Hagane no Renkinjutsushi – Fullmetal Alchemist Ep. 42
鋼の錬金術師 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST Episode 42 review
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood – 42

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Al’s armor body is taken apart and carried to an abandoned building where Mei uses Scar’s brother’s notes and unlocks the hidden code contained within. Kimblee discovers Sloth’s tunnel and encounters Pride, who takes him off his mission to find Scar and tells him to put a Blood Crest on Briggs as Sloth completes work on the tunnel. Miles makes it back to Briggs and lets Buccaneer know about the missing Ed and Kimblee. Falman has a phone conversation with Breda (stationed in the west), where they discuss the worsening conditions with the fighting in the south (where Kain is stationed) as well as the fighting in the west.

Meanwhile, Hohenheim arrives at Lior and after a meal, he inquires about the cult that started the riot. Rose and her boss lead Hohenheim underground, where the water has become poisonous. Having Rose and the man wait, he makes it to the tunnel that Sloth built and encounters Pride, who immediately attacks. Hohenheim retreats to the tunnel he created to get there and discovers this homunculus is limited to the giant tunnel and the center of Central City. After a brief chat, Hohenheim tells Pride to let Father know that Slave 23 is coming, something relayed immediately to Father.

At Briggs, the forces of Drachma march on the fort and are aided by Kimblee, who lets the Drachma general know that his men will turn on the Briggs troops and cause chaos. Elsewhere, Zampano calls Central and reports to Envy that Marcoh is hiding in the city of Asbec.

Thoughts/Review:

Well now, well now. I didn’t expect to see Rose again but it was nice. She seems so confident now despite all of the bad stuff she’s been through with the exposure of Father Cornello as a fraud and the subsequent riots that happened which seriously damaged Lior. She wasn’t lugging some baby around either, which I seem to remember in the first anime series. I wonder if Rose plays a bigger role in the future or if this was just an extended cameo role.

Regardless, Hohenheim’s trip to Sloth’s tunnel showed that Pride has limits. He can travel around the tunnel with his shadow form and he can move about in parts of Central City (if I understood correctly). Well, now we know why Pride hasn’t unmasked some of the conspiracies against Father — he’s limited. Heck, not being able to leave the tunnel means he cannot monitor what transpires in Briggs or anywhere else. I would guess that his threat on Riza is legit though.

Still, why has it taken Hohenheim so long to take any action against the homunculi? He is the most powerful alchemist there is as far as I can tell with his ability to transmute at will without doing anything obvious to cause the transmutations. Granted, as a living philosopher’s stone, he’s going to be more powerful but I didn’t expect him to have a walkway created under his feet as he walked down the underground waterway. That’s pretty impressive.

Of course if he battles Father, it would be an even match as best as I can tell.

It was interesting seeing the Drachma forces. The people from Xing seem Chinese to me and the Drachma seem Russian. I’m guessing this is on purpose to emulate Earth.

Anyway, I can’t help but think that the people of Briggs may have already prepared for dealing with Kimblee’s men turning on them. I suppose it really doesn’t matter if Briggs repells the attack from Drachma or not since it is blood that has to be shed for the transmutation circle to be completed. It is interesting that Kimblee already had contact with the people of Drachma and apparently enough influence to get them to attack Briggs.

Well, it seems my initial suspicions about the Chimera and their rapid conversion were well founded. I know, I know. Last episode, I had decided to go ahead and trust them but hey, I can’t always be right. ^_~ Well, the two with Ed may be OK, but with Zampano having a direct line to the Führer’s office to squeal, he certainly doesn’t seem OK. Still, in addition to playing trickery with the audience, it is nice to see Envy brought back into the mix.

Finally, there’s Mei Chan’s solving of Scar’s brother’s notes. Take them apart and make a transmutation circle out of them.

What?

OK, I know that certain keywords like “gold” were used to group papers together but how do you sort them as they did? I’m completely lost on that one and it smacked rather convenient that by spreading the papers of the notebook out in a certain way, somehow linking certain keywords to help make the arrangement, one could get a transmutation circle. Further, how twisted was Scar’s brother to come up with this insanity? This is the most complex puzzles I’ve ever seen because the notes had to be written so that someone would figure out spreading out the papers in an overlapping, specific patter, then flip everything over to reveal the true solution to the riddle.

*_*

My head is spinning. Maybe I shouldn’t have watched this when tired. ^_^;

All that aside, I get the notion that Scar’s brother figured out that Amestris was being turned into a giant transmutation circle. So, when I remember that Father had no control over alkahestry when Mei Chan and Scar used it in his lair, it stands to reason that an alkahestry circle might counter whatever Father is planning. Question is, if I’m right, how do they go about making these changes?

One more thing — at least an explanation was given as to the removal of the dirt from Sloth’s tunnel. *lol*

There’s a lot happening on multiple fronts and this anime series continues to be very good. ^_^