Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.
I like seeing a good epilogue after an intense conclusion to a story. When you spend a lot of time with characters and get attached to them, you want to see them do well in their lives after they kick some bad guy ass, right? Of course. The characters in Fullmetal Alchemist fight to hell and back, so they deserve a pretty damn good end, and by god they get it.
And, so, the main story of FMA: Brotherhood has come to a close. (As suspected, ep64 will mainly focus on the extended epilogue in the manga’s final chapter. It’s a solid postscript and not a total trainwreck like certain other epilogues, so the finale should be enjoyable.) As someone who is a relative bandwagon hopper to FMA (Brotherhood‘s debut was my first exposure to the series; I didn’t see the original anime or start reading the manga until last summer), it has been a hell of a ride keeping up with the story week-by-week (or month-by-month in the manga’s case :p). I’ll definitely miss FMA once the credits start rolling next week. (At least I’ll have the English dub to satiate me for a while longer.)
Definitely a lot of fun to see this kickin’ final battle play out onscreen, though as Epi points out, it is kind of strange to see Father not fight back a bit more creatively. However, it seems as if it is not that he can’t fight back in a tougher way because he lacks the imagination to do so; rather, it’s more because Hohenheim’s plan has Father by the balls, and Father is desperately putting all his power into denying that truth, except his power is not enough to handle his business. He could unleash a ton of energy and vaporize all the characters in an instant, but to do so would require much more energy than he has on hand at the moment. Father would likely die along with everyone else.
Before I get to the post, I want to thank everyone who voted for me in the Aniblog Tournament, and I want to congratulate steelbound of The Null Set for coming out victorious in our match-up. Best of luck to you in the rest of the tournament! While the loss stings, of course, what my run in the tournament says to me is that I am doing enough right to earn support, but also that I am not yet the best I can be. This blog is a couple of months shy from being a year old, which is still fairly young; UNMEI KAIHEN has a lot of growing to do, and you can all damn well be sure that it will grow!
Anyway, now that the meta nonsense is over with . . . this episode of Brotherhood kicks things up a notch, particularly the climax of the battle between Wrath and Scar. Where last week, I was a bit disappointed at how tame the fight between those two great warriors was, it’s clear now BONES was saving up a bit so that it could break the bank in this episode. So much movement, so much raw energy and so much viciousness! Just two powerful people going all out against each other in one burst of pure fire. Fantastic stuff.
I can’t be the only one who found that look unbelievably funny, right? Like Father had just got to the end of Gradius or R-Type or something after dying like five billion times, and then the power goes out in his home, only he’s too numb to react with much anger, so all he can muster is a sarcastic narrowing of the eyes before he grabs a shotgun and blasts three of his neighbors. Or is it just me?
So Father’s plan has come to fruition, and I doubt anyone is shocked that in the end he follows that most hallowed of delusional villain traditions: Eating God with some fava beans and a nice Chianti Becoming a god. No villain can be a perfect megalomaniac without possessing ambitions of godhood and absolute power and knowledge, correct? It’s funny that Father claims to have expelled all of his negative traits with the creation of the Homunculi while simultaneously desiring to achieve greater power. Still seems like some of that greed, gluttony, lust, et al are still hanging around!
In a result that honestly shocked me, I prevailed against Blogsuki in the second round of the Aniblog Tourney. I have no doubt that if Jason took this whole thing seriously and mobilized his voters, he would have trounced me (not that I would be too upset; he’s been at this for years — I can only hope for that sort of longevity!); however, I nonetheless appreciate the support from everyone who reads this site. I try my best to provide writing that is of interest to people, so I suppose I am doing something right! Anyway, enough of that. On to the non-self-congratulatory part of this post people actually care about.
I always get a kick out of villains doing that one last piece of assholery before biting it. A lot of the time they don’t even need to be a jerk, and it might even impede their survival — but they’re just such dickheads that they cannot help but give in to the urge to be an evil bastard one final time. Just kills me. We all know the villain is (probably) going to bite it eventually, so I like to think of it as the writer allowing the villain to get in one last memorable act before the inevitable.
It’s a bit different for Wrath, because he is actually defending himself from a (likely) shooter, but that’s the feeling I get from the above scene: He knows his time is probably up soon (combination of mortal wound and hanging in a precarious situation), and that it is probably best to keep clinging onto GreedLing, but he can’t help but chuck a “Fuck you!” knife into that Briggs soldier’s shoulder. Realistically, it’s not really going to do much except prolong his life by a few seconds since there are other soldiers ready to gun him down; however, he cannot abide by that, so the “Fuck you!” knife it is.
There isn’t really any one thing about this episode that stands out, so bear with me while I plunge into some random thoughts.
The young punks are the ones always shouting about changing the world, but this episode shows that the grizzled old dudes aren’t about to hand it to them on a silver platter. It will have to be taken from their cold, dead hands.
Old, grizzled badasses are a well-worn character type. Clint Eastwood has been playing that sort of character for the past 30+ years, for example. (This is, of course, after he transitioned from playing regular ol’ badasses. :p) And before him, you had guys like John Wayne, Robert Mitchum (a truly overlooked grizzled badass; he should have John Wayne levels of popularity but doesn’t because he played some creepy villains) and George C. Scott (Patton, anyone?), among others, regularly showing the young bucks how to get things done. Everything is better when there is an old dude kicking some ass. It’s the Rule of Cool, my friends.
This is the episode where the entire cast reminds us that, yes, they are indeed here.
Lots of grand entrances in this episode, and, amusingly enough, a couple of instances where alchemy is used to make doors in solid objects. Guess there’s nothing more impressive than walking out of solid rock with nary a scratch. Izumi’s entrance — and her subsequent ass kicking of Sloth in tandem with her husband — certainly impresses the hell out of the Armstrong siblings. Housewives gotta rumble every so often.
UNMEI KAIHEN 