Episode 3, "The Town of Heresy"
*****SPOILERS*****
Synopsis: In the town of Lior, the Elric brothers learn of a preist named Cornello who can perform "miracles". Investigating, they discover that the man is a fraud, using what seems to be a Philosopher's Stone to bypass the law of Equivalent Exchange. Confronting him, they also expose his deception to the townspeople. Edward defeats Cornello, who goes into hiding, only to be killed by two mysterious figures.
Comments:
This was probably the best episode of the Brotherhood dub yet. I think it's probably because it was about as mediocre as I expected it with no additional surprises of failure. Everyone pretty much sounded exactly the same in their roles as they did in the Lior bit from the first series. It's not as though that's glowing praise, but it was tolerable, at least.
Vic Mignogna's Edward is about the same as before. I should probably stop commenting on this performance so much, since it seems to be exactly the way it was in the first series. If you liked how he performed in the first series, you'll like this peformance. I still think of his Edward as sort of detached and uninvolved with the emotional gravity of the narrative. It can really bother me at times.
Maxey Whitehead's Alphonse is, again, too low to hear half the time. Luckily, I already know Al's lines in this part, having rewatched the episode in Japanese with subtitles just prior to the episode's dub airing. From what I can make out, she's fine, but for fuck's sake, somebody get the audio engineer to raise the volume. Alphonse is the armor, he's not a little insect inside the toe section.
Cornello, Rose, Cray, the restaurant guy, random extras, were all pretty run-of-the-mill. I think Cornello probably performed a little better than the others, though. He was probably the best voice in the episode, which isn't saying much. I didn't like the way he delivered some of his lines, it felt a little over-the-top. But I guess that's the way Cornello is, anyway.
We got to hear a little Laura Bailey as Lust again, and she's still fairly competent in the role. I still don't much like Gluttony's English voice (same one as the first show's), but I don't like the new Japanese voice, either. I guess it's not too big a deal, since Gluttony doesn't say much, anyway.
I was bothered by the split screen nonsense and the Hulk Cornello. I think the first series handled this material far better.
The real test of the dub will be episodes like next week's, the Tucker incident.
Overall Dub Score: 3 out of 5
