parallels here.
Dante and Hohenheim... uhhh, again, weak ass plot. However, interesting idea: the immortal life of the soul, and how their entire story was built upon them trying to cheat death over and over. It still catches up to them though, and chases them. They've bought themselves extra time by feeding death countless lives of others, but it's only a temporary solution, and their bodies rot as soon as their soul enters because the soul isn't immortal: the soul, the human, is fated to die, no matter what.
Desire as Death
And this brings us to looking at how these two pillars of FMA intertwine to form most of the interactions and story. Just as the homunculi are revealed to be very human after all despite not being so literally, desire often reveals itself to be a disguise for death. The homunculi want to become human: the desire for something does often turn out to be a wish to kill or die.
The overall motif of the Philosopher's Stone as requiring human life is the best example of this, and does make literal this relationship. The stone can grant any wish, any desire, does become itself an object of desire, and the price of obtaining it is always death — and not just one, or two, but countless, thousands, so many that it stops being 'souls required' and becomes the metaphysical idea of death itself. If you seek the stone, you seek death — always others, and eventually, if accidentally, your own. The only reason the Elric brothers survive in the end, I think, is because they give up at the very last moment on their quest for the stone.
I'm sure there's something to be said about the homunculi eating janky stones, but nothing is jumping out at me here other than it, again, just draws attention to the parallels mentioned already. What is clear to me though is that they all, generally, wanted to become human, and this path led them all to death. Lust's story especially points to the idea that the path of humanity, no matter what, is a path to death; that to be human is to want, and to want is to die.
Hughes is another example of desire leading to death. He's part of the intelligence division, dedicates himself to finding information, and does eventually find the answers that he was desperately looking for. And the price is death, which he pays. Mustang, conversely, wanted to get to the top and become the leader; his desire is referenced multiple times, and is even hinted at having led Hughes to his own demise. But when Mustang finally sees that the price to get what he wants is death — just as Ed and Al do with the stone — he isn't willing to pay it. And thus, he escapes death, and he fails his goal, and doesn't gets his dream. FMA wants to say that you can't have both your life and your desire: you have to choose.
Ed and Al constantly on their travels meet people who combine desire and death into one. Kimbly, whose biggest desire is to kill. Archer, who wants to be a war hero no matter the human cost. Tucker, who wants to create chimeras, at the cost of the lives of the victims, and doesn't care about it being his daughter or wife — to him, his desire for making chimeras supersedes all else (similar to the story of King Bradley, especially once Tucker becomes obsessed with bringing Nina back when he's the one who killed her). One of the earliest characters who embody this idea is Barry the Chopper, who epitomises desire and death mixing into one.
Over and over, we see murderers and monsters and genocide and war. I think all of it serves as a grizzly reminder that desire is subjective, and selfish, and again it strengthens the link between these two themes. One is the other.
The Conqueror of Shamballa
This movie is a bit of a weird ending point, because it does bring some stories to an end (Wrath's being the particular stand-out) but for most of it alchemy is just a side-plot, so we don't have any of the Philosopher's Stone business which the entire show has centred around thus far. There's some obvious stuff that does relate to what I've discussed so far (the Nazi rioters want to make their country better, but we all know how history really panned out; Noah's wish for a home only brings destruction to that place; Eckhart's desire for power corrupts her, etc.) but my favourite parts were Wrath's, Envy's, and Ed's.
Wrath and Ed have similar stories. They both have come to see clearly the cost of their desire. They're both as at peace with it as they can be. Wrath decides that he's willing to pay the price — he's willing to die if he can have a mother and love again — and we see in a very emotional scene him being reunited with the mother he never had but always wanted: Izumi. Ed, conversely, knows that if he wants to get back to his world, the portal to it will remain open for future abuse: the cost of returning would be endangering his home world. So he decides he won't pay the price. And he sticks to this, no matter what. I've loved Ed's character through all of this because he is a bargainer and a gambler, and he always asks fate if it wants to up the ante, but at the end of the day he always plays by the rules as well.
Envy, on the other hand, hasn't learned anything, and it's his own ruin. I was really struck by the image of him pinned to this magic circle, with Hohenheim in his jaws. Eckhart said that it was the only way to shut him up, and I think that's kind of brilliant: he's so focused, he's so angry that he's sticking to his guns. He doesn't regret what he did before, and he'll do it again. Hohenheim's death is worth any price. He reminds me of Tucker and Archer (before they were both turned into literal monsters).
(Unrelated, but I wanted to mention that the only reason I'm not using gender-neutral pronouns for Envy is because he was confirmed to be Hohenheim's son. Since he seemed to identify with that description, I thought masculine pronouns might also be appropriate.)
I have mixed feelings on Al's journey through Shamballa. I already didn't like how his character was written in the second half of FMA (despite, or perhaps because of, him being my favourite character). It felt like he was a soft-spoken likeable but harmless plot device with no agency or genuine motivations of his own. He kind of still feels like that; if anything more so because by taking away his memories whatever vestiges of his agency remained vanish. He just repeats the same journey Ed and he went on before, trying to gamble with fate, not thinking or realising the price. I feel mean saying it, but his whole story to me in this movie was nonsense.
Mustang and Armstrong (another fave, cry) fall into that category for me, too. They didn't make sense to me — they just seemed to do what the plot needed them to at any given moment.
One result I did appreciate of Al's story, though, was the reunion with Ed and also the return of Al's memories. I don't think it makes any narrative sense, but emotionally it feels sound that they are together, and lose their home and their friends and their alchemy to do it. Earth!Al dying kind of felt like it made space for our Al to return to Ed as well, you know? I loved Earth!Al. He was complex and likeable and despicable and felt genuine the whole way through.
In conclusion, I have no conclusion. These were just a bunch of thoughts I had after I finished watching the show. :) I'm happy to hear agreement or contradictions, so if you want to talk about any of this, feel free to reach out! I'm not I-will-die-on-this-rock about any of these.
Desire: The Homunculi
So we've got the Homunculi, who are physical manifestations of desire in different forms, taking the name of the cardinal sin they most embody: Pride, Greed, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth. Their entire story throughout the anime explores all of them going after what they want with single-minded focus but it always being at any cost, and they're punished for it accordingly.
Greed's mistake was to not give in to his desire at all; while all the other homunculi wanted to be human, he rejected this base desire. However, at the same time he more than any of them craved freedom and used it to do whatever he wanted; unlike the others, he didn't consider himself beholden to any rules, and he was imprisoned for his craving for freedom in all it's forms — directly contradicting that very wish.
Lust wanted to be human, to have a human life, no matter what. This was twisted and revealed to have actually been a desire for human death, or the resignation to it. I think her story highlights the 'be careful what you wish for' idiom.
Gluttony was the simplest of them all, wanting only to eat things, and caring only about his friend Lust. Deprived of his own mind and personality, in the end he was reduced to nothing but appetite, and in this happening it was revealed to the audience how despite his apparent simplicity, despite what appeared at first to be a one-dimensional character who wanted to eat, that wasn't what he was at all. Only now that he's been deprived of all of those things do we see that he did have a life, humanity, and a personality the whole time, and this serves to make us doubt the veracity of the Homunculi claim that they don't have souls after all. They certainly seem to live and feel as humans do; they aren't monsters as they are because Gluttony is changed to become one.
Wrath was desperate for a mother. He wanted love, care, and acceptance. Before he properly realised his desire, he was living in comparative peace despite his loneliness, but once he realised, it led him on a path of tragedy (re: the moment his eyes turn purple) and he decided that he wanted to become human because that would make him worthy of love and acceptance, and thus he decided that the only route to this was by stealing Ed's body. In the end, he did have exactly Ed's body, automail limbs and all, but lost Sloth — his surrogate mother — in the process. In going after what he thought he wanted, he lost what he already had, which was what he'd wanted all along. And even then he rejected companionship at the end, and elected to return to his life in the woods — back where he started with only pain to show for his journey.
King Bradley seemed to have the perfect life. What anyone else might want, he had: he had power, respect, a family (and what looked like a very loving relationship with a son who idolised him) and most importantly, he seemed human. He was living what seemed to everyone like a human life; he even gets shit about it from Envy because it's so convincing. And despite this, he's loyal to Dante because he wants to become human, ignoring all around him the signs that he already has this. In chasing this hollow desire, he destroys his life by his own hand (very literally, re: strangling his son). He tried both to have that life, but also destroy it. I think he epitomises the 'grass is greener on the other side' idea.
Sloth is a bit harder to pin down. The strongest sense I got from her is imitation of the human she once was. She pretends to be wrath's mother, she pretends to be an ordinary woman (Juliet), she pretends to be Ed's and Al's mother, she pretends she can't remember being their mother — her entire existence is an imitation. In the end, her final words (re: her confession to Ed as she was evaporating that she did hold memories of their mother) suggest that it was the truth she had been running from all along, and using the fake front of running towards her goal of becoming human as something to hide behind as she did. In the end, she wanted to be herself, only herself, and couldn't accept that part of that was someone with the memories of the Trisha. So she tried to destroy that in her quest, but couldn't accept until the end that that meant destroying herself.
Envy had an overwhelming desire to cause pain to humand and specifically Hohenheim. He isn't shown to have any other motivation other than revenge, and it's shown to be enough to have driven him for centuries already. It brings to mind the Ishbal proverb 'those who cause pain cannot sleep' because he never seemed happy or comfortable or satiated; he always, always wanted to hurt more people. It wasn't enough to hurt Hohenheim, he had to kill him; and it wasn't enough to kill him, he had to hurt his other sons, etc. His apparent rejection of his own identity suggests to me that his desire to hurt others was an expression of his own self-loathing. At the very end he's revealed to have been jealous of the brothers receiving Hohenheim's love while he was rejected by him, and he expressed that jealousy by trying to destroy that which he wanted: the chance of familial acceptance. He even rejects the Homunculi around him, refusing to form bonds.
All of the sins wanted what they didn't have, and got it in the form they didn't want, as self-hatred and self-rejection turned outward.
- Greed wanted freedom. He'd rather die than return to being imprisoned. So he died.
- Lust wanted humanity. It was implied by the end that the Homunculi were human in every way except their immortality, and so she got the only thing she was missing: a human death.
- Gluttony wanted to eat non-stop. His fate became just that, at the cost of everything else.
- Wrath wanted Ed's body. He now mirror's exactly that, but he's back where he started, because in going after it he sacrificed the love of a parent that he actually wanted.
- Bradley wanted a human life, and wanted to sacrifice everything to get there. So he sacrificed everything (despite the irony of him seemingly already having it).
- Sloth wanted to reject the memories of Trisha, and be only herself. She succeeded in destroying them, but because they were part of her, she destroyed herself, too.
- Envy rejected familial bonds in any capacity despite it being what he craved. All he wanted was to kill Hohenheim, and he ended up sacrificing himself to do it.
Death: Humanity
All of the characters are haunted by death. Initially I had this as 'loss' and although it can be seen in this way, I think it isn't just loss but specifically death: the tragedy of it, the permanence, the inevitability, the mystery, the intrinsic bond between being human and facing death.
We're introduced to this early with Winry and her parents, and of course the death of Trisha soon after. In fact, it's rare to meet children who haven't been affected by death in some way; most are without parents or people, and those who aren't lose pets or siblings.
Mustang is haunted by the Ishbal Massacre. His PTSD is referenced early, and we see flashbacks later of how far it pushed him to the brink of committing the sin of trying to use alchemy to bring back the dead, not out of desire to have someone back, but to absolve himself from the guilt of murdering so many. War features a lot in FMA, and I think Mustang is the spearhead through which the theme is explored: we see nothing of his life but his dedication to the military, but he is traumatised by that very same thing.
The Ishbal people, again, carry an air of death around them. Every time we speak to any Ishbal, it is in reference to the genocidal massacre they were victim to. And a big plot thread in FMA is about the mystery surrounding the event: why did so many people have to die? It's a question returned to again and again: why do people die? Why is life unfair? If life is supposed to operate on the principle of equivalent exchange, why does justice not exist? By the end in my opinion we do see that actually life doesn't work that way, but the brothers choose to view that it does because it contextualises the tragedy around them in a way that can be lived with. Through their subjective view of the world, they tell themselves that somehow this must make sense, because otherwise wouldn't it all just be too terrible?
Scar's plot was weak. The whole 'I will make a Philosopher's Stone because ?power?' idea was pretty thin at best, but it does draw a circle to his story thematically, and I think that's the only good part about it. He initially starts as someone bent on revenge — but unlike Envy, whose motivation is powered by desire, Scar has more in common with Mustang. He wants to kill State Alchemists because he thinks it's his duty to: he wants to be absolved of his guilt as a survivor, his guilt over his brother, and his grief regarding his people. By the end, again, he's not creating the stone because he wants power, nor to bring his people back; he's doing it in that same duty-bound way. He decides that he'll do the unspeakable, he'll be someone 'who doesn't sleep' because death haunts him in such a way that there's nothing left for him but to continue down this track with single-minded focus. The cycle of death and war continues: as the Ishbal were massacred, so the military was massacred, and so Liore was next on the list. Death coming round and round again and eating up a new group of victims.
The Homunculi play a big role in orchestrating all of this, of course, but the 'how did we get here' isn't always important when talking about theme. Also, because, as stated multiple times in my liveblog, I hated so much of FMA's plot gymnastics lol. What I think is very relevant in this discussion regarding the Homunculi is how they conversely seem haunted by their own immortality; Lust, especially, but all of them embody this in their quest to become human. I think it's just interesting to draw the parallels here.
Dante and Hohenheim... uhhh, again, weak ass plot. However, interesting idea: the immortal life of the soul, and how their entire story was built upon them trying to cheat death over and over. It still catches up to them though, and chases them. They've bought themselves extra time by feeding death countless lives of others, but it's only a temporary solution, and their bodies rot as soon as their soul enters because the soul isn't immortal: the soul, the human, is fated to die, no matter what.
Desire as Death
And this brings us to looking at how these two pillars of FMA intertwine to form most of the interactions and story. Just as the homunculi are revealed to be very human after all despite not being so literally, desire often reveals itself to be a disguise for death. The homunculi want to become human: the desire for something does often turn out to be a wish to kill or die.
The overall motif of the Philosopher's Stone as requiring human life is the best example of this, and does make literal this relationship. The stone can grant any wish, any desire, does become itself an object of desire, and the price of obtaining it is always death — and not just one, or two, but countless, thousands, so many that it stops being 'souls required' and becomes the metaphysical idea of death itself. If you seek the stone, you seek death — always others, and eventually, if accidentally, your own. The only reason the Elric brothers survive in the end, I think, is because they give up at the very last moment on their quest for the stone.
I'm sure there's something to be said about the homunculi eating janky stones, but nothing is jumping out at me here other than it, again, just draws attention to the parallels mentioned already. What is clear to me though is that they all, generally, wanted to become human, and this path led them all to death. Lust's story especially points to the idea that the path of humanity, no matter what, is a path to death; that to be human is to want, and to want is to die.
Hughes is another example of desire leading to death. He's part of the intelligence division, dedicates himself to finding information, and does eventually find the answers that he was desperately looking for. And the price is death, which he pays. Mustang, conversely, wanted to get to the top and become the leader; his desire is referenced multiple times, and is even hinted at having led Hughes to his own demise. But when Mustang finally sees that the price to get what he wants is death — just as Ed and Al do with the stone — he isn't willing to pay it. And thus, he escapes death, and he fails his goal, and doesn't gets his dream. FMA wants to say that you can't have both your life and your desire: you have to choose.
Ed and Al constantly on their travels meet people who combine desire and death into one. Kimbly, whose biggest desire is to kill. Archer, who wants to be a war hero no matter the human cost. Tucker, who wants to create chimeras, at the cost of the lives of the victims, and doesn't care about it being his daughter or wife — to him, his desire for making chimeras supersedes all else (similar to the story of King Bradley, especially once Tucker becomes obsessed with bringing Nina back when he's the one who killed her). One of the earliest characters who embody this idea is Barry the Chopper, who epitomises desire and death mixing into one.
Over and over, we see murderers and monsters and genocide and war. I think all of it serves as a grizzly reminder that desire is subjective, and selfish, and again it strengthens the link between these two themes. One is the other.
The Conqueror of Shamballa
This movie is a bit of a weird ending point, because it does bring some stories to an end (Wrath's being the particular stand-out) but for most of it alchemy is just a side-plot, so we don't have any of the Philosopher's Stone business which the entire show has centred around thus far. There's some obvious stuff that does relate to what I've discussed so far (the Nazi rioters want to make their country better, but we all know how history really panned out; Noah's wish for a home only brings destruction to that place; Eckhart's desire for power corrupts her, etc.) but my favourite parts were Wrath's, Envy's, and Ed's.
Wrath and Ed have similar stories. They both have come to see clearly the cost of their desire. They're both as at peace with it as they can be. Wrath decides that he's willing to pay the price — he's willing to die if he can have a mother and love again — and we see in a very emotional scene him being reunited with the mother he never had but always wanted: Izumi. Ed, conversely, knows that if he wants to get back to his world, the portal to it will remain open for future abuse: the cost of returning would be endangering his home world. So he decides he won't pay the price. And he sticks to this, no matter what. I've loved Ed's character through all of this because he is a bargainer and a gambler, and he always asks fate if it wants to up the ante, but at the end of the day he always plays by the rules as well.
Envy, on the other hand, hasn't learned anything, and it's his own ruin. I was really struck by the image of him pinned to this magic circle, with Hohenheim in his jaws. Eckhart said that it was the only way to shut him up, and I think that's kind of brilliant: he's so focused, he's so angry that he's sticking to his guns. He doesn't regret what he did before, and he'll do it again. Hohenheim's death is worth any price. He reminds me of Tucker and Archer (before they were both turned into literal monsters).
(Unrelated, but I wanted to mention that the only reason I'm not using gender-neutral pronouns for Envy is because he was confirmed to be Hohenheim's son. Since he seemed to identify with that description, I thought masculine pronouns might also be appropriate.)
I have mixed feelings on Al's journey through Shamballa. I already didn't like how his character was written in the second half of FMA (despite, or perhaps because of, him being my favourite character). It felt like he was a soft-spoken likeable but harmless plot device with no agency or genuine motivations of his own. He kind of still feels like that; if anything more so because by taking away his memories whatever vestiges of his agency remained vanish. He just repeats the same journey Ed and he went on before, trying to gamble with fate, not thinking or realising the price. I feel mean saying it, but his whole story to me in this movie was nonsense.
Mustang and Armstrong (another fave, cry) fall into that category for me, too. They didn't make sense to me — they just seemed to do what the plot needed them to at any given moment.
One result I did appreciate of Al's story, though, was the reunion with Ed and also the return of Al's memories. I don't think it makes any narrative sense, but emotionally it feels sound that they are together, and lose their home and their friends and their alchemy to do it. Earth!Al dying kind of felt like it made space for our Al to return to Ed as well, you know? I loved Earth!Al. He was complex and likeable and despicable and felt genuine the whole way through.
In conclusion, I have no conclusion. These were just a bunch of thoughts I had after I finished watching the show. :) I'm happy to hear agreement or contradictions, so if you want to talk about any of this, feel free to reach out! I'm not I-will-die-on-this-rock about any of these.
