Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood S2E23: “Filial Affection”

“Filial piety” is an old timey term for the loyalty a child owes to a parent. The title hopefully indicates that Hohenheim is going to earn himself some of this by finally going to put it together that the explosions and screaming noises coming from the direction his son just went in might be something he should investigate. Or, I suppose, it could have to do with some intra-haemunculus politics. Well, let’s see!


Another “Last Time On” that flatteringly describes Edward “working out a plan” to get Alphonse free of Pride, using information that neither he nor the audience had access to. Then we open on the unconscious, but de-Prided, Alphonse being worried over by Hohenheim. A few hundred meters over, Pride uses the sense of smell he lifted from Gluttony to catch Hohenheim’s scent, and decides that capturing Edward might be the best way to lure him closer. Reinvigorated by eating his brother, Pride quickly puts Edward on the defensive.

And, just then, Greed takes over from Ling again. He refuses to help when Ninjette tells him they should help Edward, and also refuses to let Ling take back the wheel.

I suspect Greed is pretending to betray the humans now, knowing that if Hohenheim DOES come over to help Edward that would be the perfect time for everyone to alpha strike Pride at once. If he was actually betraying them, he’d have just let Edward run up to the puppetted Alphonse and stabbed Lionheart and Simian in the back.

Well, if that’s what Greed is trying to do, Pride ain’t buying it. Leed and Ninjette nearly get sliced in half by toothy pseudopods an instant later. Well, I suppose even if he’s resuming combat, having Greed back in control of Leed at this point is still the best idea. The fire has spread enough that ki-sensing is no longer needed, and only Greed can deploy the armor that’s proven effective against Pride. In these battlefield conditions, yeah, I’d say Greed takes point again, and I think Ling probably agrees.

Also, new music! First new track in quite a long time. It’s a very tense, creepy theme, appropriate for being hunted through a burning midnight forest by the world’s brattiest shoggoth.

Flash back over to Hohenheim, who has opened Alphonse up and somehow coaxed his blood seal back into action. Or maybe Al just coincidentally woke up again while Hohenheim was tinkering with him, that could also be.

Phrasing, Alphonse.

Hohenheim muses on what Pride seems to have done. Not just puppeting Alphonse, but also seemingly keeping him dormant for as long as he needed to use the armor. And, here the show acknowledges something that I’ve been musing about since about a third of the way through this Let’s Watch.

Edward and Alphonse are Pride’s…uncles…more or less. Or perhaps cousins, depending on how you interpret Father and Hohenheim’s relationship. Whatever they are, it appears to fall within Wog-Sothoth’s definition of blood relative, which allowed Pride to hijack the blood seal in a way that an unrelated haemunculus probably couldn’t.

This is probably a reminder for Hohenheim as well as confirmation for the audience. This is an unwanted part of his family he’s dealing with here. Both sides of the conflict are extensions of his own legacy, regardless of how much or how little agency he had in creating it.

Graninja and Lionheart stagger over to Alphonse, Simian, and Hohenheim, and update them on the situation. The fire can’t be easily contained at this point, and now that Pride has Gluttony’s senses it wouldn’t even help much. The Xingese are out of flashbangs, so they can’t do that again. The others strongly imply that Hohenheim ought to go help out.

Hmm. I suspect that Hohenheim is going to figure out a way of using the family spiritual link against Pride.

Alphonse, meanwhile, feels guilty about all of this.

Alphonse, I’d personally cast more blame on Miles and Hook with their clownshoes decision to leave you unguarded far away from anyone else when they knew about your condition.

Anyway, Alphonse seems to be thinking along the same lines I was, and says he might have a plan that Hohenheim’s knowledge and skills might enable. Then we cut back to the ongoing battle, which Ninjette has fled at Edward and Leed’s insistence. Leed and Edward are being overwhelmed, now that Pride is refreshed and in his element, and before long he knocks them down in the middle of a freshly burned clearing.

Ninjette tries to sneak back up on Pride, but a creature made of eye-covered tentacles with the world’s best nose is kind of impossible to sneak up on in open ground. Hell, she doesn’t even make it closer than a tree at the edge of the clearing.

With Edward and Ninjette both pinned down, Pride turns his attention to the exposed Leed. He asks his little brother for any last words. Greed just tells him the same thing he told Father the last time this happened, and promises to give him a stomach ache. Before he eats Greed (and I guess sort of just breaks Ling into pieces? Is that how that would work?), his new Gluttony senses detect a familiar scent. He turns and sees Hohenheim entering the clearing.

Pride is pretty glad to see him again. Either because he’s been wanting revenge for that time he taunted him in the tunnels, or because the Promised Day is tomorrow and they’re planning to use him for it. Probably both, really.

Hohenheim just stands at the edge of the clearing, answering Pride’s questions and challenges with terse, ambiguous replies. Pride withdraws all his tentacles back around himself, his full attention on Hohenheim. He must know that Hohenheim might be trying to force exactly this response, distracting him to let the others escape. But, Pride is enabling that anyway; either he considers Hohenheim to be enough of a threat that he really has no choice but to drop the others for now, or a valuable enough prize that he should take priority over Edward and Greed.

Those balances of understanding between opponents are always fascinating to me.

Anyway, while they’re waiting for each other to act, Alphonse comes barreling out of the woods and charges right toward Pride. Erm…Alphonse, I hope there was more to your genius plan than this. Even if Pride lets you get within striking range before his reflexes kick in, you’re not going to do any more damage to him in close quarters than you could with ranged earthbending attacks. Is your suit stuffed with flashbombs or something? No, the Xingese are out of those. Well, I’ll just assume there’s more to the plan than this, because even after being dead for a few hours Alphonse should be way too smart for this.

So, Pride intercepts him. Alphonse got closer than I expected him too, but not close enough to touch his central body. Pride is understandably underwhelmed.

Pride removes Alphonse’s helmet, presumably with the intent of pouring himself back in. Edward tries to intervene, but Hohenheim puts out his arm and stops him. Okay. They’ve got something planned involving soul-bullshit, then? Waiting for Pride to interface with Alphonse’s suit and then using it for some kind of metaphysical trap using his soul-glyph?

Pride tells Hohenheim that his son is a strange one. Hohenheim then glares at the prick, tells him not to put down his son (hmm…interesting nonspecificity, given the nature of his connection to Father), and then makes with the red lightning hyperalchemy. I think this is the first time we’ve seen Hohenheim do the kind of large-scale philostone powered magic that Father likes to flash around, and he’s clearly no less powerful. At least as far as reshaping inert matter is concerned.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that if Father and Hohenheim went all out at each other 1v1, Hohenheim would come out on top. Hohenheim’s ceiling on transmutation power doesn’t seem to be any lower, and even with his consumption of protostone Father has clearly netted much more of a loss to his battery over the centuries than Hohenheim.

Then again, given all the research he’s been doing, Father might well know a spell similar to Marcoh’s philostone-unmaker. In which case raw power wouldn’t matter.

Hell, he might have already known how to destroy philosopher’s stones from the beginning. He was “born” knowing how to create one, after all.

Well, leaving the Versus Debates aside for now until the two actually do face off, Hohenheim wraps Pride and Alphonse up in a colossal stone shell, seemingly too thick for even Pride’s tentacles to puncture. Pride could conceivably have escaped before it closed around him, but Alphonse – who he had pulled close to his central body – grapples his nucleus hard enough to prevent it from getting out in time. Pride just loses some more tentacles mass for his trouble when Hohenheim cuts them off with the closing prison.

It’s pitch dark in there too, so Pride can’t even extrude any more tendrils to start slowly chipping away at the rock. Because that’s how Pride works now. Even though it must have been awfully dark inside of Alphonse’s suit as he walked it through the late night forest.

…

Arakawa’s failure to fully define Pride’s powers and limitations until too late isn’t ever going to be as annoying as the timeskip. But it isn’t ever going to not be annoying either.

…

Leed is amused by this clever plan. Edward, unsurprisingly, is not. Hohenheim simply tells him that this was Alphonse’s own idea, and that clearly neither Edward nor himself was able to come up with a better one.

Al’s self-sacrificing impulses rear their head again. Hopefully without the deathwish undertones it’s had in the past. On one hand, he’s spending more and more time dead, and has just been used by the bad guys against his family, with his expected shelf life running ever-lower. On the other, he and Edward apparently have some crazy scheme in mind involving the Promised Day, which is tomorrow.

Cut to inside the stony prison, where it is quickly clarified that Alphonse is quite hopeful after all. When Pride tells Alphonse that he’s as trapped as he himself is, and that if he tries to transmute his way out Pride will escape too, Alphonse says that that’s fine, because he’s not planning for either of them to stay for long. They just need Pride out of the way until the Promised Day is over, after all. So, Alphonse only needs to babysit him for twenty-four hours or so, and then they’ll figure out a more permanent solution.

It’s basically the same strategy that Grumman used a couple eps ago. Put one of the Sins in a situation that it will take at least a day to get out of, thus making it easier for them to disrupt Father’s ritual until the window of the Promised Day is past. It’s a pity the humans had to invest one of their own heavy hitters in this case, but given Pride’s role in protecting the macroglyph it’s definitely worth it. Hohenheim knows that the thing guarding the tunnels and the thing he just imprisoned are one and the same, so now would be a perfect time for him to start running around destroying macroglyph loci. The only Sin left free, alive, and loyal at this point is Sloth, and he’s useless for fast response, so Father has nothing left to stop him with except conventional forces and chimaeras, unless he wants to go intercept Hohenheim himself.

Although…actually, he may have another option. That golem army. Dunno how well or poorly those synths would perform against Hohenheim and Co, since we don’t know what they can do, but this seems to be the kind of situation that merits pulling out all the stops.

Anyway, Alphonse doesn’t need air or food any more than Pride does. Pride’s humanoid body is nigh-indestructible, but in this darkness it also lacks offensive capabilities, so the two of them can’t hurt each other. All either of them can do, for the time being, is talk.

Well, if you’re trying to do what it seems like you might be trying to do Alphonse, good luck. Of all the Sins, Pride has shown the fewest signs of resentment or disloyalty. Still, even if Alphonse can’t talk him over, maybe he can at least plant a seed of doubt that will weaken Father’s control at a critical moment.

Pride will most likely try to do the same thing back at him, of course. Hopefully, Alphonse has gotten better at seeing through such emotional manipulation attempts since the Barry the Chopper incident.

Outside, Edward asks why Hohenheim didn’t inform him before doing this plan. Hohenheim says that it’s because Alphonse told him not to, knowing he’d oppose it. I, meanwhile, say that THEY LITERALLY NEVER HAD A CHANCE TO TALK TO EACH OTHER IN THE TIME BETWEEN ALPHONSE COMING UP WITH THE PLAN AND NOW. I suppose it’s up to you, dear reader, to decide whether I or Hohenheim has the right of things. Edward and Alphonse have a conversation through the stone wall, which is apparently thin enough to talk through I guess, about how it’s too bad they couldn’t talk face to face again before this. Still, Edward promises that he’ll get their bodies restored on his own; apparently he thinks he can do that without Alphonse being physically present.

Well, thinking about it, I actually might know what Edward has in mind. If Alphonse’s soul is being drawn back to his organic body, and his organic body is accessible through Edward’s Gate of Truth thanks to their spiritual short circuit, Edward just needs to pull it back out of there and wait. Yeah, I think that’s what he’s got in mind. Presumably, the same factors that make the Promised Day usable for Father’s spell will also enable this much simpler body-retrieval operation.

For now, Hohenheim and Edward have a forest fire to put out. Presumably, Hohenheim would rather not waste Xerxians if he can have Edward help out with normal alchemy. Alphonse is left to have a twenty-four hour heart to heart with the world’s brattiest shoggoth. Leed, meanwhile, has slipped away and his approaching Central on his own. Greed in control, of course. As he runs, he eagerly recounts to himself how his siblings are all dead or indisposed for the time being, which makes this a perfect opportunity for him to do…something. Something that will help him become the owner of everything. Ling asks him what the fuck. Greed answers with unhelpful vagueness.

Is he going to try and steal the ritual, and basically do the same thing to Father that Father himself did to King Peter? I think he might try to. I guess phenomenal cosmic powers are worth more to him than the people he’s befriended in this incarnation. Or maybe he’ll still think of them as “his” if he melts them down and eats them.

Well, hopefully not that. Come to think of it, Greed’s never really wanted *power* so much as access to things and the ability to enjoy them. So yeah, probably no drinking Amestris. More likely, he has some hairbrained scheme in mind to hijack the rebellion they’ve been planning and set himself up as king of Amestris, then go back to Xing and ascend that throne as well. Then he just needs to build some roads and do some greening along them across the desert, and he’s got half a continent under his rule. That sounds much more in-character for Greed. Not necessarily a viable plan, but one he’d be more likely to try to attempt than my first hypothesis.

Probably not viable, but if he somehow managed to pull it off…eh. The world being conquered by Emperor Greed isn’t the best way this story could end, but it’s not the worst either.

In Central, some street randos are musing about the uptick in Ishvalans appearing in the slums and outskirts. Just then, they’re approached by Scar’s party, who asks them where the village of Kanama can be found. They’re looking for Hohenheim and/or Edward, I guess. Well, they could have just followed the explosions and screaming in the nearby woods, but it doesn’t hurt to ask for directions as well. The street randos in question recognize Scar the notorious Ishvalan terrorist, and ask if he and his associates are responsible for Big Boko Baba Bradford the Bradth’s assassination via train bomb this afternoon. Scar, Marcoh, and their companions are all stunned to hear about this, so I guess they and Grumman haven’t been able to communicate in the last few hours. Anyway, Scar assures the Central residents that his people had nothing to do with that, and that while his countrymen are here in Central for something important, but that it will not involve terrorism.

Violent regime change doesn’t necessarily involve terrorism, so he’s not lying. Terrorism is just when the violent acts being committed are done with the intent to intimidate or provoke a civilian population.

Cut to…somewhere. Inside of a dingy building or underground complex. There are a bunch of dead Ishvalans laid out on the floor, and someone is humming cheerily. Probably Kimblee. Yep, it’s Kimblee. I guess Wrath put him to work hunting down suspected Mustang/Grumman assets in Central before heading out east, and he’s been doing a decently effective job. Well, hunting people down is among the handful of things that Kimblee is legitimately really good at, and these aren’t elite combatants like Scar and Edward, so that makes sense.

Return to Alphonse and Pride sealed in the stone dome. Pride is morosely scratching at the wall with a stick. It occurs to me that they’re really lucky he didn’t get the gluttonizer along with the nose when he absorbed his brother. I wonder *why* he didn’t? Maybe that’s something Father had to build into Gluttony’s external body rather than just programming into the stone. If so, that means he must have deliberately recreated it when he remade Gluttony. Which means that while the gluttonizer was a failure in its intended role, Father has since come to see it as a useful weapon at least.

Well, anyway. At Alphonse’s insistence that it’ll do no good, Pride gives up his scratching and sits down to talk to him. Okay, here we go. Operation: Diplomance Pride.


Split for image limit.

Alphonse tells Pride that his kind’s insistence on discounting human intelligence and determination is a massive folly, and proof that the haemunculi themselves aren’t actually much smarter than us.

To use a bigger example than the outcome of this recent battle, Alphonse points out one of the major flaws in Father’s plan. They’re counting on their chosen alchemist sacrifices being available on the Promised Day, when there’s nothing keeping them in Amestris besides fickle national loyalties. More damningly, they seemed to count on that to keep working even after Scar winnowed down their list of candidates to a precious few, and most of the remaining ones learned about the plan. What would have happened if Mustang, Edward, Alphonse, and Izumi all just decided “fuck this shit I’m out” and fled the country a few days or weeks ago?

Pride thinks for a moment, and then starts telling Alphonse about some of his own observations of humanity from his time among it. He’s has quite a bit of that, according to the Mustangs’ research. As he idly plays with Alphonse’s helmet, he says that it is true, many humans think only of their own survival, and many others are willing to sacrifice much in the name of honor or spite. On the other hand, though, he raises the example of his current “mother.” He recalls one occasion when he almost got hit by a car, and she risked her life to save him in a way that probably wouldn’t have made a difference had the car not stopped anyway. She didn’t know that the impact would do nothing to him.

So, Queen Bradley has no idea that her husband and adoptive son are both haemunculi.

God, how fucking stupid must that woman be? “Honey, have you noticed our son hasn’t aged a single day since we took him in?” “Your nagging face hasn’t aged a day since we took it in!” “Oh, okay then.”

And also, how the hell did Wrath convince Father to let him marry someone who not only wasn’t in on it, but *couldn’t be allowed* in on it?

I strongly suspect that however it went down, Father’s decision to make Pride their adoptive son was a form of putting his foot down. “Okay Wrath. Fine. You can marry this nonloyal rando. But I’m going to be watching every damned moment you have together, and it’s on you to keep her in the dark with two Sins in the house.” That fits pretty well with how Pride and Wrath interacted in the lamppost scene.

Pride was surprised by the car incident. Not that she’d sacrifice herself for him, but that she’d do so even with such minimal, almost nonexistent, chances of success. Pride came to enjoy living with her, in part due to incidents like this. Even if it was just “playing house” as he describes it, having someone like her in his life is a pleasant experience.

But, more to the point, not every human is like Queen Bradley, putting their bodies in front of smug adoptive sons who they haven’t even had that long. However, some humans are. There are individuals who can’t live with the knowledge of loved ones – or even just liked ones – being in peril. Who will throw their own lives away to save them even if they know it won’t actually help. Part of the purpose of the State Alchemist program was to not just keep tabs on alchemists of sufficient ability to be good sacrifices, but also to learn about them and determine which individuals had that ethos. Which ones would never abandon their countrymen to Father’s prospective retaliation.

Like Alphonse and his allies, for instance. If that’s how Alphonse feels, why haven’t he, Edward, and the other sacrifice candidates they suspect just left?

Hmm. What *would* Father do to the Amestrian people if he was unable to perform the spell due to the sacrifices running away? I guess that unknown is what’s keeping them from doing just that.

Anyway, Pride’s appreciation of that kind of human selflessness seems to be purely aesthetic, and he has no compunctions with using it against them. Talking this thing over is looking like less and less of a possibility; even if Pride broke with Father, he’d be nearly as bad of a threat on his own.

I still think there are things Alphonse could have asked him after that (though I don’t blame him for lacking the presence of mind to do so after hearing such a display of chilling psychopathy). For one, the Sins themselves have displayed similar behavior to this, on occasion. Gluttony’s reaction to Lust’s death, as well as most of their decisions to stand by Father despite him not seeming to care much about them, aren’t on the same level if kin selective behavior as what Pride is talking about, but they’re on the same spectrum. I wonder if Pride would own up to this being a common trait between them?

Hmm. I suppose Pride would probably give the Kimblee answer. IE, shrug and say “if you can find away to use it against us in turn, good for you.”

I also, if we’re trying to tug at loyalties, would want to see Alphonse ask Pride what he even wants out of life. What is his incentive for going along with Father’s plans. Etc. That would definitely relate to the "filial piety" of this episode's title, no? Well, while I don’t expect this prison to hold for as long as they hoped, maybe Al will still have time to ask questions like these in future interludes.

Cut to Amestrington National Cemetery, where Mustang and Hawkeye are visiting Hughes’ (I think? Could be someone else) grave in the predawn hours. It’s almost showtime.

“Let’s go, Lieutenant,” he tells her before leading her off. She pauses and gives the back of his head an ambivalent glare before falling. Maybe he hasn’t quite learned his lesson yet after all. Then again, they do have a war of sorts to fight, so falling into their old command structure might be the best option for now just for efficiency’s sake. Nonetheless, Hawkeye doesn’t look happy at being addressed by rank right now.

Out in the forest near Kanama, Scar’s party arrives a little too late. They find the giant stone dome that Hohenheim imprisoned his son and grandson in, and are trying to figure out what the hell is even up with it when Simian meets them. Beebop and Rocksteady are afraid that he’s here with Kimblee to hunt them down, which…well, come to think of it, the names of individual chimaera defectors might not be the kind of information worth spending their limited covert communication ability on, so fair enough.

Fortunately, Edward’s arrival a moment later gets the three to grudgingly stop being stupid at each other. The whole group comes back to the camp Edward’s party set up, where the wounded Lionheart is resting. The sun is about to rise. How much coffee are these people going to have to drink before the Promised Day’s trials? Anyway, the four chimaeras sit around and talk shit about Kimblee together while the water boils, and the smart people convene. Hohenheim and the Xingese are still here, it looks like. Come on Hohenheim, you need to start collapsing tunnels!

Graninja heads toward Central. He’s the only member of their group whose face isn’t known to the enemy, so they’re going to send him ahead to try and reestablish contact with Mustang’s cell in advance of the party. And also hopefully find out where Greed vanished off to with Ling’s body, as that appeared to be in the same general direction.

Well, dawn arrives. Edward and the beastmen stand beside the stone prison where Alphonse is keeping Pride talking, and watch the sun rise on the Promised Day.

We’ve got the power of friendship warmed up and in position. Let’s use it to kill us a god. Roll outro.

The stinger has some random Amestrian family waking up early to watch the solar eclipse from as soon as it begins. Hmm, eclipse. That’s a lot closer to home than the sort of stellar conjunction I thought Father was waiting on. They go to the window, and see smoke rising from the cityscape, accompanied by the percussive symphony of urban warfare.

Whatever part of the plan is meant to happen in Central, it has now officially begun. Mustang’s cell is attacking the Central garrison, with Mustang making liberal use of firebending to destroy armored vehicles. He also, it seems, has made a point of keeping the captive Queen Bradley near his person. I guess they’ll still need to deal with Wrath eventually, so keeping her in custody until then is a prudent move.

In the command center, one of the generals gives the order to use as much force as necessary, but to not kill Mustang. Everyone else is expendable. Including Queen Bradley. Those orders are probably coming from Father.

Cue Mustang, Hawkeye, and Co – including Queen – getting cornered by a SWAT team. The order is given to save Mustang, and shoot everyone else, including the ones standing behind Queen.

External shot of the building, followed by gunshots. Presumably from whatever trap Mustang just lured these guys into, now that he’s ensured Queen’s cooperation. He raised his hands a liiiittle too fast when those troops showed up. End episode.


I can’t comment on how clever the Pride-trap was or wasn’t, due to my issues with the nebulous powerset that it allegedly counters. Still, Alphonse and Pride sealed in the dome together is a compelling subplot, and I look forward to seeing how the dialogue between them progresses. Or doesn’t progress, if Alphonse has just written off his attempts at reasoning with the twat after that last exchange. Either way, the child in the inhuman shell and the inhuman in the child shell, sealed in the darkness together in a contest of wills, is something I dig.

Other than that, it’s the beginning of the coup arc, so this should be an intense set of episodes coming up! On one hand, Father seems to have counted on his chosen sacrifices all sticking around, and they ARE all sticking around, which doesn’t bode well. On the other, he’s got…what? Just Sloth, at this point? Probably Envy as well, depending on what ended up happening to May. Now, the question is: are they going to use the distraction of the military coup to destroy the macroglyph hub before the eclipse so that Father misses the window, and then try to fight him conventionally after that major threat is taken care of? Or are they planning to actually hijack the control center and use the eclipse to hit him with a big spell of their own? The latter seems pointlessly risky, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.

The fear seems to be of what Father might do to spite them if his plans are foiled; that kind of hostage-taking and terrorism seems to be Sin Inc’s go-to strategy for controlling humans. So, if they just foil the plan, while they might have saved most of Amestris by doing so, Father is likely to go on a spiteful rampage, and there’s no guarantee that Hohenheim and the others would be able to catch him in time to prevent a body count in the same digit range. So, they seem to have opted for the high-risk-high-reward option of using the Promised Day to kill/disable/imprison Father instead of just stopping him from using it.

Okay. This is making sense to me now. I’m not sure that their strategy is the wisest one, given the stakes, but it’s definitely a valid approach. The question is just how capable Father is of springing his trap for the sacrificial alchemists when he’s this short on manpower. And whether whatever whacky bullshit Greed is planning to pull hurts Father's plans more than the humans'.

The ending, which is almost certainly going to result in Queen Bradley flipping allegiances, is the most promising thing about this episode. Really can't wait for Wrath to get back to Central and have to make his decision.

Also, holy shit Queen Bradley is a fucking moron hahahahahahaha.