Oh my god. Talk about an amazing episode, seriously. This episode contained so many plot twists and amazingly directed action-scenes. It really ranks among the best episodes of this series so far. I’m really beginning to understand why the story of the manga is so highly regarded.

To start off with, this episode really took me by surprise when those bodies on Envy suddenly started talking to Ed. I first thought that it was just another illusion by Envy, but damn, those are the souls of real people there, who once were sacrificed in order to create this homunculus. That fight scene also showed how scared Ed still is of ending lives. Common sense should have told him that those bodies were nothing like normal people, and yet he lost all will to fight for that moment.

It was a bit questionable that May Chang and scar were able to track down Al and Gluttony that easily, but there’s probably some reason for the two of them to be present in the next episode. To make up for it, we got some very nice build-up during the journey that Ed and Gluttony made to “father”, and some awesomely animated fights between Scar and May Chang and the various chimera.

On top of that, we get the back-story on king Bradley. He once was a human, specifically “bred” to advance the experiments on homunculi by “father”, and I guess that he was trying to create a homunculus from a human. I guess that that’s why every homunculus is different: they were all created through various means.

And what the heck, Al is actually still at that door?! That’s one hell of a twist, and yet it makes so much sense: it’s been made clear that bodies don’t simply disappear to the realms of god, so it still must have been somewhere. The same goes for Ed’s limbs: where did they get to? And is there perhaps also some homunculus walking around with the Izumi’s guts? In any case, this proves to be a major step forward for Al to get his body back. All they need to do now is make a truce with the homunculi, borrow one of their stones and have Al attempt human transmutation. The only problem seems to be to get the Homunculi to cooperate.

Also, on a different note, when I checked MAL, it suddenly came up with a total amount of 63 episodes for this series. This obviously hardly says anything, since at MAL they like to use any baseless rumour for these amounts of episodes, but at the same time 63 seems a bit too random to just have been pulled out of thin air. Is there some trustworthy source to support this claim? Or is this just the case of another noob who just went with a number that sounded right?
Rating: *** (Awesome)

And so, the time has finally come for Kou and Azuma to take on the most challenging team of the preliminaries, including the player whose name Azuma could remember. The question is of course going to be whether the next episode, which is going to focus on the real meat of the match, is going to be able to deliver. The build-up in this episode was very fine, but the baseball matches in this series have always left a strange bad taste after their end. Let’s hope that this time the creators can avert this.

By far the biggest surprise in this episode was Aoba. I guess that finally the team has to face a formidable opponent, and as the result she was fangirling like crazy in the audience. This episode showed a totally different side of her usual composed and calm personality.

Oh, and the creators have finally scrapped the cat drawing game at the beginning of each episode. Instead, we now have a quiz. Seriously, Momiji asks who the pitcher of the baseball team is and gives three options to choose from. I mean seriously, even kids aren’t that stupid. And seriously, what the heck is up with all that live action in anime this week? First we had that horror of Shugo Chara Party, then Yumeiro Patissiere pulled a few minutes of cheesy live-action at its end, and now Cross Game does it too. Why!?
OP: Some scenes were changed for the OP this time, most notably Wakaba having grown up. Gives a strange effect: what would this series look like if she were still alive?
ED: Hmm, I liked the first better. The vocalist seems to want to try too hard while he doesn’t have the voice for it. Again, grown-up Wakaba gives off a strange nostalgic feeling.
Rating: * (Good)