Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - Episode 7

With their "wounds" healed, the Ed and Al are back on the road in their hunt for information about the Philosopher's Stone in episode seven of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, complete with the information given to them by Marco. However, it takes scant seconds on this episode to see that potentional information disappear before their very eyes.

In short, the Central Library has been razed to the ground by the Homonculus, who have clearly decided that the Elric brothers were getting a little too close to their goal. However, they reckoned without the former librarian Sheska, whos passion for books and former employ of the Central Library means that she remembers the tome containing Marco's research in its entirety. It turns out that this book is simply filled with recipes, but Edward soon realises that there's more to this volume than meets the eye and sets about decrypting it, running into shocking discovery after shocking discovery in the process.


Away from all of this, the Homunculus have been up to more than simply burning down the Central Library, as they also run into and attack Scar, wounding him in the process and setting the wheels of tracking him down on the part of the State Alchemists back in motion.

Considering the darker facets of this particular episode, it might be a little surprising to hear that this episode is arguably one of the most light-hearted of the series so far, with the instalment packed to the rafters with comedy aside from the relatively brief moments where the Philosopher's Stone and its requirements are being discussed. Given the amount of dark material in this series, this more humourous take was actually rather welcome and much needed here, and what's more it actually managed to be funny on occasion rather than simply as some rather run of the mill comedy. Having not been much of a fan of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood's attempts at humour up until this point, I wasn't expecting to think much of these fripperieseither, but I actually ended up enjoying them rather a lot, making this episode another good one in the grand scheme of things, even if the show's pace does continue to be breakneck at this juncture to avoid boring the Fullmetal Alchemist die-hards.