The Creator Of Fullmetal Alchemist Loves This Star Wars Villain
One of George Lucas' primary influences when making "Star Wars" was Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who is generally considered his country's best director aside from maybe Yasujirō Ozu. Whereas Ozu is famous for making domestic comedies and dramas, Kurosawa made movies that felt epic: samurai movies ("Seven Samurai," "Yojimbo"), noir thrillers ("High & Low"), and Shakespearean stories translated into his homeland's history ("Throne of Blood").
This may be one reason why "Star Wars" is popular in Japan. If you don't believe the box office, look at Japanese pop culture; anime cornerstones like "Gundam" owe a debt to Lucas. One Japanese "Star Wars" fan is Hiromu Arakawa, the manga artist most famous for creating "Fullmetal Alchemist." (Arakawa is not shy about expressing her opinions on the "Star Wars" films either.)
Set in a world where alchemy is more than just a pseudoscience, "Fullmetal Alchemist" primarily follows two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, who search far and wide in their homeland Amestris for the Philosopher's Stone. It's a story that has shades of "Star Wars." There are no spaceships, but it is a fantastical hero's journey with a magic-wielding lead. Ed even has a metal right arm like Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) post-"The Empire Strikes Back." In an interview for the "Fullmetal Alchemist Manga Profiles" book, Arakawa mentioned her love of "Star Wars" and said bluntly: "Darth Vader is the greatest villain of all time."
Knowing she feels this way casts an intriguing shadow on the villain of her own story.
The Dark Father of Fullmetal Alchemist
The villains of "Fullmetal Alchemist" are a cabal of homunculi named for the seven deadly sins. They carry out the will of their Father, who looks a lot like Ed and Al's own absentee dad, Van Hohenheim.
Darth Vader was terrifying from the moment he walked onscreen, but what made him legendary was the twist in "The Empire Strikes Back" — that he's Luke's presumed-dead father Anakin Skywalker fallen to the dark side. Was Arakawa pulling the same trick, making the father of her hero into the main villain?
The manga suggests this in its first half. For instance, Hohenheim first appears after a scene where Father steps off his throne for the first time and suggests he has business elsewhere. (The anime "Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood" unfortunately doesn't present these parallels in quite the same way, so the hints are lost in adaptation.)
Then in Chapter 54, "The Fool's Struggle" (or "Brotherhood" episode 28, "Father"), the Elrics finally meet Father face-to-face. They assume he's Hohenheim — but he's not. To confirm this, there's a brief shot of Hohenheim miles away, sensing the battle between his doppelgänger and his sons. Later in the series, it's revealed Father is a homunculus created from Hohenheim's blood, who crafted his body to match his "brother."
Arakawa naming her villain Father feels like more than a coincidence, given her love for Darth Vader. However, the characters are actually opposites. For one, the twists: we have no reason to suspect Vader is Luke's father before the bombshell drops, whereas Father is teed up to be the Elrics' own dad right up until the rug pull. And whereas Vader wears black armor to hide his frail human form, Father looks human but is monstrous under his skin.
A father-son relationship right out of The Last Crusade
What about Hohenheim himself? He does turn out to be a good guy, but the first references to him aren't flattering. He walked out on his family, which Ed still resents him for (he refuses to actually call Hohenheim "dad"). It's eventually revealed that Hohenheim left not because he wanted to, but because he needed to stop Father's evil plans. Still, abandonment issues aren't resolved so easily.
In her "Profiles" interview, Arakawa says she likes not only "Star Wars," but "Indiana Jones" too, and adds that "Sean Connery is the greatest old man." Connery played Indy's (Harrison Ford) father Henry Jones Sr. in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." Indy followed in his dad's vocation of archaeology but resents that Henry Sr. cared more for his work than his family. When the Joneses get pulled into a father and son adventure together, the more physically capable Indy has to mind his bumbling father.
In "Fullmetal Alchemist," Hohenheim is often cheerful but absent-minded, which further rubs the wrong way on Ed's short temper. Though a powerful alchemist like his sons, he lacks their fighting skills. Hohenheim loves his sons but he doesn't know how to connect with them — especially since Ed doesn't want to. At the same time, he isn't afraid to fire back; in his first reunion with Ed, he sees right through him and calls his running away from the past childish. In short, their tumultuous relationship is pretty similar to Indy and Henry Sr. in "The Last Crusade" — an eccentric dad and his action-hero son who work through their unresolved resentment on a high-stakes adventure.
Alchemy is about transmuting existing materials into something new, and that's exactly what Arakawa did with her favorite stories to make "Fullmetal Alchemist."