Episode 51, "Immortal Army"
*****SPOILERS*****
Synopsis: The officer who activates the homunculi dolls is eaten by them, and they turn o the scientist that was with him next. Edward, Scar, and the chimera arrive at the doorway near where Barry died. Ed tries to open it, to no avail. Suddenly it opens and the homunculi dolls pour in. Olivier takes a general hostage, but he orders his subordinates to shut the gates so that Mustang's and the Briggs forces can't get in. Sloth attacks, but Olivier moves out of the way and the general is crushed instead. Edward's group tries to fight off the dolls, but they don't have any luck. Edward suddenly realizes what they are. He shuts the exit to the room so they can prevent them from escaping. Back at the mound, Heinkel realizes that Pride has been sending out morse code signal, but it's too late. Kimbley attacks, breaking the mound, which releases Pride. Underground, Mei runs from the dolls, balancing the jar with Envy on her head, but Envy is swallowed by one of the dolls and takes control of it. Devouring the other dolls, Envy returns to his original form. Olivier tries to fight Sloth, but isn't damaging him. When she is about to be crushed, her brother Alex arrives to assist her. Alphonse tries to help Heinkel and escape from Pride and Kimbley, who shows him the Philosopher's Stone he saved from the mine. Alphonse uses it to challenge Kimbley and Pride, to Kimbley's amusement.
Comments:
This episode is difficult for me to gauge. On the one hand, it's got plenty of awesome stuff in it. On the other hand, it's also got some incredibly lame elements, too, and I'm sure some of you may disagree with me based on how well they are made to look cool, even if they are awful. I have to put aside the quality of the production values (which is great), though, even to criticize those elements that don't work. That's probably why I gave this episode a fairly high score. I really wanted to love this episode, but there were some natting bits.
For one thing, those white, gaunt, homunculi dolls, the "immortal army", are fucking lame. Oh so lame. All that build up to an immortal army, and we get these stupid, brainless zombies that serve as nothing but last-minute mooks to keep Edward and his group busy while characters Hiromu Arakawa actually cares about do things work looking at. Is anyone else disappointed by these things? They're nightmare fuel, for sure, but somehow, I don't really think of them as some big threat.
In fact, they seem little more than fodder for reintroducing Envy into the mix, as his extremely contrived return comes in this episode, as well. Not only is Mei stupid enough to fall for Envy's words, but he conveniently takes control of these dolls to regain his body, and is immediately back where he was before Marcoh defeated him. Envy had a perfectly good exit from the story a long time ago. We'll see later on that Arakawa wrote his return for a very specific reason, but that will bother me just as much. At least Envy is some sort of real threat, but seems much less of one after having been defeated by Marcoh.
One of the great things about this episode was Olivier Armstrong. I don't think there's a single bad scene with her in it. I love how she dodges just in time and the general gets smooshed instead of her. And with Alex on the scene, now, the battle between the Armstrong siblings and Sloth is going to be awesome. It's a little strange that Alex has taken this long to get back into action, though. We haven't seen him do a damn thing since way back when the original Greed was still around. Talk about underutilizing a character. Though it is abundantly clear who the superior Armstrong sibling is.
Another great moment in this episode was Alphonse using the Philosopher's Stone to fix his torn of feet and staying to do battle with Pride and Kimbley. You really didn't get that kind of active badassery from Alphonse in the first FMA series. Though I really didn't care about Heinkel, since he's a worthless chimera character, his reasoning for why Al should use the stone was pretty good. This is one of the best episode-ending scenes in the series.
The fifty-first episode was the one on which the first FMA series ended, but there's plenty more of this one to go. I wonder how the readers of my reviews feel about this series versus the first one. I still don't have a preference, but I realize a lot of people see m to prefer one or the other.
Next week, Alphonse vs Pride and Kimbley! The Armstrongs vs Sloth! Should be interesting.
Overall Score: 3.5 out of 5
