The anime series Full Metal Alchemist, based on the manga series by Hiromu Arakawa, is set in a world similar to Europe of the early 20th Century, where Alchemy is a science and the Government-backed State Alchemists are the Special Forces of the Military.
Edward and Alphonse Elric are a pair of young prodigies recruited by the Military. As children, they had experimented with forbidden alchemy, trying to bring their mother back from the dead, and the horrible failure of their attempt cost Edward his leg and Al his entire body. It was only by sacrificing his arm as well that Edward was able to anchor Al’s soul into a nearby suit of armor. Now the two travel the country doing troubleshooting work for the Government while searching for the means to restore their bodies.
Complicating their personal goals are the Government’s own sins of the past. Some years previously, there had been an uprising in the eastern province of Ishval among the ethnic population, triggered when a Government soldier had killed an Ishvalan child. The uprising escalated into a full out war of extermination, the results of which reverberates throughout the entire series. Nearly every character has been scarred by it to one extent of another.
At one point in the story, one of the characters notes that in the Ishvalan conflict, the local authorities seem to have the situation largely under control; but then the Central Government sent in the Military and that’s when it became a bloodbath. In researching the matter further, the Elric Brothers learn that there have been many such uprisings in the country’s history, and in each case the Government sent in troops resulting in even more violence. They ultimately discover that malign forces in the Government are controlling the whole show, and that the person behind it all is deliberately orchestrating the carnage and using the deaths to fuel a massive, alchemeic spell that will make it more powerful than God.
I don’t think our own orange homonculus is trying to make himself more powerful than God. I’m not sure he doesn’t think he already is that important. But it certainly looks like he’s looking to create strife that he can benefit from.
