Hagane no Renkinjutsushi – Fullmetal Alchemist Ep. 16
鋼の錬金術師 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST Episode 16
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood – 16

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Arriving in Central City, Ed, Al, and Winry head into town while Fu and Fan look for their missing master, Ling. Ling is observing the city and feels something wrong with it. However, when he attempts to pull off his free meal scam, he’s arrested as an illegal immigrant. Meanwhile, Ed and Al decide to pay a visit to Lieutenant Colonel Hughes at his work while Winry decides to head to his house to pay Gracia and Elicia-chan a visit, stopping to pick up a basket of apples to bring as a gift.

Sheska has to cover to keep people out of the research room, where Colonel Mustang has been doing research on Hughes’s murder. Sheska wakes Roy up and he takes off to get ready for a meeting. Lt. Focker shows up and inquires about Mustang being there, understanding that Sheska is in a bad situation and promising not to tell anyone what he saw. Sheska lets Focker know what Hughes is doing and as Focker walks down the hall, another Focker comes the other way forcing the first Focker, who’s actually Envy, to change guises.

Colonel Mustang is getting ready in the bathroom when Major Armstrong emerges from a stall. Mustang and Armstrong have a little chat where Mustang reveals he knows more than he did the last time they met. Armstrong reveals that he has not let Ed and Al know the truth about Hughes being murdered. A little later, Roy and Riza encounter Ed and Al and Roy finds he cannot tell them the truth either, so he makes up a story that Hughes and family were sent to the country. However, when Ed and Al meet Lt. Ross a little later, she ends up letting them know the truth, not realizing they’ve been shielded from the truth.

Ed and Al race over to Hughes’s place where Winry already is and has already discovered the truth. Ed tells Al that he’ll take responsibility for Hughes’s death since it was their investigation of the Philosopher’s Stone that caused it, but Al has decided to go with Ed no matter what. Upon letting both Winry and Gracia know the truth, Gracia tells them that Hughes would give up his life to help others and that they should not give up their search as it would make Hughes’s sacrifice a vain one. With that, Ed, Al, and Winry head to a hotel where all three grieve in their own way.

In a room full of caged chimeras, Envy reports to Lust about Mustang’s research progress. Lust decides that maybe she should get her new boyfriend to talk a bit more to try to learn more. Envy has a plan in mind to handle Mustang. With that, Lust (as “Solaris”) goes to meet her new boyfriend — Jean Havoc from Colonel Mustang’s staff.

Meanwhile, Military Police come to Lt. Ross and arrest her for the murder of Lt. Col. Hughes. Riza reports this to Mustang, who immediately orders her to secretly investigate this further.

Thoughts/Review:

The whole thing with Ling disappearing and his bodyguards looking for him wasn’t that amusing to me but I did find it interesting that he sensed something wrong with the city. I’m guessing that would be the homunculi.

The one moment of comic relief came from the scene with Vato Falman being charged with watching Barry the Chopper. Barry’s dark comedy remarks about wanting to turn everything into a chopping session were pretty funny in spite of the ugliness of what he wanted to do. Of course if he were allowed to chop Jean’s girlfriend, that would be interesting, though there’s no way I see someone like Barry the Chopper getting close to Lust. Anyway, I did think, “How does Vato sleep with a homicidal maniac who needs neither food nor sleep there with him?” Surely, Vato has to have some means of restraining Barry if needed.

The one thing missing in this episode was Ed and Al questioning why Roy and Riza had lied to them. I could understand the moment Lt. Ross accidentally let them know the truth that they’d take off to see Gracia. However, at the hotel, I would have thought that Ed and Al would be questioning why Roy and Riza (and Armstrong for that matter) had felt the need to lie about the situation. That may still come but we’ll see.

I wonder what is so important about Roy Mustang that the homonculi need him alive. When Hughes got too close to uncovering the truth, they killed him. Mustang is about there as well and they aren’t trying to kill him. Instead, they are shifting the blame to Lt. Ross for some reason. I’ll be interested to see why this is.

So, a good episode all around as we continue to forge ahead into new territories.