Conqueror of Shamballa Art and Concept Art from the dvd. Pictures taken by me, but feel free to reuse however, with or without credit.

FMA 03 Month Day 2 - Favorite/Least Favorite Female Character

I wanted to say Riza or Lust for my favorite Female, but I have to go with Winry.

Her arc is honestly so subtle but amazing. It’s one of confliction. A girl who lost her parents, but can’t bring herself to seek revenge in the end, because the person who did it turns out to be a person she’s not only known for years, but also somebody that is only trying his best to right his wrongs. She has to come to terms with everything on her own, and handles it like a champ. I’m only upset that the scene with her and Roy from the cos script got left out. 

There is already a post that points out the highlights of her arc though, so I won’t go into that.

As for least favorite female: 

As a character, it’d probably be Eckart, because really I don’t care about her story and I felt she could have been better written(although the irony of her death was kind of neat). But as a person, it would be Dante. She was such an awful person, from the way she used Rose, who was incredibly vulnerable after what happened to her, to the way she manipulated and dehumanized the homunculi, to the way she orchestrated wars and took numerous lives for the stone just so she could keep on living in her rotting body, to the way she even planned to use Rose to get to Ed, her STEP SON. Yeah, I think, honestly, she’s probably the most f*cked up and deplorable character in the entirety of the fma universe. And yet there an underlying human nature about her that makes her so compelling as a villain, with how she plays the sociopathic role perfectly and how she literally inhibits each one of the seven deadly sins. She’s probably the most human character on the show, but she just doesn’t have the limiters that others do. I like the way she challenges equivalent exchange, and just literally everything about her character. And also? Her backstory with Izumi, Envy, and Hohenheim is something I personally would have liked to see WAY more on. But I guess that answers the questions.

FMA Conquerors of Shambala about Envy in original script.

"In exchange for getting through of the gate Envy exchanged his transformation ability: he can only return to his original form (and?) the shape of a serpent. He's lost all of his powers as a Homunculus." (I'm not actually sure if it means his original form as in the form he came to that world in: it's written "true form * serpent" so I'm assuming it means that, but one could argue it means his original human Hohenheim's son form AND the shape of a serpent. My own opinion aside, either way is grammatically supportable.) "At this point Envy by and large has no reasoning left. In other words, he's become a monster." "Envy fled here from the Thule Society. Trying to sacrifice his body to open the Gate, I think that he went through something akin to torture at the hands of the people in Thule. It was incomplete, but when they had some success in opening the gate, that was likely what allowed Haskin's bomb to come through." When Hess comments on all the Lances of Longinus (Lance of Longinuses?) throughout the world they strove to collect, "It was meant to be a scene to make viewers understand how caught up in Occult delusions Hess and company are. But, in a twist that's either interesting or just strange, there are rumors that Hitler was also trying to get the Lance of Longinus. However, who knows if that was true or not?" The script note further emphasizes that it's not anything supernatural holding Envy back; it's purely the mechanical aspects at work. Script note says that in reality it's very unlikely that Lang and Haushofer met, it might be an interesting idea to people familiar with Lang to imagine he did know such people, as he spoke of Japan, though likely didn't go. In the end this too is all noted to be fiction. This note gets made a lot. In short, this world is not an actual pure parallel to 'our' world even if it's called "our world" or reality frequently in staff interviews and notes. The director made a note to have the people in 'our world' call it a 'Door' rather than a 'Gate' because it would be strange to have two people in two worlds call it the exact same thing. The script is intentionally vague on whether the Gate opens as a result of Hohenheim or Eckart's "magic." Eckart's variety of magic certainly does something but whether it's properly functional is unknown. "Hohenheim was originally cooperating with the Thule Society but as he found out what their plans were and was wavering on what he should do, Envy appeared through the Gate. Since Envy's body is made up of materials from the other side, Eckart and company believe it may be able to call to something to make the Gate open up. By the way, Envy's lost his mind. Once they realized they could control Envy by using Hohenheim as a live offering, he ended up a prisoner of war. That would be the circumstances around why Hohenheim disappeared from Ed." SOURCE: http://sinnesspiel.dreamwidth.org/3067.html