Epi on June 21, 2010 · in Full Metal Alchemist 2

Summary:

We quickly flash back to the end of the previous episode where a ground-level Father decides to harvest some soldiers for Philosopher’s Stone power. In a bit of a retcon (previously Father succeeded in making a stone, although I bet now I’ll get comments that say “look closely Epi you idiot those guys are dead”), we see Hohenheim coming up to save the soldiers by attacking Father. As everyone else shows up, Hohenheim taunts Father by asking him what use is a Homunculus god if he can only destroy but not create. In response Father decides to pluck out some souls from within his stone and recreate some of the people of Xerxes including the king (who recognizes Hohenheim). As everyone reels in disgust, Father decides to throw out a mega blast to kill our heroes.

The blast disables everyone and cripples Al, but hurts Hohenheim the most as had positioned himself to shield everyone from the blast. Back underground Greed rounds up more people to fight Father and leaves behind the wounded including a very proud Olivier who reluctantly stays behind. With everyone temporarily dazed, Father resumes his soul harvesting starting with Ed and Izumi. Before he can finish, a bullet to the head stops Father. It seems the Briggs soldiers have acted, and soon an entire battalion surrounds father, pumping out mortars and bullets into him. Everyone else responds as well with their own attacks (the dumbest being RAN FAN and Darius’ pointless attacks) including Roy Mustang who with Riza’s sniper eye guidance unleashes his full flame power against Father. Father repels them all with his red alchemy shield.

At this point Greed decides to attack and try and absorb Father’s god-knowledge but Father absorbs Greed’s stone instead. While he’s busy with Greed, Izumi, Ed and Armstrong decide to attack with melee attacks. Finally Father’s shield is whittled down and he blocks Ed’s last attack with his arm. Father starts to lose control of his own body and a huge explosion results.

Father has now been crippled, and on his last legs he moves to an immobilized Ed to harvest his soul. Realizing that his own blood patch is about to be destroyed in his cracked armour, Al gets May Chang to create an alchemy path to Ed as he sacrifices his own soul so that Truth would release Ed’s limbs back to him to allow him to fight Father. As Al’s soul disappears back behind the gate, Ed does not let his brother’s sacrifice go to waste as he quickly pulls himself up with his new limbs to fight Father.

Everyone cheers Ed on as he unleashes round of kick ass on Father as the episode ends.

Reaction:

I have mixed feelings about this episode actually. On one hand, this episode had the so called epic battle that I had been looking forward to all along. With virtually every non-injured character making a contribution to fighting Father and with the predictable act of the main hero throwing the finishing punch, this really should have been the FMA battles to end all battles, but it really wasn’t. I may have expected too much of Father, but really just having everyone pummel him while he stands around looking nonplussed wasn’t really that exciting.

If you think about it though it’s sort of his own fault. Because he created the other Homunculi to do his dirty work on the surface while he sat in his chair, Father really has no idea how to fight at all. While he’s really good at verbal manipulation and trickery, he’s literally a little kid when it comes to fighting. There is also the issue of Father’s arrogance in never thinking that the humans were worthy enough for him to even try against. Therefore we see him do stupid things like waste a ton of energy on Macross Cannon beam spams, stand there and just take explosions and hits as if he had unlimited power, and not using any creative ideas whatsoever to fight back. It was kind of weird though for Father who has proved to be such an intelligent and resourceful villain so far to actually think he could stand there and take hits and that it wouldn’t matter.

While it would have made for a vastly more enjoyable final fight if Father actually did do some creative alchemy that our heroes had to overcome, it’s understandable how it turned it. I was hoping for too much I guess.

I was also weirded out by the final montage of everyone cheering on Ed to kill Father. While in the context of an anime we can be sure that Ed will prevail, in the context of common sense, we have this guy who was just seemingly invulnerable fighting a teenager with an injured arm by himself. Why doesn’t ANYONE else help out? A clean bullet to the head of Father would do wonders to help, so would anyone else helping out with Alchemy. Also, considering everyone else got up so quickly to cheer Ed on, why wasn’t anyone doing anything when Ed was crippled and about to be harvested other than Al? I understand it’s a bit of a plot point, but it was kind of a dumb plot point. I would have preferred everyone to still be on the ground and immobilized (and cheering) rather than jumping up and down holding guns and cheering for Ed.

In terms of important plot elements, we did get a bit of an unexpected but not entirely surprising plot element of Al’s soul finally leaving this world. There’s no doubt in my mind that in the last two episodes Ed will find a way to bring back Al body and all, but I wonder how it will be done. Will Hohenheim use up the last of his power, perhaps even his own soul to bring his son back? Will they use the Philosopher’s Stone that Kimblee dropped before, or the one RAN FAN is carrying (which will probably go to GreedLing)? Either way it doesn’t matter, because now that he has his arms back, I don’t think we will see Ed losing them again. It would be a bit weird to see the armour-Al recreated though with Ed back to his automail self to end off the series considering all of the other options available.

We do also get a bit of an acknowledgment that the ‘Truth’ guys are repositories for lost body parts and lost souls. I wonder if people who die ever meet Truth in this world, or if the only way is to perform human transmutation.

I do have to say that it was really nice to see Roy fighting once again. Riza has the sharpest eyes in Amestris and I think it’s great that they so compliment each other now. Roy was looking a bit like a cripple the previous two episodes, so to see him use his power at full power was a sight to see.

I expect next episode to have a bit of Father reviving a little and having a bit more fight in him before he’s finally defeated… either that or he reveals some kind of shocking ‘truth’ to everyone before he vapourizes forever.

Oh and the animation was super choppy this episode. It seems like both the A and B teams were working alternately as we would go from good to bad to good animation non-stop.

Finally I wanted to thank everyone who voted for Sea Slugs! in the AniBlog tournament, and hope you’ll be with us for round 5 as well!