This has got to be among the best Full Metal Alchemist episodes to date. And with more than a hundred episodes on the franchise’s track record, that has to say something! It mostly focused on two fights: the one versus Kimblee and Pride, and the one versus Sloth. Both were awesome in their own ways, full of great twists and turns, making for one hell of a ride.
Seriously, I’m getting the same vibes here as when I watched the action scenes of Bounen no Xamdou. What Bones did here is deliver animation with such a force and power. This is exactly what I’m looking for in an action series. And this time, the stories and backgrounds actually did get well developed. While at this point Full Metal Alchemists’s animation still isn’t quite as good as Xamdou, it has far surpassed Xamdou at this time as an action-series for me, due to the plot, characters and setting in this series.
Kimblee’s death (or at least, I think he died) also really surprised me. In the way that Pride kept playing with his victims like a cat, it was a very good reminder that there are plenty of mortals in this series, and this even showed that having a philosopher’s stone doesn’t make you immortal. To contrast, there were also plenty of heart-warming moments during the same fight: three side-characters who I wrote off as being useless in battle really created an awesome escape sequence.
Also, the clone army really proved to be one of the flaws in Father’s plans: having them rampage around is nice enough, but the way in which they fail to recognize either friend or enemy leads to a lot more soldiers changing sides, especially when you’re in front of such a charismatic leader as Olivier. This episode forced a ton of characters to do things they usually would not: Ed also finally ended up using weaponry, the Armstrong Siblings working together.
One point of criticism for this episode was during the Ed’s fight. I mean, the army of closes did go a bit into overkill there, and it wasn’t that well animated anyway, with a lot of clones just being CG dolls. It reminded me a bit of these cheap fantasy series in which teen-aged leads have to battle on hordes of copy/paste zombies. Not to mention that the clones decide to just stand still whenever some major plot twist happens. Really, if I was such a clone, I wouldn’t care about what happened around me. All I would care about would just be these tasty human beings in front of me.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Oh, dont worry about the clones. One person will take care of it in a second!
As for Kimblee, yes – he’s as dead as a doornail. I felt kinda bad when he died since he was such a properly developed villain.
Pride said he would keep living inside him, though. So if you like him; he’s living on inside Pride (you just can’t see him). If you don’t like him; Yeah, he’s dead.
I LOVE how Al is actually stronger than Ed (even without the philosophers stone).
And yes, the clones never were a great part of the manga. I really jumped out of my chair in joy when they finally left the scene. I was kinda getting a little bored of them. Sloth-battle and upcoming Envy are awesome, though. I actually cried in the next chapters of the manga, and I have no idea why. xD
Roy is looking kinda mad in the preview. I don’t think he’s gotten over Hughes yet. :/
Without spoiling anything.. ironic that this Pride/Kimblee battle happened this week given what happened in this month’s manga chapter ^^
@kiryuu
without spoiling anything, simply being really annoying (sorry :[)
I know exactly what you mean, and I thought the exact same thing. How many chapters do you think there’ll be? I thought 108 at first, because if they don’t delay the last episodes of the anime, they won’t make it :S An anime original ending is the last thing this series needs. I read somewhere that the last 2-3 episodes where going to be three weeks delayed, but that could be a rumor.
I haven’t been paying much attention to length of manga vs this remake, but I thought the intent was for them to end at/around the same time, which would mean no anime original ending (in fact it’d defeat the purpose of the remake being “true” to the manga, unlike the original series)..
I doubt the clone army was ever really part of Father’s plan, simply a bribe for the military.
Father: “Hey if I give you a invincible army and make you all immortal will you do as I say no questions asked?”
Military bigwig: “Immortality! invincible army! Shit where do we sign?”
Father: “Here. Morons…”
As for the Al stronger than Ed thing, thats been going on all through the Manga and Anime.
Al’s taller, stronger probably better looking than Ed since they were, even younger, kids.
Ed though is the genius, he was the one who came with the human transmutation circle and is probably the more scientific. But its nice not to have a mister perfect as a Shouen lead.
@ Acylia
Even if the last few episodes were delayed a few more weeks, it would only allow enough time for 109 chapters since FMA has monthly releases. And I was under the impression that the number 108 was supposed to be symbolic for something. Anyways, things seem to be winding down and I think Arakawa can still wrap things up in the next two 70+ pg. chapters.
Arakawa already finished the manga, and BONES already has it all. At least I strongly get that impressioned based on everything I’ve seen, read, and heard.
Arakawa already finished the manga, and BONES already has it all. At least I strongly get that impressioned based on everything I’ve seen, read, and heard.
hello I’m Yoki i ran over pride in a car was actually useful
Yoki totally won my appreciation in this episode. Good job there xD Anyways, another amazing episode. I especially loved the Al vs Pride/Kimblee fight. To the next episode~
there’s probably enough time for 3 more chapters i would think… assuming 4 sundays in the next 2 months, episode 60 would air around when chapter 108 comes out, giving them 3 eps to wrap it up, consulting with her about the direction of last few chapters beforehand. plus they could always skip a week or two like Acylia said to give her time to wrap up the manga and them to animate it (makes sense to me)
these recent eps have been pretty great, but right now i’d still rate ep 19 (lust’s death) the best brotherhood ep to date. next week should be really good. nice day for a barbecue 🙂
I had thought the last 2 eps were alot of setup w/o alot of payoff.
Sh*t, meet fan.
Al was great. I love his charachter so much in this series. Kimblee’s death was awesome. I feel like pride didn’t stab him just so he could have a warm meal later. Pride + Gluttony = some f*ked up sh*t. Also, that sloth spike sh*t, DAMN.
Great epi for non-stop action.
They should just make a movie for the last 3 episodes. never gonna happend but still would’ve been neat. anyways great ep this week and seeing the previews it would seem like it’s only gonna get better.
Wonder if pride gets any new powers from eating kimbly.
If father is gonna do the same as last time, who cares if soldiers die or don’t die? He’ll just absorb the human souls of every single living individual in the whole country, and like we’ve seen before, blood here and there is good too (see what they did at Brigg’s, they killed the whole enemy army)
Trust me, hms-one, the shit and the fan haven’t met just yet. But they will.
They already have the script for episode 62 and have already animated and done voice recording for about every episode before that, if you read the directors blog. So it’s not like the animators are waiting for the new chapters to come out so they can animate them. They’ve had them for a while. I mean, 62 is the second to last episode and they already have the script. I doubt there wil need to be a delay.
Any delay would probably be so the anime doesn’t show the ending before the manga does.
Its funny you should mention poorly animated clone fight, I was rather less impressed with the Kimbalee fight, quite often it was very noticable that there wasnt a single background detail just a plain ground. (Compare Kimbalee and Homunculus screenshots taken above for a taster of what I mean of while in the Kimbalee fight details remained throughout. also above.)
What a mediocre episode… seriously, you people are enjoying the fights with the cannon fodder zombies with no character whatsoever? Ugh.
no thomas we were enjoying the fights with Kimblee and Sloth not the fodder zombies
The series just keeps getting better and better. It’s really good to see AL getting stronger and more adept. He was more or less useless for both series. It’s about time someone made use of a stone.
Oh and don’t count Kimblee out quite yet. The animation hasn’t caught up with the comics yet.