This episode mostly followed the original series again, with only a few subtle differences here and there. The most notable event of course being Hughes. I remember, when I watched the first series that his death didn’t make that much of an impact, so I didn’t expect much of this episode. But damn… seeing his daughter at his funeral nearly got me a bit teary-eyed.
So again Hughes dies because he learns too much. I’m not exactly sure how Lust knew exactly when and where he would find this out (are uber-stalking powers also among the arsenal of the homunculus skills or something?), but in any case he realizes what the homunculi are planning, and also that something is very fishy with the Fuhrer, and thus gets killed off before he can spread the word.
One of the differences with the first series is that the creators here don’t try to hide the fact that the Fuhrer is a bad guy at all. In the first series, he looked more like a nice grandpa than anything else. That’s nice and all, but on retrospect I do have to wonder how that guy became a Fuhrer in the first place, and ended up ordering the Ishbal massacre.
Ed and Al meanwhile are busy with completely different things as they travel to their teacher in the search for answers to the Philosophers’ Stone. Unfortunately Winry ends up inviting herself again. I was hoping that she would have gotten to stay home this time, but let’s hope that she’s at least going to be more useful than she was in the first series. I never really understood her popularity. All she did was fix Ed’s limbs at the beginning of the series, and then just continued on in pointless adventures that didn’t really matter in the end.
Rating: * (Good)
Mostly the same as the first series, nevertheless it had one particularly touching scene.
How did Lust find out what Hughes was up to well if I say that would be a spoiler but I will say it has something to do with the fact that Hughes took the effort to call Roy from a pay phone. But anyways that is how the manga works. It doesn’t explain everything at first but leaves hints to the larger picture throughout the series.
As for Bradley you will get quite a bit of explanation but that comes a bit later.
Winry does have a larger part in this series but I also think she is much more developed than her 1st anime counterpart.
About how Lust knew, all I can say is wait and see. Thing will become clear later.
On Winry, I kinda felt the same way about her in the first series. She just… tagged along.
She did have a point and propose in the manga. Her story was more involved with the plot.
Also I want to add speaking of differences I don’t think you mentioned the most signifigant one. That Roy is taking an active role in trying to find out what happened to Hughes. I guess you can say that Hughes death has a larger impact on Roy in this series than the last.
Also I think the reason why it is easy to see Bradley is up to no good in this series is because of the first series (which is an unfortunate side effect of having some plot twists already revealed in the 1st series). But I guess there are plenty of twists that were not in the 1st series to come.
Now I might not remember this right, but in the first series wasn’t Hughes discover based off of the secret around that anime’s version of Sloth? If anything I’d say that person’s complete abscence so far would be the biggest difference to someone who has only seen the first anime series.
By the way, do you watch the raws of this or something because these reviews always come out sooner than I can fine subbed versions of the episode. If you in fact do not know Japanese and don’t watch them as such can you give a hint as to where you find your episodes?
Liebs: yeah, I watch my series raw. I’m not sure exactly why, but with the shows I’m blogging I tend to be very impatient for new releaes.
If this series continues to follow the manga, then they’ll explain how the Fuhrer came to be… I’ve never watched the first series, so i can’t compare. A few years ago I saw this one episode aired from the first anime series, completely different from the manga and was so.. dumb, from then on i decided not to watch the anime and stay with the original story, the manga. Although this time, they’ve cut out a few scenes and dialogs, but still follows the manga pretty faithfully, just hope they keep it up and stop rushing so much >.>
Also, i gotta say… i love the opening credits, just fits so prefect…
Winry gets better development, but doesn’t have as big a part in the Elrics’ ‘adventures.’ You’ll see. 😉
the daughter had almost the same lines in the original.
Liebs, it was Hughes! 😀
I gotta say I felt the original series did these events better. This episode felt like too much was squeezed in at once and moved too quickly. Just my 2 cents.
The daughter had the same line in the original
I think you are right but really the manga is the original and that is where the line actually came from. 😉
i prefer this version of hughs death much better then the first anime. in the first anime. i dunno if it was cause of how it was cut or what. but it all happend so fast that it was like ‘what just happend?’ you saw him get shot and then cut to funral. i dont even think you saw him laying on the ground. it was real random. and mustangs pain is felt more in this version.
i know.but i was’crying’much earlier than that.ok i did NOT bawl,scream,whatever,but i did er…waddyou call it…sob?