#i'll get into dissecting some of what we could surmise about the nature of souls in 03 & the metatextual claims that arise

[salvidida]

The fully human Nina that Tucker produces after using some of Al's Philosopher Stone, a body that has none of the non-human animal parts used to build the various chimera-Ninas, is exactly like her own before her father experimented on her. And yet it remains vegetative and without any neurological function that we can see. Her soul did not return, and in fact this body lacks any soul whatsoever.

Whether this is a problem of Tucker being insufficiently skilled or lacking in the particular knowledge which would be able to call her to this new vessel, or because her soul can no longer be retrieved from whence souls depart to, her existence points to something hotly debated within the text and to which Lust herself was adamant about:

Stone-revived Nina is soulless, nothing more than a functionally inanimate and person-accurate flesh husk.

This is not the case for homunculi.

Because homunculi have souls.

And we see this all before Ed confronts the very homunculus of his own mother. The non-human copy of Trisha he has to convince himself is in fact a soulless mistake, nothing more.

But Nina. Nina shows us what a soulless being truly looks like.