- “You killed me. I hate losing. But there worse ways to die than at the hands of a man like you. I love how cold and focused your eyes are. I look forward to the day when those eyes will be wide with agony. It's coming. It's coming...”
- ―Lust's last words.
Lust is a major antagonist of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga and its two anime adaptations. She is the first of the Seven Homunculi to be introduced and she plays an important antagonistic role for the first part of the series.
In Japanese, she was voiced by Yūko Satō in the 2003 anime and Kikuko Inoue in the 2009 anime. In the English dubs of both shows, she was voiced by Laura Bailey.
Personality[]
Among all homunculi, Lust is one of the proudest of her nature and the most scornful of humanity (dismissing it as frail, predictable and hopelessly dumb). Still, she never taunts people. She is offended when called a monster, preferring the term "evolved human".
True to her name, Lust likes to act in a flirtatious way. She is not lascivious though and instead prefers to seduce people and use her beauty for her own gain. Also, she lusts for violence and chaos, as evidenced by her obvious enjoyment in battle. She is very polite, poised and calm, but at the same time cruel, witty and threatening. Lust is also one of the smartest and most level-headed homunculi. She is very skilled in planning and knows how to conveniently deal with setbacks. She also knows full well how to use her beauty to entice men and bring them into Father's grasp or to promise greedy people power and wealth to use them. In addition to these skills, she is a talented infiltrator, able to blend into a crowd with remarkable stealth, which proves useful to collect information.
Appearance[]
Lust is a beautiful woman that is tall and curvaceous with long dark hair and dark eyes. She wears a black robe, long gloves and high heels. She sports red lines on her arms, with her distinctive Ouroboros mark below her collarbone. She is one of the few homunculi without a secondary form and also one of the few who is seen wearing normal clothes in addition to the distinct black ones that are part of her appearance.
Lust is the second born of the Seven Homunculi and is around 300 years old. Lust is Father's main field-agent, intelligence gatherer and overall supervisor. She is one of the homunculi's third-in-commands, tasked to supervise the "subterranean" aspects of Father’s goals while Wrath deals with the politic and warmongering aspects.
Lust gets along well with the other homunculi as seen with Envy. She has a very close older sister-like bond with her partner Gluttony.
Powers and Abilities[]
Like any other homunculi, Lust has huge strength, speed, reflexes, stamina and durability. Also, she cannot age and has a near-limitless healing factor. As long as there is power left in the Philosopher's Stone serving as her core, she can recreate her body from nothing, even when reduced to dust in a burst of flames.
As the "Ultimate Spear", Lust can turn her fingertips into long blades that can cut through virtually anything, which she can extend seemingly without limit.
She most often transforms all the fingers of one hand and uses them either like claws or in fencing style, but she can also target several foes at once with separate fingers. Her blades can destroy stone and steel with no effort and she demonstrates expert mastery with them, striking with uncanny precision and always aiming for vital spots. Moreover, she is very fast, swift and nimble, being able to best fighters renowned for their speed, and she prefers strategy over brute strength, as she always seeks to disarm or disable her foes before striking to kill, making her one of the three deadliest homunculi.
Lust's special power, the "Ultimate Spear" enables her to turn her fingertips into long and sharp blades that can cut through virtually anything, which she can extend seemingly without any limit. She most often transforms all the fingers of one hand and uses them either like claws or in fencing style, but she can also elongate her fingers one after another to target several foes at the same time.
Manga and 2009 Anime[]
Prior to the start of the series, Lust supervised the secret alchemic experiments performed in the Third and Fifth Laboratories about human transmutations, transformation of people into animal chimeras and mostly the creation of the Philosopher's Stone. (Which in the series is created from human souls.) She had the souls of several convicts extracted from their bodies and transplanted into armours, so that they could guard the Fifth Laboratory after she had it closed. Among these convicts-turned-guards were Barry the Chopper.
Lust first appears after the primary protagonists, the brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric, expose Father Cornello, a "miracle maker" and high priest of the false cult of Leto, as a fraud. Cornello promised wealth and resurrection for their loved ones to his believers, planning to make them into an army that does not fear death and use them to take over the nation of Amestris where the series takes place... or so he thought. Lust has previously provided Cornello with a half-complete Philosopher's Stone which he would use to make "miracles", but she had no intention of making him leader of the country. She just wanted his "army" to be slaughtered by the Amestrian military, as the homunculi need huge bloodsheds at several points of the border, following the nationwide transmutation circle that they are digging. All this with the ultimate purpose to sacrifice the entire population of Amestris to enable Father to absorb the Truth (the source of all the alchemic power of the universe) and become the new God of the Fullmetal Alchemist world.
Lust mercilessly kills the now useless Cornello and calls forth Envy to impersonate him, in order to increase the anger of the townfolks, who are furious for having been lied to, and cause violent riots. Through this and with help from soldiers sent by Wrath, Lust manages to cause a huge bloodshed as planned. She then starts to keep an eye on the Elric brothers, whom the homunculi need as "candidates for the sacrifice" to enact Father's goal. As she discreetly tails them, she witnesses firsthand their encounter with Tim Marcoh, the alchemist who worked on the experiments on the Philosopher's Stone and fled out of guilt. She then goes to Marcoh's house and tells her that he his under watch and that if he tries to flee again, she would burn the town he is hiding in to the ground. As Marcoh has told Edward Elric where to find his notes about how to create the Philosopher's Stone, (in the military section of the national library in Central City, the capital of Amestris) she precedes him there and sets the building on fire to destroy Marcoh's report, as searching through the thousands of book on her own would have proven nearly impossible.
With the Elrics in Central City under the watch of Wrath and Pride, Lust goes to East City where Gluttony awaits her, so that they could deal with Scar, a survivor of the country of Ishval, whose population was nearly wiped out by the Amestrian military and State Alchemists for the homunculi's goals. As Scar is killing State Alchemists (alchemists under the command of the army) whom the homunculi need for their final sacrifice, he becomes a thorn in their side. Lust and Gluttony find and nearly kill Scar, who scarcely manages to escape grievously wounded.
Lust and Gluttony then return to Central City. She appears alongside Envy when Edward Elric has just sneaked into the Fifth Laboratory and defeated one of the armor-bound guards. She and Envy kills the guard, who was about to tell Edward everything he knew, and take him out to safety, before blowing up the building to erase all evidences. However, Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hugues, a friend of the Elrics, understands the homunculi's goal, following what the Elrics have discovered. Lust appears and wounds him but he manages to flee, only to get killed later by Envy.
This murder causes Hughes' best friend, Colonel Roy Mustang the Flame Alchemist, to seek revenge and start his own investigations. As Mustang is a valuable candidate for the homunculi's sacrifice, they cannot dispose of him, so Envy frames an innocent soldier for the murder to keep him quiet. Meanwhile, Lust begins to date Jean Havoc, one of Mustang's trusted subordinates, to get information from him but not to avails as he keeps his work and his private life separate.
However, Envy discovers that Barry the Chopper is still alive and is hiding from them. Resolving to kill this troublesome witness, Lust releases his former human body (in which an animal soul was transplanted) to track him down, and orders Envy and Gluttony to take the matter in hand. However, they get locked in battle with the Xinese prince Ling Yao and his bodyguard Lan Fan, who are more than a match for them, allowing Roy Mustang, his right-hand woman Riza Hawkeye, Jean Havoc and Alphonse Elric to follow Barry's armour and human body to the Third Laboratory.
In the laboratory, Lust confronts Mustang and Havoc, revealing her nature as a homunculus. Although she is reluctant to kill a candidate for the sacrifice, they know too much to live. She then gets wounded, and even reduced to ashes by Mustang's fire blast, but she regenerates and grievously wounds her two foes, leaving them to die after destroying all that Mustang could use to activate his Flame Alchemy. Lust later catches up with Alphonse, Hawkeye and Barry. She effortlessly dismantles Barry's armour and overwhelms Alphonse, despite his best attempts to fight back.
Mustang eventually reappears, having drawn transmutation circles on his hands with his blood and burnt his wound to stop the bleeding. He then relentlessly scorches Lust with his most powerful fire blasts until she exhausts all her regenerative power and she vanishes into ashes a nanosecond before she could pierce Mustang's forehead.
2003 Anime[]
- Main article: Lust (2003)
2017 Film[]
- Main article: Lust (2017)
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Lust's English voice actress, Laura Bailey, is married to Travis Willingham, who voiced Roy Mustang. Ironically, Roy was the one who killed Lust.
- In a four-panel omake chapter in the manga, Lust is shown to have a somewhat erotic talent for crushing walnuts with her massive cleavage.
- As Lust died, she seemed to have accurately predicted Mustang's fate of becoming blind after seeing the Gate of Truth near the end of the series, saying that "I look forward to the day when those eyes will be wide with agony.".
- Outside of the 2003 anime series, Lust is the only female antagonist in the Fullmetal Alchemist story.