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sepublic · 3 days

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The Owl House and Fullmetal Alchemist

So let’s talk about how The Owl House’s parallels to Fullmetal Alchemist, how it may or may not take inspiration in certain aspects, etc. Dana Terrace mentioned once that Luz would love Arakawa’s art, and even without the confirmation that Dana herself is familiar, it’s pretty clear…

(And yes, I’m discussing the 2003 continuity because why not; Depending on when she got into FMA, it might’ve been Dana’s first exposure to the series even!)

We have a magic system that can be accomplished two ways; Either by drawing circles with patterns, or by using your hands. In FMA, the former is the norm, the latter the exception; In TOH, it’s the other way around, with our main character Luz having to rely on glyphs.

Luz and the Elrics lost a parent, but they have one who’s still alive that they have mixed feelings with, but ultimately reconnect with near the end of the series. The loss of that first parent motivates them, it’s what leads to the inciting incident, with the Elrics trying to bring their mother Trisha back to life only to lose an arm, a leg, and a body; Luz carries on her father’s final gift, and in her attempts to be true to herself as Manny taught her, she ends up being sent to Reality Check camp, with her mother Camila agreeing due to not being as brave.

The permanence of death is something for characters to struggle with; Multiple characters in both versions of Fullmetal Alchemist attempt to revive the dead for this reason, or prolong their own lives by ending the lives of others. The closest attempt to reviving the dead is in 2003, in the ambiguity of its Homunculi, who may or may not be the souls their creators attempted to bring back; And at the end of the series, the main protagonist is killed. But his brother Alphonse recognizes that his soul hasn’t yet passed an established threshold existing on a separate plane of existence, and is able to sacrifice mythical power he’s gained to bring Edward back to life, at the cost of himself passing the threshold.

Similarly, Luz also dies at the end of the series to protect the Collector; But because her soul hasn’t yet passed the established threshold that exists on another plane of existence, the Titan is able to use his power to bring her back to life, even as he himself passes the threshold. Luz dies as a lesson to the Collector in the limitations of their own power; Edward’s tragic encounter with Nina reminds him that for all his boasting of alchemists as the closest thing to God, alchemists are still mere mortals with limitations, which is a major factor into his main antagonist’s motives.

The Collector’s childish naivete extends to their lack of familiarity with death, and they eventually have to come to terms with it and other consequences as part of their character arc. The Collector is the youngest sibling of the Archivists, who themselves have a petty relationship with death; They seek to preserve all living things eternally via scrolls, but this state destroys their physical bodies, preserving only their souls. Any population that doesn’t go along with their plans of preservation are wiped out by the Archivists in retaliation.

The Collector’s story can also be compared to Wrath the Homunculus from 2003; Both are immortal child antagonists who stand out thanks to their magic. Both are manipulated by Belos and 2003 Envy (guys who murder their blonde brothers via stabbing), and are isolated to do so. They feel anger over being mistreated by parents and older sibling (figures), but ultimately just want companionship.

They have bittersweet endings; The Collector goes off into space, but still occasionally visits his mortal friends; Wrath goes off on his own, but occasionally interacts with Winry, and finally sacrifices his life to help Alphonse reunite with his own beloved family member, as Wrath gets the same in death.

But for all of the mixed feelings about death, immortality may not be so pleasant either; King Clawthorne is doomed to outlive everyone except for the Collector and Hooty, which means so many loved ones dying before his eyes. This is a fate Hohenheim dreads regarding his wife and children, and he manages to avoid this when he sacrifices the power behind his immortality to save the world, and die a mortal whose age finally catches up to him. This might be why the immortal Archivists preserve mortals as scrolls, though their reaction to those who refuse them is suspect…

EDalyn Clawthorne, EDward Elric; They’re main protagonists, with a color scheme consisting primarily of dark red, with gold, black, and white. They’re teen prodigies, although both lose their magical abilities in order to protect a loved one who stars right alongside them as a fellow main character. This is never restored, and they also lose their right arms due to being part of a deadly spell. They’re quite (in)famous and have a sibling. Of course, Edward works for the state; Eda is devoutly against it, a proud criminal.

There’s a running theme of disability, with Eda’s disability coming from the curse, which eventually drains her magic. It leaves her fatigued, is implied to be messing with her memories, and causes her to age more quickly. It even makes her transform into an Owl Beast, due to the curse coming from Eda being possessed by one. When the curse completely overtakes Eda, Lilith takes on half of it to allow Eda to regain her usual form, but her and Lilith lose their magic forever. In the context of a society comprised of witches, Luz is essentially disabled, as is Hunter; For Luz, glyphs are her magical prosthetic, as is Flapjack the Palisman familiar for Hunter.

Edward lost his arm and leg, Alphonse lost his body. Izumi lost some of her organs and regularly suffers from fainting and exhaustion, as well as vomiting blood. Lan Fan loses her arm. Automail is aesthetically cool, but it’s also a hassle and requires a months-long process to get used to, and even then you need a mechanic to maintain it. Ed has to return to said mechanic, his childhood friend Winry, multiple times, and suffers from his prosthetic overheating or nearly giving him frostbite, depending on the temperature.

Disability sucks; And it’s something you just have to learn to live with, in Eda’s case. She accepts her curse, she’s not interested in her mother Gwen’s attempts to cure it, which just make her feel ashamed of the curse and lead to a breakup with her lover Raine. In 2003, we see a man who lost his leg but doesn’t use Automail to replace it, explaining to the Elrics his decision, and being validated and respected for it by the narrative.

Ed and Eda’s disabilities are connected to a magical incident involving another being they constantly live with; This being lost their body, and their soul had to be bound to something else… For Ed, this is his brother Alphonse being bound to a suit of armor. For Eda, this is the Owl Beast having to be bound to her body, which is what the curse is; Technically a parasite draining her.

Despite this, Eda figures out a way to work with the Owl Beast, recognizing it’s also trapped with her. And you can see similarities between this dynamic and Ling Yao with Greed, a Homunculus who embodies his Father’s desires. Greed and the Owl Beast both manifest as red magic, linked to the main villain in some way; Father is the source of his childrens’ soul-fueled Philosopher’s Stones. Thanks to the Collector, Belos wields the same red magic as the Archivists who reduced the Owl Beast into a contained soul that can be melded with another living being and their body.

Ling accepts Greed’s red Philosopher’s Stone into his body, and the two form a friendship where they take turns. Ling’s body becomes superhuman like a Homunculus, complete with regenerative abilities, and the power to rearrange the carbon in his skin into an indestructible Ultimate Shield.

Likewise, Eda comes to a mutual agreement with the Owl Beast after befriending it, having to make concessions such as letting the creature take over her body to feed; In exchange, Eda is able to achieve a harpy form she has proper control over, granting her flight and enhanced strength and speed, as well as claws. It’s nowhere near what she could accomplish with the magic she’s still missing, and she still needs to take elixirs… But it helps.

Ed and Eda’s lineage can be traced to a blonde man who has a (blood) brother, the main antagonist of the series. While the antagonist chose evil, the brother chose to renounce this, leaving him behind to have a child with someone he fell in love with.

The antagonist is located at the center of the setting, within a giant fortress. Their lairs are filled with gears and haphazard pipes. Despite their appearances as elderly, long-haired humans, they have a true form; A viscous monster covered in eyes. During the final battle, they project giant versions of themselves atop their own fortress.

The villains also share a similar white, holy aesthetic, drawing upon the image of Christian patriarchal figures; One of them is canonically Christian, in fact. Both are motivated in different ways by some relationship to the idea of God, with Father wanting to become him, and Belos insisting he’s doing God’s holy work. They consider themselves as being born special, as having some aspect of God carried through them.

Despite their delusions, their narratives make it clear that they didn’t actually work or earn any of what they’ve accomplished; They’re nothing more than thieves piggybacking off of the efforts of others, glorified parasites who didn’t learn or mature at all. The Truth dismisses Father’s questions of what he should’ve done differently, responding that he clearly knew all along, he just ignored it; Similarly, Belos is shown to be aware deep down that he’s a treacherous hypocrite. And yet they both ignore these things, failing to self-reflect.

Their plans are similar, waiting for the eclipse so they can enact a Promised Day/Day of Unity. They’ve been working for centuries to do this, establishing a corrupt nation to do so, with all of its citizens and military unaware that they’re setting up their collective demise. There’s a spell circle cast, and it requires a group of skilled alchemists/witches to activate it; For FMA these are five alchemists who have seen the Truth. For TOH, these are the nine Coven Heads, witches powerful in one of the nine tracks.

(Belos definitely did a better job at this, having backup witches and replacing coven heads for fifty years; Father didn’t have any until a few years prior to the Promised Day, and just barely figured out the remaining three within that last year. The last one was prepared literal minutes before the eclipse.)

They both absorb the power of a God/Titan that is sort of God but not really, more on that later, to become all-powerful; But they are separated from that power. Their final moments are similar, insisting to someone else that they did nothing wrong, only to be met by unimpressed silence, angering them. They die reduced to a humiliated, pathetic little thing, because that’s what they are at their core. This all-powerful villain with the power of a god is brought down not by equivalent magic of any kind, but with a simple bare-fisted punch, or a stomp from a foot.

The villains run on the lives of countless innocent beings that they’ve consumed across the centuries, and without this energy, they die. The villains’ magic is arcane and red, defying the usual logic. At the center of their lair, they mess with the source of the setting’s magic, rendering it ineffective. Their evil began about 400 years prior to the start of the series, when they began consuming these innocent lives, and despite their good relationship with their brothers, pushed him away; This brother would set in motion the villain’s defeat via his child(ren).

The souls of the consumed are still alive, and attempt to fight back; In particular, Belos has a resemblance to Envy, an extension of Father’s personality. Their human appearances hide monstrous green forms; Belos’ is a result of the Palismen souls he devoured, whose faces emerge and writhe from the amalgam they’ve become, like how Envy’s true form has the souls of his Philosopher’s Stone emerging from the flesh. They both have the ability to parasitically control others, and this is displayed/discovered after they’ve been enormously injured, reduced to a tiny little thing. They eventually use the lives of others to reform their bodies, only to get knocked down once again, and die.

There’s a human they tormented and have captured before, attempted to make an accessory to their plans and were successful to a degree, and found glee in their guilt, smugly talking hot shit about how it doesn’t matter. But those humans get the last laugh; Envy and Belos share very similar scenes where after their source of power is disrupted by said human, Envy and Belos are reduced to just an upper half, dragging themselves along the ground as they rave angrily at the silent protagonists, insulted to be looked down upon and insisting they’re still better, as they reach out uselessly to the human that has soundly humiliated and defeated them.

Belos and Father/Envy both have a disdain for a species, thinking themselves superior, only to be done in by them and their collective bonds and relationships; The villain has nothing to him. The one thing he has are his Homunculi; Artificially-created beings who resemble humans and have pink eyes. But Belos’ Grimwalkers inevitably defy him, just as Greed defies Father. These rebellious children end up as friends to the protagonists. In the 2003 continuity, a Homunculus is specifically what happens when you try to bring a dead person back to life, only to get a flawed clone with some of the memories.

This is exactly what Grimwalkers are, with Hunter and his predecessors being attempted clones of Caleb; Belos is another example of a character who refuses to accept death, at least for the one person he ‘cares’ about. He also refuses to accept death for himself, feeding on Palismen to prolong his existence.

Going further into 2003, we should also compare Belos to its villain, Dante; While Father is an inhuman being, Dante started off human, just like Belos, and both represent the worst that humanity has to offer, the banality of evil. Dante manipulates others into creating the Philosopher’s Stone before stealing it from them, using it just to keep herself alive; But her soul is eventually reaching its limit, and the Philosopher’s Stone is not enough. This causes bodies she stole from others to decay at an increasingly rapid rate.

Similarly, Belos used Palismen souls to become immortal, but eventually his form turns into a slimy green monster, and while he uses more Palismen souls to revert himself back into a human, one can see how the curse has begun to creep into his human appearance. By the end of the series, he is permanently the curse monster, and can only imitate the façade of his human appearance, and for a brief while. He also ends up possessing the bodies of others to survive, and one of them, the last Grimwalker, decays rapidly from the attempt and falls apart.

Dante is the master of the Homunculi and created four of them, while helping the other three regain a more human appearance. She’s a master manipulator and gaslighter, just as Belos manipulates Hunter, but also all of the people around him. They’re raging hypocrites and cowards, their motives very human; Dante wants to live forever, while Belos craves the righteous power fantasy of being a witch hunter. They represent dead people who refuse to move on, with Belos especially representing conservative, white supremacist ideology furious over the changes of the modern era, and rejecting them to continue his crusades regardless.

This also gets us into a villain introduced after Dante in the 2003 continuity; Dietlinde Eckhart, a literal Nazi trying to help Hitler rise to power. Eckhart is knowledgeable about the magic of another world parallel to ours, the world that is the series’ main setting; Belos/Eckhart manipulate a young girl of color into accomplishing their plans of genocide. Eckhart is fearful of the other world beyond hers and its magic, seeing it as an inherent threat that must be destroyed; In her efforts, she becomes consumed by supernatural forces, mutating into a slimy, unrecognizable monster and is killed in this state.

For the main FMA continuity, there’s a juxtaposition in that a society of humans is revealed to be run by a non-human who hates humanity and thinks he’s better for not being like them; In TOH, a society of non-humans is revealed to be run by a human who hates non-humans and thinks he’s better for not being like them. Belos sees the witches and demons of another world as an inherent threat that must be destroyed. He’s also much more thematically intertwined with the state he leads; Father is ultimately his own apathetic entity, letting others run it for him.

Amestris is an imperialistic state, it’s fascism, it commits genocide against an ethnic minority of brown people; It’s racist. Belos comes from a real life historical context, a very racist one, just like Eckhart; He’s a Puritan from a 1600’s American colony, relying on the delusions of Evangelicalism as his motive, Satanic Panic dialed up to eleven. His attempted genocide and damage to the culture and environment of a world he’s colonized is just the obvious extension of what Puritans like him did in real life; Eckhart is a literal Nazi helping Hitler rise to power, and Hitler cited the American settlers’ genocide of Native Americans as inspiration.

FMA 2003 places more emphasis on the corruption and racism of the state, and it can be seen as a criticism of the U.S.’s War on Iraq during its release. The War on Iraq was supported by Evangelicals, many of whom support Zionism in the same region due to their Evangelical desires for the Rapture to occur, and they see the establishment of Israel as part of the ‘conditions’ for this Rapture to happen.

The Promised Day/Day of Unity are both Rapture events; In the case of FMA, there’s a group of high-ranking military humans who believe they’ll ascend above the rest when it occurs. For TOH, this is what’s believed by the witches and demons colonized by the coven regime. With Belos especially, his Day of Unity is unambiguously a play on the Rapture due to his real life, historical background and motives.

Amestris may be led by a Fuhrer, but it’s meant to be a conglomeration of multiple Western powers, and its name hearkens to America. When you combine this with 2003’s commentary and Belos’ blatant Christian colonialism -imposing his own understanding of how God works onto the local Titan- and representing how other Puritans like him are factors into everything wrong with the U.S…. You can see how both series criticize real-life white people.

This also gets me into another character, Raine Whispers; They bear a resemblance to Roy Mustang in some ways, as they’re both high-ranking government officials aware of how their state persecutes others. They’re both selected by the villain as a key factor into their genocidal rapture spell. They both seek to use their positions of power to challenge the government’s atrocities. They both joined it wide-eyed and idealistic, only to realize the truth.

Both of them realize that in addition to the inherent corruption, there’s also a conspiracy afoot within the government; Their attempts to interfere lead to them being captured. Mustang attempts to find someone like-minded in the friendly Raven, only to find out he’s a part of it and has led him like a lamb to the slaughter; Raine expects an enemy out of Darius and Eberwolf, who prevent themselves as loyalists, only to reveal they’re on the same side after all.

Nevertheless, being captured leads to both characters being allowed to continue their duties under government surveillance, due to their role in the genocidal spell. But they find clever, under the radar ways to coordinate with their fellow rebels without being seen. There’s a scene in which Raine burns a message from Darius in the leadup to the Day of Unity, just as Mustang does in the leadup to the Promised Day.

There’s hope; All of our disparate protagonists coming together, different subplots like Luz and her family, Hunter and the students of Hexside, and the CATTs. Everyone comes together to find a way to stop the genocidal spell, and/or ensure others survive it; Armstrong sends his parents outside of Amestris, while the staff and students of Hexside fortify the school and are able to avoid the Collector’s control later on.

Everyone comes together to stop the genocidal spell on this dangerous day, having to contend with the fact that a lot of the people they’re fighting don’t know any better, and they can’t convince them in reasonable time; But what other choice do they have? They’ll have to cause some damage and harm, including to those in the upper echelons of the state who don’t realize they’re not included. There’s a specific plan, although things don’t exactly pan out…

But while the genocidal spell activates, it’s ultimately reversed to prevent anyone from dying to it. This is accomplished thanks to someone who was duped by the villain into helping them get to this point; Hohenheim was manipulated into giving the Dwarf in the Flask half of Xerxes’ souls to become Father. But with the other half he was given, Hohenheim undid the Philosopher’s Stone comprised of Amestris’ souls… Likewise, the Collector was manipulated by Belos into giving him the draining spell, but after being freed by King, undid it.

Amidst the similarities of Raine and Roy, there are also the differences, such as in how they seek to challenge the government; Roy intends to become Fuhrer by legitimate processes so he can change the country using his power, and hopefully shift it to democracy. Raine is under no such illusions; They regularly break the law to protect the people who are being persecuted by the state, use their knowledge to interfere with operations, and incite the public to do the same by explaining the state’s corruption.

Likewise, they intend to remove the coven system completely, and replace it wholesale by assassinating Belos; We see them succeed in the epilogue when the system is now run by a council that they’re a part of, coven bindings are removed so magic can be practiced freely, there is no longer a fascist Us vs Them mentality, and prisons have been abolished and replaced with hospitals.

In addition to assassinating Belos, Raine is willing to use violence in general; When cornered by fellow coven heads Darius and Eberwolf, they attempt a spell alongside Eda to kill all four in the vicinity. What causes Raine to call it off isn’t the realization that Killing is Wrong, it’s the realization that Eda has kids back home that she’s leaving behind, and they care too much to let Eda go down this path out of self-destruction.

It’s later revealed that Darius and Eberwolf are a separate undercover cell, who kept up appearances to avoid being exposed (as seen when loyalist Kikimora shows up shortly afterwards). But in the end, the narrative does not admonish Raine for their willingness to kill government officials to protect the persecuted; Darius and Eberwolf were fine because they were already on the same side, but if not then killing them would have been fine. This is reiterated by Raine successfully helping defeat Belos in the end, and participating in a killing blow they announce personal satisfaction with.

(Also unlike Roy, Raine never killed anyone for the state, only going after people who they thought were a part of it, or even were. Their decision to go against the state was prompted quickly by realizing how witches were being branded and likely discreetly executed by others, whereas Roy became the biggest murderer of the Ishvalan Genocide and decided only then to change the system from within the system.)

This gets me to another comparison, and hear me out; Raine also bears some resemblance to Scar, particularly his 2003 counterpart. They have the brown skin, glasses, and lighter hair; They’re both willing to kill government officials and burn down the state, and they’re not admonished for it, validated even. Their ‘magic’ is associated with red. They fight to protect a group persecuted by the state.

In fact, Raine is like Scar in that they ARE a part of that group technically, because the state’s ultimate function is to murder all witches, and as a witch, they too have been colonized by the coven regime, and they’re inherently a target due to having been covenbound. The beliefs of wild witches, deemed part of the ‘Savage’ Ages by the coven system, is like how the Ishvalans’ own religion is demonized, and Raine is very much a wild witch by the end of the day.

So in this sense, you can see Raine Whispers as a strange blend of Roy Mustang and Scar; A violent freedom fighter whose pro-murder stance is never challenged because the narrative ultimately agrees with it, who gets to kill the dictator. They initially joined the state thinking it was just, only to quickly realize it persecutes innocents and that they themselves are a target of this larger genocide, and decided to change the government.

I also want to add that in the same finale where Raine helps kill Belos, our protagonist Luz asks the Titan if her wanting Belos dead makes Luz just as bad as Belos; The Titan laughs it off, essentially saying that the violence of the oppressed is NOT equal to the violence of the oppressor. Luz and co. are actually fighting to protect people who are at stake, against someone who is not protecting anything, only claiming to be in his fascist aggression.

Luz settles her moral quandary, shortly after opting to let a pleading Belos boil to death rather than save him; Belos claims this makes her evil for not wanting peace, and just as bad as those witches, whom humans like him are better than! Cue said witches stepping in, agreeing that they aren’t better than this, before taking petty, justified enjoyment in stomping Belos to death. As I’ve said, Raine is among them.

Willow is one of Luz’s friends, and a recurring element to her storyline is Willow allowing herself to be angry, allowing herself to call out people, be it bullies or even her own friends, to express displeasure with them, and this is how she can learn to stand up for herself. Eda outright says to her mother that she has a right to be upset over years of condescension over her disability. Scar’s mentor tells him his anger is valid, and will never not be; Victims have a right to be angry, and this goes hand in hand with having the right to go against abuse, which oppression is a large-scale version of.

The magic of both series comes from the land itself; Magic is a gift from the Titan, and Alchemy is powered by the kinetic energy of the Tectonic plates. There’s a mysterious portal with an eye on it, linked to the deity of the series; FMA’s portal houses God and is guarded by the Truth, while TOH’s portal uses the eye of the Titan. Like 2003, there are two parallel worlds that the portal can be used to traverse through; Our world, and another world where this magic is possible to begin with. Glyphs can’t be used in the human world, and in 2003, alchemy or the powers of the Homunculi are similarly inaccessible here.

On a meta note, there was once a fan theory that the Demon Realm had witch counterparts to those in the human world and vice-versa; This was prompted by an early design for Amity being one of Luz’s human classmates, as well as her mentioning an Augustus whose nickname Gus adopts, and of course the reveal of someone impersonating her. This was later established as a basilisk named Vee, and the theory was disproven. But in 2003, counterparts WERE a thing, with Alphonse Elric having Alfons Heiderich, Hughes having a Nazi counterpart I kid you not, and the human Pride was cloned from being real-life Fritz Lang.

(Speaking of Vee! We have a reptilian shapeshifter who can imitate humans and other beings; We also have Envy. See the resemblance?)

As aforementioned, TOH and FMA both have a space between worlds, used to cross between said worlds, as the threshold for death; Souls who go past the murkiness of the in-between are lost forever, while souls who pass the Gate are beyond even the power of the Philosopher’s Stone. With God not exactly being God, the afterlife is also left ambiguous; It’s eventually confirmed/heavily implied that Belos does not see the ghosts of his brother and the Grimwalkers, but is merely hallucinating. We don’t know what the afterlife in TOH is actually like, if there even is one.

And in 2003, it’s implied there is no afterlife, and all deceased souls simply become energy for Alchemy; At least on our world’s side. When Wrath the Homunculus dies, he has a vision of himself reuniting with the deceased Izumi, and the existence of the Homunculi adds to this uncertainty.

There’s a Theological rumination in both series; God in FMA is described by Father, who was born from it, to be the collective nervous system of the Earth and all of the living creatures that are part of it. It’s not really God in a conventional Christian sense, nor is Truth; It’s a deliberate mystery. Edward Elric is a devout atheist (despite having met his universe’s God) and brings it up to Rose, a member of Cornello’s cult who has an existential crisis after it’s exposed.

Father Cornello is the first villain of the series, an agent of the Homunculi and by extension Father, whose purpose is to create political instability that will justify the state’s violent, White Savior interference, and thus fulfill the third Blood Crest needed for the nationwide transmutation circle. He runs a cult and uses the red power of a fake Philosopher’s Stone given to him by Lust to rouse everyone into believing in him as a holy man, a bringer of miracles.

He’s a phony, but right after Lust disposes of him, she namedrops her Father; And with Father Cornello being his full title, there’s the obvious religious parallel. Then we see how Father (sans Cornello) is obsessed with God, and in the end these bookended villains, the first and final antagonists, are called ‘third-rate frauds’ by Edward Elric, who claims there’s no comparison between him and them.

You can see the comparison between Belos and Cornello, with Belos more explicitly being a figure of Christian colonialism; The Titan is worshipped by witches and demons, but also acknowledged as very dead and unable to speak or influence people. But Belos introduces the concept of Hell and Damnation to them, and treats the Titan as a higher deity similar to God; Not just for his own insincere purposes, but because his racist, colonial mind cannot grasp how another belief system works differently.

Rose has an existential crisis when everything is revealed, but eventually makes peace and finds a way to keep going. Similarly, we have the aforementioned Titan in TOH; It’s revealed that the Titan is just one of many, and that the Titans are just… people. They’re just people, very BIG people, but people nonetheless, and the show’s tritagonist King, Luz’s adopted little brother, is a juvenile Titan himself.

As King comes to terms with being the son of the Titan, he meets Steve, a former member of Belos’ cult who left and has his fair share of questions. Among them being the consideration that maybe even the Titan (God) doesn’t know what he wants, that Belos is putting words into someone else’s mouth, etc.

This is reiterated when Luz meets the (specifically, our) Titan, and sees firsthand that he really is Just Some Guy. So for FMA and TOH, there is a God of sorts, but not in the way as Christians would conceptualize it, which is intentional; Belos is canonically Christian, while Cornello and Father are meant to emulate Christians.

In 2003, it’s revealed Christianity used to exist in this universe, and that the city Dante came from practiced it; It also had witch trials that condemned innocents to die, with Dante and Hohenheim using these condemned lives as fodder for their Philosopher’s Stone experiments. Belos, as mentioned, is a historical witch hunter, with Gravesfield’s witch hunts meant to emulate the practices of another Puritan colony in the area, those of Salem…

Christianity is dead by the present, with Dante having outlived it; But she throws in cheeky references to it in how she names the Homunculi after the Seven Deadly Sins. At one point, she crucifies Lust as punishment, and the thing about Lust is that she was once a woman of color from a desert region (Remember 2003’s War on Iraq commentary?) brutalized by a predominantly white, America-inspired military as part of Evangelical delusion. But when she was remade, Lust turned out white, and is now a white figure being crucified…

Belos is also Christian, but much more devout than Dante (even if both are insincere by the end of the day); When he first began his genocidal plans, he had long brown hair, a beard, and blue eyes… As many have pointed out, in his youth, Philip Wittebane resembles the whitewashed depiction of Jesus Christ; And in the finale, he has the closest pose that a kids show can get away with to the crucifixion, as a symbol of his Messiah complex. The Puritans are the ancestors of the Evangelicals…

Of course, religion is not bad in these series; Scar and his fellow Ishvalans keep their religious faith. Scar has an existential crisis over his use of Alchemy, considering it heretical; His brother was a casual heretic, and his research into a Xingese form of Alchemy, dubbed Alkahestry, is revealed as the basis for Scar’s Alchemy. Scar decides to make an exception for his religion, applying Alkahestry to his other arm in order to give him a better chance at fighting.

At one point, Wrath denounces the Ishvalans’ religion, inviting God to strike him down in arrogance… When Scar fights him at the end, pure chance causes the sun, emerging from behind the eclipse, to reflect off of Wrath’s sword and blind him; It is an Act of God that gives the religious Scar the chance to use Alkahestry to tear off Wrath’s arms, causing him to bleed to death. And in the end, Scar gets to keep his religion.

Scar and his brother reconciling the use of Alkahestry with their religion seems to be a riff on Christians trying to reconcile their religion with science, with evolution, all of these things. But it could also be a historical reference to how a lot of scientists were Christians who saw no distinction, and believed their research to be a way of exploring God’s world, not countering his word; Gregor Mendel is the father of genetics and he was Christian.

FMA has a nuanced take on religion, not all bad or good, it really depends on how you engage with it because religious violence is just a veneer for the greed and cruelty of some. TOH agrees, pointing out that Belos’ use of Christianity is just to serve his own delusional hero complex, monster slaying fantasies, and hateful bigotry. Christianity in colonialism is an extension of colonialism, not the other way around.

You see this in the finale; The show makes a cheeky reference to Jesus Christ in how Luz dies to protect someone from Belos in the finale, before accepting the power of the Titan to come back to life and defeat him. Of course the Titan isn’t really God, Luz isn’t really Jesus; But when the Titan’s corpse is left in a pose mimicking Adam reaching out to God, it makes one reflect on Dana’s Catholic background.

So while she herself is no longer Christian, she seems interested in exploring Christianity as not all bad, as having a lot of good in it; She’s critiquing Evangelicalism and its punitive practices. But she seems to find respect in the healing, restorative aspects of Christianity; These sorts of disagreements are of course very Christian, if all of the denominations are anything to consider.

And this theme of Retributive vs Restorative justice isn’t just limited to the discussion of Christianity; Much of TOH is based in the idea of people who have been hurt or suffer, but choose to be better. It’s about not lashing out, but instead preventing others from suffering the same way you have, because suffering isn’t really good or healing or redemptive; You be better in spite of it, not because!

And you see this in how characters like Lilith or Amity become better people, not because of their suffering and loneliness that made them cruel, but because of the compassion of people like Luz reaching out to them. You see how they’re allowed to get better, and that while they are held accountable to the people they’ve hurt, they’re not supposed to be punished; Just given space to grow.

This also applies to Luz; The U.S. school system punished her a lot, but this did nothing to help Luz. And when she chooses to avoid its Reality Check camp, Luz finds healing in the Boiling Isles. When she feels guilt over being manipulated by Belos into giving him what he needed to take control of the isles and attempt genocide, Luz attempts to punish herself by staying in the human world, believing it was her selfishness that caused this.

But as with Eda, this does nothing but hurt herself, and hurt her loved ones who are isolated from Luz. Luz has to forgive herself, she has to heal, she has to resolve to do better and let herself be happy and even selfish at times.

The show beginning with Luz’s conflict with the school disciplinary system goes hand in hand with the introduction of the Boiling Isles’ Conformatorium, a harsh prison; And it’s later revealed both of these systems come from Puritanism. Puritanism/Evangelicalism is criticized for its emphasis on punishment, Belos focuses on the suffering of the crucifixion, while Luz represents the healing of the resurrection. As mentioned, prisons are abolished and replaced with hospitals.

FMA also has a similar sentiment; Multiple characters are Amestrian war criminals who helped commit genocide against the Ishvalan people. And in the end, they’re not allowed to wallow in self-pity, they don’t get the luxury of dying or killing themselves (not yet anyway); They’re held accountable, they’re expect to do the hard work of continuing to live, so they can give reparations to the Ishvalans, challenge their own system, and prevent more people from dying.

There’s a scene where Tim Marcoh, a doctor who feels guilt over using Ishvalan lives to create a Philosopher’s Stone, encounters Scar. He finds a brief relief in this, for a moment the shots frame him as a martyr bathed in white light, accepting holy judgment from Scar, who will absolve him…

And then it cuts to a very angry Scar, who is not a perfect, holy angel here to absolve Marcoh; He slams Marcoh against the cold hard concrete, knocking him down to reality and showing him to be the scared and pitiful man he actually is. And Scar demands answers, he demands help in his quest to help his own people. And so Marcoh doesn’t get to die, he has to live; He still loses his face to Scar as punishment, left hideous. But he’s expected to spend the rest of his life helping rebuild Ishval in repentance.

For TOH, it’s not nearly as terrible (since it’s a kids show) but it’s still there; Amity betrayed Willow, and while she had her reasons, while she really was stuck between a rock and a hard choice, she nevertheless owes it to Willow to be and do better for her, and that’s exactly what she does! Amity works to defend Willow and be a supportive friend again.

Hunter aided Belos, who devoured Palismen and endangered them; Now he carves Palismen and helps the Palistrom woods grow once more. Raine, Darius, and Eberwolf were all part of the coven system, but have since replaced it with a new one as they work to undo coven bindings, and eventually succeed. Alador used his technology for arms manufacturing, which contributed to the Day of Unity; His tech helps in undoing those aforementioned bindings.

Lilith was head of the Emperor’s Coven, but was ultimately a pencil pusher who never actually arrested any wild witches; Despite this, Lilith accepts that she’s complicit after seeing Eda almost be executed later that day, intending to use her position to prevent anything like this, in spite of her leigitimate fear of being killed by Belos. She’s ousted by Belos before she can ever do this, but Lilith ends up working with the rebellion to stop the Day of Unity, and genuinely offers to sacrifice her own life to sabotage the draining spell.

Lilith having guilt and needing to make up for it is also there; She accepts half of the curse to mitigate Eda’s due to being the one who inflicted it upon her, losing her own magic in the process. She brews a spying potion to apologize. And when Lilith offers to sacrifice herself against the draining spell, it’s also to spare Eda that burden, although Eda ultimately has to be the one. Despite having wasted most of her life, it isn’t over, there’s still plenty more years; It’s never too late for Lilith to begin anew with her mother Gwen, and find a new purpose and happiness.

FMA goes with the idea that it’s hard to live, it’s hard to keep going; Rose has no purpose but Ed tells her to keep going on her own two feet. Sloth, an extension of Father’s personality, finds constant agony in the work of living, and only finds peace in his final moments, knowing he’s about to die. Jerso and Zampano are resigned to having been transformed by the state into chimeras, but Alphonse encourages them not to give up and to keep trying.

In TOH’s final arc, it’s hard for Luz to forgive herself, to still want to keep going for her dream. She would rather punish herself and remain in depression over her guilt in being manipulated into giving Belos what he needed to create his regime and attempt genocide; But as her mother reiterates to Luz, she just needs to accept that mistakes are a difficult part of life, but that it’s still worth trying regardless.

As mentioned earlier, Raine does call off the murder-suicide against Darius and Eberwolf, not out of a moral quandary towards killing fascists, but because they realize Eda is essentially committing suicide; They see her photo of Luz and King, and pinpoint that Eda, feeling like she’s no longer needed in anyone’s life, has succumbed to despair. But these people still need her, Eda’s life matters too; Just as Al admonishes Ed for almost letting Scar kill him because Alphonse needs his older brother too.

The story does not end in Fullmetal Alchemist; The adventure keeps going with Ed and Al exploring two different directions of the world. Roy and his fellow war criminals are still working to change the government, with Arakawa even stating that she never did the conclusion to this, because the story is not about them, but about the Elrics. Jerso and Zampano journey with Alphonse to restore their bodies.

The Owl House also goes by this; Its ending shows there’s still plenty more work to be done in rebuilding the Boiling Isles, there’s still a looming threat out there in the Archivists. Dana herself said she doesn’t like the phrase Happily Ever After, in how it settles everything as perfectly settled and resolved.

Given both series involve a Rapture event, you can probably see the satire here; There is no great ending to life or history. Life keeps going, society keeps going, and you have to do your work to help yourself and others. You can’t just give up. Living is hard, but it’s worth it!

That also gets me into the aspect of working, of working with others, etc. Fullmetal Alchemist talks about Equivalent Exchange, and how to gain, you must sacrifice, and/or work for it. In 2003, this philosophy is deconstructed by Dante as libertarian bullshit (not that she’s any better), pointing to things like class inequality as her evidence. Despite this, 2003 believes in still trying, in still being kind to others, that sort of thing.

The main continuity builds off of this further; Ed and Al don’t get this type of Wake Up Call, but they come to the realization that you should still be gracious in general. Alphonse pitches a new Alchemical equation they’ve been coming up with; Where you take one, add one, and thus give two back. The idea is to give, to create more in the world, to be gracious. It’s not that people should just earn everything, that there’s a responsibility to be compassionate for its sake, and without any expectation of an equivalent return, if any.

Remember what I said about TOH, and how characters suffer but choose to be better and kinder? You can see this here; The show actually namedrops and criticizes capitalism via a literal pig who benefits from it, and in the character of Odalia (both of whom have their greed flourish under a coven system resembling America’s, started by the same settlers no less). People shouldn’t have to suffer, they shouldn’t have to work for and ‘earn’ things, sometimes you should give it to them anyway.

At the start of the series, Eda tells Luz that if she wants to achieve her dream, she needs to work for it; Similarly, Ed and Al have to work for their own dream as well.

But work isn’t just doing everything you can to accomplish a goal, because Father and Dante are villains for this, and they receive karmic fates. Belos is obsessed with his fantasy, to the point that he sacrifices his own brother for it, and dies pathetically, having wasted his entire life. Work is also about paying attention to the people around you, to the world around you; Giving back to it, giving back to them. It’s about uplifting the others around you, it’s about remembering the relationships you do have and maintaining them.

In 2003, there’s emphasis that the Elrics abandoned the relationships they already had with Winry and Pinako for their dream. For TOH, Luz can’t just have her head in the clouds all day, dreaming about fantasy; She needs to engage with the world around her, and only then can she achieve her dream. Her first spell comes from acknowledging that others and their dreams matter, too; The rest come from Luz paying attention to the literal world the Titan embodies.

Luz ultimately wants friends, she wants to reconnect with her mother and gets that. King realizes he doesn’t want power, he just wants friends; And in FMA this is what Greed, an extension of Father’s personality, comes to terms with before sacrificing himself to protect his friend Ling from Father, and allow Ed to deal the finishing blow.

So Work is a basic necessity; It’s not necessarily good, but it’s something you just have to deal with, like Life. But it can pay off in the end, and you can and should help others and spare them the Work, so they can also be happier at a lower cost; Give more to the world, ask not just what you can get from the world, but what you can give back.

Wanting things is not demonized, either; Too much is bad of course. But the appropriately-named Greed explains to Edward that everyone wants what they don’t have, and in the end, this willingness to dream and keep moving forward is important to growth and humanity. Likewise, Luz is allowed to want things, she thinks her problem is that she’s selfish, but her attempt to be ‘content’ with what she has just made her miserable. Sometimes you need to prioritize yourself, sometimes you need to reach out and find a better place, too!

And this is also important in challenging a corrupt system that tells you to be content; Even before the coven system is confirmed to be killing people, the narrative condemns it as needing to be changed anyway because of how it limits people. Luz and other kids in the Detention Track wanting to learn magic is good, them pursuing that leads to good change within their school.

As another similarity in how their stories end? Ed gets his arm back, Al regains his body, and they’re both surrounded by the many, many friends they’ve made, who earlier cheer on Ed when he defeats Father, an observation that gets Greed to admit this is what he really wanted. In the afterlife, Hohenheim is ecstatic to tell Trisha that their sons have made so many friends!

Luz’s story, the exact final moment and frame of the show, ends with her having made so many friends; Becoming a Chosen One was part of it, as was being a Good Witch. But this is the final note to end on, and we see the many relationships she’s surrounded herself with literally and figuratively, after the series began with her concerned mother asking Luz if she had any actual friends.

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