Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood S2E20: “Looming Shadows”

Straight to the intro for this one. After the OP, we open on a military train coming to a stop at Resembool, and the narrator telling us that...

It's now just a few days before the Promised Day.

We just timeskipped from several months ahead, and it's the middle of spring.

Um. Okay?

I wouldn't mind a timeskip so much, normally, but May juuuust turned around and brought Envy back toward Central. Given that it's never taken characters more than a few days to cross Amestris and there's no particular reason she couldn't disguise herself use the trains as she's done in the past...hell, just by HITCHHIKING she should be able to reach Central in a matter of days. So, we're not seeing the consequences of Envy's manipulation. Just jumping to a month later, when Envy has presumably been restored and May is either imprisoned, in hiding, or a zombie or something. Why? Hell, JUST a cliffhanger shot of Envy tricking her into the macroglyph tunnels and Pride looming over her would be sufficient. Anything but this.

Well, anyway.

Miles and some of the other Briggs officers have gotten off the train, and are telling the Resembool locals that they need to stock up on water. It also happens to be the local spring fleece fair, so their arrival is ruffling a lot of feathers.

Wonder if that's a coincidence, with them having their thing and Father having his thing so close to the same time? Maybe their sheep fair grew out of a spring equinox ritual or something.

Soldiers unload some storage vats that are suspiciously heavy for empty water tanks. As people mill around bumping into each other in the chaos of military appropriation and woolselling, a pair of soldiers surreptitiously bring one of the improbably heavy containers to a certain house on the outskirts. They set it down in the barn, and Winry gets out. Heh, I was wondering who it was. My money was on a disassembled Alphonse, but that probably would have taken more than two guys to carry.

She smiles happily at being back home, and invites the soldiers into the house with her, warning them not to touch any of Pinako's automail-in-progress projects that are scattered around the place. Pinako is a lot less orderly about this than Winry, it seems. I wonder if she's declined mentally since her granddaughter went missing. I assume Winry would have gotten word to her somehow or other in the past few months, but still, that kind of stress at that age is likely to hasten things. No sign of the woman herself, though. Hopefully she's at the fair rather than the hospital. For now, Winry goes up to her room, starts changing into a set of her old clothes, and gets her top halfway off before noticing she's not alone.

So...Edward is here, now. Presumably as Pinako's guest. How did he get out from under Greed's thumb, I wonder? Did he just sneak away after getting the information he wanted, or did he somehow convince or bribe Greed to let him go off and help bring down Father? Greed himself didn't seem interested in revenge against his creator, per se, but Edward and Ling might have changed his mind, in which case he might be participating as well. Or else they just promised to give him stuff after the revolution, that could also have done it. Well, regardless of Greed, Lionheart, and Simians' whereabouts and current agendas, Edward at least is back in his hometown.

Cue slapstick, as Winry's startled shriek brings her bodyguards running, guns drawn. Which in turn brings Lionheart and Simian, who'd been hiding somewhere in the house, running with their guns drawn. Then Pinako's dog bites someone, and while everyone is panicking and on the bring of opening fire Leed shows up and asks who the hell all these people are and what they're doing here.

Okay, I guess Edward and Ling *did* talk Greed over. Would have been nice to see that arc in progress.

...

It REALLY feels like I skipped an episode. First the unresolved thing with May, and now skipping what seems like it must have been some important team-building and character development. Edward had just barely managed a mistrustful alliance with Greed when last we saw them, and now we just jump ahead to when their relationship is...what? Does Greed still need to feel like he's in charge of the gang? Have they warmed up to each other? Have they had any philosophical discussions about Leed's state of being that brought Edward, Ling, or Greed to see the situation differently than before? This stuff is IMPORTANT. We saw Edward's developing relationships with Ling, Armstrong, Winry, and other characters who he's come to work with in the past. Seeing that develop with Greed is even more important, due to how they started off. Moreso than even the likes of other former enemy Scar.

I checked the episode order with multiple sources, and nope, I didn't skip any.

The sheer disconnect I'm feeling right now is kind of hard to put into words. What a bizarre time to start a timeskip from.

...

The soldiers who escorted Winry recognize Lionheart and Simian as two of Kimblee's mysterious spooks, which is why they're reluctant to lower their weapons, even after Edward assures them that Kimblee is no longer relevant. Finally, Winry just has one of her wrench-wielding cartoon superstrength episodes and forcibly evicts everyone except Edward from her room. She and Edward have a heartfelt, if off-kilter, reunion, and Edward asks her where Alphonse is.

...shit, have they still not seen each other since Baschool? Maybe. Maybe not. Where were both of them for the last few months? Where was Leed bringing Edward all that time? What was Alphonse doing with Hohenheim?

Well, what was *Hohenheim* doing? What other parties has he communicated with? Has he met Mustang? Miles? Scar and Marcoh? Leed? Either of the Armstrongs?

.....actually, what was WINRY doing? Was she really just sitting around in that Ishvalan expat village this whole time? Was she laying low in North City? Being hidden at Briggs (and somehow kept out of sight of the new brass Central sent up there)? I'm guessing she was still up north, if it's the Briggs people bringing her home, but what would she have been doing all that time? Could they really not have arranged a way of dropping her off at home earlier, like oh I don't know, in an unassuming-looking car or something? Wouldn't that have been less trouble for them as well as her?

This timeskip could have worked so much better if there was just ONE more episode before it. Resolve these immediate, very important questions. Establish where everyone is going to be and what they're going to be doing. Indicate who has established lines of communication with whom. Show the characters who have just been acquainted with each other at least *start* the process of building rapport. As it is, it's one of the most disorienting viewing experiences I've had in a long time (KnK doesn't count, because it never made me care enough to be jerked out of the story in the first place).

I guess Edward and Alphonse haven't gotten to meet in person since Alphonse went running after Winry and Scar's group. Okay. Sure. It makes as much sense as the alternative, though the hows and whys sure would have been nice. At any rate, Winry tells Edward that Alphonse is still on the train, and if he hurries he can catch up with them before they leave Resembool.

In other news, Edward looks considerably beefier and more mature than he did before. I guess those have been an important couple of months for his adolescence. Good for him, I suppose.

Edward starts to move toward the door, but then stops, and in a pained voice tells Winry that he and his companions all have warrants and wanted posters up. So, he can't go to the train station to see Alphonse.

Because disguise is not something Edward can do, I guess.

And...he HAS been in Amestris this whole time, or hasn't he? How have he and the others been hiding themselves throughout this time, and why is that same method not viable for getting to the train station to see Alphonse right now? If anything, a crowded, chaotic scene like today's would be the PERFECT opportunity to sneak through the crowd unnoticed.

Has he not been leaving Pinako's house for all this time? Have...none of them been leaving the house? How did they even get back to Resembool in the first place?

Jump briefly over to Miles and Alphonse, on the train. Alphonse reminisces over seeing his hometown doing its annual spring thing. Miles tells him that he hopes the next time he sees it, it will be with his own, organic eyes. I guess the plan for sabotaging Father's spell in a couple of days is also supposed to restore Alphonse's body. Somehow. I guess? Maybe Miles is just doing some general well-wishing rather than hinting about any immediate plans. The train starts moving.

Back to the Rockbell residence. Pinako comes home, is pleased to meet Winry, and is confused to meet the two rando soldiers disguised in ill-matching plainclothes. Though I imagine she's pleased that Winry's been well protected. Wherever she's been. For however long she's been there. Winry is also surprised to see Ling, and confused when he doesn't recognize her.

Leed explains the situation to her and everyone else not in the know over dinner. Pinako either happened to have a *lot* of food on hand, or they did some last minute shopping.

Okay, so Leed at least thinks that he's still the one in charge. What has he been having them do? How have they felt about doing whatever it is? Anyway, they came back to Resembool before the Promised Day so that Pinako could give Edward his automail tune-up. She's not as familiar with his current prosthetic as Winry, but she's the best they could manage. Whether or not they planned to regroup with Winry and/or the Briggs guys here, I have no idea. Anyway, since they're all here now, Pinako and Edward would both prefer it if Winry did the rest of the fine tuning.

Later that evening, after the fine tuning, Edward and Winry fill each other in on what they've learned since they parted ways. Edward is glad to hear that Liore is recovering well; his own part, however small it was, in carving that blood crest has been bothering him. She also tells him that Alphonse is going further east with Miles' force in order to help carry out some plot of theirs during the wargames scheduled between the northern and eastern garrisons. Okay. What is that plan? I don't know, we skipped the part where they came up with it. Normally, that's a tool for the author to build suspense when the heroes' plan is going to succeed, but considering how many other things got skipped over that *really shouldn't have been* I can't say for sure that this is a case of that. Meanwhile, Hohenheim moved toward Central, and is supposed to be laying low and waiting in some outskirt slum called Kanama. If Edward wants more information about what everyone has planned, he'd best go there and talk to him.

Wait, so...has Edward not been in communication with anyone at all for this whole time? Well, Greed better have sang like a bird in exchange for that, if so.

Then it's Edward's turn to answer questions. Winry asks him about the upcoming "Promised Day," and he confirms that Greed has explained all about that.

He says that it's not only when they'll have to stop Father, but also an opportunity for himself and Alphonse to restore their bodies.

...

Um.

Edward.

PRIORITIES.

...

This makes it sound like they're planning to do something else in addition to stopping Father. Hooopefully not something that will make the former more complicated.

Regardless of how complicated or simple their plan may be, Edward advises Winry to take Pinako and leave Amestris if they can do so in the time remaining, in case it fails. Edward, who seems to have forgotten about that whole character arc Winry's had about not letting her loved ones march into danger while she waits on the sidelines during his time doing ??? with Leed, gets a wrench to the head. Winry ain't running. She's doing everything she can to make sure they win. Victory or death (or a fate worse than death, depending on whether they get shot/blown up/eaten before the macroglyph activates, but you know what I mean).

As she and Edward stare each other down, something occurs to me. Something really off putting.

Edward is now taller than Winry.

Either Alphonse's body has stopped leeching as many nutrients since his soul-link started weakening, or Leed and the chimaeras have succeeded where everyone else failed and gotten Edward to drink his goddamned milk.

Well, his father is a pretty big guy. We didn't see any of his mother's family, but she seemed to be average height or so. So, Edward could end up fairly tall, depending.

Regardless, Winry is mad at him for being like that, and Edward is mad at her for being mad. He huffs out, and is met by a chuckling Leed out in the hall. He admires Winry's commitment to keeping everything she wants within arm's reach. Edward tells him that wanting specific other people too much is a bad idea, just look at what it did to him and Alphonse. I feel like this is a conversation that they should have had many times before now, and maybe they have, but it isn't written that way. Why does this time skip? Seriously, just why does it?

Anyway, Greed counters Edward the way I'd expect of him at this point, and say that Edward's desire to save Amestris is no less self-destructive, but he doesn't think he'll give up on that.

Basically, the crux of the dispute here is that Father didn't actually know what "greed" means when he created this guy.

Edward, Leed, and the furries leave in the predawn. Now that Edward's arm and leg are fixed up, they've got to get moving. Edward promises to be back, victorious, after whatever he's going to do. Which may or may not be related to what anyone else is doing, since there doesn't seem to have been any communication. Pinako remembers to give Edward a message for Hohenheim this time. Trisha's last words for him, as I recall.

Jump over to Liore. Bebop, Rocksteady, and Yoki have been blending in with the Liore reconstruction crew for the last couple of weeks or more, waiting for Scar and Dr. Marcoh to come back and give them their next mission. Yoki isn't enjoying physical labor, no surprise. Scar and Marcoh finally come back to Liore - well behind schedule and cutting it close, but seemingly triumphant.

They collect the other three, and tell them it's time to head back to Central. Cut to them walking down a forest road, with Bebop and Rocksteady commenting on the irony of an Ishvalan terrorist now working to save Amestris. Scar corrects them by saying that he's not trying to save Amestris, but to turn it into something else. Something that will give his remaining people a decent quality of life.

Also, most of the Ishvalan remnants are living inside the macroglyph radius. So even were there no other factors involved, Scar would be fighting Father for the same reason the rest of the characters are. He doesn't mention this, but it's kind of weird that he doesn't.

As he speaks, a group of people slink out of the woods by the side of the road and address him.

It's a group of rugged-looking Ishvalans, including Scar's abbot who he was briefly reunited with in the outskirts of East City way back in season one. Scar and Marcoh explain that they've been spending these last couple months networking with various resistance movements from around Amestris, including a large Ishvalan contingent.

The abbot continues to have my respect. He's totally down for armed insurgency, but only in pursuit of attainable goals and with consideration of the probable backlash. Scar mistook this for apathy and defeatism earlier, but now he and his master are on the same page. Remember kids, violence IS the answer, but only if you're asking the right question.~

The next morning, an ostentatious ceremony full of military pageantry is being conducted at an eastern fortress. The Amestrians have really ritualized these war games of theirs, unsurprisingly. After riding down the aisle between their saluting forces like some kind of nazi wedding procession, General Grumman dismounts and strikes up conversation with Miles. After exchanging pleasantries about how much easier it's going to be holding their mock battle here instead of up in the mountains this time, they start whispering about the plan.

I like that Grumman's fan is visually linked to his insurgency. The state almost certainly doesn't approve of his, shall we say, more unmanly characteristics. Fitting that the feminine little hand-fan would be the scepter he holds while talking rebellion.

On a more plot-critical note, they have a bit of an unexpected snafu. This military exercise just got a VIP observer on very short notice.

Probably a smart move on el Padre's part. And one that royally fucks up their part of the plan.

Granted, what would be an even smarter move on his part - assuming May's been captured or killed or whatever - would be to send Envy here disguised as Wrath. Each Sin has a very different ability set and requires a different set of countermeasures, and tricking Grumman and Miles into using the wrong ones could be the difference between victory and defeat. Meanwhile, having the real Wrath lay low in Central to act as a nasty surprise for anyone trying to start shit there would be a really good extra defense.

Regardless of which Sin they have breathing down their necks, Grumman and Miles need to figure out a way of getting rid of it before the plan can proceed.

That night, Alphonse is sitting in an empty military train car, by himself, and starting to suffer another of his narcolepsy-like attacks. They've been slowly getting more frequent, as I feared. And, the Briggs troops apparently decided to leave Alphonse, alone, unguarded, and narcoleptic, all night, even knowing that Wrath is on location.

Um. Why? Why is Alphonse not being guarded? Or at least watched over?

As he tries to fight off another temporary death incident, he hears a noise from outside the train and peeks out. And then steps out completely and looks around. Even though he knows he's about to collapse. Slime starts dripping from the scaffolding overhead. Uh oh. Chimaeras?

Oh...not chimaeras. Worse, or maybe better, depending.

On one hand, Gluttony is a lot more dangerous than any stitched-together monster. On the other, Alphonse built up a pretty good rapport with him during the stomach incident, and Father did say he was keeping Gluttony's memories intact when remaking him this time. So, I think Alphonse might have a chance of talking him down, if he doesn't lose consciousness first.

Well, his first impulse is to just run. Probably the best idea. If he can make it to somewhere with a lot of witnesses before he passes out, that has a higher chance of deterring Gluttony than diplomacy. Unfortunately, we learn two new facts at once. The first is that Gluttony is just being used as a bloodhound here, using his nose to help someone else track down Alphonse. The second is that, as I suspected, Hohenheim was wrong about Pride not being able to leave the macroglyph.

Now, *my* hypothesis was that the macroglyph just acts to extend Pride's reach and speed, enabling him to reach all the way across Amestris when his range is otherwise much more limited. In that case, his central body would have to be somewhere nearby for him to be attacking Alphonse aboveground away from Central. Let's see if I'm right.

Alphonse struggles futilely against the tentacles until the temporary death episode overtakes him. Apparently, no one was near enough to hear all the shouting and screaming. Why the hell did they leave him so far away from the troops? And, yep, looks like I was right about Pride. He's actually here.

With Father being very short on Sins at this point, it seems he's being forced to send Pride out into the field.

Which means the macroglyph is unguarded.

Too bad nobody knows that. If Hohenheim or Grumman found out that Pride wasn't in the tunnels, they'd probably take this opportunity to collapse as many parts of it as possible all over the country.

Also, three out of five (or four, if Envy hasn't actually been recovered) haemunculi are out here at the eastern mock-battlefield. Big, big risk on Father's part. If anyone found out about this, it wouldn't just be the macroglyph that could be attacked, but the command center at Central itself.

Well, Alphonse is captured now. I doubt a handful of Briggs soldiers watching over him would have been able to prevent this, but they could have *gotten the word out* at least. I'm guessing that they're going to disassemble Alphonse so he can't cast and keep him locked up until sacrifice time. Maybe Father will do something to strengthen his soul glyph, to make sure he survives these last critical few days. If anyone could extend Alphonse's golem body's lifespan, it would be Paternoster.



Split for image limit.

Our next cut is to Armstrong Manor, where Olivierre is indulging in her favorite pastime of staring out a window with a grim expression. Looks like she fixed the place up pretty well in the wake of her collateral damage intensive duel with Alex, which must have been a lot of work, so she's earned herself a good long window-brooding session. There's a knock at the brooding gallery's door, and Mustang comes in. She refuses to offer him tea, and they head outside to talk.

Mustang comments that this estate is big enough for a sizeable army to set up camp in. It's also, implicitly, relatively close to Central. Okay, I'm picking up what he's putting down here. Olivierre tells him that if anything were to *inexplicably* happen to her in the near future, she'd rather leave the estate to Mustang than to anyone in her family. She hates him slightly less than any of her siblings, and he can at least make good use of it.

Fucking hell Olivierre, did your brother and sisters all forget your birthday or something?

She doesn't seem to hate her parents. Or, if she does, she does a good job of masking it while in their presence.

Hmm. I wonder. Given her obsession with personal strength and meritocracy, maybe she hates being from an aristocratic lineage? That might explain why she'd take a post like Fort Briggs, as far away from her wealth and privilege as possible, where her personal ability is constantly being put to the test. Granted, her upbringing undoubtedly gave her some unfair advantages in attaining her rank in the first place, and that might be a constant sore spot for her. If so, taking over the estate might be something she sees as an unfortunate strategic necessity in this situation. And it explains why she'd rather give it to Mustang (who seems to have risen through the ranks despite being from a working or at most middle class background), even though she dislikes him, than to one of her siblings who was raised to expect and rely on wealth.

I could be totally off base. We still don't know much about Olivierre's past and relationships. But from what we DO know about her ideals and sensibilities, this is my best working hypothesis for now.

The conversation moves out into the front garden, where two of Mustang's cronies are undercover as groundskeepers. He and Olivierre have been building further ties over the last couple months, it seems. You know what would have been cool? I'll bet you'll never guess, you'd have to have really keen pattern recognition to be able to predict what I'm about to say. So, what would have been cool? If we actually saw this happen onscreen. That's what. Mustang then hands Olivierre a bouquet, with a handwritten note in it that relays Hawkeye's warning about Selim being another haemunculus.

He was sitting on that information for months, and is only just not sharing it with Olivierre. Despite them having apparently been in touch throughout this time.

...

Some of these scenes were definitely meant to have happened before the timeskip. That's the only way to make sense of them.

But then...why not just have one or two more episodes before the timeskip?

God, this is giving me a headache.

...

He also tells her that the hyacinths he gave her were a complement to her feminine mystique, which pisses her off to the point of burning the bouquet and kicking him out.

I'd normally say that this was an uncharacteristically petty and sexist move on Mustang's part. Given the way that Olivierre has been treating him and his friends (including her own brother) from the beginning though, I honestly can't blame him for getting back at her in small ways. It's a good reminder that the "good guys" aren't all good guys, and the allies aren't necessarily friends. Father is an existential threat that everyone is essentially being forced to work together against. We can back to good guys versus bad guys once the literal demons are no longer a mutual threat.

The next morning, the day before the Promised Day. We return to the eastern wargame camp, where Grumman and Miles are still locked down by Wrath. Also, a seven foot tall iron golem just got stolen from under their noses, which isn't doing much for morale. Grumman murmurs to some of his underlings that maybe they should just blow up the tower that Wrath is watching from, and they quickly insist that that would be a bad idea. I guess Grumman still hasn't quite internalized what Mustang told him about how hard to kill haemunculi are. I can't exactly blame him, really. For someone from an otherwise low fantasy setting, this is the kind of thing you'd really have to see to believe.

Cut to Wrath's tower, where Grumman's musings are being reported to the Moustache in Chief. One or more of Grumman's confidantes are spying on him, it would appear. And, they've learned that concentrating so many suspected dissident force out east here is actually a ruse to get Central's attention while the real threat comes from elsewhere.

Ishvalan guerillas and Amestrian underground cells have been trickling into the area around Central. It seems that the real plan is for them to launch a coup while Central's attention is elsewhere, and then for General Grumman and his forces to quickly turn on the Central observers while the latter's supply lines are cut off and march on Central to "liberate" it from the rebels, with the help of his old protégé Colonel Mustang who is already in place. Grumman gets to be the one who saved Amestris from King Kuck Klang's negligence, and the bulk of the military will likely side with him once Central is secured by Grumman and Miles' forces.

Well, we know that Grumman actually WAS frustrated by Wrath's presence out here, so I'm pretty sure that he's been feeding false intel to suspected spies. Or else he was just staying in character from the beginning, in which case Wrath's spies have gotten some real intel that could actually fuck things up for Grumman and Co. Hmm...no, no I don't think that's it. Taking Central from Father's puppet regime isn't actually going to stop him from doing the thing, and he's likely not going to let it distract him overmuch so long as his bunker and the macroglyph junction tunnels remain adequately defended. So yeah, Grumman is bullshitting here.

...or not. Wrath himself acts like this could be a serious problem. Well, probably because he knows that Pride is currently NOT in position to guard the macroglyph, so if someone were to blow up the right things in Central right now they could actually ruin it. But does he know that Grumman doesn't know that?

Well. The only way to see whose I-know-you-know game goes down more layers is to watch events unfold and see who went deeper.

Wrath decides to head back to Central with a few of his top men, while leaving the rest here to watch Grumman and Miles in his stead. He gets on a high speed train, and rides back to Central while the cultists he's bringing back with him grouse about how stupid it was to leave Mustang free, even minionless. Wrath says nothing. Why *did* he leave Mustang and the Elrics free to act? Was that a small, random act of spite against Father, or part of a deeper, more comprehensive betrayal that he's still waiting for the right moment to spring? How much of his own resentment is Wrath even conscious of?

As he silently listens to the cultist generals' griping, the train slows down due to a flock of sheep being herded across the tracks up ahead. The shepherds are hurried on out of the way, and the engine car decouples and leaves the rest of the train stranded on a bridge over a deep river canyon, which subsequently explodes.

HAH!

Okay, that was brilliant. I knew Grumman was tricking them into thinking he knew less than he did, but he actually tricked me as well with his "why don't we just blow up the tower?" spiel. He DOES understand how tough haemunculi are. Blowing Wrath up wouldn't do a thing to him, but blowing up the vehicle he's on while it's in the middle of nowhere the afternoon before the Promised Day? I don't think he can keep his superspeed up for too long at a time, going by previous showings, so it's probably going to take him at least a day or two to make it back to Central *or* out east. If he's removed from play for the next thirty-six hours, that's all that matters. Wiping out a few more of Father's inner cult members in the process is just an extra cherry on top.

In fact, there's a best-case scenario on top of this: if Wrath's loyalties are still wavering, maybe this will just give him the perfect opportunity that tips the scales? If he were to, say, just not hurry *too* much on his walk across eastern Amestris, then he'd have plausible deniability in the event of Father's victory ("I came as fast as I could! But it seems you did not need your lowly Wrath to ensure victory against these pitiful creatures in the end, of course."), and the freedom to quietly disappear and make a new life for himself in the event of his defeat.

I wonder if Mustang's affinity for this sort of dirty trick is something he developed on his own, or a skill he learned from his commander? Grumman seems to be all about counterintelligence, which is also how Mustang's secured most of his victories that didn't just come down to immediate application of fire.

Back in the tower at the eastern base, the four star who Wrath left in charge of watching Grumman and Miles gets the news, reducing his face to a picture of blind panic. He stares down in unthinking horror at the forces arrayed on the ground below. Grumman looks up at him, and does this:

It matches the opening guitar riffs of the end credits theme perfectly. Ever since we got the latest outro music, each episode has ended with a minor triumph that suits it. This is a pretty major escalation over the previous ones though (with the possible exception of Envy's defeat).

As the outro picks up, we get a glimpse of Hawkeye (who Wrath seemingly did not bring out east with him. Curious) and some other members of Mustang's old team running inventory on warehouse stacked full of crates.

I'm guessing those boxes either contain weapons for taking Central, or explosives for collapsing important macroglyph intersections. Or both. Probably both. To get back to a running theme, Hawkeye refers to one of the others by rank, and he tells her to knock it off with that. She smiles, apologizes, and says that she loves Mustang being answerable to them now as well as the reverse.

The outro finishes, and now for the tension-restoring coda! The remaining top brass are in the Central Command meeting room, panicking over what to do with Wrath gone. Olivierre remains rigid and icy as her colleagues ramble and argue. Having a personality like hers definitely makes this type of infiltration easier; if you look sullen and expressionless most of the time anyway, no one can tell when you're doing it on purpose to hide your true emotions.

She muses to herself about how pathetic this lot is, falling into panic and indecision the minute their leader is gone. Not like her own chain of command at Fort Briggs, which she drilled and shaped with a strong chain of command that can be broken at any point and still be functional on either side of the break. Of course, that's because she was building an army to defend the border with a powerful and persistent enemy far from the Amestrian logistical centers. Father was building a control system that would never be able to turn against him. You can build a cult that is also an effective fighting force, but there are some major differences in priorities between those two models.

Just as Olivierre has formulated a plan for getting the others to rally behind her so she can get them to act in a presumably self-defeating way, the door opens and she is introduced to the head of state.

What undermines the tension of this scene just a little bit is the knowledge that for them to have not heard Sloth's gigantic footsteps approaching the conference room, Father would have had to be doing something to muffle them. And, well...using his phenomenal cosmic powers to silence Sloth's footsteps just to make his entrance more surprising and dramatic for people who he doesn't need to impress anyway is just so incredibly in-character for Father.

Still, his incurable childishness doesn't quite mitigate the fact that Father assuming personal control of the state is going to make things a lot harder. However unconscious or indecisive Wrath's acts of sabotage might have been, they were still vital for the humans getting this far. It's not going to be like that anymore.

The fact that he could vaporize anyone and everyone with a glance is also a way in which him having people in his line of sight is bad. Not *that* much worse than Wrath already was in this regard, but still worse.

On the other hand...if he's out of his bunker, he's more vulnerable. We know that he has expanded senses in his lair full of philostone pipes, but I'm not sure if that's true upstairs in the building's human district. If they can get Dr. Marcoh or someone who he taught his philostone-dissolution spell to inside the building, they'd stand a good chance of sneaking up close enough to hit him with it. That's probably the only thing that can kill him, and he's never going to be more accessible than this.

Then again, depending on how those mass produced golems work exactly, he might be able to see and hear through them. In which case, he's almost certainly already activated them and has them securing the building. Hmm. More information needed.

The generals all fall silent and thank their god for honoring them with his presence in this hour of need. Father assures them that he remains with them here in Central, and they are not rudderless.

He also puts his hand on Olivierre's shoulder.

That's not a good sign, as far as her being able to trick him goes.

For her own part, Olivierre hasn't seen Father before, and she may or may not have met Hohenheim. However, she did have Edward describe him to her, and he has Sloth (who she does recognize) at his side, so she knows exactly who this is and what his presence could mean. End.


Why was this timeskip?

Why. The fuck. Was this timeskip?

It ruined almost everything. And nearly all the other stuff in this episode would be great if it weren't for the timeskip.

It feels like it was forcibly inserted into a random place, with some scenes that should have happened before it being cut off, and some that should have happened during or before it shooting off too early. And it turns half of the characters' actions into nonsense.

On top of robbing us of some really important and potentially fun to watch character development. Especially with Greed, but also Winry, Alphonse, and the conspirators. It really, really feels like I skipped an episode, if not multiple episodes.

One of my patrons has informed me that there was some other shonen manga around this time that did a timeskip and sold very successfully, and that the publisher - in the most extreme case of "producers not understanding what people actually like about media" that I've ever heard - encouraged all their other mangaka to shoehorn in a timeskip. Because it's definitely timeskips in and of themselves that the customers like, rather than any particular plot circumstances surrounding Naruto's. "I like stories with timeskips, I'd like to buy more comics like that" is a thing that people say to themselves all the time.

I don't know if that's actually what happened here. Even if it did, I think the author could have definitely at least waited another one or two issues to get the really important stuff done first, no? In any case, there's no way that Arakawa doesn't deserve at least some blame for this.

I'm not even sure how to grade this episode. Half of the story in it happened offscreen, and most of the rest was out of order.

Frustrating, given how strong each of those pieces was. At least the chronologically sensible thing with Grumman and Wrath came at the end to leave the trainwreck (hehehe get it?) on a high note.