Chapter 74 (spoiler)

歌猫さんの記事を拝読した以来、「フラスコの中の子エド」にずっと気になって、我慢できず絵を描いてみました。（笑）(And... yeah, I made a mistake on the chapter number and ended up re-publishing this a few times. Stupid me.)

Idea borrowed from Utaneko. (Thanks!) Guess I should explain a little. After a homunculus is formed, continue feeding it blood for 40 days, and it will acquire the form of a human child. The idea is, if the form is related to the blood donor, will the homunculus end up looking like Hohenheim? Since Ed looks like his dad when he was young, will the homunculus look like Ed? (All these are just fantasies, of course.)

Haha... straying too far. Back to the subject. Chapter 74... Yet another shocking revelation. This is probably one of the last? What's left?

1. Hohenheim's past
2. the mystery of the "Father"
3. the gate of truth
4. the purpose of the underground gigantic transmutation circle (with the "chosen" alchemists)
5. Trisha's promise to Hohenheim (Nah, maybe not a major one, and pretty obvious too.)
   

My first impression of the dream sequence was, that was Hohenheim's dream. Which makes the "Father" = Hohenheim. Because they must share the same memory in order to have the same dream. And most of all, they look almost the same. Maybe somehow Hohenheim split into 2 or get cloned? However! That would be too straight forward, wouldn't it? On closer look, the sequence can also be interpreted as the homuculus' dream! This means, the "Father" = the homunculus! Yup, this makes perfect sense! I fell into the trap of stereotyping, matching human form to human form. Bad.

Many fan blogs have already made their predictions. Hohenheim was probably manipulated by the homunculus into using the whole population of Cselkcess in a massive transmutation, and ended up with an immortal body. This theory works, but I'd like to add my contributions.

First, how would the homuculus go about giving Hohenheim knowledge? Teaching a slave how to read and write from inside a flask is not very feasible. How about using the gate of truth? Knowledge will automatically implant into his head in a split second. But first, he would need to perform a human transmutation, and must pay toll. Hmm... is this related to the demise of Cselkcess? However! I get the impression that long before that happened, Hohenheim had already got the knowledge. Well, we'll see.

My theory is,

1. The black dust ball (homunculus in the flask) promised Hohenheim knowledge.
2. The way is to have him perform a human transmutation on himself, open the gate using Cscelkcess's population as toll. Hard to believe a slave boy can do that alone?
3. The result is, Hohenheim got his knowledge, plus became immortal, and the black dust ball got a body (Hohenheim's clone). But why does one seem to age more then the other? This theory puts the "Father" as the first homunculus. But, Selim Bradley said he was the first homunculus.

Unless! The black dust ball itself got transplanted onto Selim's body later! Just like the rest of the homuncluii named after the 7 deadly sins. So, the "Father" = the first homunculus = Selim Bradley!? Hmm... (>_<;)

Oh! I wonder what exactly is Selim's homunculus power. Just controlling the shadowy crawly arms?

And then... there's something about the gate of truth and the black dust ball that bugs me. The later looks similar to those Medusa arms inside the gate.
The gate → gives knowledge
Homunculus → born with knowledge
Somehow they seem related. Are the homunculii from inside the gate? Or was the gate artificially manufactured with homunculii? Hmm... (>_<;;;)