Episode 24, "Inside the Belly"
*****SPOILERS*****
Synopsis: Gluttony goes on a rampage, trying to devour Roy into his eye Gate. Roy manages to escape with Riza in a car, taking Ran Fan with her, while Ed, Al, and Ling stay behind to fight. Envy arrives to retrieve Gluttony, but a new fight begins, and Gluttony accidently swallows Ed, Ling, and Envy. Roy attempts to enlist the help of General Raven at Central HQ, but it's revealed that he and a number of high military officers are in on the homunculi's plans, and the Fuhrer appears before him.
Comments:
Late review or LATEST review? Actually, this is nothing compared to how late some of my Mazinger reviews are.
You really have to hand it to Bones in this episode. If this level of quality keeps up, this series could very well surpass my love for the first FMA series. I was pretty damn impressed with nearly everything in it.
Here we see that Edward, Alphonse, and Ling's own plan to gain knowledge of the homunculi is met with more hitches than Roy's, with Envy coming to pick Gluttony up and ending up in a fight with Ling. As Pride told Wrath (in a scene I am grateful to Bones for keeping), the humans are sort of making fools out of them. Gluttony being as witless as he is lands Ed, Ling, and Envy in some big trouble, because now they've been swallowed.
A bit of a nitpick, but I felt that the actual swallowing of Ed, Ling, and Envy seemed a little plain. Bones could have amped the scene up a bit during that moment.
The problem with the story now is that Edward will be spending a lot more time with Ling now than with Alphonse, and Ling becomes a sort of Al substitute, even though he's more like Ed, so it's like two Eds, and one is enough.
I've never been a fan of the Xingese characters, as any reader of my reviews know by now. They cut a good action scene, but as characters, I don't really give a damn about them. I think, though, that Mamoru Miyano really makes Ling a more likeable character, even if he's still probably my least favorite in the cast. It just goes to show how talented Miyano is.
Back to the Fuhrer, we see him sitting down to dinner with his wife and adopted son, Selim. Selim reads an essay about his father, some of which is heard over the fight in the episode. Now, for those not in the know, keep his words in mind. For those in the know, this extra scene is probably a wink and a nudge. I won't say any more about it, though.
Roy is now beginning to see the scope of Hughes' discovery about the military, now that it's outed he knows that Bradley is a homunculus. He probably should have been a little wiser in who he chose to trust in, because General Raven (who I always pictured as having a deceptively warm voice, not this sort of generic old man voice) was in on it, as were most of the higher officers. It makes a bit more sense than in the first series, where the conspiracy was just Dante, the homunculi, Archer, and Kimbley. It made the rest of the military look clueless.
What's with all the Amestris maps in this show? I mean, I understand why military HQ would have maps up, but it feels like this series is really going out of its way to establish Amestris as a country, as if to compensate for not even mentioning the name of the country in the first series. Also, does Amestris look like a cookie with a bite taken out of it to anyone else?
Anyway, a great episode, and I look forward to the next one with great anticipation.
Overall Score: 4 out of 5
