Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa (part two)
On we go with this ill-advised, but somehow not bad at least yet, FMA cinematic excursion.
At the fairgrounds, Edward and Alphonse get to work helping set up some amusement park rides. I guess they're some kind of engineer-types in this timeline. Meanwhile, some of the Roma have gone into a big, gaudy tent that's waiting for them. Said tent turns out to be built around a more permanent structure, and that structure is the palatial home of a distinctly fair skinned man with a distinctly sleazy demeanour. He greets the psychic girl by name as Noah, and then hands the two other women with her a big wad of money.
Noah doesn't seem to understand what they're being paid for, at first, but then the other two leave the room and physically push her away when she tries to follow them. During that moment of physical contact, she has another psychic flash, which tells her enough to determine what the context clues already had her suspecting. Her tribe has decided to sell her.
On one hand, I can see why her (apparently genuine) psychic abilities might have scared her kin and made them want to get rid of her. On the other hand...you'd think having someone who can actually read minds would be enough of a financial boon for a clan of performers and fortune tellers to make up for that even with the German economy being as bad as it was during the interwar years. More importantly though...shouldn't she have been able to see this coming? How do you successfully scheme against a telepath/clairvoyant while being in constant close proximity to them?
I guess her powers must have some clear limitations that they knew how to exploit. With "they" probably just being a few select individuals within the clan. Notably, we only see two others being actively involved in exchanging the money for the person.
After they leave her behind, without speaking a word to her or making eye contact even as she struggles and begs, Noah is left alone with the German man. On one hand, it doesn't seem like she's about to be raped. On the other hand, depending on how he's intending to pursue his avenue of research, things might actually be even worse for her than that.
I'm guessing this guy is connected to...well, I'm not sure if the National Socialist German Worker's Party itself was associated with the esoteric fascist sects that it later absorbed just yet, but this guy is probably connected to one of those. Proto-nazi occultists. Who probably want to dissect her brain, or sacrifice her to Odin to raise Atlantis back up, or some deranged shit like that.
Some military-looking men come marching into the room to take her away, under the orders of someone named Lieutenant Hess. These guys aren't in uniform, though. So, while they could be plainclothes German military agents, this could also still just be an occult-leaning Freikorps militia group like I suspected. One of the soldiers/militiamen/whatever asks if this girl is the psychic they've heard so much about, and grabs her chin in a creepy way that suggests that she might be about to get raped AND have her brain dissected. Harsh. When he touches her, she sees a blur of images that seems to scare her. Curiously though, the glimpses of her vision that we see don't show any German fascist shit. Rather, the imagery is all either Amestrian, or what appears to be the Eye of Wog. It still convinces her that she needs to get away from this guy, though.
Is he the counterpart of some Amestrian baddie? Maybe. He doesn't look familiar, but it might have been an 03-only character that I don't know about.
Noah pushes him away and dashes out of the room. Somehow, the three able-bodied military-looking men are too slow to even react until she's already out the door. Lol. Either those powers of her have some direct action sequence applications, or these guys were really scraped from the bottom of the fascist thug barrel.
They don't look old enough to be veterans, so it's not like they coughed most of their lungs out in the trenches either. Zero excuse lol.
Back out on the fairgrounds, the Elric brothers are still setting up the big scaffolds. Turns out it's not for another Ferris wheel or cart-track, though. It's a support for some kind of telescope or rocket. They and their colleagues (one of whom looks a bit like Alex Armstrong without the mustache, but I might be jumping at shadows with that one) are talking about the recent breakthroughs in astronomy and aeronautics and how it's got everyone excited about space. Okay, that definitely makes more sense for a 20th century Earth version of the Elric brothers, heh. After they work for a while, Edward tells Alphonse and the no-names that he has a neck cramp and needs to lay down for a little bit.
As he leaves to take a break, Noah comes running across the fairgrounds screaming for help. As a Romani woman being chased by a bunch of white men though, everyone just assumes she stole someone's wallet. No help is forthcoming.
Edward goes to a flatbed truck to lay down, but it's not the same one that the Roma shared with them before. This one has some equipment covered in tarps in it, so I assume it belongs to whoever is behind this local astronomy thingy. As he lays down and looks at the sun, Edward reaches up toward it in his signature visual pose and stares longingly. For years, he's tried to find a way to escape this world and return to the home and brother he remembers. So, this is reverse-isekai'd Edward from Amestris, only we're picking up his story several years after the fact for some goddamned reason. Lol, okay. He broods on this for a minute, and then Noah comes tearing over to the truck and dives beneath the tarp to hide. It's not clear if Edward recognizes her from the truck ride or not. It's also not clear if she reminds him of Rose or not (once again, I'm not sure if the resemblance is intentional or not by the creators). He does warn her that there's some volatile stuff under that tarp though, so she probably shouldn't be playing around under there.
Have they got rocket fuel under there? That would make sense.
The thugs finally catch up to Noah. They might be shit at chasing people, but she's also shit at hiding, so eventually things turn back in their favor.
They pull off the tarp, and it turns out there's an actual rocket under there, not just fuel for one. From Edward's warning, it probably has a full tank. Yeah, I'd be careful about playing around with that thing.
Anyway, worried though he is about the rocket, Edward quickly becomes much more worried about what he sees happening to Noah. He might not be able to use alchemy in this world, and he might not have the automail that makes some of his blows hit harder, but he's still a highly trained and experienced combatant. When he pushes them back away from her and tells them to leave, and one of them pulls a gun and tells him that they paid for Noah fair and square, Edward is less intimidated than he is happy for a chance to blow off some steam.
He clasps his hands together in front of himself out of habit. It doesn't do anything, and he didn't expect it to, but habit. And it also confuses the trio and makes his opening attack easier to land. And, it turns out that he actually still does have his automail; its hidden under some convincing fake skin, and he seems to have rebuilt it somewhat using a diesel-powered motor he can activate when he needs to apply any real force. In this case, breaking the arm of the guy who drew the gun.
The other two guys are bigger and tougher, though. Their reflexes might leave much to be desired, but they're bulky, and Edward doesn't seem able to outfight both of them at once now that he's used his surprises. So, he leaps back into the truck, grabs the rocket, and uses it as an improvised single-shot cannon.
We don't get to see the not-technically-nazis-yet goons go flying like blood-covered bowling pins, unfortunately, because the scene cuts away to another rocket launch. That conveniently happened at that exact second, thus covering the noise of the gunshots, weaponized rocket, and screams.
Erm...apparently they finished building that launchpad, loading a much bigger rocket onto it, attracting a crowd of spectators, and launching it within those four minutes that Edward was taking a break to rest his neck.
It would have been so much easier for the script to have Edward finish setting it up with them and THEN go mope in the truck. Eh, only a minor issue, but still, so easily avoidable.
When everyone besides the participants of the fight scene over at the parking lot is finished clapping and cheering at the launch, a steely-faced man uniform approaches Alphonse and the rest of the rocketry team. This man is a potential financier for their ongoing aerospace research, and he is also the very same Lieutenant Hess whose flunkies were sent to collect Noah.
In his words, he's been impressed by what he's heard and now seen of their work, and he thinks that they can build the device that his organization requires for its purposes and is willing to pay quite handsomely for.
So, they need a cutting edge rocket, and they need a psychic lady.
Whatever this guy and his cronies are planning, it's something weird.
As Hess shmoozes with the engineers, the goon with the broken arm staggers back to him and timidly reports that they have failed to collect the package. Broken armed dude is reporting this alone because he was lucky to have been sprawled out on the ground cradling his shattered limb before Edward decided to shoot a rocket at them. The other two guys are in much worse shape. Cut to Noah and Edward fleeing the fairgrounds into the woods as lively Flamenco music plays.
That evening, Hess makes a telephone report to his partners-in-crime back in Munich. They're currently having a convention of sorts at a ritzy hotel, and...lol they're literally exactly what I predicted, portrayed exactly the way I predicted.
Heh.
Needless to say, the rest of these Thule Society shmucks are less than pleased to hear the news. What the hell are they even supposed to do with their fancy rocket if they haven't got a psychic Roma girl to go with it? After hanging up, they whisper darkly about how they might never have a better chance of contacting the Great Serpent than this one, they can't blow it. They'll have to report this situation to Director Eckhart and see if he can pull strings and get them more manpower to hunt down the fugitive.
I assume that they're referring to Dietrich Eckhart, the founder of what would eventually come to be called the National Socialist German Worker's Party. At this time, Adolf Hitler had only just started eclipsing him within the organization, but he was still the second or third most important guy in it. I didn't think he was super into the occult side of what was soon to become naziism, but maybe he actually was.
Also, while reading up on him, I discovered this hilarious anecdote:
“In 1921 Eckart promised 1,000 Marks to everyone who could cite one Jewish family whose sons had served longer than three weeks at the front during the First World War. The Hannover rabbi Samuel Freund named 20 Jewish families who met this condition and sued Eckart when he refused to pay the reward. During the trial, Freund named 50 more Jewish families with up to seven veterans, among whom were several which lost up to three sons in the war. Eckart lost the case and had to pay.”
Lmao.
Also, I think that Lieutenant Hess might also be a real person. His (possible) anime version is slightly better looking than that photo, but also similar enough to plausibly be based on the man. We're leaning much harder into the historical fiction aspect than I expected.
...frankly, that just makes Edward Elric running around in the middle of the story even weirder and more surreal than it already was.
Cut to the next morning, and the apartment or hotel or whatever that Edward and Alphonse are currently living in. Looks like Edward and Noah managed to slip back into town undetected, and the sort-of-brothers have put her up for the night. Edward sleeps in, so Alphonse and Noah have breakfast together. During which Alphonse tells her that while it sucks she got betrayed and abandoned by her family and human trafficked and all, he's still glad she's here, because it's great to see Edward being enthusiastic about a woman instead of those fantasy otherworld delusions of his.
Wow. Earth Alphonse is a total dick.
Edward eventually wakes up, mumbling - as it's implied he always does, while half asleep - about Winry and the Alphonse who he remembers and who isn't an asshole. Noah comes up to see him, and after exchanging good mornings she asks about those incredibly impressive prosthetics of his.
Huh. His dad did, did he?
He also says that this happened two years ago. So, right before he got isekai'd. Some time during the events of the series. I guess Hohenheim upgraded Edward's automail at some point in the '03 series.
Also, Edward mentions a few of the details he *does* understand about his prosthetics, including the fact that his nerve endings are bonded to artificial wires that let him control the servomotors. That pretty much HAS to have involved bio-alchemy. Which, to be clear, I'd already sort of assumed was the case. Automail engineers aren't alchemists, but it was vaguely implied that you need an alchemist to do the initial implanting work on the patient end before the synth limbs can be fastened on. What this means is that, while alchemy might not work on Earth, the products of alchemy still work just fine. His nerves aren't unfusing from the synthetic interface or anything like that. Noted.
Hmm. If you brought a golem-bonded person like Alphonse or Barry to Earth, would their souls still be able to animate their suits? Weird, weird line of inquiry, but unavoidable given what we're being told and shown.
As they walk downstairs, Noah suddenly asks Edward what the animated armor-creature was. In her vision, she saw it traveling with him. Fighting alongside him. Consoling him, and vice versa. Who and what was it?
Edward is silent for a long moment, but then seems glad to have someone he can finally really talk to about this who he knows is taking him seriously. He knows her powers are real know, because the one thing he never, ever told anyone about - not even Alphonse, who he's otherwise been very open with - is the armor creature.
Oh. Fuck. Okay, that's the first thing so far in Conqueror of Shamballa to hit me in the feels the way that much of Brotherhood did. He told Alphonse that there was a version of himself, back in Amestris, and that he and Edward were alchemist-warriors who served the state military, but he couldn't bring himself to say what he caused to happen to that other Alphonse in that world. Just like manga/Brotherhood Hohenheim couldn't bear to tell Edward and Alphonse about what he let happen with his firstborn.
I don't know if FMA03 Hohenheim had a thing sort of like that, but if so, this is another instance of Edward becoming like his father in the process of hopefully one day being better than him. Again, assuming that remained a big theme in the 03 version.
So, yes, he's from another world. A world much like this one, save that alchemy was the king of the sciences, and the maps and histories were different. Different places. Some different names. But, curiously, quite a lot of the same faces. When she asks how he ended up here, he explains that this was the price he paid to undo the death of his little brother.
So. In exchange for giving Alphonse his body back, Truth took Edward's...self...but instead of keeping it he tossed him into a parallel dimension.
Um. I guess he's hoping Edward is going to accomplish something that serves its interests, over here? Yog-Sothoth setting him up to kill Hitler or some bullshit?
Again. My question. Both Watsonian and Doylist, addressed to Yog and to the writers in equal measures. WHY?
Anyway. Edward tells Noah that he still isn't entirely sure if this world is even real. If it's just an extended hallucination, or a pocket dimension created by his dreams that recasts people and things he knows in new roles and structures. Maybe this is some weird kind of afterlife or hell (hey, harsh Edward! It's not like your planet was all sunshine and roses either, yeah?). But, just having someone who he can have what feels like a real, sane conversation with makes it feel realer to him. And reassures him that he isn't crazy, and one day maybe he can go home again.
Noah, of course, no longer has a home to go back to at all. Her family seems to have decided that for her.
Edward also explains that he met this world's Alphonse by chance, in Romania of all places. It was obviously him. Same name. An older version of the same face that Edward remembers from before the disaster. Curiously, Edward doesn't mention anything about whether this version of Alphonse already had an older brother. I'm very curious about this now.
As they talk, he slowly leads her to the home of a woman who...is that a version of Mrs. Hughes? I think it looks like her? And, she asks Edward for what's implied to be the dozenth time who it is in that other world of his who she keeps reminding him of, and he declines to answer. Yeah, I think that's Gracia Hughes. Anyway, he borrows some clothes for Noah. She's gracious about this, but warns Edward to "be careful" before seeing the two of them out. Edward interprets this as a warning to make sure he takes care of his new lady friend, but Noah can tell what she actually means.
Cut to some disaffected unemployed men sitting around outside a pub, drinking at 10 AM and complaining about the economy. Yeah, it's not the high point of German financial history. Things start getting a little rowdy, but they quiet down again quickly when stoney-faced Officer Hughes marches over and gives them a menacing glare. Edward knows this cop (his wife literally just lent him some clothes, after all). Seeing him and Noah, Hughes comes over and pulls Edward aside for a pseudo-paternal little huddle and whisper some warnings.
Edward DOES know that in another morning or two he's going to wake up tied to his bed with everything valuable missing from his apartment, right? Edward's a good kid, Hughes doesn't want to see him get taken advantage of like this.
Heh, well. Unlike Alphonse, I always thought Hughes was slimy. His Amestrian counterpart was notably much less miserable slaughtering Ishvalan civilians than Mustang and Hawkeye were. I could easily see a version of him who never got pulled into Mustang's orbit being a 1920's German cop.
Edward doesn't feel like having to sit through this, and pushes Hughes away. Hughes gives him a final warning that he just doesn't want Edward to get his wife mixed up in whatever happens next, and Edward coldly tells him that maybe he should just go tell that wife how much he loves her, she'll appreciate that. Hughes is sort of dumbfounded, and watches Edward and Noah walk away with only a few token warnings to watch their manners with him.
Hmm. Does this version of Hughes *not* tell Gracia how much he loves her all the time? I can't tell if the joke is that he IS like his Amestrian version in this regard, or that he ISN'T like him.
Next, Edward goes to the barber/cosmetic surgeon place, wher he gets the fake skin over his automail touched up. It's a pretty crowded place, what with all the disfigured WW1 vets who need constant upkeep to be able to go out in public. The guy sitting on the stool next to Edward's (who looks a bit like Dr. Knocs, but I'm not sure if it's meant to be him) is having an angry political discussion with his own cosmeticist while Edward quietly lets his own work.
Edward tries to avoid getting the guy's attention, but when he starts to leave with Noah the dude sees them, assumes they're dating, and blows up about how at least with Jews it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference, but there's no fucking excuse to stick your dick in a gypsie, race traitor, selling out the country to invaders, should be illegal, yadda yadda. Edward doesn't have the energy left for yet another fight about this, so he just silently leads Noah away as the guy keeps screaming at their backs. It might not be a great decade to be German, but it's an even worse one to be a German ethnic minority.
By the time Edward and Noah get some cheap soup for lunch, the mood has been pretty comprehensively soured. Edward apologizes for all these lunatics who have been taking "his side" in their imaginary conflict of interests between him and Noah, and that he doesn't think she's a "gypsie." She smiles at that, and tells him that she doesn't actually mind that particular exonym. It's one that her ancestors kind of brought on themselves by pushing a "we're actually the descendants of ancient Egyptian fortune tellers" grift a few centuries back. Her people have accumulated a LOT of exonyms in their near-millennium of roaming the continent, some of them nicer and/or more solicited than others. She lists a good half dozen of them before Edward asks her what their own name for themselves is. "Roma." The etymological origin of it comes from their word for "human." Heh, I didn't know that, but it's not surprising; a LOT of ethnic endonyms are just "the people" in different languages. Anyway, Edward seems to like it.
What he does NOT like, however, is the car that comes driving down the street in front of them a moment later. More specifically, the passenger in its back seat.
The music here is great, by the way. It's like a scare cord extended into a full theme that keeps going and going and doesn't stop being scary until it's over. Seamless musical transition from sudden jumpscare to mounting tension and dread as Edward watches him ride passed.
This definitely raises questions. In the Mangahood version, King Kobra Kai Kissinger was born a human, so it would make sense for there to be an Earth counterpart to that human. I'm pretty sure that that's NOT the case in FMA03, though. In this version he's just a homunculus like the other Sins, I think. So, why would he get an Earth counterpart?
...then again, I've also heard that FMA03 homunculi are created from botched resurrection attempts. In that case, um...maybe this is the Earth counterpart of the guy who died and was accidentally brought back as Fuhrer Franz Fergilicious? Maybe? I don't think the homunculi are supposed to still LOOK like the people they were in life, though, so...yeah I really don't know what's supposed to have allowed this to happen.
Well. Edward doesn't seem to think it's possible for him to just have a normal, non-monster human counterpart on Earth either. He tells Noah to go back to the apartment and stay there until he returns, and then stealthily dashes off to track the car.
I'll split it here.
This movie is bananas.
