"Hey you, I like your cleavage, let's go out!"

Summary:

The episode begins with a bit of a flashback a few years ago as Roy is talking with his sensei who taught him alchemy. On his deathbed, his sensei expresses disappointment at Roy for being a dog of the military, and then promptly dies, but not before asking Roy to protect his daughter and the fruits of all his research… Riza Hawkeye.

At this very moment... Roy catches TB

Flash forward back to present time, as Claudia McCunnen Riza is taking a shower when Ed pays a visit. There Ed returns the gun he had borrowed, and takes the chance to talk to Riza about pulling the trigger, and what really happened in Ishbal.

I hope Hayate likes coffee!

At the same time Scar is busy interrogating Dr. Marcoh (although one assumes chronologically Scar’s thing happened quite a while beforehand) about the same thing. We learn that the Ishabal-jin were always a bit annoyed at being annexed and tensions were always high. Envy’s disguised killing of the Ishbal child was just the last straw that set things into motion, which eventually led to a 7 year civil war. Fed up with the war, President Bradley decided to enact Executive Order 3066 – the order allowing the genocide of the Ishbal race.

It was good to see Hughes again, I miss his antics!

With the entire army mobilized and state alchemists involved, the extermination was relatively fast, but ends up changing the views of many in the military including Roy, Armstrong, Riza and Hughes as they questioned why they were killing innocent people in the first place. We learn that Riza was an expert sniper at this time (although one wonders how good you have to be if the other side can’t really shoot you back).

At the same time, we learn that Dr. Marcoh took captured Ishbal prisoners to turn them into Philosopher’s Stones for Kimblee to use.

I'm a soul man! do do do do, do do do do! I'm a soul man!

After the war, Riza officially enlists under Roy’s command where he asks her to follow him to hell and to kill him if he ever strays from his ideals. Accepting the challenge, Riza grows out her hair and stays by his side.

As the storytelling ends, and with the encouragement of Riza, Ed vows to return Al and himself to their bodies. Meanwhile as Al leaves Dr. Knox’s house, May Chang learns that he is really Ed’s little brother.

This turned into a Shojo manga so fast I barely noticed...

As the episode ends, Envy is delivering food to Dr. Marcoh when he discovers his DECAPITATED BODY WITH “VENGEANCE”  SPELLED OUT IN BLOOD ON THE WALL. (and you guys said this series wasn’t dark! Hrumph!)

Reaction:

This episode felt like a relatively ’short’ episode for some reason in my mind. Maybe it was all the reused footage, or the fact that we already basically knew everything that this episode talked about anyway, I’m not sure. From the snippets from previous episodes we pretty knew exactly what the Ishbal ‘civil war’ was all about (what’s so civil about war anyway?) already, and we also knew that Marcoh was making Philosopher’s Stones.

There were three new things in this episode. First of all we finally see Kimblee in all his glory, Philosopher Stones and all. It is a mystery as to why exactly he was given stones. Obviously the Homunculus started the war for their own benefit, so why were the products of the entire affair given to Kimblee? And what were the larger aims of starting the war in the first place? Surely the central conflict in this story which set the background for everyone wasn’t just a random affair. I do wonder if they were trying to use Kimblee as an experiment to see how they could further use stones. Or perhaps Kimblee himself is a Homunculus (Pride perhaps?). Hard to say at this point.

I’m hoping that Kimblee and his stones feature more prominently in future episodes. Having a corrupt state alchemist who’s capable of real alchemy would be much more fun to watch than just fighting the homunculus or fighting the omnipotent ‘Father’ for our heroes.

The second major event in this episode was the realization that there is a bit more to Mustang and Riza’s relationship than we were previously led to believe. I was always hoping that Mustang randomly loved his subordinate, but now there’s a possibility that he’s protecting her out of duty. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t like her in some respect, but there’s a much larger possibility that them having a romantic relationship is diminished which is a shame.

Finally the last and most significant new reveal is the fact that Riza has a giant tattoo on her back with some alchemy stuff on it. Considering her father put all of his research on her back, it adds yet another factor to how the story will play out. Will the scars on the back which obscure part of the tattoo matter? Will this ‘reveal’ add onto Scar’s brother’s book, or will it be complementary? Will each show the same truth in the end, or will they depend on one another? In this case, will Scar get to see Riza naked before Roy??!?!

Either way, after multiple revelations in the past 4 episodes, it’s nice to see many new mysteries open up with some potential new alliances (Scar + the brothers) and new rivals (Pride, GreedLing, Kimblee) coming into play as well.

P.S. Obligatory “this episode needed more Ran Fan”.

P.P.S. What’s with Riza having the same haircut as Al!?!?!?

EDIT: for my crappy spelling

Related posts:

1. Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood 31
2. Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood 33
3. Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood Episode 23 & 24