Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - Episode 10 ENGLISH DUB Review

Episode 10, "Seperate Ways"

In this episode: wacky hijinks!

*****SPOILERS*****

Synopsis: Edward describes his experiences at Laboratory 5 to Major Armstrong and Lt. Colonel Hughes. Fuhrer King Bradley visits and warns the group not to investigate any further. The brothers get on a train to Dublith, to go see their alchemy teacher, though the thought of it frightens them. While reading the paper, Hughes is inspired to do some research into the massacres around the country, but is confronted by Lust. Hughes tries to contact Roy via an outside pay phone, but is killed by Envy, in disguise as Maria Ross. After Hughes' funeral, Roy begins investigating his death, vowing to find his killers.

Comments:

Sorry for the lateness!

I think the most important thing to note in the dub for this episode is the evolution of Travis Willingham's Roy Mustang voice. In the first series, he felt a little bit to goofy to me. He always tackled silly scenes well, but when Roy was in a dramatic scene, he fell flat in the role. Then at the beginning of this series' dub, he returned with a very weak, awkard voice that sounded like an entirely different character. However, by the fourth episode, his Roy had become something else entirely: a better version of his first series voice. A voice that sounded natural coming from Roy Mustang's mouth.

I can hear that not only does his Roy sound more natural now, not only is it an improvement over his first series voice, but it's probably the best performance in the Brotherhood dub thus far, especially in this particular episode. You can really feel his concern for his friend, his subordinates, and his ideals. It's a voice I knew he had in him, but didn't expect to hear, because I didn't think the direction was that good in the dub of last series. Whatever the director or Willingham is doing now, though, is really working well for this character, and has my support.

Sonny Strait's farewell as Maes Hughes (though not really, he'll appear in flashbacks) was handled fairly well by the scripting and acting, though I've been alerted to changes to certain lines for the dub that remove some of the forshadowing the original lines had in this episode, which is concerning. I'm also not a big fan of Ed Blaylock's King Bradley, it's too soft and leveled. The Japanese voice has this booming, commanding feel, and made the scene where he hands Ed the melon even funnier because of how serious he sounds. Blaylock plays Bradley too weakly.

Urgh, next week is the Rush Valley episode. At least Brotherhood, like the first series, had the common decency to leave it all in one episode. It was the worst part of the manga by far and was an early test of my committment to the series.

Overall Dub Score: 3.5 out of 5


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