We’re really nearing the climax for this series now, you can really see that the focus is getting more and more back to the lead characters and especially the lead villains. The next episode should be all about Father, trying to do whatever he needs to do in order to execute that plan of his. After that there are going to be three more episodes to wrap everything up. Should be enough.
Thumbs up for especially Al in this episode: he actually refused to go back to his body, because he knew that it would be impossible to be useful with that kind of a posture. That was actually very well built up: ever since he got stuffed in that box and Pride got hold of him, he’s had a lot of trouble being useful, having to play the part of damsel in distress a few times, along with just being too far away to help out in the early battles of Central City.
This episode made a ton of promises for interesting fights: it’s not just the question of “Will Al be able to redeem himself?”, but also, “how will Roy kick ass now that his eyes are gone?”, and “what will Mai Chang’s role be if the creators went through the trouble of putting her amongst the most central characters of the story at the most crucial time?”, to a fight between Scar and Mustang that will continue into the next episode. And then there’s Ed: as the lead character but nowhere near the best fighter, what is his role going to be?
The animation was quite inconsistent in this episode: some parts were animated quite smoothly, and you can really see that the animators really like animating the fights that involve Bradley with great detail, but there also were a few speedlines, unrefined faces and still frames. The big question for that is obviously going to be whether or not the creators saved enough budget for those final episodes, especially since they’ve been teasing us over and over with that ED.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Let’s just hope they cut on the animation to make an awesome ending, and NOT because they’re getting poor. x/ I won’t tolerate a badly animated ending!!! >:/ The Al-scene was great, though. Poor kid.
Oh, btw, what was your opinion on the Roy-stuff this week? 😮
Is it really only three more episodes? If the last manga chapter is really as huge as its rumoured to be (100+ pages), 3 eps don’t seem enough.
4 episodes.
And rumors are just rumors. It will probably be big, and should get an entire episode according to my calculations, but not as humongous as people speculate. I’d say ~80 pages tops.
Anyway, the next episodes will be very fast-paced. They covered nearly 2 chapters this week and there was barely any filler, which is a good sign considering the last few episodes were pretty slow.
Well, in an interview the director said that he was surprised how huge the final chapter was, so who knows?
Acylia: well, it’s always easy to kill, limb or cripple a character when a story is nearly done. Roy’s eye loss was indeed shocking, but what’s much more important is how the last episodes will end up using it.
Next episode SHOULD be the one where the well animated episodes start as it will be mostly action packed…
What made me cringe this week: Mustang held Hawkeye, cried for her not to die while NOT trying to even pressure her wound. Not very wise from an Ishbal veteran. If I remember correctly, she had her hand tight against her neck the whole time in manga.
Linnie, actually I just re-read that chapter and it seems like as Mustang is holding her, neither of them are really touching her neck. Mustang’s hand looks like it’s on her shoulder-ish, but again, it doesn’t exactly look like he’s applying pressure.
Keith: You’re right. Well, it freaked me out in anime, probably it was more obvious. Thanks for clearing it up for me.
I’m I the only one that was disappointed with the Alphonse scene? The manga…that was one of the best moments in the manga…and here…it was rushed, the animation was sloppy, it didn’t feel emotional enough at all.
In all honesty, they never should have fixed a set timeslot for this anime, intending to finish a manga THAT WASN’T EVEN DONE YET.
I’m going to be pissed if they’ve been doing so great this far, only to rush the ending and ruin it.
Truth to be told, though, I don’t think ANY of us expected the last chapter to be a whooping 150 pages…
The 150 pages thing isn’t confirmed though…
But I still feel that the chapter will be at least 100 pages or somewhere around there.
How is it that Al’s body can be sentient apart from a soul within it? Is there a bit of Al still in that body?
“to a fight between Scar and Mustang that will continue into the next episode”
I think you mean Bradley there, champ 🙂
Also, I’m gonna LOL if next episode, Mei thinks she woke up Al thanks to the POWAA OF LOVE.
BTW, this is for psgels: back in ep 56 you thought Roy was one of the characters who stood a good chance of defeating Bradley handily.
Guess it’s really the other way around, huh? Good thing the bad guys need Roy alive, else he would’ve had two swords through his heart and neck instead of his hands.
I agree with you. AL refused to be on container is the best part..
And I can’t wait to continue watching Scar vs King Bradley..
I thought they did the Al’s body part pretty well actually. They gave Al rejecting his body a more ominous feel to it, which is definitely fitting considering what happens next.
Also Scar vs. Wrath is easily my favorite part of these last parts of the story. I’m so glad they’ve been doing justice to its start. I’m looking forward to episode 61 even more so just to see how they handle the rest of it 🙂
@Ergo
i kinda see your point w/ the Al scene a bit. i didn’t like the transition to that scene, so at first it seemed a bit rushed, but the overall scene wasn’t bad although the manga did it better IMHO…
i have to say Bones has done wrath/bradley true justice in this series… from the moment he owned the ice guy in the 1st ep you KNEW this was not going to be the talky/little-action bradley from the 1st series. nice new BGM w/ him and scar too… too bad the dubbed version of brotherhood has the same english voice actor from before, his voice is NOT scary/angry at all
@Cornwiggle
setting the ep number probably allowed them to pace themselves, which is why the 1st 14 eps that covered stuff from the 1st series was rushed a bit to get to ling/may/new stuff as soon as possible. it might be a little rushed, but since chapter 100 the manga has really slowed down timewise so speeding up isn’t necessarily a bad thing it they do it right.
@StWolf:
Al’s Truth is wearing Al’s body. It’s Al’s Truth that’s talking not Al’s body.
You know, I’m starting to feel paranoid. The anime has what-3 or so more episodes to go? They have maybe, 7 more chaps to cover, plus the recent manga chapters had quite an increase in pages, with the last one presumed to have at least a 100 pages. Can they actually make this work?
@Ergo, that’s not exactly true. He says something along the lines of “I would be proud to be your container.” At least that’s what the line is in the manga I read.
If that was the truth speaking…wouldn’t he not be referring to himself like that?
great episode as usual.
@Bobby
That’s the best part of the english dub, he sounds like a nice old man when he’s just talking but when he’s badass, he sounds scary as hell. Watch the episode when Bradley fights Greed and you’ll hear what i mean.
@Keith
i think Ergo’s take on “Truth”/Al is largely right… i mean how would Al’s body know that his soul going back to the real world would be a bad thing? a god (i.e. Truth) would know because HE’S GOD… plus, Ed’s version of “Truth” has his arm and leg on it’s “body”, in Al’s case his entire body was taken so in that respect Al’s version of “Truth” is “wearing” his entire body as a toll. even the line you quoted (i WOULD be proud to be YOUR container) it’s seems like Truth is speaking.
@Roldan
haven’t seen the past few dubbed eps so you may very well be right, i just think that the natural voice of Bradley’s actor doesn’t really fit his face/look/age like the japanese actor does. but what you said totally makes sense
There is one thing I don’t understand though… How the hell did they make Mustang perform the transmutation?
Until now the so called “magic system” was explained in detail and had logic in every aspect. But now suddenly Mustang is forced to perform a transmutation even if he strongly doesn’t want that. I thought that alchemy is performed with the mind,as the place where the knowledge is, and than the transformation of the object takes place, or something like that. Maybe i just don’t understand the alchemy system good enough… Anyone care to explain?
@Anzai, it will be explained in the upcoming episodes. There’s a price to pay for everything. It will also explain why they couldn’t just group together a bunch of alchemists and force them to do the transmutations.
@Anzai: knowledge was in goldtooth. Alchemic powers were from kimbly. Roy just had the bad luck of being pinned down on the transmutation circle.
but the one doing the transmutation was Pride….. and he too had to pay the price. But more of this in the next ep 🙂
Thx for the answers. ^^ That was helpful
@Anzai Also the array they used for Mustang’s transmutation was different from the one Ed and Al use, it looked a lot more squarish.
its interesting to contrast this with the Ed, Ling and Envy episode in Gluttony’s stomach. That time the whole process was guided by Ed who had already been once to the gate, and Envy was the energy source. Here Pride was doing everything, and neither Pride nor Mustang had any advance knowledge of the gate, they couldn’t guide themselves to it or away from it. Or maybe Pride adjusted the parameters so that Mustang just HAD to lose something….
Mustang’s toll was much lighter, i guess he just lost the capacity for sight, not the entire eye itself.