Okay. I understand why the mood of the final OP had to be completely different.
This episode had such a sharp contrast with the previous arcs of the series: the characters looked so set on victory: four homunculi are dead by now, Pride is missing, and it seemed like only Father and King Bradley still posed a problem. This episode was dark, and left little of the euphoria that was build up in the previous seasons.
But seriously, what an awesome episode it was. Bradley probably is the best fighter of the entire series, aside from perhaps Father and Hohenheim but we’ve seen too little from them to really determine that. We hardly saw him actually fight though, so when he finally gets into action the tables turn completely, like the previous episode showed. For some strange reason, the other homunculi hardly ever directly killed people in fights: Hughes was the only major good guy death that I can remember so far, aside from flashbacks. In two episodes since he’s actually started fighting, the number of casualties has suddenly risen with two major characters, and who knows how many soldiers? The way in which he was eventually hit also made a lot of impact to me, and it was very well portrayed and very subtle after how over the top the final moments of the old guy were.
This episode also pulled one of the trumps it had been hiding for quite a while now: the strange scientist who created King Bradley. Some of his actions didn’t make any sense, like how he had to wait for Ed to show up before he could write that magic circle of his, and I’d also have preferred to see a bit more about who he is beforehand, but this guy definitely pushed the story in a different direction. At the end of the episode, Ed, Al and Izumi were probably transported to the Truth, or somewhere similar. I also have to give thumbs up to the animators: those “eating”-scenes looked beautiful.
Rating: *** (Awesome)