Episode 53, "The Flames of Revenge"
*****SPOILERS*****
Synopsis: Citizens around Amestris tune into Radio Capital, a station in Central where several Mustang's subordinates are at as the Fuhrer's wife is being interviewed about the attempt on her life. Mustang's group uses this to gain support of their countrymen, who believe that a coup has been started to overthrow Bradley and Mustang and his group are defending the status quo. Hearing Maria Ross on the program, Denny Brosh realizes that she's still alive. The Central command officers are surprised to see tanks attacking HQ. Meanwhile, underground, Roy and Riza arrive to help Ed's group and Roy easily dispatches several homunculi zombies with his flames. Mei and Envy, the latter chasing the former, end up in the same room, where Envy sees the unlikely partnership between State Alchemists and Scar and comments on it. Roy demands to know who killed Maes Hughes and Envy eventually admits to it, showing him how he transformed into Hughes' wife to catch him off guard. Roy tells Ed, Scar, and the others to go ahead, as he will handle Envy on his own. Roy easily injures Envy repeatedly using his flame alchemy, even when Envy transforms into his larger form. Envy slips away and tries disguising himself as Hughes, but Roy doesn't fall for it. Having been separated during the fight, Roy and Riza reunite, but Riza points her gun at Roy.
Comments:
Wow, it was a beautifully done episode, wasn't it? Production-wise, this was an extremely strong episode. The art and animation were excellent throughout, the music was well-utilized, and the voice acting was the best it's ever been from several characters, especially Minami Takayama as Envy, the character at an all time high of wickedness. Really, in some ways, this was one of the best episodes since episode 19.
But, on second thought, story-wise, thematically, and the like, it wasn't very good at all.
First of all, though it was appropriate to show the reaction from Amestrians, especially people in Central, to the happenings of the past few episodes, they spent way too long showing this. They spent way too much time with the radio broadcast segment of the episode. At a certain point, the lingering just slowed down the enthusiasm I had for this arc, which had been steadily building. Is it all right at this point to slow down and spend all this time around characters who do nothing? They could easily have cut this bit down from seven or eight minutes to four or five and nobody would have lost anything from it. It doesn't make sense to impede the momentum of the story at this point.
Then there's the battle between Roy and Envy. Or really, I should say it was a one-sided slaughter of Envy by Roy for the purposes of... what, exactly? Satisfying the viewer's bloodlust (er, flamelust)? I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but since I read this part of the story in the manga, I have had huge problems with this fight on several fronts. I'll cover as much of this as I can without trying to tread too much of the same ground I've been over in other places online.
First of all, can somebody who's writing this, be it Hiromu Arakawa or the guys writing the scripts for the TV series, come to some sort of definitive stance on just how powerful Roy Mustang is? Are we supposed to believe his flame powers are stronger because he's angry? Are you telling me the guy who couldn't defeat Isaac on his own and barely survived fighting Lust can take on a newly revived Envy at his strongest like he was a crippled infant with a rock tied to his back? We're supposed to believe that Roy just completely dominates Envy when Ed and Ling barely survived? I'm sorry, I know Roy is a more powerful alchemist than Edward is overall, but really, this powerful? Envy can't stomp the flames out with his mere size in his true form? And he's incapable of closing his eyes for two seconds so that he avoids getting his eyes burnt? The whole fight seems so one-sided it's painful. If it's so easy for Roy to fight homunculi, he should have taken out Bradley the moment he confirmed he was a homunculi.
Second, it's so unnecessary. What is the purpose behind this battle? So we can go over the "revenge is bad" theme? Unnecessary, because we've done that. And clearly the battle is shown in a way where the viewer is supposed to enjoy Envy's pain. Shouldn't Roy's revenge for the death of his friend climbing to the position he set out to or defeating the system that caused Hughes' death? Must he really do battle with the specific homunculi who killed Hughes? Envy was just a trigger man, anyway. Any of the other homunculi would have done it. It's not even strong thematically, because Roy should be above petty revenge like this at this point of the story.
Envy was already defeated. Already had his big defeat, a more proper defeat, by Doctor Marcoh, a while back. Why bother bringing him back, putting him back in top form, if he's just going to get utterly dominated? It's an excuse for an action sequence, and nothing more, and that's well below Arakawa's writing talents. It's a lot of bluster and noise to distract the reader/viewer from the fact the story has not moved forward, but has rather halted. We're this far and not only are the homunculi still around, but they actually brought one back when there are still others they could use. What was the point of having Envy defeated earlier if he's going to get the same treatment again?
It's bad writing, plain and simple. Bad. Writing. I expect better from Arakawa, from FMA, and so should you. But I'm guessing the lot of you will just wave your hand and go, "Oh Mike, why can't you just be entertained by how cool the fight is?"
I can't. Sorry. It's stupid. The whole episode was nice to look at, but I actually felt myself get dumber just watching it.
And there's more of this bullshit next week.
Overall Score: 3 out of 5
P.S. I realize the perceived hypocrisy of complaining nothing was going on and then complaining when something was, but the Roy fight was only slightly less wasteful than the eight minutes of the radio bit. Just because one is prettier, doesn't make it not wasteful. The only reason I was merciful enough to give a "3" rating is because of the extremely high production values of the episode, its saving grace.
