Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa (part five)

Alphonse causes a tornado over the breach (eh? How do you do that with alchemy? Specific transmutations of energy states in different parts of the air or something? Maybe the show explained how Alphonse figured out this trick...), which does a good job of sealing the baddies in (and throwing a few others of them into the sky). Area is denied for now, but are the...damn, I keep almost calling them Hydra...the Thulites still sending other stuff through, or casting additional spells of their own? If so, this could just be a temporary solution. If not, then this is kind of a letdown.

That said, the interdimensional portal seems to have side effects elsewhere around Amestris (and possibly further out across Shamballa as well, though we don't have any POV characters from outside the country to inform us of this if so). Powerful earthquakes strike at several locations, including both Liore and Central. Are all the earthquake zones located around urban centers? That seems deliberate. Or else the nazi magic is just interacting weirdly with the eldritch urban planning of...or, wait, actually, is the macroglyph even a thing in this version? It was strongly hinted at prior to the point of divergence in "Brotherhood," but the hinting may not have been as obvious that early in the manga, so I don't know if the 03 writers would have been able to pick it up. So, does this version of Amestris have eldritch urban planning, or not? I really don't know. Okay, putting a pin in that for now.

In Central, the earthquake hits especially hard. At the command center, we see Hawkeye receiving the reports and managing the flow of information. She seems to have become significantly more important within the Amestrian military over the last couple of years.

Maybe getting out from Mustang's shadow was good for her.

Yeah, some details are really starting to make me interested to see FMA03 now. I know I'll probably be disappointed, but there are a few specific things that I really am curious about now, and Hawkeye's arc is one of them.

Also, just on an interesting note, while Central is being rocked by the earthquake we briefly see the inside of what appears to be a parliament in session. Does this mean that Amestris has democratized, at least to a degree? Or was the parliament just always a sham democracy preserved as a rubber stamp for the military dictatorship, with this being a continuation of the same? Dunno.

Also, the amount of damage the Central earthquake is doing is kind of insane. It looks like the city's been air-bombed. In addition to the giant fissure that's opened up and outright swallowed half a dozen buildings.

Maybe some of this damage was preexisting? Amestris does get itself into a lot of wars, after all. Even just with the fissures though, this damage to the city and even just the landscape under it is insane. Did the Thulies know how much damage they were going to cause? *Was* this down to a weird interaction with preexisting Amestrian alchemical earthworks?

Back to Liore. The tornado has stopped, and the remaining armored nazis (nazi golems? nazi zombies?) have finished climbing out of the pit. I guess Alphonse ran out of mana or whatever. Also, they had to resort to very cheap CGI to show all these armors in motion lol. They climb out of the pit, and start...sort of wandering around aimlessly bumping into each other.

Are they even attacking? Or exploring? Or...doing anything at all?

Also, some of their suits look deformed in a way that they weren't before coming through the portal. Craters and ulcerations dating the plates. Random protrustions sticking out here and there. Helmets attached upside-down. Etc. Whatever these used to be, I think Haushofer might have been right about the portal not being safe for transit. Either due to Truth fuckery, or just plain imprecision in how they did the spell.

Alphonse charges toward the shambling, deformed hulks and does something to a couple of them, causing them to turn around and start beating up their former comrades.

Erm...Alphonse, these guys didn't even seem hostile. Shouldn't you have tried talking to them first?

Well, if he was able to do that at all then that means they're probably just drones. There isn't really room for a mind control spell in FMA's magic system, aside from soul-infusion/possession shenanigans. A robot, on the other hand, should be hackable if Alphonse has run into similar ones in the past.

When Alex and Rose ask him what the hell kind of transmutation he just used, Alphonse cheerfully explained that he used soul-infusion to possess them.

O...kaaaay...

Even assuming that those WEREN'T actual people (mutated or otherwise) with the ethical issues that would raise, was soul-splitting really just Alphonse's second solution to the problem after the whirlwind? Isn't that dangerous, for such a trivial application? Couldn't he have just raised a wall or locked up their armor or...anything besides that?

Also, how is turning a small handful of these things against their seemingly dozens of companions even a solution to the problem? This has a much smaller impact than almost anything else I could have imagined Alphonse doing in this situation. It's tactically idiotic on top of all the other problems.

...that's allowing that this is even a "tactical" situation at all, given that the armored things don't seem to actually be attacking anyone, except each other under Alphonse's control.

...

I was starting to wonder if Alphonse is on a villain arc, but all things considered I think it's more likely that this scene was a massive failure of visual storytelling, because this doesn't even make sense for evil!Alphonse. If you had it so that the nazisuits were destroying stuff, and Alphonse had them at a narrow choke point, and attempts at walling them in with earthbending had already failed, the script would work much better. Not perfectly, but much better.

The fact that this sequence uses so much CGI while the rest of the movie doesn't may have been a causative factor. Different people doing different parts of the animation, miscommunications happening, etc. That doesn't make it any more forgivable, though; writing fuckup or animation fuckup, it's an embarrassing lump of creator incompetence either way.

...

Alphonse runs into the frey to keep bullying the mutants. Alex and Rose watch him, seemingly more disturbed by his failure to recognize Rose than his nonchalant explanation that "yeah, my soul seems to leave and come back to me really easily lol" in response to their questions. Rose murmurs that it seems he still doesn't remember anything from the four years he spent being a state alchemist with his brother.

Huh. So, this version of Alphonse was actually "on ice" for the entire time until Edward could get him back in exchange for sending himself to Germany. And, if Alphonse himself spent the intravening time in Germany, he did so in a state that precluded the formation of new memories. And also, I think, the advancement of development and aging. Germany, or the Antechamber of Truth, whichever.

But...if he has no memories of what his golem-self was doing for that whole time, then how connected ever were those two Alphonses?

...in this version of the story, was Barry actually right? The "Alphonse" inhabiting the armor was actually just an artificial intelligence unknowingly created by Edward?

I almost hope so, just for what an incredible dick move that would have been on the part of the writers. One for the history books. I don't *actually* hope so, but it would be such a beautifully unsatisfying and self-sabotaging thing for them to have done that...well, it would have a kind of majesty to it.

Granted, this not being the same Alphonse who had the golem experiences raises some other questions as well. Questions that Alex and Rose raise themselves as they watch Alphonse keep bullying the metal dudes. If Alphonse has no memories of any of that stuff, how is he so accurately capturing Edward's look and MO as the Fullmetal Alchemist? He could have just asked people and looked at photos and stuff, but the degree to which he's dedicating himself to this bit seems a bit much for that, and there are some personal tics that imitation-by-secondhand-account alone would have a hard time explaining. Alex wonders if perhaps there's still some kind of spiritual link between this version of Alphonse and that version of Edward, wherever the latter might be right now. Some kind of bleedover of personalities. It's phrased in a way that makes it pretty clearly the voice of the author speaking up from behind Alex's mustache, so I guess I should probably believe what it says.

Jump ahead a little bit to a pile of metal-clad hulks laying in a heap outside Liore's recently restored hospital. Turns out, there actually were human bodies inside of those suits. However, going by autopsy findings, they appear to have been dead since before the fight started.

The explanation is hard to understand. The wording makes it sound like the armored men were crushed by some kind of immense pneumatic pressure, which suggests that they were killed by the rigors of interdimensional travel as they came through the portal. However, there's no explanation provided for how they were still moving for a while despite being dead. Maybe passing through Wogspace sucked out their souls as well as damaging their bodies, leaving them as short-lived, aimless zombies on the other side until they succumbed to their pressure wounds? Maybe? Or maybe the Thule guys crushed a bunch of bodies and turned them into zombies to use as disposable mooks in advance of the real expedition?

I feel like something might be lost in translation here.

Also, one of the bodies appears to still be twitching when a soldier pokes at it, but that may or may not mean anything depending on what state these things are supposed to actually be in.

Hmm. Well, moving on from that confusing detail.

As Armstrong and the other soldiers inspect the bodies, and Alphonse and Rose have a heart to heart about Edward's possible whereabouts, another portal opens up. In the sky this time, fortunately, no more earthquakes. The dead (dying?) bodies start glowing, and levitate up into the portal, vanishing without a trace. Either Ekhart is drawing them back through again, or this is a natural backlash type thing that happens when you mess with dimensional travel. And, for some batshit reason, Alphonse grabs onto one of the corpses and rides it up into the air toward the portal.

Either his wog senses are telling him that Edward is on the other side of that portal, or he's just stupid. With how he's been written so far, either is just as likely.

Fortunately for his dumb ass, Rose grabs Alphonse by the foot before he can be sucked back through the portal and crushed into a brain-damaged zombie or whatever, yanking him off of the hulk. Alphonse struggles, but finally is forced to just watch despondently as the bodies are all pulled back through the portal and it closes behind them.

Meanwhile, in another movie, Noah has a disconcerting morning. She hasn't heard from Edward since he mysteriously sent her away and went after that car the evening before, and without him she has only Earth-Alphonse's good graces to depend on in order to not be homeless and completely alone in a strange city. She asks the nice lady next door who lent her clothes the other day if she's seen Edward since then, with said lady also commenting ominously about how being alone and nonwhite in the country is indeed getting more dangerous, but - speak of the devil - said lady's husband walks in on the conversation and puts a quick stop to it.

Gracia Hughes decides to not just wilt back and let her husband make them look bad uncontested, this time. If he wants to talk about *scheming,* she says, why is he still not telling her what he and his buddies have been up to at those beer hall meetings?

Oh. He's an actual party member. I see.

...the decision to make him a cop was a bold one, at the time this movie came out. Historically accurate, but bold. Maybe this was easier to get away with in Japan than it would have been in the USA at the same time.

On that note, I wonder how this movie was received in Germany? Hmm.

Later that morning, Noah has breakfast with Alphonse. As they eat, he explains the sense of national humiliation that followed the Treaty of Versailles, and how many Germans feel like they could have fought a little longer, got a better settlement, and then not had to endure this horrible economy or feel like they endured years of death and trauma and lifetimes of disfigurement and disability for nothing at all. And, it's fairly natural that some would turn to people promising a national revival, even if they have some weird ideas about how to bring it about.

Noah glares at him across the table, and asks him if he's been talking politics with his team's new employers. Alphonse clams up, looks around nervously, and insists that he just wants to grill.

This movie is really invested in wanting me to dislike every version of Alphonse it contains.

When Noah has nothing more to contribute to this conversation besides dirty looks, Alphonse says that he did get a call from Edward just a little bit ago. He said he was going to go check something at a nearby university before coming back home. We then cut to the university in question, where Edward is inquiring about a Professor Karl Haushofer who teaches there.

Erm...did Edward get any sleep, aside from the drug-induced knockout session from when they sprayed him?

Did he get any food, since then?

Also, apparently the Thule Society just left this kid who they knew was in the know about everything (including the name of one of their higher-ups) free to wander when they could have just hid his body in the woods?

I'm not optimistic about satisfying answers to these questions forthcoming.

Anyway, Edward is informed that Professor Haushofer has cancelled all his classes for this two week period. Some of his students think that this has to do with Thule Society business; he's been hosting some big operation of theirs at his own manor house, or so they say. Cue Edward asking what the Thule Society is, and being highly sceptical about what he hears. Even for a guy from a world where "wizard" is a respectable, well-paid profession, this sounds like bullshit.

Unimpressed he may be. But still, Edward wants to investigate. Because um...

um

...okay, why DOES he care?

I guess he might be worried about what ends up happening with Envy, and/or hoping Envy can get him some information on how to get back to Shamballa. I guess? That's literally it, though. Other than that, the only motive I can imagine is him being butthurt at the Thulites for tranqing him and wanting to pee in their coffee or something as a show of indignance.

Yeah, "looking for Envy in the hope of finding a hint of how to get home" is the best I can do for this, and it's pretty weak. Especially given the incredibly contrived series of events that led Edward to last night's events in the first place.

...

I feel like there must have been a point in the writing process where they intended for Noah to be Edward's motivation for pursuing the Thule Society. The inciting incident for the movie was him rescuing her from them. It seems logical that they'd keep sniffing after her and force Edward to fight back, or that Edward would recognize some of the mooks in the security detail when he meets his and Alphonse's new patron and wants to dig up proof that these guys are no good to show to Alphonse, or something like that.

Something must have changed, or just not worked. Because really, as it is, this plot is just a total mess. Meeting and rescuing Noah hasn't had any impact on Edward's investigations or conflicts so far. She didn't cause him to spot the man who looked like Pride driving through Munich. She didn't encourage him to go chasing after him. Why is she even in this story?

Well. Really, the better question is one that I've been asking since the first post of this review: why is Edward in this story?

...

So, by that evening, Edward has found his way to the house. Turns out that Haushofer's "manor house" is actually that castle full of personal fighter planes that I mistook for Ekhart's earlier. Okay then. It's a poorly guarded castle, as well; Edward has a ridiculously easy time slipping passed the guards and getting inside. And, once he's inside, after noting the half-finished rockets that look a lot like Alphonse and Co's work, he quickly finds his way to the ritual room that has Envy (or Envy's carcass. It's not clear if they're still alive or not, though I imagine they wouldn't kill off a major antagonist offscreen like that, so probably still alive) laid out in a circle above the main floor. Edward can't see Envy, from the angle he's looking up at, so his attention goes to the transmutation array inscribed on the floor.

At first, he snarks about "magic circles" that superstitious occultist bumkins like these guys believe in, and whether they have a supply of virgins to sacrifice to demons onhand. But then, after looking a little more closely, he realizes that this is a legitimate transmutation array.

-____-

Okay. In Brotherhood, I criticised the story for using Earth legends like the Icarus and Deadalus story instead of hinting at a native mythology. That was just a small, slightly annoying, failure of imagination though. This is much worse.

Edward comes from a world where transmutation glyphs are known. Where they *have been* known for centuries at the very least. Alchemy works. It's not considered superstitious, or even really "occult," by most of its practitioners (except for the few who manage to get a glimpse of the deeper wogish mysteries).

Would a world like that have stories about "magic circles" that are distinct from transmutation arrays? Would an alchemist from that world ever look at something even vaguely resembling a transmutation array, and have their first thought be contemptuous jokes about demon worship?Even if he's been primed to not take the Thule Society and its beliefs seriously, Edward shouldn't even have the cultural frame of reference to laugh off something that looks like a glyph. If Shamballa has legends about demon-summoning and the like, those legends would look very different from Earth's, because the reality of alchemy in their world would give them a completely different idea of what "mundane" and "magical" even mean.

But, that barely even rates on the stupidometer compared to what happens next.

Edward notes that the glyph is incomplete; some connecting lines and supplemantary symbols still need to be drawn. He also spies a piece of chalk left by the edge of the circle. What follows is nothing short of character assassination.

"Infiltrate an enemy fortress. Find a half-completed transmutation array of unknown function. Complete it, for no good reason, just for the lulz."

I haven't seen FMA03, but if it's even remotely the same genre as Mangahood then this kind of behaviour should have gotten Edward killed years ago.

The fact that alchemy doesn't usually work in this world helps, but it only helps a little. He knows that these guys know things. He's just run into Envy again. He doesn't know that there aren't exceptions to alchemy not working here. This is not something he would do. And, if it WAS something that he'd do, he'd have gotten the rest of his body disintegrated within his first few months of State Alchemist policework.


I'll call this a post. I think the honeymoon is over.