Apparently last week had some sort of important sport event that caused quite a few series to go into hiatus, among which Full Metal Alchemist. Now that it’s back we can continue with the hunt for the Humonculi, and quite a surprising aftermath to the previous episode.

Because as it turns out, Havoc lost his ability to walk. I’m not sure whether this is permanent or temporary (you never know that in anime…), but nevertheless that was a heavy sacrifice that Roy had to pay in order to be able to kill off Lust. On top of that, Ed and Al also realized (with Barry’s original body being the way it was), that Al’s real body might be rotting away right now, and that he might not even be able to go back to it. At the same time, we also learn that Ed seems to be sleeping an awful lot. Something tells me that this is also going to become important later on.

The rest of this episode focused on a plan to lure out the Humonculi. Scar showed up again, in the city that Ed, Al and Roy happened to be in, and so they come up with the idea to use Scar, in order to lure out the Humonculi who seem to get rid of scar. They suspect this because of the way the Homunculi have been fighting scar, and also that the Fuhrer has a good chance of being a Humonculus, if I understood correctly.

Also, for some reason the facial distortions in this episode were a lot more out of control than usual. Especially with Ed on his fixing spree, and afterwards when he tried to talk to Roy Mustang. The scenes themselves were quite hilarious, but they didn’t mesh too well with Scar’s sudden appearance. I liked it more when the comedy was more subtle. That’s really the moment when you don’t know when to laugh or not.

I wonder how Winry’s going to react when she finds out that Ed and Al were chasing the one who killed her parents for revenge. Something tells me that she’s going to find out sooner or later, and I don’t think that she really would have taken revenge if she was in their shoes. Still, at the moment her part in this series has been rather pointless so far, aside for the emotional support for Ed and Al. I do hope that she’s going to end up doing something useful, rather than hog lots of screentime like she did in the first anime series.

And as usual: when discussing this episode, please refrain from mentioning events that happen after this point in the manga.
Rating: * (Good)

A big episode for Aoba this time. Up till now we have really seen both her and Kou acting as directed Wakaba’s dreams, rather than for their own. And while that indeed is important for both of them to deal with her sudden death, it also really gets in their way at times. Especially in the case of Aoba, who despite being technically superior to Kou is doomed to stay in his shadow because he just happens to be able to throw faster.

In this episode, she finally did what I’ve been hoping for for a while now: participate in an actual game. In the past few episodes, you could really tell that she was pissed off being seen as inferior to Kou. She kept teasing him about how he was a year higher than she was, and was very sarcastic whenever she talked to him. There is such a thing as a lovers’ quarrel, like you often see in anime, but in Aoba’s case it’s much more than her simply being a tsundere. Especially the new batters, who kept comparing her to Kou hit hard.

But yeah, in this episode, Senda(what happened to the guy, by the way? We haven’t seen him in a while, have we?)’s friend pops up again, with a proposal for her to join the baseball team of her school. Obviously, she did this without the consent of the rest of her team, but in the end Aoba gets a part of a stand-in. Which of course is logical: the teamwork would have been completely disrupted if the pitcher were to change to some girl nobody heard of.

And you know, it’s still pretty obvious that Kou and Aoba are into each other, but after having seen a genuine smile from Aoba a couple of times now, I’m starting to think that the two of them really should spend some time away from each other. Something tells me that when they’re together, they only remind each other of Wakaba: I suspect that Kou keeps seeing Wakaba in Aoba, and he continues to put up a strong image in front of her. Aoba on the other hand is constantly reminded of the guy Wakaba was in love with when she was still alive, and therefore still feels hurt when remembering her. In fact, have Kou and Aoba actually talked about Wakaba when they were together? This may be my memory, but it seems to me that the topic of Wakaba has become some sort of a taboo between the two of them.
Rating: ** (Excellent)