Episode 52, "Combined Powers"
*****SPOILERS*****
Synopsis: Using the Philosopher's Stone, Alphonse battles Pride and Kimbley. Kimbley is impressed, but is curious as to why Alphonse hasn't used the stone to retrieve his body. Alphonse claims that the possibility exists to save everyone and regain his body. Kimbley argues that it's possible that neither will occur, and attacks using his own, refined stone. In Central, the Armstrong siblings take on Sloth, who proves to be the fastest of the homunculi. Pride seemingly gains the advantage against Alphonse, but it turns out to be a trap. Heinkel comes from behind Kimbley and bites his neck. Edward, Scar, and the other chimera continue to fight the homunculi army, who try disabling them by taking out their legs. As Pride taunts Alphonse and his group, a car comes out of nowhere and hits him. The car is driven by none other than Yoki, who helps the others escape. Alone with a dying Kimbley, Pride decides to devour him like he did with Gluttony. Back at Central HQ, the troops who corner Olivier are attacked by the homunculi army and she tells them to make a choice between dying or making a stand. Beneath Central, Envy chases Mei. In the room where Ed and the others are, they are beginning to get overwhelmed, but Roy and Riza arrive.
Comments:
This was a pretty action-packed episode! Alphonse takes on Pride and Kimbley, the Armstrong siblings fight Sloth, Edward and his group fight the homunculi zombies, and even Yoki gets in on the action here! Roy even shows up at the end to help out, which means that things are going to heat up even more (yes, pun intended!).
The episode starts off with Alphonse in combat with Pride and Kimbley. What I've appreciated about Brotherhood is its more active Al, who doesn't hesitate to mix things up with antagonists when his brother's not around. Here he has the advantage of having a Philosopher's Stone to power his alchemy, growing back parts of his armor and creating a sword and a flashbang to fight Pride. The battle was one of the best animated ones in the series, too.
Poor Kimbley does not make out well at all. Come to think of it, despite his cooler attitude in this series, he comes off as kind of a loser. His first battle with Scar results in his impalement and though he defeated Edward handily, he didn't really accomplish very much, and ends up getting teeth in his throat here before making a real impact. I felt like they didn't really utilize him well enough. Not that he wasn't a pretty cool villain, don't get me wrong, I liked him, but this unceremonious end to him seems a little off. At least he went out doing something pretty cool in the first series, turning Alphonse into a bomb.
A big surprise was Yoki, a comedy relief character, ramming Pride with Kimbley's car and helping Al, Marcoh, and Heinkel to escape. After so little attention given to him, it sort of comes out of nowhere, and goes nowhere, but it was pretty humorous to see Pride fly through the air and Yoki declare a victory.
Alphonse's fight was good, but my favorite parts of the episode were still the bits of the Armstrongs versus the homunculi Sloth. It's revealed here that Sloth is actually the fastest homunculi. That makes sense, because Sloth is the sin of laziness, the waste of potential. Sloth isn't just slow, he's fast but doesn't like using his ability. He's lazy. As much as I love the first series, it makes a lot more sense than Water Mommy being Sloth. The fight is well-animated like Alphonse's, but just so much more awesome, because there's so much damage being done to everything and there's so much going on around it.
Edward and his group continue to fight the homunculi army, which is probably the least interesting bit of the episode. Like I said before, they really seem like last minute mooks to serve as busy work for the characters that Arakawa didn't have anything for to do at the time while she was handling the big homunculi showdowns. But now that Roy's showed up, things are going to take a different turn.
Expect Roy's flames to get a good workout in the next episode!
Overall Score: 4 out of 5
