First Impressions / Fullmetal Alchemist

Summary:

While Buccaneer, Ed, Al, and Falman get the fuel ready, Olivier has her tanks push Sloth into the nearby elevator, sending him to another level. There, they pour the fuel on him, and their combined efforts are able push Sloth outside into the cold. Thanks to the vaporization qualities of the fuel along with the blizzard, Sloth completely freezes. In the aftermath, Olivier decides to have Ed and Al locked up, and Miles is tasked with going to see the injured Kimblee concerning Scar. Miles wants Kimblee to leave looking for Scar up to them, and since Kimblee still feels that the Ishval Scar is his prey, Miles reveals that he himself is of Ishval descent and that Kimblee should just stay quietly in the hospital. However, after Miles leaves, Kimblee is paid a visit by Raven who has brought along a doctor who can use alchemy. Meanwhile, Marcoh is continuing his study of Scar’s brother’s research, and May Chang explains some of the alkahestry concepts to him. It is in contrast to how alchemy uses the energy of the planet’s crustal motion, and what bothers May Chang is that she sensed, particularly under Central, the energy of wriggling humans. Back at Briggs, Olivier takes Buccaneer, Falman, Ed, and Al with her underground through the hole that Sloth emerged from. After proceeding through the tunnel for a while, Olivier stops the group and has Ed and Al spill the beans about everything they know since they’re now in a place where others can’t hear them.

Once she’s heard everything Olivier asks about the tunnel, and Ed theorizes that it circles around the entire country. Building on this, Ed gets Falman to tell him all the major bloody incidents in their country’s history. Connecting the sites of those incidents on a map draws a transmutation circle that resembles the one found under the Fifth Laboratory, meaning that their enemies are trying to create a Philosopher’s Stone by using the entire country. What’s more, all of the incidents can be connected to the military, so their enemies had created this country from the beginning for their own purposes. Hughes had been killed after figuring this out, and Ed realizes that even Isaac had known. What pisses off Olivier is how the map indicates that Briggs is going to be the next hotspot, and as if on cue, a messenger suddenly shows up with news that Raven has arrived at the fortress. Given all this, Olivier and the brothers decide to trick Raven. Having assigned Miles to show the healed Kimblee around, Raven meets privately with Olivier, and she tells him about Sloth, only she pretends to think that it’s a biological weapon from Drachma. She also pretends that the Elric brothers refused to say anything and were locked up, and she claims to not be able to torture children. Olivier uses this to segue to her desire not to grow old and to the idea of an immortal body, and this prompts Raven to test her interest in an immortal army.

Preview

This was a decent episode that concluded the Sloth battle pretty quickly and spent the rest of the time developing the story. I was sort of impressed by how they stopped Sloth because I would not have thought to use fuel to freeze him like that, and I was amused by how Olivier drove a tank out of the elevator. It’s too bad that’s not a feasible counter to all the Homunculus since I doubt they’ll all come to Briggs and fall for it. On a different note, it’s also a shame Miles didn’t just kill Kimblee while he was an invalid. Now Kimblee’s back up and healed thanks to that creepy old guy, and Miles might want to watch his own back.

What was good to see was that everyone is now on the same page finally with Ed and Al explaining things to Olivier so that she can really help them. They also spent a good bit of time reaffirming that the Homunculus plan is to use Amestris as a giant transmutation circle, and it was nice to see them refer back to the first episode to tie things together. As for what happens now, I’m curious to see what they’re setting Raven up for and if Kimblee being there is going to mess things up a bit. Raven is obviously a villain character, but compared to all the others in the series, he seems like the perfect target because he’s not a powerful Homunculus, or so I assume. I also wonder what part in the story Hohenheim is going to play since they showed him again in the preview…

37 Comments

  4. Eh, not really.
    Brotherhood has stretched the shit out of Kimblee’s character. He’s big in the manga (compared to the first anime..), but they’ve added a bunch of scenes in this anime that were not in the manga at all.

    Homuncurus!
    Reply

  19. i can’t wair for the anime to get to the current point in the manga (shit is off the hook). BTW anyone kno if we’re gonna see fillers? cuz we’re gonna pass the manga at the rate the anime is going

    Sean
    Reply

  21. Olivier, semi-vulnerable? Rest assured it’s all just an act. One doesn’t make rank all the way up to Major General without having to lie through your teeth and play the politics game (I’m military, I should know). XD

    Raika
    Reply

  26. I wonder if that’s it for sloth since he’s so slow and lazy, but im sure he’ll be back since he is a homoculus. The creepy scientist showing up from Bradley’s experiments was a interesting suprise. I wonder where this will be going since Raven has came north.

    Siege
    Reply

  27. fantastic ep. im really liking the current pace of anime, hope it stays consistant. i particulary like how many little cameos/references there are in this episode either in person, flashbacks and random thoughts; i mean crazy doctor, izumi, mustang, hawkeye, havoc, isaac etc. its nice to remind the viewer of wider events outside briggs.

    i especially liked how they included isaac from episode 1 as part of the bigger picture. it may have been a filler of sorts, showing new material to attract series 1 fans but Hiromu Arakawa herself designed him and deliberately incorporated his motivations into the grand schemes. its just a shame we’ll probably never know how he found out what father/king bradley were up to.

    fathomlessblue
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  28. This is by far my favorite series airing right now, with Bleach being mired in fillerland (interesting filler, no doubt, but I want my Ulquiorra fight) and Needless about to come to an end. Isaac’s appearance tied things together nicely, as did the reference to Lior. Olivia is definitely my favorite Armstrong at this point. I wonder if alchemy is a skill that requires some kind of natural magical aptitute beyond just drawing transmutation circles – otherwise I don’t see why Olivia, who’s always seeking new ordinance to throw around, wouldn’t force her little brother to teach her the skills “passed down the Armstrong line for generations!” 😛 I thought it more like a science that anyone with the requisite intelligence can learn to understand and use, but alchemy does seem a lot more like magic than science this time around.

    I wonder if Hohemheim’s going to be very relevant in the next episode – it looks like he’s about half a world away from the frozen wall of Briggs. Prolly he’ll just stare off into the distance and spout some cryptic nonsense to himself that will be vitally important later, that’s pretty much been Van in a nutshell this series. 😛

    It seemed a little odd to split up the Sloth fight like they did, especially when it took about 5 minutes for them to finish the Big Slow off. I notice he’s back up and about in the preview for next episode, tho, so they probably split it up so they could have a little action in a mostly developmental episode.

    I wonder how they’ll choose to fight against Raven – Olivia would probably have no compulsions whatsoever about just throwing him and his creepy doctor guy off the top of the Wall, but it looks like to protect Winry they’re going for a much more subtle approach. I’m pretty sure that, military training or no, Raven’s no match for either of the Elric brothers or Olivia herself in a face-to-face fight.

    Guardian
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  29. From my own speculation I would surmise that Hohenheim was the original Alchemist that transmuted the Ancient Country and all of its inhabitants to create a Philosophers Stone. I would also conjecture that as a result of that, his body split creating both he and the Father, the latter being obsessed with more research – hence the creation of Amestris in order to create an even larger transmutation circle.

    Also, recalling that ‘Father’ was able to stop the Elric brothers from using Alchemy in their face off (and not Scar or the Chinese midget) it leads me to believe that ‘Father’ is the true source behind all of Amestris Alchemy teachings (seeing as how they created this country to begin with), and that alchemical power is somehow related to the death of the inhabitants of the Ancient Country. I state this because he is the one who can control their access to it, and the fact that his own blood transforms into Philosophers Stones (meaning he is saturated with the blood of humans having been transmuted).

    I’d like to note that I’ve never read the manga (and not interested in knowing the manga’s ending or any sort, don’t spoil it!) I just like tossing ideas around. 🙂

    Ashan
    Reply

  30. I would like to say that the story behind Hohenheim and Father is much more interesting than “They were once one”. You’ll see. If they kept most of the Hohenheim stuff present in the next episode in tact, you’ll see what I mean. Though the full flashback is quite a ways off still.

    Cornwiggle
    Reply

  35. I’m kinda pissed they wasted a minute to do Al’s redundant Apple Pie line. They could have used that minute to show WHY they tied Falman up (in the 2 seconds you saw it) and where he was between that time with Sloth and exploring the tunnel. That’s the only thing I didn’t like.

    Cornwiggle
    Reply

  37. Thanks damian.
    I just remembered that I skipped a couple episodes of the beginning of this series because I wasn’t interested and I was told they would be a recap of the first one..
    I feel so dumb!

    Tumpty
    Reply

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