Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood S2E22: “The Oath In the Tunnel”

Sounds like we’ll be headed back down into the macroglyph this episode. Which means either Pride is going to be taken care of, or he’s going to grab someone (probably Alphonse, since he’s still in sleep mode) and use them to lure the others back underground where he has the advantage. It’s certainly what I’d do if I were him, assuming there’s an access point not too far away.


We pick up where we left off, with Ninjette and Leed having Gluttony stunlocked in the darkness, Lionheart ineffectually wailing on Pride while the latter waits for the lights to come back on, and Edward and Simian kind of standing around feeling useless. Is Hohenheim going to show up for this fight? They’ve got to be making enough noise for him to hear them at this point, the village is not far away. Inside of Leed, Greed is sort of creepily complimenting Ling on his ninja lady, and Ling is sort of uncomfortably trying to get him to shut up as he keeps fighting.

Despite this distraction, the Xingese are managing enough dismemberments on Gluttony that they’ve got to be working through his battery almost as fast as Mustang did when he burned Lust. Of course, Gluttony just got recharged, so he probably has a lot more hp to spend right now than she did at the start of that fight. The humans might well tire out before his core does. The calculus shifts further into their favor when Graninja arrives on the scene as well and starts helping them cut Gluttony down faster and with less effort expended.

Guess he lagged a bit behind his granddaughter. Old age starting to catch up with him or suchlike.

Graninja also does an (internal?) monologue about how the Emperor of Xing has the divine ability to “read the dragon’s pulse” to sense ki, and that those who serve the imperial bloodline inherit this ability. I doubt that that’s literally true, given the type of fantasy that the FMAverse seems to be, unless Xing has some giant occult conspiracy secret of its own going on that keeps things working that way. More likely, the bodyguard ninjas just get esoteric training that involves some rudimentary combat-alkahestry. I believe that he believes it, though, and this detail of the Xingese imperial cult is a neat bit of worldbuilding flavor. Anyway, he and his granddaughter have been laying low in Central and getting lots of practice tracking philostone ki signatures, so when Pride and Gluttony headed out this way they were able to follow them and snoop on the unfolding events.

…huh, I just realized. Maybe when May said she felt tortured souls wriggling under her feet in Amestris, at least part of what she was feeling was Pride? He normally has his tendrils extended all around the macroglyph, so maybe she was sensing him in addition to whatever system Father has in place that lets him suppress alchemy.

Graninja reports that in addition to the haemunculi they tracked out this way, and the extra one inhabiting Ling’s body, they detected another truly MASSIVE signature in the nearby village. Makes sense. Given how much juice Hohenheim and Father have been respectively using over the last few centuries, Hohenheim probably has a hell of a lot more left even with Father’s recent protostone diet.

I wonder. If Hohenheim and Father fought one on one, would that be enough to tip the scale in Hohenheim’s favor despite Father’s greater alchemical knowledge? Well, I doubt Father would risk finding out if he could help it, so it’s probably best to eliminate as many Sins as possible before we give that a try.

Edward and Simian assure Graninja that the entity in the village isn’t hostile at least for now, and the latter suggests that he go help Lionheart against Pride while Ninjette and Leed handle Gluttony. Edward is a little reluctant to leave Gluttony to them, given Ninjette’s very recent recovery and automail grafting, but when she starts breaking the explosives out against Gluttony he lets himself be convinced.

Edward also gets caught in the periphery of an explosion in the process of being convinced, just like he got hit right in the chest by Simian earlier. Edward is really leaning into the slapstick, this episode, and the damage is all going away at Loony Toons rates. Man, if he could just figure out how to activate this state while he’s in combat he’d be damned invincible. :/

Another major factor in his decision to go help out with Pride is that the explosions and screams are starting to get the villagers pretty antsy, and they’re working fast to get the lights back on after whatever mind-boggling sorcery Edward used to shut it off last episode.

Meanwhile, Lionheart is starting to get visibly tired out, and he’s stopping mid-beating to catch his breath more and more often.

Pride, for his part, still hasn’t seemed to have used any red-lightning-regen at all. His clothes are all ripped up, and he’s got dirt all over him from being batted around, but I don’t think he’s had to spend even a single Xerxian on healing yet. That little kid body is put together tough as hell.

Edward and Graninja head over to help out Lionheart, with Edward asking about what sorts of bombs and gadgets he has at hand. Edward seems to have an idea of how to use some of them against Pride.

Cut to Central. Mustang is back with the brothel madam who runs his secret hooker army. He’s had her (and her contacts, presumably) doing historical research, and the photo record reveals that there’s always been a kid who looks a lot like Selim Bradley hanging around Central Command. He’s always been some military bigshot’s son, or baby brother, or nephew.

How long have they had photography in this world, I wonder? In real life history, cameras weren’t invented that long before combustion engines. I guess a few decades of common use is all it would take, though. Pride’s childlike appearance makes him more obvious than an adult-looking immortal would be.

Ah, we have a date for the earliest photos! Fifty years before the present. That matches up fairly well for cameras to start coming into common usage, with the give-or-take 1920’s tech level of modern Amestris.

Black Ops Madam has also researched Wrath’s alleged hometown. His early life there is all documented, but there’s no one living there who can remember having met him in his youth. I guess Mustang just wanted to confirm the autobiography he got at the end of last season. Sensible, as there’s no guarantee that Wrath wasn’t spinning a yarn to make himself seem more sympathetic or what have you. Tactical Espionage Action Madam (now named as Madam Christmas. She was probably named in a previous episode, but her appearances have been sparse and I didn’t catch it until now) tells Mustang that while researching this was hard, her motivation increased as she went. The more she learned about the history of Amestris’ upper military leadership, the more she felt herself pulled down the rabbit hole.

Man, I kind of wish we had a full subplot of her doing this. Nice little creepypasta-esque psychological/conspiracy story, with her likely doubting her own sanity after a certain point. Ah well.

She asks how this could have been covered up for so long, and Mustang answers.

That’s not just referring to Pride’s current “father” who is literally named King (Kobra Kai Commander Magnataur III the Impaler) Bradley. Pride has always, appropriately enough, hid behind pomp and respectability. It’s a trick Father learned in Xerxes, after all. People ask why the king is digging a giant arcane circle around the country, and they’re dissuaded with “because reasons” simply because he’s the king. People ask who’s wiping out villages around the perimeter, and are satisfied with “we’re working on the problem” because he’s the king.

…

You can see why I don’t think the Xingese emperor actually has any special divine connection going on. This episode is coming back to one of the story’s major themes, and I think Graninja’s little emperor-worshipping spiel was placed here intentionally.

I feel like this is also closing the loop on one of Mustang’s character arcs. It started with him realizing he had no ability to give Hawkeye and the others orders anymore, during the Gluttony fiasco. Now he’s realizing that hierarchical authority isn’t just a collective delusion, but a malicious scam that he bought into even when he thought he was defying the system.

…

Return to the forest near that village, where some of those well meaning locals we saw before have found their way to the action with lanterns.

They panic at the sight of a beastman mauling what appears to be a small child, and shine their lights directly on the two.

They realize their mistake really, really, really quickly after making it. Not that it helps at that point.

Surprisingly, Pride doesn’t kill them. That’s more merciful than I was expecting. Instead he just rips Lionheart open with one set of tentacles while using another to steal a lantern and set the bushes on fire. Now he has a bigger and harder-to-extinguish light source that’s likely to spread, assuming it’s been dry lately.

He launches the killing blow on Lionheart, but…then Edward shows up just in time to block it.

Because, you know. I was on the edge of my seat for this extremely minor character’s fate.

-_-

I’m starting to feel like Hughes’ death was sort of false advertising. It was signaling that this is a story in which good guys can die. But at this point...I wonder if this is down to Arakawa herself wimping out after doing it once, or to pressure from the publisher.

Edward shakes his head in disbelief that that obnoxious little kid he met back in Central is actually the penultimate boss. Pride tells Edward that outer appearances are just symbolic, and uses the opportunity to make another crack about Edward’s height. Um…Pride, I think you kinda dissed yourself there at least as badly as you did Edward. Pride raises his tentacles for another attack, and we cut back to Central.

On the nighttime streets of the capital, some undercover cops are looking for Mustang. He disappeared into that bar/brothel he often goes to, but hasn’t come out in a weirdly long time.

Also, they just learned a bit of information that somehow they hadn’t picked up until now. “Madam Christmas” isn’t just a contact or ally of Mustang’s. Her red light pseudonym is actually a contraction of her real name, Christine Mustang. She’s his foster mother.

That…huh. Interesting.

Much earlier in the Let’s Watch, I suspected that Roy might have been abused as a child. Him having been raised by foster parents could also be related to this. I wonder if Christine was in the same profession, back at that time? If so, I wonder how this colored Mustang’s perception of class, gender, etc growing up. Then again, the fact that the secret police didn’t know who Madam Christmas was right off the bat indicates that she’s changed her location and persona at least once since her adoptive son left home, so who knows how she (and her husband? Did she have one at the time? Does she still now?) was living back then.

The investigators respond to this update by deciding to storm the building. As soon as they reach the entrance though, it explodes. I’m guessing the Mustangs had some gunpowder bombs placed, and Roy shot a fireblast over his shoulder to set them off while everyone fled out the back or whatever.

Ah, not out the back! Down through the floor, it turns out.

They’re in a tunnel now. Time for an oath to be sworn?

Christine’s employees have all left Central by now, she explains, and most of them have probably gotten clear of Amestris itself. He promises to get her a new and better residence after the revolution. She makes him promise to not get himself killed, and then sneaks off into the (subway? Absurdly spacious sewer?) tunnel with her suitcase in hand.

Well, there’s our oath. It’s basically the same one that Roy made to Edward the last time they met in person, and which was also its episode’s namesake. Let’s see if this becomes a rule of three by the time this conflict is resolved.

Roy goes in a different direction through the tunnels, and meets up with Hawkeye, Hawkeye’s doggo, and two more of his old team members, who have been waiting for him. These undercity tunnels are suspiciously complex and large. I wonder if at least part of this network is an old project of Father’s before his lair and macroglyph took their current shape? That would make a lot of sense. Hawkeye reports that Wrath took Pride with him when he went out to the eastern wargames a couple days ago.

That explains how Pride got out to where Alphonse was; presumably, they had Gluttony stashed away in the train with them. I suspect Pride took Gluttony and Alphonse into the nearest macroglyph entrance after capturing the latter, and used his amplified reach and speed down there to get them back to the area around Central without taking another train.

Anyway, Mustang informs them in turn about Grumman’s trainbomb ensuring that Wrath won’t be able to make it back here too quickly. The downside, of course, is that what appears to have been the assassination of the head of state has spurred heightened security around all administrative centers and VIPs in the country, which will make whatever they’re planning to do now harder. Still, given Wrath’s unique combination of aboveboard political power, speed, and near-invincibility in combat, this is probably the lesser evil. Riza asks Mustang for orders, which is an interesting about face from the Gluttony Incident. I don’t think it’s a reversal now, though. Rather, Roy has since proven himself to be a worthy leader to follow for Hawkeye and the others regardless of the authority and recognition he once derived from the state. Speaking of states, Mustang reminds them that there’s no going back from this coming battle. Two days from now, either everyone is dead or philostoned, or he’s the provisional leader of Neo-Amestris. Their order is something separate from the previous one they served under.

Although…he does still use the word “fuhrer” to describe his future position. Ehhh…baby steps, I guess. Or maybe I’m just giving these war criminals too much credit altogether.

He does specify that they’ll be “rebuilding” Amestris though, so that’s a good sign that things are going to differ on a social contract level at least eventually. He also relays the order his foster mother just gave him: no dying, he’s going to need all the trustworthy advisors he can get for the democratization process.

Our oath has a few signatories now. Let’s see how many keep it.

From there, we finally cut back to the battle in the forest. The fire is spreading, but the fight has moved into a largish clearing where that doesn’t pose an immediate threat. Lionheart is too wounded to keep fighting, from the looks of it. Edward, however, is somehow actually parrying Pride’s attacks.

Oh, hah! I didn’t notice until I paused the video to take a screenshot, but Edward’s cyberarm is covered in a graphene layer just like Greed uses. I guess he learned that trick from him during their time together. Wonder if he’s keeping a carbon supply handy, like a bag of powdered coal or the like? A second later, Pride’s inner monologue confirms what I thought I saw. And, apparently the lightweight alloy has a very high carbon content, so Edward is able to deploy the Greed-pattern defensive layer just by transmuting the matter already in it. Handy, no pun intended.

Pride’s tentacles aren’t metaphysical cut-through-anything bullshit, then. They can pierce stone and metal, but have trouble with stuff as strong as carbon fiber. Wonder what sort of material they’re made of, in that case? Unless there actually are material limits to what “shadow” can cut through? Pride is weird.

Although…you know, it looks like Pride should just as easily be able to just snake those tendrils around behind Edward and strike from all sides at once. He might be as fast as Pride (outside of the tunnels, at least), but his arm can only be in one place at a time, right? True, Pride is trying not to kill Edward, so stabbing him from all directions would be a no no, but what about grabbing him?

Seeing that Edward might be trouble, Pride uses the firelight to reach some tendrils back into Alphonse’s suit and walk it over.

Edward isn’t sure how to adapt to this change in circumstances, with Alphonse being walked closer and closer to him. But then he notices something hidden in the nearby bushes, and starts smiling. Graninja jumps out of hiding and, at Edward’s command, throws a flashbomb. The bright light then…destroys…Pride’s limbs?

Wait, what? I thought he liked light? But…too much disintegrates him, just like too much darkness does? And Edward somehow figured this out without ever seeing it demonstrated? The fuck?

Like. Okay, so if Pride is literally made of “darkness” or some metaphysical weirdness like that, it would make sense that a strong enough light could disrupt him. Sure. But then that raises the issue of “darkness” being strong enough to penetrate stone and metal, but not strong enough to penetrate carbon fiber. So…this “darkness” has a specific tensile strength and hardness. And it sometimes acts like a shadow being cast by something, but also sometimes acts like a reservoir of “anti-light” that can be neutralized. Huh?

Again. My biggest problem with this isn’t that Pride’s physical properties don’t appear to make sense. I can accept that wed need a long lesson in obscure alchemical lore to understand the hows and whys. The issue is that Edward seems to have somehow figured all this out, despite not having been told by Greed OR seeing anything to demonstrate these principles that he could base a hypothesis on. At best, this is just a really bad breach of Sanderson’s laws, the hero using magic we don't understand to solve a problem we also don't understand. At worst…well, I’ll get back to this at the end if it turns out to be neccessary.

Meanwhile, Leed and Ninjette chase Gluttony through the forest. The flashbomb gets Gluttony’s attention, and gives him something to flee toward. Graninja keeps pace with him, tracking him to the other battle-in-progress, but Ninjette starts having automail issues, and Leed (still in Ling mode) stays back to make sure she’s alright. Hopefully they’ll catch up sooner rather than later.

As the light burst starts to die out, Edward has Simian drag Alphonse out of Pride’s range.

Pride tries to prevent this of course, but they just flashbomb him again, and once more he loses a large mass of shadow-shoggoth material. Gluttony arrives at just the right moment to be caught off-guard by the next flashbomb, and momentarily blinded. By the time the two haemunculi recover, Alphonse is out of sight and hopefully out of reach.

That was their last flash bomb, but they made it count.

Pride turns to Gluttony, and asks how beat up he is. Gluttony replies that he’s lost a lot of Xerxians. Pride acknowledges that grimly, and confesses that he’s taken significant damage as well. Gluttony suggests that they should retreat. Return to Father for recharging, and try again later. I’m not sure if that would be doable in time for the Promised Day, but thinking that many steps ahead is not within Gluttony’s ability/

Besides, Pride has a better idea anyway.

Gluttony reacts in fear when Pride starts grinning at him malevolently. Begs him not to. Even tries to run, as the shadowy tentacles surround and seize him. Oh no. Is he seriously going to…FUCK.

His last words as he’s torn apart and has his philostone consumed is crying out for Lust to help him.

RIP Gluttony. I don’t think there’s going to be any coming back from this type of dissolution.

On one hand, I feel like it’s kind of cheap that the story contrived to prevent the good guys from needing to kill an innocent like Gluttony, or from having to deal with the moral and practical dilemmas of what to do with him after defeating his family. On the other, it really highlights what a monster Pride is, and it’s an emotional gut punch that breaks up the action effectively.

…although, hang on. If haemunculi can just eat each other’s cores directly like that, why did Father need that giant incinerator/distillery when he reabsorbed Greed? Maybe that just makes the process more efficient, or something? Or maybe this is just a unique Pride ability? That's sort of a dangerous power for Father to have trusted him with, in that case. I don’t know.

Although, now that I’m thinking back to that scene, I wonder if you could actually recover Gluttony from Pride and recreate him, the way that Father does when he reabsorbs and recreates his children? Maybe. I doubt it’ll happen though. Pride doesn’t seem like he’d have the inclination (and possibly not even the knowhow) to do this, and I suspect the story will reach its conclusion before Father gets a chance to.

Pride looks up from his fratricidal meal, visibly replenished and bolstered. He also has Gluttony’s senses now, which means he won’t be nearly as easy to hide from. He also complains that he’s inherited Gluttony’s hunger, though, which is annoying for him. Wonder if he lost a few IQ points too.

Back in Central, Father asks everyone what they expect Mustang to do next. In a rare show of weakness, he verbally acknowledges that he doesn’t know Mustang personally like some of the humans present do, and so he’d like their input on what they should be expecting.

Along with that asking for advice and the weakness that implies, Father looks so mundane in this setting. Just a middle aged blond guy, wearing an outfit that makes him look silly rather than regal with these modern surroundings and lighting. That’s probably why he doesn’t usually come up here. Not only to build up the mystery around himself as the ancient spirit that guides the cult from below Central, but also to prevent them from seeing anything that could undermine that larger-than-life-even-for-a-literal-demigod reputation.

In response to his question, Olivierre says that in Mustang’s place she’d try to kidnap Queen Bradley. Father scoffs at this, saying that Mustang would have to be truly stupid to think that would help him in any way that mattered. Well, he asked what she thought Mustang would do, not whether or not it would be smart. Though I guess that also makes it a backhanded insult to her, since she said that that’s what SHE would do in his place. Combined with the hand he put on her shoulder during his entrance, it’s really seeming like Father knows her game or at least suspects it.

Regardless of how good or bad an idea capturing Queen would be, it seems like she’s right. Either due to actually betraying Mustang’s plan, or due to guessing (un)lucky.

Why was Queen driving out this way, outside of the city?

Did Wrath tell her to flee the country? Was she going east to see him? She doesn’t seem perturbed by what happened to him; has she not heard yet, or did he somehow get a secret communication to her that he was alright?

In any case, this is going to provide a moment of truth for Wrath when and if he gets back to Central. His father, or his wife? He did make a point of telling Hawkeye that his wife was the only thing he ever got to choose for himself. Was he just betraying this information in a random bit of catharsis as his emotional state declined, or was he actually trying to help them there? “This is how you can give me the excuse I need to break free,” or “this is my one tether to humanity that you can pull on,” or something to that effect?

Mustang might be doing the exact wrong thing by threatening her. Or perhaps the exact right thing, depending on what he does with her next. So, Hawkeye and Mustang versus Father; who has a better handle on what Wrath will do? Father knows him much better, of course, but positive humanlike characteristics in his offspring are a major blind spot of his. Like I said, a real moment of truth awaits Wrath when he finishes his jog back to Central.

End episode.


The stuff relating to Father, Wrath, and the officers maneuvering against them is promising, and the Madam Christmas reveal was intriguing, but those are very small parts of the episode. This was almost all fight scene, and while the fight was mooostly good, it suffers badly from the fact that, to unfortunately get back to the point I hoped I wouldn't have to: Pride is an ass pull. Not his existence, obviously; there are seven deadly sins after all. Not his appearance or personality; the Selim Bradley twist was effectively built upto from early in the series. But, his combat abilities and his role in Father's organization are hard to interpret as anything other than post-hoc authorial scrambling.

It struck me as odd that Pride wasn’t mentioned at all in “Those Who Lurk Underground,” when all the other Sins – including Sloth, who was still half a series away from showing up in person – were discussed. I inferred that Pride hadn’t yet been created, and was therefore confused when he later introduced himself as the “first” of the siblings. Then, he started displaying poorly defined abilities whose power varies in an unquantified and unaddressed way, which I sort of inferred was related to where he is in relation to the macroglyph but now I'm much less sure of. And now, he’s sporting weaknesses that seem to contradict his main purpose and concept (darkness destroys his limbs, but he can reach through an entire country-sized tunnel network of pitch darkness to attack someone holding a candle on the far side of it...?) and that the good guys exploit to turn the battle around without having had a way of learning them.

Basically, what I’m saying is that Pride looks a lot like an unfinished product. It feels like the story caught up with Arakawa before she could figure out exactly how she wanted him to work and the details of his role and how the good guys were going to beat him. I could be wrong about this, but I really don’t think that I am. Pride playing such a major role in the immediate wake of the timeskip, with all of its own issues, is just adding one more thing to alienate me from the story.

I loved the production values of this fight. It had some of the best animation of the show so far, which is saying something. The fight choreography was great. The atmosphere and feeling of desperation and pulling out all the stops against an overwhelming foe was great. Gluttony’s death was painful and awful for me in the best possible way, despite its moral convenience for the protagonists. But the issues surrounding Pride just showed too many of the strings for me to get into the story like I usually can with FMA:B.