Episode 19, "Death of the Undying"
*****SPOILERS*****
Synopsis: Hawkeye and Fuery are unable to take out Gluttony, but recieve help from Col. Mustang, who blows him away with his flame alchemy, at least temporarily. Roy, Riza, Havoc, Alphonse, and Barry follow Barry's body into Laboratory #3's basement, where they split up into groups. Roy and Lt. Havoc encounter Lust, who stabs Havoc through the spine and injures Roy as well, leaving him for dead. Al and Hawkeye find Barry with his rotting body, but they are joined by Lust. Lust tears Barry apart and prepares to kill the other two, but Roy arrives, and using a makeshift alchemy circle drawn on his hand and Havoc's lighter, he incinerates Lust repeatedly until she can no longer regenerate. Bradley spots the group, but walks away instead of engaging them. Meanwhile, back in Risembool, Edward arrives, and finds his father there.
Comments:
This was a really good episode of the dub. But it was still vastly inferior to the Japanese version, for a few reasons.
First of all, while Travis Willingham has been doing splendidly lately in the role of Roy Mustang, this episode was a moment of truth that I felt he dropped the ball on. More specifically, the most important scene, the one in which he confronts and destroys Lust, he sounded awkward and weakly growly, rather than focused rage. Shinichiro Miki makes me shiver in this scene with how badass he sounds. Willingham just sounds unnatural, like he really can't tap into the character's feelings. It's very disappointing.
However, Colleen Clinkenbeard's performance as Riza Hawkeye in this episode completely, utterly, undeniably blows away Fumiko Orikasa's performance in every way, both in voice and delivery. Her scream of, "You bitch!" was just perfect. Instead of giving her a school girl cry, she makes her sound like a full-grown woman who is in intense emotional pain. You can tell she's really losing it in the scene, she's pushed over the edge. It's almost frighteningly good. Clinkenbeard is a massive talent, and she's been impressing me as Gohan in Dragon Ball Z Kai, but her Riza Hawkeye is the best role I've ever heard her in, especially here in Brotherhood.
Laura Bailey's Lust, making it's exit here, was also extremely good. I felt like in the first series she was putting on a bit of a hammy sexpot character voice, but she sounds noticably more natural in this series, and delivered strongly in her death scene, whether screaming or whispering. It's a shame the character has to die so early here, because Bailey was really on top of her game. This is the Lust performance I wanted in the first series' English dub.
It's also a shame that Jerry Jewell won't be heard anymore, with Barry gone, too. You can tell he was really having fun with the role, and it was working very well.
What I was also impressed with was the dialogue. The script was really good in this episode. So, all in all, it wasn't as good as it could have been, but it was otherwise a great dub.
Overall ENGLISH DUB Score: 4 out of 5
