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NEWS: New Fullmetal Alchemist TV Commercial Streamed

There could've been more of it, but I'm glad there wasn't, because that's not what the series is about

Tons of explanation about Dante's predicament has already been done in this thread, and I find it all very acceptable. I actually like what little we see of Dante's character - she's a person who has been twisted by the ravages of time and filled with delusions of grandeur, even while she's incredibly defendant on all of her servants. I really like that depiction, because usually when you have a character who has lived hundreds of years, you get someone more like Hoenheim, or some wisened elves in whichever fantasy book who are usually so infallible, it's sickening. I think Dante provides a great foil to this. And I think it's a bit more realistic, too, but that's just me.

She's been corrupted, she's rather incompetent compared to Hoenheim, she knows that creating the philosopher's stone also results in death. spoiler[Hoenheim would've died had she not transferred his soul to another body, and Scar, well, he obviously did die.] That seems to be the other ingredient to the stone - lots and lots of souls, and the body of the person enacting the transmutation. We basically learn as much from Scar's brother. Obviously, Dante isn't going to sacrifice herself like that, so she has to create all of these complex plans to trick another alchemist into doing her dirty work for her.

But it's not like that's all she was doing, either - she's also got complete control of what seems to be the most powerful government in their world, making her the most powerful person in the world. No small feat. Which means she had to create Pride, the only aging homunculi, which was likely a significant task. I will say it's a shame they didn't delve into that more like in the manga, but, to be fair, the manga hadn't even reached that point yet. That's just another thing to look forward to in this new series, though! Anyways - she also had to collect/create the rest of her little homunculi army, then deal with Greed's little rebellion - y'know, I'd love to hear more story behind that incident as well. And all the while she's waging wars and trying to lure in suitable alchemists - training Izumi was probably part of that plan. She might have taken on several other apprentices before Izumi as well. Point is, she wasn't just sitting around doing nothing the whole time.

And I never saw Ed and Rose as having any romantic tension between them, except at the very end, which was very obviously just a part of Dante's plot, seeing as she had a firm grip on Rose's mind at the time. No doubt she thought it would be great fun to seduce one of Hoenheim's sons. Ed even stops Rose and is essentially like, "the hell are you doing?" And I seem to be the only person who actually did feel a fair amount of romantic tension between Ed and Winry throughout the series. There could've been more of it, but I'm glad there wasn't, because that's not what the series is about. It's nice to have as a little side dish in the manga, but it's harder to work into the show, I think.

Whether or not homunculi have souls is very much open to debate, and is debated in the show itself, which is something I love about it. Really, it's one of the big philosophical questions of the series - what is a soul? How can you define it in order to put it into an equation? That's a problem Ed and Al encounter right off the bat, obviously. Personally, I like Lust's theory, that homunculi spoiler[are in fact the people who were being resurrected, they're merely an incomplete product. So while they're missing the person's soul, they do have their memories, which obviously affect the actions they take and leads to them developing their own personalities.] Who's to say that, at some point during this process, they don't develop souls of their own? It makes sense to me, and it explains quite a bit. The whole ideology behind souls is very fluid anyways - it's nothing we have an answer to, so we are free to search out our own answers, which is what the original series wants us to do, I think. I just hope this new series is just as thought provoking, because, while the manga is absolutely wonderful, it would also be very easy to just dumb it down to pure action. I've got faith in studio BONES, though.

I like the parallel world thing, I thought it added even more depth to the show - they may not have explained it so well as to dispel all questions about it, obviously, but they gave a general explanation that worked for their purposes, I think. To be honest, they really didn't give themselves enough time to explain it, seeing as it came at the climax of the show, which also happened to be the second to last episode, heh. And that's where it should've been, I think. But if they had taken more time just to explain the specifics, it would've disrupted the climax and thrown off the pacing of it all. They could've explained it more in the movie, but I guess they wanted to keep it rather mystical. Which makes sense, I mean, spoiler[if Hoenheim is just barely able to make sense of it, it's not likely that we're going to have a bunch of scientific facts about it. Traveling between the 2 universes is unprecedented until he does it, as far as we know, and Dante doesn't even really know what she's done to him, just that she's separated his body and soul,] so there's not really any way for us to canonically obtain the information anyways. All we really need to know is that there is some kind of flow of energy(which we are told is beyond our understanding enough to make it a significant theme of the show), or of "souls," between the two universes, and the energy that reaches Ed's universe from the other side of the gate is used for transmutation. If anything, I think it was smart to incorporate that sense of mysticism about it all in the movie, I found it to be a very good fit.

Man, I'm way too long winded when discussing FMA, heh. The walls of text symbolize my love! *bricked*

That's my problem with the first animated series.
The manga has many themes and events and developments going on at the same time, in a way that you could thing that it isn't focused enough on the Elric brothers, but only if you only look at few chapters, and not at the manga as a whole.

I read volumes 13 and 14 again, today, and it's just great, simple like that.

The memories must come from the souls in the anime as its the only answer that makes sense, Al has no body in the anime, his memories coming from the Soul that is attached to the blood seal in the armor.