Father VS Dante - Analyzing the Villains of Fullmetal Alchemist

Background Music (in order of use and by section):

Introduction
- Life and Death (from 2003)

Part 1: Father
- Pride (from Brotherhood)
- One is All, All is One (from Brotherhood)
- Lapis Philosophorum - Chant (from Brotherhood)

Part 2: Dante
- Warning (from 2003)
- Deep Forest (from 2003)

[Lowart]

Sorry for the long wait on this one. To be honest, this video isn't as long as I would have liked after such a lengthy wait, but after some consideration I moved a good amount of content from this video to a later video in the series. While I don't want to give a date for the release of the next FMA video, I'm confident in saying that the wait won't be as long as the wait from the homunculi video to this one (multiple months). Either way, I hope you enjoy what's here. Thanks for watching, and I hope you have a great day :)

[tripkings]

Dante represents denial and cognitive dissonance.

She tells Ed straight up equalvant exchange is a lie. He reflexively denies this parroting off his childhood lesson. But once she says "equal effort does not always mean equal gain" if you look at Ed's face, his expression is priceless, like in spite in believing, he has some doubt.

Dante proceeds bring up example after example of clear unrewarded effort, and Ed has *no* rebuttal.

The brilliant irony of this is this mirrors the first episode where Ed was talking down to Rose, lording his science and alchemy over Roses "pointless" and "irrational" beliefs in a god she couldn't see and all her actions were in based on her belief like a puppet. Yet here Ed is talking to Dante, thinking he was following the truth, when like Rose, was only following a flawed belief, having absolutely nothing to say. Just denial.

This is made even worse because his father shows him, scientifically, that equivalent exchange still requires extra energy to change the matter and is therefore not "equivalent". And even having this explained to him pedantically and in detail, he walks away from that *still* believing in equivalent exchange. Even in the last episode, still parroting off equivalent exchange this. Equivalent exchange that.

It mirrors Rose finding out that Father Cornello was a fraud. She could not let her belief go. She had invested too much of herself in the belief for it to be false, dispute all evidence against it. It couldn't be wrong as that would mean she wasted all that time believing. Sunk cost fallacy. And Ed fell for it just like Rose did. His God was just called equivalent exchange. _A Rose by any other name is just as sweet._

Ironic really. The whole series was Ed attempting to come to terms with this belief and it's contradictions. Ed accepted early on "a life is not worth a life, " yet still believed in "equivalence". How does he reconcile these 2 contradictory beliefs? Denial.

Dante is just like this. She rationalized mass genocide was justfied to prevent mankind from destroying itself. Yet this was an excuse to hide from herself that she is simply scared of death. She needed to frame genocide as virtue, so she can live forever. There's a good reason... but then there's a reason. She was suffering from extreme cognitive dissonance. Denial.

[thankyounext]

I think the fact Father was a mirror of Van Hohenheim made him much more unsettling as a character.

[mafeuk]

Even though I consider Brotherhood the superior adaptation, I think the idea of the homunculi as a consequence for trying to play god is more fitting than some black goo that hates humans. Also Lyra is cuter than Father.

[thedestroyer]

Honestly this is 100 percent the most unbiased comparison between the 2 shows on youtube where you can tell with other youtubers that they clearly have a bias towards one show and just want to put down the other you can tell lowart is truly passionate about both and just wants to share what he finds to be so great in both shows while also pointing out the flaws he finds in both.

[stelliana_vkei]

Everyone in this comment section could be an author...writing whole paragraphs…

[jaimepe]

Let's not forget Dante gets one of the coolest and most haunting melodies in the series.

[vogonp]

Father and Dante are very similar characters in certain ways. 

1. They both seek to use the philosopher's stone at the cost of countless lives to become more than what they are.

2. They both take advantage of the homunculi and never think of the possibility that their motives and emotions will conflict with the plan. This ultimately leads to their downfall when they are destroyed by a homunculus.

3. They both have a certain pride in themselves  (despite one trying to remove it) and think that they are above humans. They see life as a resource.

4. They both create a philosopher's stone with Hoenhiem.

5. Both take a form that isn't their own.

[hinataize]

Thinking of every humonculi other than Lust and Sloth in Brotherhood, the idea that Father wanted a family and to be able to make connections is believable. Greed's ultimate wish, Pride's love (if you can call it that) for his mother, Wrath's love for his wife, Envy's jealousy of the connection of the main cast, and Gluttony's love for Lust. I doubt he could handle that and viewed all those emotions as limitations and began shedding his sins. In doing so, he lost any chance of understanding all is one and one is all. I also like the execution of Father's attempt to transcend and the line about how he just wants to get out of his flask when Hohenheim asks what his wish is.
Dante, on the other hand, was just too creepy to me (mostly bc of the thing with Ed bc otherwise she was the right amount of creepy) and seemed less above those limitations than she claimed to be. When Father compared humans to insects, it felt more justified. However, that's only bc Dante is just a human, so her looking down on humanity just felt petualant to me.
I actually do like Dante in the original though, and I'm glad the anime got past the manga bc the whole different angle of the show was great to me. I found Dante compelling, but I have a bit of a peeve about human character pretending they are above humanity. As you can probably tell, I prefer Father.

[kriitikko]

Back when I first watched FMA03 I thought Dante as a rather boring main villain, but after re-watching the show couple more times, and falling in love with it even more over time, I actually think she's a pretty terrifying villain. Her parasitic nature of literally stealing lives and bodies of others makes my skin crawl. And I think her real motivation of destroying civilizations isn't doing humanity a favor as she claims, but just to stay alive. It's a simple motive but also very relatable and human. All in all, I now think Dante is one of the most underrated anime villains I've come across.

[kristofgriffin]

The fascinating, frankly brilliant side of Dante to me is you would expect someone willing to screw with the nature of the undead, fling countries into an endless war, endorse genocide, all that stuff, would be someone with a deep, complex motivating drive. But Dante is a great villain in how ridiculously petty she is. All that war, all that destruction, not for a messed up understanding of morality, not to justify a meaningful end. Just to preserve her pathetic life just a little longer.

[Calebe]

I like father more because of his relationship with hohenhiem, it also gives more of a reasoning for the homonculis naming scheme, although I appreciate how much care they are given in 2003

[brandynlovett]

Villains Wiki described Dante's true form as only ever being shown in flashbacks and that "the old lady and Lyra are just victims" what really got me their was "the old lady" part. We don't even know who she is and what's hiding behind that face is actually an evil soul, almost as if Dante is masquerading as a corpse. That's what makes her so terrifying.

[tommcburney]

I'm surprised that there aren't many female anime main antagonists like Dante in recent media. Even though she is a scripted villain she still stands as one the best underrated anime villains of the early 21st century.

[emmaeady]

The dwarf in the flask at the gates meeting the truth is a scene that makes me tear up every time because he asks a fundamental question of why do I exist. He didn't really know what to do with himself after getting out of the flask but picked this goal that he thought was what he was put on earth for, to cast off his sins and become a perfect being. When he meets the truth he can't understand what he did wrong, what mistakes he made, he is desperately crying out to god for guidance on why he was here and what he did wrong but god makes no reply, Its both satisfying comeuppance and incredibly sad to see someone who was so sure of their ideals realise they were wrong but wonder why. Both why he failed and why his entire philosophy in life was wrong in the first place. He was made to play a game, and he essentially became the best player, but he never knew the rules and he never knew how to win.

[Tenhys]

I'd say that the biggest difference between the two villains of both "Fullmetal Alchemist" lies in how their most obivous differences hide in plain sight their most stricking similarities.



*Dante*

What we learn in the original Fullmetal is that "Dante" was a human woman that DID succeed at crafting the philosopher stone BUT, by causing the unforeseen death of the man she loved (Hoheinheim), ended up immediatly using it's power to transfer his soul onto another man's body to save his life, essentialy achieving a form of immortality through theft - a flawed version of immortality that causes the hijacked body to rot and die, disregard how healthy the body is. Worse, the more the soul is transfered to the next body, the faster it rots. This puts Dante on a race against time, where she does everything she can to find a way to keep death at bay : doing human experiments, conspiring against entire country to cause war, orchestrating genocide to get the necessary components to make a new, purer philosophical stone to save her skin (both litteraly and figuratively.) While disguising her absolute selfishness as self-righteous altruism ; presenting herself as the shepard of humanity. Despite her litteraly manipulating the figurative albeit physical manifestation of human sins, under the form of Homonculus, with the promise of using the philosopher stone to give them the humanity their existence is devoided off yet long for, yet never having the intention to be true to her word.

In other words, Dante is a human being. More so : she's the archetype of the selfish, entilted, self-styled superior human that think herself better than everybody else (to the point of not seeing herself human anymore, so much she think herself above all), that yet ultimately only act on the most basic and superficial desires that define the humanity she denies herself to belong to. Yet does. Only to have that very sin being paid back in full when the last of her sin standing, Glutonny, whose insatiable hunger was kept in check by his human-like infantile innocence, was released of his shackles due to her ridding him of emotions and devored her whole. Leaving nothing behind.

*Father*

What we learn in "Brotherhood" is that "Father" was an entity birthed by humans during their research on "the Truth" and confined within a flask to serve as a mean to discover and achieve immortality BUT, through manipulations and cleverly crafted promises, ended up turning the tide upon it's masters in an otherwordly ceremony and expeding their live as both fuel to reach his own immortality and freedom from the confine of his flask, as he craft himself a body molded after that of the slave that helped him getting up to his point (Hoheinheim) ; the same slave that he went on sharing is immortality with as an earnest form of gratitude (from his inhuman perspective). All this event barely serving as a premise for his great ambition of creating a big country with the intent of sacrifying the life of every human living in it in an even bigger ceremony to assimilate "The Truth" (also known as "God") and achieve godhood of his own. Seeing both humans and even emotions themselves as nothing but hindrances to be discarded by default or using as tool (at best) to fulfill his ambitions, completely detached from everything else.

In other words, "Father" is an inhuman being whose pettyness is only matched by his ambitions and whose very existence is a contradictions, in both acts and words, against everything and everyone, whose sole intent is to stand above all. Yet ultimately being denied everything at the most critical point, by the very everyone he continuously looked down upon ; ending up being himself judged and condemn by "The Truth" he worked to hard to overcome and being locked back behind it's doors as the mere being he was and was never meant to come out.



From this premises, serving as comparison material between both characters, we can immediatly realize the one critical point they both share : they serve both as the epitome of "Heresy" for their respective worlds. (From Greek _hairesis_ : _"a taking or choosing for oneself, a choice, a means of taking; a deliberate plan, purpose; philosophical sect, school."_ Itself coming from _haireisthai_ which means _"take, seize"._ Middle voice of hairein _"to choose."_ )

Dante symbolise the being belonging to the realm of humans denying humanity. And "Father" is the being belonging to the realm of the divine ("The Truth/God") denying divinity.

Whereas Dante is petty and selfish as a mortal, "Father" is petty and selfish as an immortal.
Whereas Dante hypocritically deceive herself to act as caretaker of mankind (donning the role of a "Mother" wtihout saying so), "Father" honestly looks down on it without the slightest form of pretense (while taking a name implying to do so.)
Whereas Dante looked forward achieving immortality, transcending her humanity, "Father" looked forward absorbing "God", transcending the divine.
Whereas Dante did refine and made use of other people's sins, "Father" only ever made use of those he discarded from himself.
Whereas Dante used a very litteral philosopher stone to transfer Hoheinheim's soul into a new body, "Father" turned Hoheinheim's original body into a full fledged philosopher stone.
Whereas Dante original human identity and face has never been revealed, that of "Father" reveals a silhouette with no identity.
Whereas Dante challenges Edward's understanding of "Equivalent exchange" with arguments (people attemtping the state alchemist exam only to fail, disregard the efforts put into succeeding at it), "Father" challenges Edward's understanding of Alchemy with facts (Mustang paying the price of human transmutation despite not causing it.)

Both are complete parallel opposites of heresy. Clashing with all established standards on pretty much every single front. And both architects of their own downfall, on their very own terms.

When you think about it, it's a very impressive duality that Arakawa created between the two antagonists. They are so removed from one another that it looks like they got nothing in common. Yet under closer inspection, they share so many mirrored similarities that they might as well be one and the same. Simply brilliant.

[TheWickedWizardOfOz]

I have to disagree about your assertion that Dante would be more interesting with a flashback. One of the biggest crutches in writing today is to have a backstory that "will totally explain everything about why this character acts this way, I mean it!" when ambiguity can be just as (if not more) effective. Dante explains her backstory, never letting the audience forget that *this is how Dante sees herself.* That alone tells you more about her than Father's backstory episode that gives much more information, but far less emotion. By letting Dante explain her own story, we learn more about her hatred of Hohenheim and Ed than we would if we saw events play out objectively.

It seems like an inverse "tell and don't show, " but that isn't true. Instead, we are being shown what her mind is by how she chooses to frame her own story. An objective flashback would be much more in line with telling and not showing, by giving us all of the info but not necessarily showing us how Dante personally interprets these events.

You can absolutely do both very well, but I want to defend the decision to leave ambiguity about specifics and let Dante's interpret her own past into her own narrative.

[tuckernutter]

The two series are like alternate universes, but more complex than ever elaborated on in the 2003 anime.

[thehopeofeden]

I think the thing about Father is that his aspirations are so big, where is Dante’s aspirations are so tiny and personal, that it’s really just exploring the evil in being selfish and hypocritical. She doesn’t want to take over the world or anything like that - she wants to be immortal and possibly have sex with Ed/Hohenheim while she’s at it. In a story that’s far more intimate (seriously am I the only one who notices that 2003 is more about the Brothers than the one called Brotherhood) it’s how small and dangerously personal she is that makes her genuinely horrifying.

She sees the absolute worst in humanity will be going herself as above human and not noticing that she is the worst in humanity.

And she has the better theme music.

[isramubashar]

One thing I wanna talk about:
At the start of the 1st few episodes of FMAB, they had a manly sounding voice talking about the laws of equivalent exchange and the philosopher's stone followed by intense music

In 2003 FMA, they had Alphonse talking about it, and soon Edward aswell, with peaceful sounding music

I like how FMA (the variant where everything is a bit more dark and melancholic) has the more peaceful and cute approach to explaining the laws of equivalent exchange