Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa
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| Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Seiji Mizushima |
| Produced by | Seiji Takeda |
| Written by | Sho Aikawa |
| Starring | See Voices and characters |
| Music by | Michiru Oshima |
| Cinematography | Susumu Fukushi |
| Editing by | Hiroaki Itabe |
| Distributed by |  Shochiku |
| Release date(s) |
July 23, 2005 January 12, 2006  August 25, 2006 September 17, 2007 February 7, 2007 To be announced 2008 |
| Running time | 105 min |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
| IMDb profile | |
Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa (劇場版「鋼の錬金術師 シャンバラを征く者」 Gekijōban "Hagane no Renkinjutsushi Shanbara Wo Yuku Mono"?) is a 2005 Japanese animated film directed by Seiji Mizushima and written by Sho Aikawa, and acts as a continuation of the Fullmetal Alchemist television series. It premiered in Japan on July 23, 2005. The Japanese DVD was released on January 25, 2006, including with it a limited edition with a special box, English subtitles and a series of other extras. The U.S. version was shown in a limited number of theaters starting August 25, 2006,[1] and the DVD was released September 12, 2006 and a limited edition November 14, 2006. The film had a re-release in theaters for one day only in select theaters on September 20, 2007.[2]
Contents |
[edit] Story
The film's story is set two years after the events of the Fullmetal Alchemist TV series's last episode. Dragged from his homeworld of Amestris to this world, Earth, Edward Elric lives in Munich, Germany, in the year 1923. Stripped of his alchemical powers and some of his limbs, but not the attachments for his automail (from his previous journey through the Gate), he has spent all this time researching rocketry together with Alphons Heiderich, a young man who resembles his own brother.
In the film, Earth is a parallel world to Amestris, and as a result Edward encounters many people whose faces are familiar to him. After rescuing and talking to Noa, a troubled gypsy woman, Edward is thrown into a series of events that reveal a path back to his homeworld along with a conspiracy that threatens both worlds.
Unaware of Edward's situation, Alphonse Elric ventures deeper into the mysteries of alchemy in search of a way to reunite with his older brother.
The film is set against the backdrop of the depression and economic collapse of Germany after World War I and the formation of the Nazi Party, notably the events leading up to and including the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. The antagonists frequently make references to it, though the actual event and its key real-life figures (including Adolf Hitler) and its aftermath are only shown in fleeting shots.
Tag line: History is written by the winners... Unless it's not written at all.
[edit] Voices and characters
| Role | Original Cast | U.S. Cast |
|---|---|---|
| Edward Elric | Romi Paku | Vic Mignogna |
| Alphonse Elric | Rie Kugimiya | Aaron Dismuke |
| Alfons Heiderich | Shun Oguri | Jason Liebrecht |
| Noa | Miyū Sawai | Leah Clark |
| Winry Rockbell | Megumi Toyoguchi | Caitlin Glass |
| Roy Mustang | Tōru Ōkawa | Travis Willingham |
| Riza Hawkeye | Michiko Neya | Colleen Clinkenbeard |
| Alex Louis Armstrong | Kenji Utsumi | Christopher Sabat |
| Dietlinde Eckhart | Kazuko Katō | Kelly Manison |
| Mabuse | Hidekatsu Shibata | Ed Blaylock |
| Karl Haushofer | Masane Tsukayama | John Swasey |
[edit] Primary characters
Edward Elric: The film's protagonist. After bringing back the body and soul of his younger brother from beyond the gate at the series finale, Edward finds himself on the other side of the Gate, Earth (the premise being that the world of Amestris and Earth are parallel universes). He befriends a young man named Alfons Heiderich, who resembles his younger brother Al, and the two follow an interest in rocketry and travel to Romania. Edward shares tales of his previous life with Alfons. Edward leads a rather calm life for the next two years, until he comes across a young Roma girl, Noa, and the Thule Society. Ed's automail limbs have been replaced with prosthetics created using Earth technology built by Hohenheim; although less advanced, they are equally functional, and Ed's arm is modified to contain a weapons system.
Alphonse Elric: "Al" is Edward's younger brother and the second main protagonist. After being resurrected by his brother in the anime, he lost all of his memories of the events following his and his brother's attempt to resurrect their mother. Since then he studied alchemy as a student of Izumi Curtis once again, and after her death he started walking his own path hoping to one day find a way to reunite with his brother and retrieve his lost memories. Since his resurrection, Al has made himself over in the likeness of his brother: he has grown his hair out and wears a ponytail, and wears the same clothes, overcoat, and gloves as Ed wore in the series; Al's gloves, however, have transmutation circles on the palms so he can clap his hands to perform alchemy as Ed did. As a side effect of his years spent as a soul bound to armor, Al has the special talent of alchemically binding parts of his soul to inanimate objects (usually suits of armor in the movie). The effect only lasts for a limited amount of time, and doesn't appear to weaken Al at all.
Alfons Heiderich: A rocket engineer that bears a resemblance to Alphonse Elric and befriends Edward in the movie. He is fascinated by Ed's stories about his travels around his original world, but is unsure of whether he can believe in the fact that Ed came from another world where alchemy is real, and his brother looks like him. He is studying under the father of modern rocketry, and wants to prove the scientific worth of his fellow Germans by inventing a rocket that can actually be ridden. He also has his own reasons to do it as fast as possible - he is slowly succumbing to an unspecified disease that eventually causes him to cough up blood. Alfons speculates that this is caused by prolonged exposure to rocket fuel.
Noa: A Roma woman whom Ed befriends. She had been sold by her own people to the Thule Society, but Edward helped her escape. She is withdrawn and introverted, partly because she has the ability to read people's minds (an ability so accurate that it makes people afraid of her), but mainly because of the persecution and discrimination she suffers as a Roma. Noa's dream is to find a home for herself. She is very likely the Earthly counterpart of Rosé although this is not explicitly stated; the two girls share similar appearances and personalities.
Dietlinde Eckhart: The film's main antagonist. She occupies an important position as an occultist in the Thule Society. After obtaining information regarding the legendary Shamballa (Amestris), and the mysterious powers of its inhabitants, Dietlinde, with the help of other Thule Society members, developed a plan to open a gateway to Shamballa and invade it, in order to learn its secrets and claim its power. While she claims to be interested in helping the Nazis in their plan to overthrow the German government, her real intent is to reach and plunder Amestris for her own ends. Her plans are supported by real-life Nazi members like Rudolf Hess and Karl Haushofer. Perhaps not coincidentally, her name resembles that of Dietrich Eckart, a real-life Thule Society member.
[edit] Secondary characters
Winry Rockbell: Winry remained friends with Alphonse over the two years lost between the show and movie. She has been waiting for Edward's return and when she loses contact with Alphonse, she goes to find him. She is confident that Edward will return and even carries around an automail arm and leg for him when she does.
Hohenheim: Edward and Alphonse's father, who appeared during the final episodes and who had left Ed, Alphonse, and their mother when they were just children because of a secret that he had. He makes a brief appearance near the end of the movie.
Izumi Curtis: In the time between the end of the TV series and the beginning of the movie, Izumi succumbed to the damage to her body caused by her attempt to transmute her child. However, she lived long enough to give Alphonse new instruction in alchemy after his resurrection. Her passing appears to have deeply affected Wrath; having detested and rejected her in the TV series, he now wants to be with her in death.
Huskisson: Huskisson appears only at the beginning of the movie, and serves mostly as an introductory element to Edward's quest as a State Alchemist and alchemy and its principles. He is a pretentious physicist who despises alchemy, and tries to surpass it with his own work. He presents his invention (a fission bomb made from uranium) to Edward and Alphonse, but upon their rejection of his accomplishment he attacks them with his machinery. At the end of the battle, he attempts human transmutation and is pulled into the Gate. His final fate, whether trapped within the Gate or beyond it, is unknown. However, by the end of the movie, his uranium bomb seems to have reached the other side, and Edward and Alphonse thus set off in search of it.
Erik Jan Hanussen: (va Toshio Furukawa)
The Traveling Circus: It is a carnival wherein Alphons Heiderich demonstrates his rocketry. Numerous Romanians and Germans alike populate the circus staff, many of whom parallel characters in the series. Noa's Gypsy family came to the Carnival for work, but Noa (the resident fortune-teller) was sold to the Thule society by her fellow Roma and a less-than-sympathetic ring master. Among the spectators are the Earthly counterparts of Lt. Colonel Frank Archer (the ring master) and Loa, Dorchet, Bido, Barry the Chopper (sporting a blonde goatee) and another (nameless) member of Greed's gang of misfits as assistants to Alphons Heiderich.
Officer Hughes: A Munich police constable, Officer Hughes is the Earthly counterpart to the late Brigadier General Mäes Hughes of Amestris. Unlike the rather care-free Hughes of Amestris, he is stern and slightly bigoted towards the Roma ethnicity. He has a soft spot for a local shop-keeper, Gracia (the Earth counterpart to Mäes Hughes' wife, Gracia), but is too shy to tell her for most of the movie. He is a Nazi Party affiliate, though his reasonings and views for it are left unexplained. At the end of the movie he leaves the Nazi Party, and his last scene suggests he may have finally gained the courage to talk to Gracia. Hughes is notably one of only two military characters from the TV series to have a major counterpart in the Earth side, the other one being Führer Bradley.
Fritz Lang: Seemingly based on the historical filmmaker, the movie's Fritz Lang is the Earthly counterpart to the human that Führer King Bradley (Pride) was created from. Because he has the same appearance as Pride, Edward was suspicious at first. Lang is a polite, self-humoring man who is traveling through Germany in search of a fabled Dragon within an ancient castle, hoping to use it as inspiration for his cinematic work. He confronts the Thule Society, who knock him out and leave him at the castle. He is intrigued by Ed's description of his world, and is eventually moved to help Ed interfere with the Thule Society's plans (his Jewish ethnicity also plays a role in that decision).
Originally claiming to be "Mabuse", he later identifies himself as filmmaker Fritz Lang when he invites Ed to the set of Die Nibelungen. His disguise name had been that of the titular character of his 1922 film Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler and its 1933 sequel, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse which was banned by the Nazi government. Lang is himself a Roman Catholic, though of Jewish ancestry.
Roy Mustang (the "Flame Alchemist"): Mustang had lost his left eye shortly after his battle with Führer King Bradley (the Homunculus Pride), in a standoff with former officer Frank Archer, and now (ironically) wears an eye patch as Pride once did. Haunted by his past sins, Mustang refuses to use his flame alchemy (instead choosing simply to use matches), and resigns from his rank as General of the State. He re-enlists as a soldier, and is assigned to a remote outpost of his choice, a cold and lonely place. When he hears that Edward could be returning to their world, he returns to Central and commands his former subordinates in the battle against Eckhart's armored battalion.
Alex Louis Armstrong (the "Strong-Arm Alchemist") and Rosé: Both are participating in the rebuilding of Lior. They also appear at times near three children, with whom Armstrong is playing.
Envy: After traveling through the Gate to Earth with the sole intention of hunting down and killing his father, Hohenheim, at the end of the anime, Envy becomes trapped in the form of a massive draconic serpent (the form he physically assumed as he passed through the Gate) because his shapeshifting ability is nullified on Earth. He was captured by the Thule Society and ironically forced into the shape of a living ouroboros circle around and above another transmutation circle, in hopes of using him to gain access to "Shamballa." Hohenheim was placed within Envy's jaws to appease the beast's rage and in his final moments he insisted Ed should not save him, because he was trying to open the gateway so that Ed may return to his own world. Hohenheim then encouraged Envy to crush him so that his blood could be used to activate the transmutation circle. Though not explicitly stated, Hohenheim's death inside of Envy's jaws while perched above the transmutation circle may have provided the energy required to open the gate. This is consistent with his observation that life energy from our world is moved upon death to the alchemist's world as transmutational energy. Also, Edward briefly activates a circle with his blood earlier in the movie. Although Edward's return through the gate at the end of his first (and brief) visit to Earth bears some similarity, it would be entirely inconsistent with the idea given that he survived and later returned again unharmed, though it is possible that the death of the body of Earth's Edward allowed Edward to return to the gate where his original body was located.
Wrath: Wrath has been wandering around since the events of the original series. He is in a weakened state of being, and seems to have become emotionally tame and depressed over the passing of Izumi, whom he previously detested. He has also aged physically into a young teenager and bears a greater resemblance to his mother. As shown in the anime, Wrath has an automail arm and leg, where Edward's original limbs were; however, in the movie his limbs are badly in need of repair, which Winry provides. Wrath's desire to return to his mother motivated him to assist Al with opening the Gate in the underground city beneath Central. In the process Wrath engaged in a losing battle with a misshapen and monstrous Gluttony. Wrath devoured some of the red stones that bled out from Gluttony to give him temporary strength, but in the end Gluttony ate him alive right above Al's transmutation circle. In his last moments, Wrath pleaded with Al to transmute Gluttony and himself to open the Gate, so Al would not have to give up his own body in equivalent exchange and that Wrath and Gluttony could return to the gate from whence they came. Al did so, the gateway opened, and Wrath finally found the peace he was looking for in a loving embrace by his welcoming mother.
Gluttony: Gluttony makes an appearance in the underground city below Central which Wrath leads Al to. Due to Dante's alchemy at the end of the anime series, he has been stripped of any intelligence and is now lost in his desire to feed. In their last encounter (which ends in a cliffhanger) Dante is stuck with Gluttony in the elevator she tries to escape in. It is speculated that Gluttony devoured Dante, also consuming her Philosopher's Stone. As a result, his body has malformed into an enormous quasi-humanoid shape sporting extra legs, limbs and several worm-like tentacles with faces on their ends. Since the Philosopher's Stone is much more powerful than the imitation stones, which the Homunculi eat to survive, his body is so oversaturated that it bleeds out red water. His body is capable of taking many shapes and can extend parts of himself at long distances. Gluttony engages Wrath solely and ignores Alphonse, allowing Wrath to lure Gluttony into the transmutation circle so Alphonse can use both of them as the catalyst to open the gateway to Earth.
Lust and Scar: Earth's counterparts to Scar and Lust appear for a brief moment near the end of the movie. They are a part of the group of Gypsies, which fits with the movie's theme of paralleling the Gypsies with the Ishbalans.
Shou Tucker: Earth's counterpart to Shou Tucker appears briefly near the end of the movie standing beside Gracia and Officer Hughes at Alfons Heiderich's funeral.
Hermann Oberth: The rocket scientist/teacher of Edward and Alphons Heiderich and others who is mentioned in the final episode of the series. He also apparently sold a book, which made his work popular calling forth a large crowd at the carnival and demonstration. The real Oberth published Die Rakete zu den Planetenraumen (The Rocket into Planetary Space) in 1923; although not mentioned by name in the anime, it is most likely the same book.
Other Characters: Many other characters have minor roles in the film:
- Scieska teams up with Winry once again to go and help Alphonse.
- Lieutenant Hawkeye is depressed due to Mustang's resignation from the military but she soon brightens up when he returns to battle.
- Havoc, Breda, Falman, and Fuery share Hawkeye's sadness but stay loyal to Mustang.
- Sig Curtis is mournful for the loss of his wife but has become closer with Winry.
Other characters make cameo appearances, including General Grummnan, General Hakuro, Maria Ross, Sgt. Bloch, the Earthly counterpart of Lyra, the Liore Shopkeeper, and even Armstrong's family.
[edit] American theatrical premiere
The movie premiered at Montreal Fantasia's Festival on July 22, 2006.[3]
The movie was premiered on August 25 in a small number of theaters by Funimation Films with little promotion. Some only ran less than 10 showings of the film. Some promotional activity was done after the film was already gone from theaters. The movie trailer was shown to a group of about 300 persons at Shiokazecon in Houston, Texas on April 27, 2006. Vic Mignogna, the English voice actor for Edward Elric, heavily promoted the film at anime conventions.
According to a press release from Funimation and the SPJA, the first official screening was shown at the 2006 Anime Expo on Monday, July 3 at noon. The session was presented by Seiji Mizushima (the original director), Mike McFarland (English voice director and voice of Lieutenant Havoc) and voice actor Vic Mignogna (Edward Elric's voice for the English version). Romi Paku (Edward Elric's voice for the original version) was supposed to attend but she did not because she (a Korean national) did not have a valid visa. Other screenings of the movie occurred at Otakon 2006, AnimeVegas 2006, Gen Con 2006, Sugoicon 2006, Anime Weekend Atlanta XII (2006), Armageddon Expo 2006 New Zealand, Wizard World Chicago 2006, Otakon 2007, and Yasumicon 2007.
The special edition DVD release will be premiered at Nan Desu Kan in Denver according to news published on their website.[4]
On the movie's MySpace it announced that the movie was going to be shown again in select theaters on September 20, 2007. It should be noted that they only showed the movie for that day only.
[edit] Soundtrack
- Opening
- "Link" by L'Arc~en~Ciel
- Ending
- "LOST HEAVEN" by L'Arc~en~Ciel
"KELAS [LET'S-DANCE]" - the song performed by the Roma women while Edward Elric and Alfons Heiderich hitch a ride. Composed and guitar by Ferenc Snétberger, with vocals by Tayo Awosusi.
The film's score was composed by Michiru Oshima.
[edit] Track List
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01. Scientist of the Alchemic World |
18. Citizen of the World |
33. Overture of Destiny |
[edit] Awards
The film won in three categories in 5th Tokyo Anime Award competition at the Tokyo International Anime Fair:[5]
- Animation Of The Year
- Best Original Story (Hiromu Arakawa)
- Best Music (Michiru Oshima)
It also won the 2005 Animation Grand Award prize in Mainichi Film Awards.[6] and Best Animated Film prize in Fantasia International Film Festival (Montreal, Canada).[7]
[edit] Possibly Deliberate Mistranslations
- The English dub supplied by FUNimation incorrectly states 2 kilometers per second as the speed Edward was going at when he went through the portal while it is actually 11 kilometers on the Japanese version.
- In the original Japanese version Edward did not gasp at his father's death. Romi Paku's gasp had been recorded but was never used. The gasp is retained in the English dubbed version, however.
[edit] References
- ^ Fullmetal Alchemist - Official Website
- ^ Fathom Events - News & PR
- ^ Ubisoft Presents Fantasia 2006 | Films + Schedule | Fullmetal Alchemist The Movie: Conqueror Of Shambala
- ^ Nan Desu Kan 2007 >> Colorado's Premiere Anime Event
- ^ Tokyo Anime Fair: Award Winners - Anime News Network
- ^ Gekijô-ban hagane no renkinjutsushi: Shanbara wo yuku mono (2005) - Awards
- ^ FullmetalAlchemist.com - The Official Fullmetal Alchemist Anime Website from FUNimation
[edit] External links
- (English) FUNimation Films site to Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shambala
- (Japanese) SONY Music's Official Hagane Renkinjutsushi - Conqueror of Shambala site
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