i don’t know how anyone could watch 03 and brotherhood and prefer brotherhood’s take on the homunculi. i don’t mean the individual characters, i mean the concept itself. because holy shit are the bh homunculi a let-down in comparison.
this is coming from someone who watched 03 first, but i find the concept of the bh homunculi to just be…. so boring. like, they’re meant to be the manifestations of father’s sins. okay. cool i guess. i’ve always found father himself to be a rather bland villain which is fine, not every villain needs to be completely fleshed out or understood. but the fact that these representations of sin are meant to reflect the sins of our antagonist, who’s a rather flat character anyway, feels like such a waste when you look over to 03.
03 having the homunculi be products of failed human transmutations is just…. SO fucking genius. it’s so interesting! now, every single one of the homunculi has a backstory to them! even the ones we know so little about like 03 pride and 03 greed have a level of depth to them. we know they were once human, that they were brought back by someone, and that they surely must have SOME feelings about that.
and for the ones we DO get to know more about? holy SHIT. sloth?!?! SLOTH. what a genius move. having the elrics go against the monster they created, the creation that sparked the whole series, the reanimated face of their MOTHER. it’s just so heartbreaking and something that works so well. and LUST????? HER WHOLE CHARACTER???? IT’S INCREDIBLE! having her break out of the “sexy woman” trope to actually be her own character, have her own feelings about her humanity and her own desires. having her turn against dante, her relationship to scar, all of that. her character became something truly beautiful.
in comparison, bh sloth is…. nothing. like i get it, haha, he’s sloth so he’s slow and doesn’t do much, whatever funny joke i guess. but it feels like a waste of an entire character. and bh lust is yet another waste. her entire existence is merely to set up roy’s character, and as the only female homunculus in bh, it feels so cheap.
i know this will probably not be a popular take, but i also think that envy suffers in bh as well in comparison. 03 envy is just, SO much more interesting. he was transmuted by his parents, then forgotten by his father in favor of a new family. he was then manipulated by his mother for YEARS into doing what she wanted. and then suddenly the name “envy” makes sense! he’s envious of humans, just like bh envy talked about, but in a much more PERSONAL way. he’s envious of what ed has. he HATES ed’s guts, and when his backstory is unraveled, it all makes sense why. bh envy is one of the more interesting homunculi in that series, but even then, his last speech about being jealous of humans and being humiliated feels a bit out-of-nowhere. his hatred for humanity really being a cover-up for jealous DOES make sense, but in comparison to 03 envy’s motivations, it feels so disingenuous to me.
and again, when thinking about the concepts, what do the homunculi in bh tell us about the characters in comparison to 03? we do get characters fighting against their “deadly sins” in each series, but the emotional stakes are much higher in 03. ed fighting pride in bh is intense and makes sense symbolically, but it lacks the emotional gut punch of ed fighting sloth in 03. both of them are the same thing on paper; ed is fighting the sin he struggles with most in each series. but bh ed has no emotional ties to bh pride, and he really can’t have any considering the whole concept of the homunculi just being born from father. in 03 however, when ed is fighting his creation, fighting his own mother, fighting the literal embodiment of his sin, it feels so much stronger.
this isn’t to say all of the homunculi are bad in bh - far from it. i LOVE bh greed. but what makes him a good character has nothing to do with the homunculi’s conception or his ties to father. it’s all about what he does inside the story. which is fine! i’m not complaining about that! i’m just saying that the mere concept of homunculi in 03 is a much better setup for the homunculi themselves and gives them a very personal stake in other characters’ stories. instead of being subsections of the Big Bad, they are born from our heroes, which gives them this much deeper sense of sadness as well as a stronger, personal tie to the protagonists. 03′s take on them is more tragic, more memorable, and just. so. good.
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