TV-Series
Description
Father, also known in Japanese as Otōsama and in Portuguese-language discussions as the Pai dos Homúnculos, is the central antagonist of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. He is the first homunculus, the creator and leader of the seven homunculi, and a living Philosopher's Stone.
His origin lies in the ancient nation of Xerxes, roughly four to five hundred years before the main events of the story. An alchemist of the kingdom accidentally created him during an experiment that used the blood of a nameless slave identified only as number 23. In his earliest form, he was a small black sphere of gas with thin arms, a mouth, and eyes, unable to survive outside a glass flask, which earned him the name the Dwarf in the Flask. Despite his confinement, he was extraordinarily knowledgeable, having inherited vast understanding from the entity called the Eye, linked to the Gate of Truth. He befriended the slave who had unknowingly contributed to his creation, gave him the name Van Hohenheim, and taught him alchemy as a gesture of gratitude. Father then manipulated the King of Xerxes into carving a massive transmutation circle across the entire kingdom. When the circle was activated, the whole population of Xerxes was converted into a Philosopher's Stone. Father divided the stone, giving half to Hohenheim and using the other half to construct for himself a human body that closely resembled his friend. Afterward, he relocated to the country of Amestris, where he spent centuries secretly directing its history.
In his early days, the Dwarf in the Flask was expressive, polite, and even charming, with Hohenheim describing him as a being full of human emotions. That personality disappeared after Father separated from himself the qualities he regarded as weaknesses, casting them out to form the seven homunculi, each named after a deadly sin. From that point on, he became cold, detached, and lifeless in his demeanor, regarding ordinary humans as insects or disposable tools. He shows little attachment to anyone, including his own children, and readily discards those who fail him or defy him. Yet his behavior continues to reflect the very sins he claims to have removed, especially pride and envy, since he remains arrogant, condescending, and resentful of the human connections he cannot truly share in.
Father's central motivation is the desire to become a complete and perfect being. Born trapped in a flask and dependent on others, he came to resent all limitation and to view the human condition itself as an imperfection. He seeks to obtain all knowledge and all power by opening the Gate of Truth of the planet itself and absorbing the being that exists beyond it, referred to in the story as God. His ambition is also rooted in isolation: he envies the emotional bonds of human beings, and he treats souls merely as energy to be consumed rather than as lives to be respected.
Within the story, Father operates for most of the series from a hidden chamber beneath Central, pulling the strings of Amestris through his homunculi and through his influence over the nation's leadership. He engineered wars and internal conflicts, including the Ishval Civil War, so that the bloodshed would etch a country-wide transmutation circle into the land over the course of four centuries. He also identified alchemists who had performed human transmutation and survived, since they had passed through their own Gates of Truth, and gathered them as human sacrifices needed for the final stage of his plan. On the Promised Day, which coincides with a solar eclipse, Father activates the great circle, absorbs the souls of the citizens of Amestris, pulls down the being called God from the planetary Gate of Truth, and takes its power into himself. His triumph is short-lived. Hohenheim, anticipating this moment, had long ago woven a counter-transmutation circle into the larger design, and it releases the absorbed souls, stripping Father of the majority of his strength. At the same time, research developed by Scar's brother allows the reversal of Father's ability to suppress alchemy, leaving him vulnerable to direct combat. In the final battle, Father is progressively drained by Edward, Alphonse, Izumi Curtis, Roy Mustang, and their allies. Greed, who had turned against his creator, sacrifices himself to transform Father's body into carbon, and Edward ultimately pierces Father's chest, freeing the last of the trapped souls. Father is then seized by countless black hands and dragged back through the Gate of Truth, where he reverts to his original fragile form and disappears, undone by the despair he once promised to bestow upon the arrogant.
Father's most important relationship is with Van Hohenheim. The two are effectively two halves of the same being, sharing the Philosopher's Stone created from the people of Xerxes, and their early friendship gradually turns into a centuries-long opposition. Hohenheim chooses to listen to the individual souls inside his own stone and to live among humans, while Father treats souls as fuel and pursues absolute power, making their final confrontation a clash between two beings with the same origin and opposite responses to it. The seven homunculi call Father by affectionate terms such as Otōsama, chichiue, or oyaji-dono, and he presents himself as their father, but in practice he regards them as expendable instruments. His encounters with Edward Elric carry a particular weight, since Edward resembles a younger version of Hohenheim, and Father openly notes the strangeness of his old friend having children.
Father does not undergo a change of heart during the story, and his goals remain constant, but the revelations about his past give depth to his cruelty by showing it as the product of a deeply lonely existence that he refused to accept. In his final moments, reduced to the small creature he was at the beginning, he is shown in the anime asking what he should have done, and Truth responds that he had already been given the answer. His downfall mirrors the principle of equivalent exchange and the story's broader warning that seeking to gain everything by consuming others ultimately results in losing everything.
In terms of ability, Father is among the most powerful beings in the series. As a living Philosopher's Stone, he can perform alchemy without a transmutation circle and without regard for the law of equivalent exchange. He can transmute humans directly into Philosopher's Stones, absorb souls into himself, and block or nullify the alchemy of others across the entire nation. After absorbing God, he gains additional powers, including the ability to create a miniature sun in his palm, to launch concentrated destructive energy, and to raise an absolute defense that neutralizes attacks. Underneath his constructed human appearance, his near-true form is a black humanlike silhouette covered in eyes, and in his final powered state he takes on a youthful appearance strongly resembling both Hohenheim in his early years and Edward Elric. His greatest vulnerability is his dependence on the souls within him; once those souls are released, his power rapidly collapses, which is precisely what leads to his defeat.
His origin lies in the ancient nation of Xerxes, roughly four to five hundred years before the main events of the story. An alchemist of the kingdom accidentally created him during an experiment that used the blood of a nameless slave identified only as number 23. In his earliest form, he was a small black sphere of gas with thin arms, a mouth, and eyes, unable to survive outside a glass flask, which earned him the name the Dwarf in the Flask. Despite his confinement, he was extraordinarily knowledgeable, having inherited vast understanding from the entity called the Eye, linked to the Gate of Truth. He befriended the slave who had unknowingly contributed to his creation, gave him the name Van Hohenheim, and taught him alchemy as a gesture of gratitude. Father then manipulated the King of Xerxes into carving a massive transmutation circle across the entire kingdom. When the circle was activated, the whole population of Xerxes was converted into a Philosopher's Stone. Father divided the stone, giving half to Hohenheim and using the other half to construct for himself a human body that closely resembled his friend. Afterward, he relocated to the country of Amestris, where he spent centuries secretly directing its history.
In his early days, the Dwarf in the Flask was expressive, polite, and even charming, with Hohenheim describing him as a being full of human emotions. That personality disappeared after Father separated from himself the qualities he regarded as weaknesses, casting them out to form the seven homunculi, each named after a deadly sin. From that point on, he became cold, detached, and lifeless in his demeanor, regarding ordinary humans as insects or disposable tools. He shows little attachment to anyone, including his own children, and readily discards those who fail him or defy him. Yet his behavior continues to reflect the very sins he claims to have removed, especially pride and envy, since he remains arrogant, condescending, and resentful of the human connections he cannot truly share in.
Father's central motivation is the desire to become a complete and perfect being. Born trapped in a flask and dependent on others, he came to resent all limitation and to view the human condition itself as an imperfection. He seeks to obtain all knowledge and all power by opening the Gate of Truth of the planet itself and absorbing the being that exists beyond it, referred to in the story as God. His ambition is also rooted in isolation: he envies the emotional bonds of human beings, and he treats souls merely as energy to be consumed rather than as lives to be respected.
Within the story, Father operates for most of the series from a hidden chamber beneath Central, pulling the strings of Amestris through his homunculi and through his influence over the nation's leadership. He engineered wars and internal conflicts, including the Ishval Civil War, so that the bloodshed would etch a country-wide transmutation circle into the land over the course of four centuries. He also identified alchemists who had performed human transmutation and survived, since they had passed through their own Gates of Truth, and gathered them as human sacrifices needed for the final stage of his plan. On the Promised Day, which coincides with a solar eclipse, Father activates the great circle, absorbs the souls of the citizens of Amestris, pulls down the being called God from the planetary Gate of Truth, and takes its power into himself. His triumph is short-lived. Hohenheim, anticipating this moment, had long ago woven a counter-transmutation circle into the larger design, and it releases the absorbed souls, stripping Father of the majority of his strength. At the same time, research developed by Scar's brother allows the reversal of Father's ability to suppress alchemy, leaving him vulnerable to direct combat. In the final battle, Father is progressively drained by Edward, Alphonse, Izumi Curtis, Roy Mustang, and their allies. Greed, who had turned against his creator, sacrifices himself to transform Father's body into carbon, and Edward ultimately pierces Father's chest, freeing the last of the trapped souls. Father is then seized by countless black hands and dragged back through the Gate of Truth, where he reverts to his original fragile form and disappears, undone by the despair he once promised to bestow upon the arrogant.
Father's most important relationship is with Van Hohenheim. The two are effectively two halves of the same being, sharing the Philosopher's Stone created from the people of Xerxes, and their early friendship gradually turns into a centuries-long opposition. Hohenheim chooses to listen to the individual souls inside his own stone and to live among humans, while Father treats souls as fuel and pursues absolute power, making their final confrontation a clash between two beings with the same origin and opposite responses to it. The seven homunculi call Father by affectionate terms such as Otōsama, chichiue, or oyaji-dono, and he presents himself as their father, but in practice he regards them as expendable instruments. His encounters with Edward Elric carry a particular weight, since Edward resembles a younger version of Hohenheim, and Father openly notes the strangeness of his old friend having children.
Father does not undergo a change of heart during the story, and his goals remain constant, but the revelations about his past give depth to his cruelty by showing it as the product of a deeply lonely existence that he refused to accept. In his final moments, reduced to the small creature he was at the beginning, he is shown in the anime asking what he should have done, and Truth responds that he had already been given the answer. His downfall mirrors the principle of equivalent exchange and the story's broader warning that seeking to gain everything by consuming others ultimately results in losing everything.
In terms of ability, Father is among the most powerful beings in the series. As a living Philosopher's Stone, he can perform alchemy without a transmutation circle and without regard for the law of equivalent exchange. He can transmute humans directly into Philosopher's Stones, absorb souls into himself, and block or nullify the alchemy of others across the entire nation. After absorbing God, he gains additional powers, including the ability to create a miniature sun in his palm, to launch concentrated destructive energy, and to raise an absolute defense that neutralizes attacks. Underneath his constructed human appearance, his near-true form is a black humanlike silhouette covered in eyes, and in his final powered state he takes on a youthful appearance strongly resembling both Hohenheim in his early years and Edward Elric. His greatest vulnerability is his dependence on the souls within him; once those souls are released, his power rapidly collapses, which is precisely what leads to his defeat.