Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood S2E26: “Combined Strength”
Going off of last episode's title, I think "combined strength" will refer to both the emergent power of philosopher's stones, to the reunited Armstrong siblings, and to a villainous counterpart as well, maybe relating to Father's need for multiple sacrificial alchemists. Multi-entendres seem to be the style of these late series episode titles.
Start right off the bat with the new OP. It definitely has a tone of finality to it, and the imagery depicting all the characters - heroic and villainous alike - as battered and exhausted does seem appropriate. The good guys and the bad guys are both giving this their all, and absolutely no one is having a good day. I doubt that it'll be my favorite FMA OP by the end, or even my second favorite, but it's probably the most tonally fitting for its specific arc.
Open on Alphonse with his protostone going toe-to-toe with Pride and Kimblee, and doing a pretty good job at keeping them off balance and taking advantage of their known weaknesses. He keeps blasting more wind and dust clouds up to prevent Pride from using his enhanced senses, and moving around in them faster than Kimblee can lay ground-explosions. The concern here, I think, is that the stone he's using is the same one Kimblee used back in Ishval, so it's probably pretty badly depleted already. I don't think Alphonse is going to be able to keep this up for long.
Also, I appreciated this very quick glimpse of Kimblee's expression as he realizes what Alphonse is doing and has to struggle to react in time:
For all that he loved power-tripping on using that stone to wipe out civilians, he seems at least as ecstatic to be fighting someone else with a stone without one himself. Sadism is a strong impulse in Kimblee, but the recklessness and thrill-seeking he's demonstrated throughout the story appear to be stronger. Whatever else he may be, and whatever deranged pseudophilosophy he couches it in, I feel like at his core Kimblee really is just dumb muscle with an unusual amount of self awareness.
Dealing with Kimblee seems to put Alphonse on the backfoot with Pride, and loses several limbs to his slashing tentacles. However, with his synthetic body and protostone, Alphonse is essentially a haemunculus himself in terms of healing factor. Of course, Pride is also crippled by his need to avoid hitting Alphonse's blood seal, which both forces him to pull his punches and limits his options for actually disabling Alphonse. Really, he and Kimblee are kind of stuck with trying to either deplete the protostone, or waiting for Alphonse to have another narcoleptic event.
Well, Pride is. Kimblee might actually not care about the consequences as much as his masters would like to think.
Alphonse uses a really clever trick to deal with Pride. He transmutes a fake flashbomb, making Pride divert his attention to snuffing it out, and then detonates a real one that he had hidden in his chest cavity. Not sure when he would have gotten that, since they were all out of those when they decided to seal Pride up in the first place. Maybe he spent some time in the prison transmuting a fresh one up from chemicals in the soil or something? IDK. Anyway, he hits Pride with a point blank flashbang, and then seals him again just as his appendages are being vaporized. This saves him from having to stress his protostone with a giant prison like the one Hohenheim created; since Pride is just the child body at that moment, a much smaller earthern structure is sufficient.
Now, if only Alphonse can keep the explosion specialist from blasting it open again when he needs only a second or so to do it. Not great odds, I don't think.
Well. At least, they wouldn't be great odds if Kimblee wasn't batshit. But then, in that case he wouldn't be fighting on Sin Inc's side in the first place, so it's all academic. Instead of freeing Pride again like he easily could have while Alphonse has his back turned, he just watches silently for a moment and then begins conversation as if they weren't just fighting.
He points out that Alphonse could use the stone to restore his own body right now, if he wanted to. That's questionable, given the metaphysical issues transplanted souls seem to have, but Kimblee probably doesn't know that. Anyway, there's a method to his madness here as it turns out. He tells Alphonse that he'll let him flee if he wants, and then he can use the stone to restore both his own and his brother's bodies.
Okay, he's trying to convince Alphonse to back down and give Kimblee time to regroup. Releasing Pride again would probably be more tactically sound, given the mission objectives, but given that Kimblee specifically told Pride "don't make me rescue you again" and Pride promised that he wouldn't, and that Kimblee is batshit and takes the most unexpected things literally or not literally, he may have ACTUALLY just written Pride off because of that.
Alphonse refuses the offer. Retreating would mean he wouldn't be able to save Amestris. Unsaid is the fact that he also is only willing to use the stone for preventing more stones from being made, and not for anything other than that, but I can understand why he wouldn't want to let Kimblee know too much about what makes him tick. Though, ironically, given Kimblee's weird pseudo-ethics telling him more might actually be the best way to get his respect. Though...it's also a toss up if making Kimblee respect you mean he'll be more or less likely to want to kill you, so actually nevermind, who even fucking knows what the right move with this guy ultimately is. Anyway, Kimblee muses that this is a sort of equivalent exchange type deal, with Alphonse having to give up the opportunity to restore himself and Edward in exchange for the opportunity to possibly save the country. Alphonse says that it might not actually be that limiting of a choice; he might be able to succeed at both, after all. Kimblee says "but what about equivalent exchange tho" as if people succeeding at two things simultaneously is some sort of philosophical impossibility. Alphonse makes the rather weak counter that humans are always trying to break rules like that one, and he's no exception.
I would have preferred it is Alphonse's response had been "you don't get to just throw the equivalent exchange principle at every arbitrarily grouped pair of things hahahaha oh my god you fucking idiot that's not how reality works holy shit." But eh, good enough.
Anyway, Kimblee does some more pseudophilosophical babbling about how "succeed at doing two things instead of only one of them" would herald a paradigm shift for reality itself, before grinning and cackling about how there's also the possibility of failing at both and revealing the second protostone hidden as per usual in his mouth.
What I appreciate about this scene is that I unironically cannot tell if Kimblee was just fucking with Alphonse to give himself time to catch his breath, or actually, seriously engaging with what he thought was a profound philosophical question that led him to remember that he had his own stone.
And, on a similar note, if he wasn't using his own protostone throughout the fight up until now out of some weird personal challenge or a prank on Pride, or if he literally forgot he had it in his mouth until just now.
The fact that any of these things could be true without it seeming out of character for Kimblee is the mark of a well written lunatic. I've had mixed feelings about the level of threat Kimblee poses to the heroes throughout the story and whether or not the narrative frames him appropriately to it, but he's much more effective as a wildcard than as a straight opponent.
So, phase two of the battle begins, with Kimblee now using his own, much better charged, protostone to turn the tide against Alphonse again. Cut to the Armstrong siblings, who are still in the capital building facing down Sloth. Alex's high-impact-kinetics focused alchemy is considerably more effective against Sloth than his sister's pistols and sword. Actually, as a large, slow moving target that requires cannon-like force to injure, Sloth is pretty much the one Sin you'd choose Alex to deal with over Mustang or Edward. The siblings also learn that Sloth's damage-nullification trick is only a property of his skin rather than his entire body. Once Alex opens a wound, Olivierre is able to stab her sword deep into Sloth's body by hitting the cut before it can heal shut.
Good to know. I can see how this might have also come from the same design lineage as Greed's defensive ability. It's the same concept of "you can either heal damage, or deflect damage, but you can't do both in the same spot at the same time." The difference being that Sloth's skin has the deflection property always active so he switches back to it automatically as soon as the healing finishes its work. Faster and more reliable switch, at the cost of his skin not being *quite* as tough as Greed's carbon nanoarmor.
Granted, stabbing wounds are probably the least effective kind of damage you can inflict on a haemunculus. But now that they've learned that, I'll bet Olivierre will start shoving grenades into his wounds as Alex opens them. That might drain Sloth's batteries with a little persistence.
I wonder if the same principle applies to Pride's central body, and/or the mannequin soldiers. If so, the Armstrongs might be able to give the other good guys some needed intelligence once they've escaped from or defeated Sloth.
Sloth clutches his stab wound and groans that he's dying, even as it's visibly healing under his fingers. He clearly doesn't know his own powerset, which is unsurprising since he doesn't really seem to know anything else either. Once he's no longer in pain, he mutters that dying would be a pain, but fighting all-out would also be a pain. Still, he grudgingly decides to do the latter.
Sounds like Sloth has a secret extra power or alternate form that he doesn't usually use, like Envy and Gluttony. I guess when they froze him before, he didn't really have the kind of stimulus needed to make him use it, since he went straight from not really caring about his surroundings to losing consciousness. Okay, let's see if the Armstrongs are up to this!
Some more dumbasses enter the hall, raise their guns at the Armstrongs who have their backs to them, and loudly declare that they have orders to shoot them. Sigh. Why. Why do this, show? Why *keep* doing it? Seriously, WHY?
So, for the thirtieth goddamned time, the Armstrongs jump aside and let the next batch of lemmings get hit by Sloth's attack. This time, the attack in question is a clumsily aimed, but highly destructive, speed boost attack. A moment later, he turns around, adjusts his aim, and speedboosts again. This time he passes closely enough to Olivierre that his air wake draws blood.
That's the most coherent, clearminded sentence Sloth has said to date. And he also, for just a fraction of a second, doesn't look completely miserable while saying it.
So, this is his equivalent to the Gates of Gluttony or Photoshop Envy. He seems to actually enjoy (or at least, be somewhat less depressed while) using it, so the reason he doesn't do so more often has got to be either him forgetting he has it most of the time, or him being instructed not to use it except for emergencies. Given that, like the gluttonizer, this seems to be a clumsily aimed attack with high collateral damage potential, I can see how it might well be the latter.
Sloth also embodies his sin in a more multifaceted way than most of the others, I think. Going back to the Catholic source material, sloth isn't just laziness, but also carelessness, mindlessness, and apathy. Slow and plodding is one aspect of sloth, while fast and slipshot is another. And, like some of his siblings, he has a built-in irony (in this case being the hardest working of the lot).
As a possible mythological inspiration source, one of the giant brothers defeated by the Mayan hero twins had a moveset pretty similar to this. He had to close his eyes while turning around, which meant that he was reduced to charging "blind" at where he thought his victims most likely still were. Sloth having to go into slow, clumsy mode while aiming his speedboosts is close enough to this that I wouldn't be surprised if Arakawa was drawing on it.
Anyway, this calls for a shift of tactics from the Armstrongs. Cut back to the forest, where Kimblee has pulled his head out of his ass and released Pride again.
Pride doesn't look happy. Being beaten twice the same way by the same group of humans, and needing rescue by another human both times, has got to be challenging his...well, it's on the label. Given that he seems to be less about *personal* pride and more about pride in his family/species, this sequence of events is almost perfectly calibrated to - if you'll forgive the anvilicious callback - get under his skin.
Kimblee does something clever here, and blows up some thrown rocks overhead to listen for the sound of pebbles striking metal, thus giving away Alphonse's position in his latest dust cloud. Alphonse tries to reposition, but Pride is able to catch his scent, and quickly seizes him with his tentacles. But, Alphonse doesn't seem especially despondent over this. And, more alarmingly still for the bad guys, he doesn't have the protostone on him anymore. It's possible that he depleted it, since - like I said - it's got to be low on juice.
But, no, that's not it. The smoke cloud was actually to hide another plot point that hadn't been touched on since last episode, but that I figured would be sooner or later. To hide Alphonse's interaction with it, and to let it move downwind from Pride so it could line up as a sneak attack on the squishier target.
Heh. Well, I'm still annoyed by all the times Lionheart survived when he really shouldn't have, but it's nice to see Kimblee get an anticlimactic death by HR complaint. It's also a reminder that while respect for human life is great and all, you really do need someone around whose willing to kill motherfuckers when you're confronting motherfuckers that require killing.
Unfortunately, a combination of Pride's nose and the dust cloud settling prevent the current bearer of the protostone from sneaking up on him to land a Sinbuster attack.
Damn, he was just a few meters away too. So much for his new chance to actually permakill a Sin after May's bungling of Envy.
Also, I legitimately forgot that Dr. Marcoh was in the shantytown nearby. I expected Alphonse to heal Lionheart at some point during the battle, but I totally forgot about Marcoh. I guess Alphonse tossed the stone to him, since he has ample experience in protostone-powered medicine.
Switch over to Mustang, Hawkeye, and Ross. Mustang's transmuted the exterior of their truck again, and taken advantage in a break in the roadblocks created by the fighting to slip back into Central.
They're trying to get into the Command Center, but unfortunately neither Mustang's nor Olivierre's troops have managed to crack it yet. Mustang decides to try using the tunnels to slip into the basement; he leaves the vehicle to head for lab 4 just like Hohenheim's party did, and instructs the other two to keep Queen safe and hidden. I'm guessing they have her in back or something. Well, if Mustang is going to try and push his way in through the Giant Glowy Door Room, he'll run into mannequins and/or Envy. The latter he can probably deal with, as long as he gets the drop on her before she can impersonate Edward or Armstrong or someone. The former...depends on how well their shields stand up to fire.
Speak of the devil, cut to Edward's party still fighting the swarming mannequins in the Sin Inc antechamber. The golems' lack of persistence and only intermittent aggression is a lifesaver, as it gives the party time and opportunity to try different forms of attack, and Scar lucks into something when he happens to disintegrate one of their legs. It turns out that their shields are weaker around the legs and feet, for whatever reason. Maybe the protostone cavities are in the head or chest, and the legs suffer from being farthest from there, that could make sense. Anyway, they start targeting the golems' legs, and while that doesn't kill them it renders them more or less helpless.
Edward is visibly disquieted at having to put these suffering creatures into an even more miserable state than they're already in. But he still does a very, very good job of it with his transmuted blades.
Upstairs in the human-frequented part of the Command Center, Sloth appears to actually connect with Olivierre and crush her against the wall, only for it to turn out that...okay, this is just too much for me.
Are the Armstrongs actually the result of some previous supersoldier experiment?
Their previous blatantly superhuman displays were always in a humorous, slapstick-adjacent context. In serious battle situations, they've never been more than typical anime-fighty-person implausible. Alex fighting Cow on even footing back in the Greed arc was a bit of a stretch, but helped by Cow only being slightly bigger and more beastlike than him. Alex actually blocking a charging Sloth with his body without taking any serious injuries isn't even in the same ballpark. Alex being this strong in a scene where it ISN'T a joke calls so many goddamned things about the setting into question that I don't even know where to start.
At this point, I'm almost wondering why Olivierre was so shocked at Sloth's toughness when he broke into Fort Briggs. She's known her brother since they were little, right? Shouldn't she be used to people like this? And hell, even her own whole not-dying-when-Sloth-crushed-her-into-a-stone-column incident last episode is starting to look less like a one-off bit of WTF and more like part of...whatever this is.
There's just no word for this other than "stupid."
A moment later, Sloth breaks through the floor and then launches himself up to hit them from below, this time hitting Olivierre dead center without Alex being in the way. She's knocked down, and seemingly out.
If this had happened five minutes ago, I'd have been sure she was dead. And that would have been a pretty poignant gut-punch of a moment. Now though, I have no idea if I should consider that a deadly blow or not. I have no idea what is or isn't dangerous for the Armstrongs, what they are capable of, or when to be worried for them.
This whole fight with Sloth feels like a super-memey omake comic, but in the main story and with serious plot relevance and stakes for some fucking reason. What makes it REALLY too bad is that, while the lead in was dumb to begin with, I was really getting into this battle when they started probing Sloth for weaknesses and working out ways to exploit them. Now that's been overshadowed by Alex going Super-Saiyan or some shit.
So, Alex keeps fighting Sloth while Olivierre lays on the floor in unguessable condition, and we return to Alphonse and Co dealing with Pride.
Pride seems to be stunned, maybe even overwhelmed, by this turn of events. Alphonse and Marcoh are surprised in turn when Pride tries to impale Lionheart, Lionheart holds up the still weakly breathing Kimblee as a body shield, and Pride actually stops the attack and withdraws his tentacles away from the target.
Alphonse and Dr. Marcoh are both unsure of what to think of this. Pride actually caring about Kimblee is not something anyone, including myself, saw coming. There's got to be something else going on here. Pride caring about ANY human would be a stretch, after the way he spoke about Queen a few episodes ago, let alone this particular human who he barely knows.
After pulling his tendrils back around himself, Pride assures them - though he doesn't sound nearly as confident as usual - that as long as Father holds court in Central, he has no doubt of haemunculus victory. Then, he starts shooting his bladed tentacles at Dr. Marcoh, only to be hit by a car while his back is turned and thrown over the windshield and onto his face some distance behind.
The driver of said car is another character who was established to be in the area, performing what's probably the first even remotely heroic action of his entire life.
I guess being possessed by Envy that one time gave Yoki a new perspective on life, death, and there being much worse alternatives to them. I don't think this is a "change of heart" or anything like that, anymore than Olivierre ever stopped being solid villain material for a political thriller when she joined the team. Good guys and bad guys can put aside their differences for as long as it takes to deal with the monsters. And, having Yoki of all people save the day at least this one time does a lot for the themes of this arc.
Split for length/image limit.
We left off with Pride having been blindsided by Yoki, which sounds like a joke until you remember the great equalizer that is motor vehicles. That car impact stuns Pride for a surprisingly long period of time, honestly. Long enough for Lionheart to grab Alphonse and jump into the car along with Dr. Marcoh, and for Yoki to drive them away. Either Pride's central body is surprisingly vulnerable to stunning, or he's letting them get away. Or it's bad writing; I normally wouldn't jump to including that as a possibility, but the Sloth fight is not doing much for my confidence right now.
As they drive away, Lionheart asks where they got the car from. Apparently, it's the one Kimblee and his squad arrived in. Dr. Marcoh has apparently spent the timeskip getting better at the whole combat alchemy thing.
Marcoh has just been on a rampage since his defeat of Envy. I think Scar might be rubbing off on him.
They throw Kimblee's dying body at Pride to keep him off balance as they floor it away, but even so his failure to do more than graze them as they retreat is kind of stretching my suspension of disbelief after his previous showings.
We see his face when he's reaching after them too, and he looks legitimately pissed off, so I don't think this is any kind of ploy.
Meh.
Anyway, they decide to head for Central and see if they can get in. If they're going to throw themselves against an indestructible monster, they might as well do it to the one who's actually in charge. So, they'll attempt to regroup with Edward and Hohenheim's team and join the attack on Father's bunker if there's still time to do so.
We then get a look at Pride watching after the car as it drives toward Central, and...ah, okay, this was a ploy after all.
Well, we already know he's a method actor, so the probably-superfluous look of frustration he had when he pulled that last punch would make sense for Pride. I wonder if he was letting them get away from the moment they got in the car, or only after he saw what direction they were driving in? Well, if the latter, he has more confidence in Father's ability to capture the sacrifices in the warzone that is Central than...
...oh.
Central is, itself, circular. And it's already been established that its layout - either as part of the larger macroglyph, or just independently - can be used as a diagram for various spells.
The fact that there are a lot of other people in Central besides the alchemist sacrifices might cause an issue, if the city itself is the "altar" on which those five will be offered. But it also might not. If they just need to be within the city for Father to sacrifice them rather than located at specific spots or ritually bled or whatever, then that would make a lot of sense. Pride and Gluttony might not have them last night at all if they'd known for sure that Alphonse, Edward, and Hohenheim were all planning to be inside the city on the Promised Day anyway.
Pride next turns his attention to Kimblee. He's still alive, but that's clearly not going to last, and it's not the usual flavor of anime "mortal injury" either. His spine is broken, leaving him completely paralyzed, bleeding fast, seemingly unable to move anything but his eyes. Pride stands over him, and - with a malevolent smile - says that it's too bad Kimblee ended up dying like this, so close to the eclipse, without getting to see the natural selection of human or haemunculus play out like he wanted. The best Pride can do for him, he says, is to extent Kimblee's life in a different way, and allow him to witness the event as a part of Pride.
Kimblee's face is frozen, so it's not clear how he feels about this. Going by the fact that he seems to be rooting for haemunculus supremacy and wasn't making any plans for getting out of the blast radius before the spell is cast, I doubt that he's that upset. He gave that speech earlier about how being part of these superior beings' designs made him greater than other humans, so...being assimilated into Pride might be a reward from his perspective.
At the same time, Pride being able to suck the souls out of living humans and add them to his philostone core creates some issues. Issues like "why did Father ever bother with protostone research if he could just suck people's souls out directly and then shed as many droplets as needed to arm his minions and constructs?" If Pride was the first of his offspring, then - even if he lacked this soul-sucking ability to begin with, and I doubt that Pride would have been born with a power Father himself lacked - you'd think he'd have made a point of replicating it for himself in the centuries since then.
The only explanation I can think of that doesn't contradict everything we've been shown about Father's research objectives is that Pride may have been refitted with this ability within the past decade. Pride's been shown to not be all that durable once you manage to actually damage him with something, so it's likely he's needed to be recharged/recreated at least a couple of times since Father assigned him to guard the tunnels. When Dr. Marcoh and his colleagues completed their protostone research, Father might have upgraded Pride with the ability to perform that transmutation innately.
Although...in that case, why haven't we seen Pride engulfing people like this before? You'd think he'd want to juice himself up at every opportunity, so why did he just stab the Briggs soldiers in the northern tunnel to death instead of doing what he's doing to Kimblee now? Also, it does seem pretty out of character for Father to give one of his creations a way to survive independently of him if he could help it.
So yeah. Pride absorbing Kimblee's soul bugs me.
Cut back to the Armstrongs. Armstrongs plural. Olivierre has regained consciousness and is standing back up after having been hit head-on by a Slothboost. I guess Father needs to use a different type of glowing crystal than philosopher's stone against these two; only kryptonite will do.
While she was taking her two minute catnip after being hit by an object with the size and speed of a truck, her brother managed to figure out a countermeasure for Sloth's phase two moveset. It's kind of obvious in retrospect. They know his skin can be pierced by very concentrated, high-energy impacts, and his own speedboosts provide a convenient source of high energy. Alex has gotten him to impale himself on a transmuted stone spike.
Normally, stabbing wounds that cause only a narrow line of tissue destruction are the least problematic things for haemunculi to heal. In fact, now that I think about it, that might be WHY Father seems to have grown fond of this defensive system; it's seemingly less energy intensive than Greed's superarmor, and the only attacks that get through it are the easiest kind to heal anyway. But, in this case, the rapidly widening shaft of the spikemade it big enough to actually amputate a limb or two, and (as we recently saw with Gluttony) regenerating that does meaningfully cost them after a few repetitions.
As Sloth slowly heals himself free, yet another failteam comes running into the room and hold their guns on Olivierre, remind us for the fourth time that they have orders to shoot, and then just stand there. You would attribute their hesitation to the presence of the giant monster impaled on a stone spire a few meters away acting as a distraction, except none of them are looking at Sloth.
-_-
Every time this sequence starts to be smart or interesting. Every. Time.
Also, the music here is completely dramatic and serious. No framing that indicates that this is supposed to be a comedic breather for the more serious stuff going on elsewhere. If it was, that would still piss me off; it's all but stated that Father specifically chose to react to this situation by sending Sloth to deal with Olivierre, which means that reducing Sloth to a slapstick fight fodder undermines the menace of *really serious BBEG" Father just as it robs the Armstrongs of the chance for a properly epic climactic battle. However, it would annoy me less, because it would at least be doing a competent execution of that poor decision. As it is, I have no idea how I'm supposed to feel as I watch this and am defaulting to aggravation.
As the soldiers stupidly point their guns without shooting, Alex expresses his regrets that they're going to die without him ever getting to become the legal owner of the Armstrong estate. Olivierre tells him that it's a lost cause anyway; she already made Mustang the legal heir, since he's one tiny step above a simpering coward like Alex.
I guess they're just doing this for the benefit of the soldiers? Like, this argument is preventing them from shooting, somehow, for some reason? I'm not sure what the bigger issue is with that; that this (almost certainly fake, at this point) property dispute is something the mooks would care about, or that the Armstrongs are still under the impression that these suicidal cretins would ever shoot anyway.
Whichever flavor of stupid you decide to go with, it's cut off by the sound of gunfire from the hall, followed quickly by the door flying open to admit a couple of fleeing soldiers and the throng of mannequins pursuing them.
They were going to start wandering up this way sooner or later. And their theme music is back too!
...
Also, it kind of weirds me out that, out of all the many memorable, recurring characters and concepts that this show has had in circulation, these robo-zombies are one of only two or three that have a dedicated leitmotif. There's a bombastic, heroic theme that I'm pretty sure has only ever played in association with Alex Armstrong, the creepy spidery theme that I'm *pretty* sure has only ever accompanied Pride, and now the anthem/horror theme for the mannequins. Other than those three, I don't think anyone has there own song. There's just the "scary thing is happening" song, or the "exciting battle" song, or the "cute downtime antics" song.
I feel like this was a huge missed opportunity for the creations. FMA:B has such a memorable, distinct, larger-than-life cast, AND such a good soundtrack. The two could have been used to complement each other much better. This show's direction is the weakest thing about it by such an incredibly huge margin. Most of the things IN this series are great, but they're often not put together thoughtfully or carefully. The sometimes random and inappropriate-feeling uses of some of these excellent tracks isn't the most damaging example of this by far, but it's an emblematic one, and exceptions to the rule like the mannequin theme really show how much better it could have been done.
Also, if you had to pick only three FMA characters or creatures to get their own theme music, would one of them seriously be the fucking mannequins?
...
As the soldiers ask each other what the hell these things are, and also seem to finally notice Sloth (to be fair, he's easy to miss), the mannequins fall into another of their confused, nonaggressive breathers, giving people time to talk. Maybe the reason they have those sudden passive flashes is because they're made from the souls of Amestrian soldiers, who seem to have the same issue. Olivierre asserts that both flavors of monster present in the room were unleashed by the same people who the soldiers are answering to. So, it's up to them if they'd rather take their chances with the Armstrongs, or with the monsters.
The soldiers still aren't sure. These people can't keep a simple instruction like "shoot the blond lady" in mind long enough to actually follow it, so expecting them to make an actual decision is way too much. Finally, frustrated to the brink, Olivierre grabs the nearest soldier's pistol, pulls it against her own forehead, and tells him to either switch sides or just shoot her already and get it over with. Lol, as if bullets would actually do anything to the Armstrongs.
Sloth pulls himself free and finishes regenerating his missing arm and jaw. The mannequins start getting manic again. The soldiers pool their three collective IQ points and use them to, with great difficulty, determine that they should switch sides.
Down in the tunnels, May is dueling Envy. Like I said before, Envy's only got a handful of souls in her right now, so this could actually be a fair fight. May's highly evasion-focused fighting style and small targeting profile is also doing a lot to even the odds against a regenerating opponent.
Another group of mannequins interrupt the battle, and Envy (wisely, I think) decides that filling her batteries is of more immediate importance than killing May. So, she grudgingly prioritizes the golems and lets May get away while she consumes them.
May runs deeper into the tunnel, pandarat on her shoulder, following her memory and her ki sense toward Father's office. She still wants to help the Amestrians. And, now that she let Envy escape, she's as determined as ever before to find a source of immortality to bring back to...save the emperor who is threatening to kill her people, or whatever the fuck is going on in Xing.
Why are they so obsessed with *immortality,* specifically? There's plenty of other secret alchemy shit she could steal here in Central that would prove her clan's value to Xing. But she and Ling have both been monofocused on that specific thing.
...
You know, the whole "Golden Being" thing in Xingese folklore, the specifically immortal man who revolutionized their society, might have given them this cultural obsession.
Hohenheim is uncannily skilled at unintentionally teaching people around him the absolute worst possible lessons.
...
Back in the antechamber, Edward, Scar, and the chimaeras have crippled scores of mannequins, but more just keep coming. Even if it weren't for the threat of exhaustion, there's the problem of even a legless mannequin being able to hurt you if you're sufficiently distracted by the mobile ones. Eventually, there are enough crippled mannequin's laying around that they're able to close in around the humans and grab or bite them while they're preoccupied.
Seriously, where the hell is Hohenheim? I guess he still hasn't learned that disappearing on the people who were counting on him without a word of explanation or warning is a bad idea. :/
Just as they're getting overwhelmed, a fire blast brings an entire flank of the attackers down and gives the humans the breathing room to get free. Mustang's managed to catch up and transmute his way through the barrier Edward raised over the exit. Looks like he brought Hawkeye with him too, which I imagine was at her own insistence. Guess it's just Rebecca and a few randos guarding Queen, then.
Not the most sensitive phrasing, Mustang.
I wonder how many more heroic rescues Mustang is going to pull off in this room? That's two so far, and there's enough room left in the final episodes to squeeze in a couple more.
Anyway, I'm not sure if he'll be any better at *killing* the mannequins than anyone else, but his ability to de-leg a large number of them at once is still a lifesaver. It remains to be seen if Alphonse's group will be able to catch up as well, but I'm leaning toward no unless they hit another major obstacle before reaching Father. That's the end of the episode.
Is it just me, or is FMA:B getting more and more "shonen" as it approaches the finale? It had most of these typical genre warts occasionally from the beginning, but they're getting a lot more numerous and more disfiguring. Good guys never dying, bad guys being harmless SatAm mooks, inconsistent and ever-expanding powersets, etc. There were positives in this episode, but most of them were working on momentum from previous ones that didn't have these issues quite as badly.
I liked Dr. Marcoh learning from his companions and growing into a man of action, and the surprise chimaera attack that took out Kimblee. Yoki's Carmageddon moment was a nice climax to that sequence. Really reinforces the themes that anyone can potentially matter, and that valuing each individual as more than just a unit of force is often the pragmatic option as well as the moral option. While Lionheart's serial implausible survivals are seriously taking the villains' teeth away, his use in this particular sequence was a very good one. Pride getting taken down - even just momentarily - by a muggle in a car is also incredibly satisfying in light of the type of pride he seems to represent.
Aside from that sequence and the nicely multifaceted expansion on Sloth though, this was all just kind of...meh? Significantly better than the average fighty anime episode, but that's a really low bar to clear.
