Fullmetal Alchemist S1E21: “Advance of the Fool”

I'm not sure how I'm going to pace the FMA reviews going forward; their placements in the queue were highly tentative, and I've shuffled them more than once since putting it up. One FMA after every two commissioned reviews was the pattern, but since I want to get through as much of the queue as possible as fast as possible I don't think there's any need to hold myself to that. On the other hand, that double-length Fate Zero pilot was exhausting (in a good way, mostly, but still), and I feel like dipping back into a story I'm comfortably familiar with and invested in might be a good wind down.

So, I guess for the time being I'm just going to watch another FMA episode whenever I feel like I need to. I expect this will mean that Fullmetal Alchemist will be a much smaller percentage of my posts going forward, but still progress faster than it did during my old biweekly schedule. That should please everyone, myself including.

So, "Advance of the Fool." Once again, there's all too many characters that title could be referring to. We're starting to come up on the end of the first season, incidentally. Anyway, let's check this one out.


Mustang, Hawkeye, and Havoc are in the hospital. Havoc managed to survive that, somehow. Maybe Mustang took a moment to cauterize his lust-punctures as well before running off to save Hawkeye and Al? I'm starting to feel downright embarrassed for Lust. She didn't even manage to kill the one-step-above-canon-fodder minor character in that fight? It's almost cruel.

Hawkeye is standing guard over the other two as they recover. All three of them complaining at each other about their respective mistakes during the battle. Mustang is annoyed at Hawkeye for believing Lust that he was dead and losing focus. Lust may have actually believed that he was dead at that point, but she could just as easily have been lying as far as Hawkeye knew, so Mustang's admonishment has some merit. Of course, Havoc also takes the opportunity to tell Mustang, as Hawkeye already did, what a moron he was for joining the fight in person without warning. Etc, etc.

They'd normally have their own rooms (or at least, Mustang would), but Hawkeye wants to keep them together and under guard. Good call, Riza. On that topic, Mustang wonders why no one has showed up to assassinate them yet. Cut to Father's lair, where Envy is asking Wrath that very same question.

Father has put Wrath in charge of handling this catastrophe, and he's decided that killing Mustang and Co would be little use at this point. Lust is already dead. And, Wrath says, Mustang is someone they need. Envy asks if he means opening the doorway (which I assume means "use him as one of the sacrifices, who we're kinda running low on," but it could also mean a more specific purpose in the ritual), and Wrath just dodges the question and assures her that he's handling it.

Watching the haemonculi processing the death of their elder sister is interesting. They don't seem quite as distraught over it as, say, I would be the day after losing one of my siblings, but they're definitely grieving. Envy is enraged, demanding revenge. Gluttony is in denial, repeating the question "Lust is dead?" over and over while struggling with tears. They might not have had quite the same sibling bonding experiences that humans do, due to their creation processes, but it's obvious that Lust was telling the truth about them having at least most of the human emotional range. Gluttony is really pitiable here, honestly. He might be a killer, but he has the mind of a small child, and Lust was almost more of a mother to him than a sister. He was never taught to do anything besides kill, or given any reason to think that it was wrong. Gluttony is at least as innocent a victim of Father's designs as Hughes ever was.

Wrath isn't showing any emotion at all, though. We barely saw him interact with Lust, unlike the other two, so I have no clue what their relationship was like. Is he suppressing his own sorrow by doubling down on the pragmatism and logic? Is he secretly glad to have Lust out of the way? Perhaps he laments her death, but simultaneously sees it as an opportunity to advance that bid for freedom I've been suspecting he's planning? He's unreadable.

When he mentions Father having left this matter in his hands, we see an ominous shot of Hohenheim standing on a mountain somewhere, presumably near Resembool, before turning to the camera with an intense expression as the music gets spooky.

This could just be a cheap fakeout, but I think it's more likely than not that this man (who, based on his dress, is the same one Edward and Pinako just met) is Father. In which case he was impersonating Hohenheim during that visit.

...

That was a really bad spoiler to have been given. :/

...

Roll OP. This was the first episode in quite a while to have a teaser before the intro, funnily enough. "Hologram" is starting to grow on me as a song, but not as a Fullmetal Alchemist song. Maybe it's just that "Again" is such a hard act to follow when it comes to fitting the tone...

...hold on a second.

That thought actually made me remember something. Okay, I'm going to watch "Again" now, and see if what I thought I saw...okay, yep!

When I first saw this bit, I thought I was looking at an older Edward who's managed to restore his arm. But now that we've seen his father more, the boy in this image has Hohenheim's paler shade of hair, and a style of bangs and pony tail much more like his than Edward's. His clothing also looks nothing like anything we've seen Edward wear, but looks like something you might favor in a desert, and is a similar shade of pale gray to the one Father wore in his reveal scene. So yeah, I'm pretty sure now that this was a flashback to Xerxes when the Hohenheims (however many of them there are) were in their late teens or so.

Also, now that I'm focusing on this one image, I'm noticing something else. This is part of the veeery early part of "Again," before the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood title appears and the song picks up. And watching just that small intro-to-the-intro, armed with the knowledge I now possess, it's actually telling a whole story just in those 15 or so seconds.

First, we see the alchemy circle from the philosopher's stone labs and Wogdat's gate, with young Hohenheim/Father superimposed over it. Then the background changes to a blue sky, and he starts moving. Going from theory to practice, perhaps?

He raises his hands in an alchemy pose, looking unsure of himself, and a wind blows past, throwing up some bits of grass in front of him. He widens his eyes in surprise at something he's just transmuted. It then cuts immediately to Trisha standing in front of their house in Resembool, smiling docilely. And those same blades of grass are still in flight across the screen. Illustrating a continuity between the previous image, and this one.

Either I was right about him having created Trisha (EVERYONE IS A HAEMONCULUS! EVERYONE! NO HUMANS HAEMONCULI ONLY FINAL DESTINATION LETSGO!), or it's just drawing a thematic connection between creating things with alchemy and building a family and home for oneself. The show has told us in as many words that alchemy and life are almost one and the same, after all.

Then, we see the door closing in the face of the young Elric brothers, the last time they'd ever see their father until just this last episode.

Then a close up of a much older Hohenheim/Father's face, with villainous framing, as he scowls coldly from behind his gleaming glasses.

Then, after a split second look at a philosopher's stone, we see Edward and Alphonse in their new bodies staring into the flames of the house they've set fire to, and the title text appears amid the music kicking off.

Interesting. And very, very Mary Shelley. A creator creates, and in the moment after he does so we see him react in shock and perhaps fear of what he's just made. We see that the world he's made for himself is, at least superficially, good. Then he turns his back and abandons it, and in his absence - out of whatever combination of unsupervised ignorance, and spite at being abandoned - his children destroy the world he left them in.

It summarizes the Elrics' family story thus far quite elegantly, and also leans into the story's antireligious themes. If our world has a creator, he's one that left us to suffer in a treacherous world full of traps and pitfalls, and does not deserves our respect, let alone our worship. And, because of the flawed and unguided state we were left in, we might just destroy the world we were born into.

Gotcha.

The episode proper opens on the Elrics and Winry musing on how best to get Alphonse's body back. Creating a perfect body from scratch might still be beyond what their alchemy can do, but Edward suspects that it may be possible to summon his original one back from Wodgat's realm, where it seems to have been taken. That seems like a questionable assumption to me, but sure, we'll think it over for now. He also has a much weirder hypothesis, though. Since he and Alphonse mingled their blood in their attempt to reconstruct their mother's identity, it's possibly that his body and Alphonse's may have gained a kind of metaphysical link. In which case, Edward thinks, his own stunted growth might be down to malnutrition; he's been eating for two bodies, with half of it being shunted off to feed Alphonse's growth instead of his own.

Alphonse also muses that Edward sure sleeps a lot. Could he be sleeping for both of them as well? "Lurking" plays over this, which suggests that they're on to something, though I kind of hope that the thing they're onto isn't exactly what they're speculating. For one thing, if Alphonse's body is still intact and undergoing biological processes that require food and sleep, then is Edward also providing it with air? Is he breathing enough for two people, and still somehow having enough oxygen in his body to do all these crazy kung fu battles? Also, the brain's need for sleep, and Alphonse's lack of that need as a soul without a brain...well, let's just say that this would open a huge can of worms for a story that assumes Cartesian dualism.

Winry has a much more convincing hypothesis about Edward's stature.

After the title card, the brothers go to visit Mustang and Havoc in the hospital. When they get there, Hawkeye is just having a bit of a breakthrough. She couldn't tell what direction that glowy white ritual room was in from lab 3, but on the way back through the tunnels she was able to gauge the approximate distance. She's procured a map of the city, and is drawing a circle of the appropriate radius around lab 3 to see if they can locate that Sin Inc facility again.

The circle comes close enough to intersecting the capital building, where Lieutenant General Command And Conquer Gundam lives and governs from, to raise some very heavy suspicions. Edward and Alphonse share their own observations about Khan Noonien King's behavior during the Greed adventure, which screamed "damage control." They muse a bit over why he'd have killed a haemonculus, if he's working with them, but I guess between the excitement and the blood loss Edward might have forgotten that Greed hinted that he'd gone rogue. Mustang steels himself at these revelation, but is also visibly excited. He was always planning on staging a coup sooner or later, and this investigation implicating Lord Jabu-Jabu himself might make it sooner. Of course, he waits for the boys to leave before talking about this aloud.

This is followed, however, by Havoc saying that he's not going to be able to participate in the coup anymore, because he's retiring. Not by choice, but because it's been a day since he recieved that spinal injury from Lust and he still has no feeling in his legs or any ability to move them.

Ah. Well, that's understandable. Since this is down to spinal cord damage rather than a problem with the limbs themselves, automail isn't going to help here. Ah well. I guess Mustang is down one lackey, at least as far as physical work is concerned.

When he's able to walk again and start some physical therapy, Mustang happens to run into the coroner who examined the Ross-decoy's remains. He's just having some mundane back problems, but as an army medic he's getting treatment at this military hospital as well. When he's able to get a bit of privacy with Mustang, the doctor asks him what the hell that fucked up meat puppet that was obviously made from a random skeleton with a few counterfeit teeth randomly shoved in its mouth was all about, and how Mustang could have possibly confused it for Lieutenant Ross. D'oh. Turns out this doctor was playing along when he confirmed the corpse's identity. Mustang just got lucky that he got a coroner who remembers him fondly from the war.

Not that the war itself was a fond memory. The doctor hints that he and other medics were tasked with dissecting body after body produced by the genocide, and he's not proud of having gone along with it. It doesn't sound like they were systematically experimenting on captives Auschitz or 731 style, but the state was definitely taking advantage of the carnage to expand its medical knowledge and experience.

There may have been actual camps too, for all we know. Amestris seems to be good at restricting information between departments, and Dr. Marcoh et al might have needed more human sacrifices than Central's death row could provide to fuel the last decade's worth of protostone production.

Anyway, Mustang confirms for the coroner that Ross is still alive, and thanks him for covering for him there. He also asks if there's any strings he could pull to get some better treatment for Havoc, but the doctor confirms that modern medicine can't really do much of anything for a broken spinal cord. I suspect the Xingite alkahestrists might give a different answer, what with their advanced biomancy, but that doesn't help them over here in Amestris.

Cut to Havoc laying in bed and staring morosely out the window. He makes some sexist comments, and talks about how he'll just answer the phone for his parents' general store from now on. Sad music plays. Dramatic camera angles are animated. The show seems to want me to care about this. I don't have much against Havoc, but he's had too little screentime for me to build investment. I wonder if this is the same issue I ran into with Hughes before, where the manga had given this character more attention in the past and therefore built investment that Brotherhood failed to? It kinda feels like that.

But oh! Speaking of Dr. Marcoh a second ago, now that Armstrong is back in Central and Edward is disclosing all his intel to Mustang's group, one of said group fills Mustang in on the protostone-equipped healer who lives just a couple hours away by train. In addition to restoring Havoc's mobility, Dr. Marcoh would be a great resource to have on hand in general, and there's a good chance he'd be interested in revenge after he had to flee the haemonculi for his life. So, Mustang sends whatsisname the deniable ops guy to go recruit Dr. Marcoh.

Unfortunately, getting rid of Marcoh is the one thing Lust didn't fuck up. Maybe they'll end up finding a clue in his town or something, though.

Return to Edward and Alphonse as they walk home from the hospital. Edward took a peek inside of lab 3 (as a state alchemist famous for policework and troubleshooting, Edward easily got access to the scene of a recent crime), and found the door that the others chased the Barries through gone. There's a section of wall where it used to be that's been made to appear as old and weathered as those around it, but Edward recognizes the improbably uniform patterning of the cracks and stains as signs of a hasty transmutation.

The multi-entranced underground alchemy lab with disappearing doorways is yet another detail straight out of Lovecraft's "the Case of Charles Dexter Ward."

...actually, holy shit.

...

I know, I know, I see Lovecraft everywhere, but hear me out.

For those who haven't read it, Lovecraft's "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" involves a centuries-old alchemist (who looks like a middle aged blonde guy) infiltrating the commercial and police institutions of colonial Rhode Island. Once entrenched, he builds a sprawling underground lab facility with multiple secret entrances, which he or other agents are able to make disappear completely after they've been discovered. He uses the existing transatlantic slave trade, among other means, to obtain thousands of human sacrifices and test subjects, and uses them to create zombies, haemonculi, and serve as fuel for other spells. He also, for much of the story, has a not-quite-innocent body double from his own family line that he uses to get away with things. Oh yeah, and while much of the alchemy in the story is pseudoscientific, the more obviously mystical stuff involving raising the dead calls for invoking a dangerous godlike entity to transfer souls across space and time.

That's way too many details to just be coincidence. Even accounting for both authors drawing from a common set of European myths. I'm going to be very surprised if it turns out that "Charles Dexter Ward" wasn't an important influence for Arakawa.

So, yet another major pop fantasy/scifi work whose inspiration likely came directly from Howie P. L. Add it to the pile, I guess.

...

As the discussion moves on to the "sacrifices" that both Edward and Alphonse have heard the haemonculi say they need powerful alchemists for, they receive an urgent message. Scar is in Central, and his opening move claimed the lives of three state alchemists and injured a number of civilians and soldiers who got in the way. All state alchemists in Central are to keep a low profile if their duties require their presence here, or to leave Central if they don't.

The brothers hurry back to the hotel they're quartered in, and Edward fills Alphonse in on what he learned about Winry's parents. He acknowledges that he doesn't know it was Scar who killed them, but that Ishvallan woman's testimony was enough to give him reasonable suspicion at the very least. They muse on whether or not to tell Winry about this, but both decide that raising the subject would just upset her without really helping with anything; its not like she can go hunt down Scar herself or anything, after all. On the topic of hunting down Scar though, Edward knows that Scar is probably going to want to finish the job he started back in East City, and he thinks there might be a way to use that. If the haemonculi are trying to keep both himself and Alphonse alive for later sacrifice, then they might show themselves again if both brothers are put at risk. So, if they can bait Scar into attacking them right near the capital building, get word out that this is happening, and survive for more than a few minutes, odds are that they'll get some sinful reinforcements.

Erm. I think this plan would have made a bit more sense before Lust tried to kill Alphonse than it does now. Currently, the evidence suggests that the enemy has come to consider the Elrics and Mustang too much trouble to be worth keeping alive, let alone putting effort into protecting. It's almost like these two story beats are out of order. :/

Well, ignoring that particular issue (which all the characters do. Ah well.), there's also the question of how baiting the haemonculi out again is going to help them. They don't know how many there, so just killing them all one by one might not be an effective strategy (and even if it was, these things are ridiculously hard to kill). What they really need to do is take one alive, and Alphonse points out that they'd have extremely poor chances of pulling that off even without the added distraction/complication of Scar.

Assuming that the two of them can even survive against Scar until the sins arrive, of course; as Alphonse also points out, he made very short work of them last time. Edward counters that the two of them have leveled up a lot since East City. They've had a ton of combat experience, Edward can replicate Scar's own signature move, and Alphonse being a spontaneous caster now effectively doubles their alchemical power in action. Still, even if they're a match for Scar now, Edward admits that dealing with him and a haemonculus simultaneously would be a problem. Also, this time he's not going to have the element of surprise.

...

Just like with Greed, this is a case where someone who could and should be working with the brothers against their common foe is unable to do so because of a personal flaw that blinds them. In Greed's case it was greed, obviously. For Scar, it's (ironically, or perhaps appropriately, given the baddy they're currently contending with) wrath.

Scar's hatred for Amestrian alchemists is much more sympathetic than whatever Greed thought he was trying to do, but still. If he were at least making a show of targeting people who actually participated in the Ishvalan genocide instead of just going for anyone with a state alchemist badge (without regard for the economic pressures being placed on civilian alchemists to become such), Edward and Alphonse might have been able to open lines of communication. When Scar heard that this plot of theirs has the potential to incriminate the man who ordered the Ishvalan genocide himself, he'd certainly be interested. In which case, if they and Scar staged a battle and then surprised the haemonculus by ganging up on it when it arrived, well...if a team made up of Edward, Alphonse and Scar can't capture one, no one can.

...

That isn't the Scar they're dealing with, unfortunately. So instead, they'll have to settle for these jokers:

After his frustrations with Alphonse, Yao is really itching to dissect something immortality-related, and a haemonculus will do (and he's actually on the right track this time; if you can purify a haemonculus' core like we saw Father do to Greed's, you're left with neutral philosopher's stone. Not that he knows this). Anyway, Yao's ninjas are around as fast as Scar and much faster than any of the confirmed haemonculi they've encountered, so they'll do in a pinch!

The brothers aren't happy about having to work with Yao. Especially after he tries to get them to pay his room service bill in exchange for his cooperation in this (hahahaha no). But, better than nothing.

Also, Yao mentions something very briefly about the fate of his entire clan being at stake. He did this once before, and that time he was only in the presence of his own henchman, so it's not just a sob story to swindle people with. It sounds like the current strongest contender for the throne of Xing might have murderous plans for his own clan's historic rivals, or something like that.

The racket of them kicking Yao out of their room after he tries to get them to pay for his bullshit wakes Winry up. Edward realizes that more automail damage is likely, and that he should probably notify Winry in advance of that probability. Her reaction is another bloody wrench SD sequence (sigh....), but it's much better than the last time the show did this, because the blocking before and after that shot make it clear that that nothing like that actually happened, and makes the whole thing seem like Winry just imagining taking out her frustration on Edward. Anyway, she agrees to stick around and keep her tools at the ready, and tells them to please be as careful as possible with whatever crazy bullshit they're planning next.

The next morning, Mustang's boi Lieutenant Breda finds Doctor Marcoh's old apartment in a sorry state.

Either Lust was having a temper tantrum when she took Marcoh out, or people have just been looting/squatting in here since then.

Well, with that possibility no longer a possibility, Mustang is forced to accept defeat. There's a rather grim look at what the Amestrian military's usual internal culture is like, when Havoc - despite being one of Mustang's loyal handpicked lackeys - refuses to believe that his commander actually cares about him as more than a tool, and Hawkeye expresses immense respect for Mustang not officially reprimanding her for having her breakdown when Lust told her he was dead. This leads Havoc to conclude that Mustang is too soft to ever be Fuhrer.

This is definitely a culture where a guy named King Emperor Generalissimo Khan has a good chance of rising to the head of state with massive public approval.

So, Havoc retires. Mustang takes it hard.

Cut to a clipshow of Edward in a weird paper cut out art style that doesn't even look like his usual chibi/superdeformed version as he goes on what can best be described as a philanthropic rampage through the streets of Central. Fixing random storefronts that are rotted/damaged, literally rescuing cats from trees, turning drab baby-carriages into edgy demonic looking vehicles covered in spikes, etc. All while loudly announcing himself to be your friendly neighborhood State Alchemist, Edward Elric.

I thought this was going to be another of that little Xingite girl, whatsername's, imaginings about Edward again. It's been forever since we saw her, hasn't it? She's probably made it to Central now, since she was traveling with Scar. But anyway, this is actually real. Edward is just going all out in baiting Scar.

Mustang catches up to him and Alphonse, to tell them that Marcoh is missing and to ask them what the fuck they think they're doing. Just as Edward is explaining the plan to him, Scar catches up. His expression suggests that he knows this is bait, and that he doesn't care, he's just that insulted at the low-effort attempt. Mustang doesn't have time to berate the brothers for not getting him in on this to begin with. Instead, he just gives them his best wishes, and agrees (at Alphonse's urging) to go and keep the brass from interfering too quickly. Mustang is bemused at being given orders by one of his underlings, but...well, he honestly seems grateful at not having to do all the thinking for once.

The battle begins, and sure enough, having two "Edwards" worth of combat alchemy is making all the difference. The brothers turn the street into a surreal masterwork of interlocking and/or broken stone columns as they evade ans suppress Scar. Meanwhile, Mustang and Hawkeye race to the nearest radio tower and throw Central's emergency response into disarray with contradictory reports of the battle's location. That's not going to work on guards who are already close enough to see the smoke and hear the explosions, of course, but it'll slow down reinforcements from other precincts. Police vehicles already en route are diverted amid the confusion.

I guess that's another benefit of doing this right near the capital building. The radio tower was probably just a block or so away. And sure enough, the first benefit pays off soon enough, as Wrath is on the scene after just five minutes or so of the Elrics holding off Scar. And he's brought Gluttony along, who still remembers Scar's scent from when he and Lust were hunting him in East City.

The battle continues, and Scar is starting to tire Edward out. He manages to get close enough to land a blow, but Edward casts disintegrate just as Scar does, and ends up parrying the attack with no damage to either party. He wasn't sure if that would work, but he thought it likely, and it paid off.

Scar is stunned by what just happened. He clearly never expected that his brother's unique weapon could be replicated so easily. Spontaneous casters are something that only the most learned alchemy scholars know the workings of, of course, and Scar is steeped in the wrong kind of mysticism.

Wrath sends Gluttony to flank from the rooftops while he interrupts the fight at ground level, which brings Gluttony face-to-ninja-kicking-foot with Yao's remaining henchwoman (the old man took Ross back to Xing a few episodes ago, so I doubt we'll see him again for quite a while if at all). Also, while ninjagirl takes point and lands the initial blow against Gluttony, Yao has a sword drawn; he's been acting as if he's useless in a fight himself, but we did briefly see him fighting in the OP. So, his squishy aristocrat persona may well be an act to give potential enemies a false sense of security. That would be very much in character.

Then again, if he can fight worth a damn, it seems like he would have helped his ninjas in that first attempt to subdue Edward and Alphonse. Hmm.

Ninjette remarks that Gluttony's chi signature is different from a human's, and that she could easily track him even in a crowded area. Oooh, I think we've found our anti-Envy measure! Just got to make sure this girl survives, or else get some more ki-detectors from Xing. The latter is looking like it might be a necessity though, because the episode ends with Wrath noticing Gluttony's attackers, realizing this was a trap, and speedblitzing Ninjette before even she can react.

The last thing we see is her mask breaking under Wrath's fist. He hasn't killed her yet, but the prognosis isn't good. Unlike some haemonculi I might name, Wrath has yet to fail to kill anyone once he's attempted it.


A lackluster episode in some regards, particularly in the first half. I don't care about Havoc nearly as much as it seems like I'm supposed to, and watching Mustang and Co scramble around trying to get his spine repaired didn't have much entertainment value. Edward's plan to bait out the haemonculi again using Scar, on top of being repetitive after we just had a very similar plan by Mustang using Barry, just doesn't make sense after the haemonculi have demonstrated their willingness to kill the brothers. These repetitive plot beats seem to be a recurring problem in Fullmetal Alchemist (see also; Greed and then Yao in quick succession). The out-of-orderness of Lust's demonstrated willingness to kill them and them banking on the Sins being willing to stick their necks out to keep them alive is a weirder problem, and for me at least a much bigger one.

Still, things got exciting enough once we got to the action part of it. Edward's Peter Parker impression was hilarious, and the battle with Scar intense and convincing (we can see the brothers using new skills and abilities that they've picked up in specific episodes since their last battle against Scar, justifying how much better they're doing this time). Most importantly, the brothers are in the driver's seat again for the first time since lab 5. The show realizes how important a moment it was when Alphonse gave Mustang a suggestion, and had Mustang realize the wisdom of it and run off to do as requested. It called attention to it, and was right to do so. If this is a harbinger of more balanced protagonism to come (which I think it is, given Winry’s observation about Edward finally growing to fill his own shoes last time), then that makes up for all of this episode's flaws.