Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa (part four)

Edward and Mabuse have both been seized and restrained. It's not clear what (if anything) the Thulites have done with all those other people that were just outside the castle a minute ago. Envy is shot full of spears (the nazi leader guy helpfully explains that these are "spears of Longinus" that they gathered for this purpose. I always though the Spear of Longinus was supposed to be a unique relic, but esoteric fascism doesn't typically care about such inconsequential things as arithmetic. And, frankly, with Envy's regeneration not seeming to work I don't think these spears need to be magical at all in order to pin them down, even if the nazis think that they do). Edward asks what the hell these people even want with Envy, and Mustache tells him that he's better off not knowing; normal, not-in-the-know people like him shouldn't concern themselves with this.

Erm...why did you have your goons grab Edward, then? It's not like he was trying to protect Envy. Eh, nazis, go figure.

As Envy finally stops thrashing and roaring, Mabuse's own captors bring him closer to Mustache. Who he turns out to recognize! Apparently, the two of them met each other in Japan a decade ago.

Alright, "Haushofer" and "Japan" made this person easy to look up. His characterization here, with him pointedly pretending not to recognize his old Jewish friend in front of his new pals, seems like a match for the biography I'm reading, and his character design looks reasonably close to the photographs. Karl Haushofer was a weird hanger-on of the German fascist movement. He found common cause with the nazis because their ideology mostly aligned with his own very strange beliefs about erm...I guess "occult nationalism" might be the best description. He disagreed with the racism part though, and kinda awkwardly went quiet and shuffled off to the side when that became the centrepiece of the movement that he'd done a lot to popularize and promote within academic and military circles. He and his Jewish wife managed to avoid the death camps as a personal favor from vice-Fuhrer Rudolf Hess (yes, the same Rudolf Hess who we've already met in this movie). Haushofer and his wife both committed suicide in 1946. Not to avoid a war crimes trial, but just because they didn't want to be alive anymore.

So, yeah. I think the movie is playing him just about right. It's funny, because all this goofy stuff with the giant homuncusnake and the wizard boy from another dimension was the part of proto-naziism that Haushofer actually was passionate about, with the heavier, more realistic aspects being something he shied away from having to pay attention to. This whole movie could almost be a drug-fuelled fantasy of his.

Well, back to the movie!

Haushofer looks increasingly nervous and flustered with Mabuse's attempts to be friendly with him, and is relieved when a militiaman knocks him out before he's forced to acknowledge them.

Then, weirdly, Edward says that he recognizes the name "Karl Haushofer" from something his father told him once. Huh. I guess this deranged "Edward goes to IRL Germany" plot point actually was planned some time in advance, then, if this is something that happened in an episode of FMA03. How early on did they plan this, I wonder? How much time did the creators spend actually thinking that this would be a good idea? Well, anyway, Haushofer asks Edward who this father of his might be, and when Edward says the name "Hohenheim" Haushofer has a little bit of a freakout.

Huh. Is his reaction on account of him having met Edward's father, on account of Edward's father having a name in common with Earth's own Paracelsus, or both?

Hmm. Well, regardless of why Haushofer has a reaction like this to hearing the name, it does seem more likely than not that this version of FMA has the Xerxian(? Is he still Xerxian in this version? He might just be a native born Amestrian this time around) Hohenheim and the sixteenth century Swiss Hohenheim are one and the same. If we're doing this ill-advised portal fantasy thing, then that's a fairly obvious direction to take it in.

Actually, it's possible that in this version Hohenheim was born in sixteenth century Switzerland, and got sent the other way through the portal by some alchemical experiment. Edward and Alphonse would be half Terran, then, rather than half Xerxian a la mangahood.

...well, granted, I don't know that Hohenheim is hundreds of years old in this version. I think I remember hearing that that's still the case, but I'm not sure. If not, then he obviously couldn't be our own world's alchemist of the same name.

In any case, Haushofer has Edward tranquilized. Not just cracked over the head like Mabuse, actually gassed and handled carefully, like a potentially valuable captive. Makes sense. Whoever Hohenheim is to the Thulites, they know better than to take him lightly.

...or, no, wait. They don't capture Edward. They just leave his unconscious body laying on the floor. I guess the gas was just for fear of hurting him via the head trauma method, and potentially bringing the wrath of a 500 year old superwizard down on themselves. It's not clear if they took Mabuse with them, just left him there as well to survive his head injury or not, or realized he was Jewish and beheaded him. Any of the above are possible. Team Nazi flies away in their collected aircraft, minus the one they crashed into the ground like complete reckless morons. Envy hanging limply from the airship harness as they return to Castle Ekhart.

Edward (and possibly Mabuse, if they left him there) doesn't wake up until they're long gone.

During the flight, Hess comments about how glad he is that they've finally recaptured that damned serpent. Recaptured. Meaning that they had Envy in their clutches at some point in the post, and they escaped. Wonder what the story was there? Did they somehow summon Envy through the Gates from Amestris, or did they just go cryptid-hunting and capture Envy shortly after the homunculus made their own mysterious journey to Earth and became known as a local monster in the wilderness somewhere? Again, I don't know enough to make an educated guess. Hess might be feeling good about their situation, but Haushofer is grim and haunted. He spends the trip muttering to himself about Edward, Hohenheim, and other people from Shamballa somehow making it to Earth without them knowing or even expecting it.

Okay, so they think Edward's homeworld is Shamballa. Heh, they might be disappointed. Or they might not be, if their idea of a heavenly realm is just "a place where our magic might actually work and people would need to take us seriously." I thought maybe Shamballa was just a goal that they were striving toward that's hidden deeper in the darkness behind the Gates of Truth, but nope, they just want to invade Planet FMA.

If they intend to LITERALLY conquer it, of course, they're going to have a pretty bad time. Even if they know real magic that will actually work in the other world, they'll be nowhere near as experienced using it - let alone using it in a combat situation - as Amestrian state alchemists. The Amestrians are also on a technological par with Germany in pretty much every regard besides lacking aircraft, but I'm not sure if the Germans can send any large number of those through the portal, and their army is probably at least the same size in terms of manpower. And that's assuming that these Thule Society nincompoops can even GET the German government to commit to any kind of invasion (if they waited a decade it would be a different story, of course, but this is 1923 not 1933), instead of finding themselves stuck with just a few thousand militiamen armed with stolen WW1 era surplus against a huge mechanized army that includes people like Roy "Slaughterhouse Five" Mustang and Alex "Will Literally Drop A Five Story Building On You" Armstrong. So, unless Ekhart has some really, really good extra trick up her sleeve, I hope for her sake that "conquest" doesn't mean what it sounds like it means.

...

You know, I think I'll accept "Shamballa" as a name for the planet that Amestris exists on. Even with regards to the mangahood continuity, if I ever write or review anything else involving it. It's as good a name as any, it's distinctive, and it's not like real life history isn't full of places being given erroneous names by delusional idiot imperialist explorers that nonetheless stick and remain commonly accepted for centuries after the fact.

...

Well, they get back to the castle. Skip ahead a few hours to them having arranged Envy's body into, ironically, an ouroboros symbol surrounding a big glyph that they've inscribed. After some villainous cackling from all those present (even Haushofer seems to have cheered up a little bit by now), Ekhart lays her hands on the snek and says some magic words. Envy starts glowing, which either means the spell is working or they're about to each get their pelvises confiscated.

Now, why they need Envy, specifically, for this, I really don't know. Maybe anyone from Shamballa would have done the trick. Maybe Envy's body currently being snek-shaped and thus able to be formed into the ourobouros/jormungandr shape around their glyph makes it uniquely suitable. I'm still not sure what they need the rocket for. Or what they need Noah for, assuming it wasn't just to help them recapture Envy. It doesn't seem like they have either of those things ready yet, so I guess they aren't neccessary for getting to Shamballa but rather for doing something else once they're there. And not something time sensitive, in particular, or they'd be waiting to get all their other shit in order before opening the portal.

Somewhere, in a dark room, we see Hohenheim restrained. He looks up and sees Envy's snek face. He murmurs grimly about how they're meeting once again. Envy hisses and snaps her jaws at the camera. I'm not sure if Envy woke up and is actually, physically looking into a cell that they have Hohenheim in, or if this is some telepathic whatsit through the Gate.

Back to the goofy nazi occultists. Haushofer is reluctant to try sending people through the portal they've just opened, even if those people are fully armored. Lol, why is he only raising this objection now and not before they started? We see the armored people poised behind Ekhert now, and they're all wearing suits that look exactly like Alphonse's.

Are those just people wearing Amestrian-style plate armor that Ekhert hopes will help them blend in (lmao), or did the Thulites actually manage to bond people's souls to copies of Alphonse's suit? If so, they probably copied the suit design in a sort of cargo cult way, not being sure if there was something about it rather than just the glyph inside of it that allows the process to work. Could also be both, I guess.

Well, whatever those people are, Ekhert sends them through.

Cut to a lonely, snowbound cabin in Amestris' northern province, where Breda, Havoc (who was never maimed in this version), and a newly demoted Corporal Mustang are having a long-awaited reunion.

Looks like Mustang managed to keep himself in the army and off the wanted posters in this version of events, though he slipped up enough to get himself busted down to corporal. Well, his co-conspirators still seem to recognize him as leader, even if his power over them is no longer official. Whether or not he's had a similar arc to his mangahood counterpart's, with regard to power and dominance, I haven't a clue. He's still being framed as a good guy, at least, so I don't *think* he's had a heel turn or anything.

Apparently, all three of them volunteered for this podunk assignment in the middle of cold-blasted nowhere. I'll take that to mean that Amestris is still under enemy control, even if it's not necessarily the same enemy that they spent most of the series grappling with. When Mustang struggles with the matches to light a cigarette, they ask him why he doesn't just do his thing to light it, and he explains that he hasn't used any alchemy at all since "that day." The day that his foolishness (and his alchemy, I guess) got so many of his own men killed, and cost him one of his eyes. The camera jumps in close, so we can see the eyepatch he's been hiding under the bangs he grew out.

Heh, another funny coincidence. Something happening to one or both of Mustang's eyes, but seemingly because of a completely different chain of events with little to no narrative or thematic overlap. Whacky.~

Mustang broods over whatever terrible mistake he made that led to him swearing off alchemy, for a while. Then cut to Breda and Havoc out in the snow away from him, trying to figure out how they can get him to stop whining and start setting their problems on fire again. They wanted to bring Hawkeye up here, and maybe seeing her again would have cheered him up, but apparently she refused. In her own words, she didn't want to see him like this.

Dang. This version of Hawkeye is either a lot less devoted, or has a lot less nerve. Hopefully the former.

Anyway, they say, it's not Hawkeye who Mustang himself is really hoping to see again right now anyway. They don't say who he IS waiting for, but we did see a momentary flashback in Edward's POV earlier of him and Mustang walking away from each other with body language that indicates a promise to meet up again when their tasks are complete. So, probably Edward. Waiting for an update from Edward before doing...something. And, in the meantime, just being miserable and not using any alchemy.

Hmm. Did this version of Mustang attempt human transmutation of his own volition and get an eyeball taken? If so, he was very lucky to have only lost one and not both. Hmm, that doesn't feel right. I don't *think* the incident was that. Something involving reckless use of alchemy, but probably not that.

Cut to Dublith, on the other side of the country. It looks like spring or summer here, so Mustang and Co must be somewhere waaaay up in the mountains for it to be that snowy. Winry is sitting in the Curtises' living room, conversing grimly with Sig about lost loved ones.

Izumi died just a couple of months ago. Shortly before that, she told Alphonse - who had been staying with her and Sig - that she had nothing left to teach him. Alphonse left, and Sig has not seen him since then.

Hmm. On one hand, I have to say that mortality continuing to exist even for named characters after Hughes' dramatic death is a nice, heavy touch that Brotherhood lacked. On the other, Izumi seems to have died from her chronic Missing Uterus Disease complications a couple of years after the time of the main series. Putting it outside the scope of mangahood's timeline. Unless there was a snapshot of an elderly Izumi at the end or something, it's entirely possible that she died at around the same time in mangahood; Hohenheim altered her circulatory system to bypass the damage and reduce the painful symptoms, but that might not have done much for her actual lifespan. So, yeah, this could have happened in both 'verses for all I know.

As they talk about the last times they each saw Alphonse and Izumi, Winry remembers a conversation of her own with the latter, who told her to never stop looking after the Elric brothers. It seems like Izumi and Winry had a bit more of a connection in the 03verse. In Brotherhood I don't think they even met each other, heh.

Winry finishes talking to Sig, and then heads out to visit Izumi's fresh grave. After putting flowers on it and thinking more on Izumi's words to her, Winry looks up and sees an unfamiliar (to me) character sitting under a tree nearby, looking depressed. Ragged, black-haired girl, with an automail leg whose attachment point has blood around it. The girl looks back at Winry, and it becomes apparent than she has homunculus glyph-marks running along her body, like several of the Sins do.

I remember hearing that a couple of the Sins who hadn't been revealed yet by the point of divergence ended up being female in the 03verse. Sloth and Wrath, I think? This is either one of them, or a non-Sin homunculus that they met at some point. The automail leg suggests that she lacks the Sins' healing factor for whatever reason.

Anyway, the movie seems to expect me to know who this forlorn homunculus is. I'm not sure if Winry knows her or not. In either case though, she offers to give her beaten-up automail a tune-up. Which is nice of her if they know each other, and extremely generous if they don't.

Having visited Amestris' northern and southern reaches, we now go to the east province. I was expecting Hawkeye to turn up in that last scene, since the other army dudes had just been talking about her before the cut, but I guess not. Anyway, the character we open on out east is...for a second I thought we were flashing back to Hohenheim's trek through the desert, before the captions appeared and I remembered that Hohenheim never made that trek in this version. Turns out it's Alphonse. Fully organic Alphonse. Another caption informs us that he's thirteen years old. He's grow his hair into a ponytail, and is wearing Edward's red cape. Like he's trying to BE Edward.

He's a bit young though, isn't he? How old is Ed supposed to be at this point? Late teens, yeah? Hmm, maybe he's still younger than that.

Alphonse finds a key location atop one of the desert sand dunes, and casts a spell. Looks like he's still a spontaneous caster in this version; Alphonse unlocked that ability riiiiiight around the point of divergence, so I wasn't sure if his 03 self kept it or not. Anyway, he turns the sand into a well. A well whose shaft extends down through the dunes, into the bedrock below it, and hits an aquifer that was apparently under enough pressure to start immediately spraying water into the air like a non-boiling geyser.

Pretty impressive. Looks like Alphonse is taking part in a desert-greening operation of some kind, since he seems to have been looking for this particular place where he could dig the well. It's a productive enough use of his time and skills, for sure.

Turns out this patch of desert was just a little ways outside of Liore. The town is in bad shape, just like it was toward the end of Brotherhood, but they're getting some powerful outside benefactors. In addition to Alphonse, the wealthy Armstrong Trust has decided to finance the restoration, and also to invest in the town's expansion into a full-on city.

Naturally, there are certain aesthetic demands that must be met in exchange for this patronage.

Alex is here in person, declaring that Liore is going to be "the metropolis of the east, a city to rival Central itself" and transmuting piles of building materials into giant statues of himself that may or may not also be functional buildings with rooms inside.

Suddenly, a strange glowing outline spreads across the ground, forming the shape of a large transmutation circle! People start in alarm and dash to get outside of the perimeter of the inner geometry of the glyph start to light up as well. Alex drops into a combat stance, staring warily at the glowing glyph, and wonders aloud if this could be the work of an enemy stand.

Why are Alphonse and Alex both written like they have Down's Syndrome, in this movie?

Rose comes up to grab a chid (possibly hers? She might have had a kid in this version) away from the edge of the glyph. Hmm, maybe Noah isn't actually her Earth counterpart after all; they look very similar, but Rose's skin is quite a bit darker now that I'm looking at pictures of them side by side, and Rose has had her hair dyed up in a way that I don't think the creators would have done if they wanted to make the two obviously the same. So, maybe, maybe not. Anyway, as she and Alex wonder who the hell is fucking with Liore now, the glyph opens up into a yawning, lightning-covered abyss filled with iridescent purple clouds, and some heavily armored nazis begin climbing out.

These people are all completely used to fantasy analogue nazis, of course, and have neccessarily built up a tolerance for them. Literal nazis, however, are just one step too far even for them.

Fortunately, Alphonse has just made it back from his well-digging operation outside of town, and obviously he's handled enough of this kind of bullshit over the course of the series to immediately know what to do. The invaders are emerging slowly, weighed down in their climb by their heavy armor. With two high-performing combat alchemists on hand to hold the breach, Liore's defenders are in a good situation.

For now, at least. That may or may not change one the Thule Society higher ups come through behind the grunts or zombies or whatever these armored dudes are, depending on whether they have any combat-relevant magic that actually works in Shamballa. Also, there's always the chance of Envy getting loose, getting their healing factor back on this side of the portal, and going on a rampage of their own.

We'll see. That's another part, for now.