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Villain Overview

People can say there is a balance, a logic that everything happens for a reason... but the truth is far less designed. No matter how hard you work, when you die, you die. Some spend their entire life trying to scratch their way to the top, and still die in poverty. While others are born into wealth without ever working at all. It's a cruel and random world, and yet the chaos is also beautiful.
~ Dante explaining her ideology to Edward Elric.

Dante is the main antagonist of the 2003 anime series Fullmetal Alchemist. She is the mother of Envy, the true leader of the Homunculi and consequently the de-facto ruler of Amestris, who plans to extend her life forever with Philosopher's Stones.

She also plans to serve as humanity's protector like a god, by preventing selfish humans from being able to use the Philosopher's Stone for their own selfish actions, ignoring the fact that she is human herself and not truly immortal due to her decaying body as the result of transferring between people so many times.

She was voiced by Kazuko Sugiyama and Yumi Kakazu while possessing Lyra in Japanese, Cindee Mayfield and Monica Rial while possessing Lyra in English.

Biography[]

Background[]

400 years ago, Dante and her lover Hohenheim discovered immortality by creating the Philosopher's Stone. With it, they switch bodies by having their souls transferred onto different bodies over and over again. Hohenheim and Dante had a child together, who later died due to Mercury poisoning. Later Hohenheim tries to revive their dead son only to create a Homunuclus. That Homunculus would later be known as Envy, and hated Hohunheim so much that he made it his personal mission to find him and kill him.

Sometime later, Hohenheim left Dante. Left to fend for herself, Dante would go to great lengths for survival and stop at nothing to obtain the Philosopher's Stone in order to extend her fading life. According to Dante, she has jumped from one body to another less than ten times in over 400 years.

Fullmetal Alchemist[]

For the following years whilst being a parasitic soul, Dante gathers and creates minions who are the Homunculi and tricked them into believing that once they obtain the Philosopher's Stone for her, she will turn them all human. Although Hohenheim initially left his family due to his body rotting, he emerges to face her once learning that she has her eyes set on his sons. Dante has her Homunculi minions keep tabs on the Elrics throughout their journey. When they finally meet her, she poses as a wise old woman. However, when they are outside to fight Greed's men, Dante switches her body with Lyra's and then murders the latter. When Greed meets her, she uses his bones to weaken him and render him mortal, allowing the Elric brothers to kill him later on.

Dante then moves on to the next stage of her plan and starts to lead the Homunculi out in the open. When meeting Hohenheim for the last time, she reveals their past together to the Homunculi, causing them to realize her true intentions and that she will never make them human as she promised. Hohenheim then reveals the reason for their rotting bodies accelerating (each time they go into a new one, they leave a piece of their soul in the old one, causing the current body to rot even faster) before she banishes him into the Gate. After Lust's death, Dante destroys everything in Gluttony's mind except the will to eat because she finds his grief over her death annoying.

After kidnapping Al, Dante explains to Ed about her past history with Hohenheim and the son they conceived, before briefly sending him to the other side. When Ed returns, Envy kills him, but Al sacrifices himself to bring Ed back and destroy the stone, as well as sending Envy to the Gate, who fails to stop him. Ed's temporal death also shocks Rose out of Dante's trance, foiling the latter's plan to possess her. As Dante escapes in an elevator to find Pride, during her tirade over losing the Stone, Gluttony appears and chews through the elevator floor, attempting to attack her. Dante then tries to stop him from eating her. However, the elevator reaches the top floor with neither of them in it, implying that he has eaten her, ending her reign of terror for good.

Unfortunately, despite Dante's death, her legacy still remains, as Gluttony becomes a gigantic man-eating monster who terrorizes the underground. Wrath then manages to restrain the monster but is fatally injured in the process, and lets Al sacrifice them both to open a gate towards the real world, putting a definitive end to Dante's legacy.

Personality[]

Dante is depicted as someone with a god-complex, egomania, and is highly misanthropic: looking down on humanity and believing that they are unworthy of unlocking the secrets of alchemy and the Philosopher Stone. When told by Edward that she was human just like everyone else, she only states "not anymore".

She has a strong sense of self-preservation an wants the stone to sustain her life forever, believing that the souls from those who died was "worth it". She also states the hypocrisies of equivalent exchange, claiming that those who work harder than others, never gain anything out of it.

Despite her minions' loyalty (except Greed), she has no qualms on punishing them if they were to turn against her, as she opened the gate to tear Wrath's right arm and left leg apart, and ordered Lust's capture. Even the homunculus Envy himself (whom is based on her deceased son) wasn't exempt from this, as he took no action against her for Hohenheim's "death", knowing full well the power she held over him - she also showed no sadness or mention when he was lost to Alphonse's transmutation, showing that he was nothing more than a "pawn".

Speaking of emotions, she is insidiously calm, stoic, patient, composed, and unemotional, not one to lose her temper nor raise her voice nor show rage, alarm, or surprise, not even when Envy snapped at her about Hohunheim. She can, however, get angered of frustrated at times, but not to the point of a psychotic temper tantrum. This is especially true upon her defeat because of Alphonse sacrificing himself to save Ed's life, and when she tried to escape via the elevator.

She is a highly deceptive and cunning individual, tricking her minions (except Envy and Pride) into believing that she can make them human, in reality she wants the stone herself in order to continue cheating death, and when confronted by Hohenheim, she used Sloth as a distraction (due to her resembling his late wife), and then used Rose's baby to open "The Gate" to banish him forever.

For all of her heinous misdeeds, she does show a slight positive side, regarding her relationship to Izumi and from her moments with Hohenheim.

Quotes[]

Heh, perhaps but it's been centuries since our last meeting, Hohenheim. We'll have plenty of time to talk later. Right now, why don't you help me enjoy this new body?
~ Dante meets Hohenheim again.
By using the lives of those sentenced to hang during the witch-hunts and those who were dying of the plague; By repeating our experiments, relentlessly, despite countless failures, we finally grasped it; The Philospher's Stone.
~ Dante.
I've been doing some research since you've been gone, trying to learn more about the Gate that is the source of all our alchemic power. I've discovered some fascinating things, Hohenheim. Would you like to know what lies beyond the Gate? You can't tell me you haven't been just a little bit curious. Did you know a part of the Gate is actually within all of us? As our consciousness matures and we grow more attached to this world, we lose our awareness of it, but by using someone who's link is still strong, like a baby, the Gate can be summoned. I'm going to show you, my darling. See for yourself, just what is beyond the Gate.
~ Dante to Hohenheim.
Damn it, Gluttony, what the hell are are you doing here? I don't have time for this! You can't understand me, can you? Just hold on - we'll find you something to eat soon, okay?!
~ Dante's last words, moments before being killed by a mindless Gluttony.

Trivia[]

  • An elderly woman identical to Dante's elder form makes a brief cameo in Episode 58 of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
  • Dante was likely named after the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, best known for writing The Divine Comedy.
  • It is likely that Dante's knowledge and skills in alchemy far surpassed those of anyone else in the series, with the possible exception of Hohenheim—and even then, the different directions their alchemy research took them did grant them an uneven equality (meaning that even though Hohenheim is more skilled than Dante, the fields of Alchemy she studied—Homunculi and the Gate—allowed her to get one up on him).
  • Dante is one of the very few individuals to have an appendage inside Gluttony's mouth that comes back unharmed.
  • It is implied that that her personal sin (Gluttony) is what caused her downfall, the reason why was because her insatiable desire for "The Stones" power. She had hastily stripped Gluttony's mindset (turning him into the monstrosity, that she becomes), which ultimately backfired when he eats her.
  • Dante's true appearance is only seen in flashbacks, as both the old woman and Lyra are just victims having their bodies possessed by her.
  • Due to Alphonse breaking free and using the stone to revive his brother, Edward, Dante lost the stone because of Envy.

See Also[]

  • Father, Dante's counterpart in terms of role in the original manga series and the Brotherhood anime series.

External Links[]

Navigation[]

           Fullmetal Alchemist Logo Villains

Manga & 2009 Anime
Homunculi
Leader: Father
Members: Wrath | Pride | Lust | Envy | Gluttony | Greed | Sloth
Others: Mannequin Soldiers
State Military
Solf J. Kimblee | Gold Toothed Doctor | Isaac McDougal | Lieutenant General Raven | Shou Tucker | Yoki
Church of Leto
Father Cornello
Others
Truth | Scar | King of Xerxes | Chimera | Barry the Chopper | Camilla

2003 Anime
Homunculi
Leader: Dante
Members: Pride | Lust | Envy | Gluttony | Sloth | Wrath | Greed
State Military
Zolf J. Kimbley | Basque Grand | Shou Tucker | Frank Archer | Bald
Crichton Family
Ashleigh Crichton | Security Chief Atlas
Nazis
Dietlinde Eckhart | Adolf Hitler
Others
Barry the Chopper | Majhal | Mugear

2017 Movie
Major General Hakuro | Lust | Shou Tucker