While Scar's continuing battle with a wounded King Bradley becomes ever-more bloody, and those loyal to Mustang find themselves with another ally as they remain trapped in the radio station surrounded by the military, our real attentions need to turn to what is going on within Father's "stomach", as our four human sacrifices (plus May Chang) spot an opportunity to fight back, although in the case of Mustang the shock of his incapacitation renders him useless.
This means that it's up to May and the Elric brothers to lead the fight against Father and Pride, making for a difficult and pitched battle on both sides as the Homunculus balance not being defeated with not injuring their sacrifices while the human side of the battle was never liable to be easy against such formidable foes. In the end, even the combined efforts of our heroes prove to be futile, and even the late appearance of Greed isn't enough to stop Father from unleashing his plan, which he reveals as an attempt to open the gate of the planet itself. Grandiose plans like that can never mean good news for the rest of us, and so it goes that the opening of this gate brings about Third Impact... Well, okay, it wasn't actually Third Impact, but it might as well have been given all of the End of Evangelion-esque undertones of proceedings towards the end of the episode.
Despite those Evangelion comparisons (and lets face it, nothing is going to compare favourably to Evangelion) this was another top-notch episode, that made the most of its pitched battles early on before maintaining the right balance of intensity and impending doom as the gate was opened and everything goes almost literally to Hell in a hand basket in a visually impressive way that brought the scale of what we were seeing to life quite impressively. However, the most interesting question of all is - what happens now? With this episode leaving us on the brink of some kind of Armageddon and what seems to be utter defeat for the Elric brothers and company, it's hard to imagine how they can turn things around... and that's exactly why I'll be waiting even more impatiently to find out.
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There were several moments of Ooo and Ahhh.
Wrath under the shower of sparks (Ooooh!)
The Father's "Smiley Gun"
(Aaaaah!)
Alphonse's "stone shower"
(Oooh!)
And the whole "Opening the Gates" Sequence
(Aaaaaah!)
This whole episode kicked butt.
Speaking of kicking butt, next time time on Hanaren...
Ah, I'm so worried how they'll handle this. No doubt the manga has done a good job of making the events of the chapters after this kickass and believable. But that's chapter 105-107 and there's still chapter 108 coming out this week. That's 3 more Brotherhood episodes to animate 4 more chapters. Which normally wouldn't seem so bad but those chapter are 60-80 pages long and the last one is supposed to be a monster (possibly 100)
I meant to say Hanoren...
The manga finale has been written for a long time. So I think that the animaters have had time to consider the amount of information they have to fit in as well as time to consider what to animate beautifully.
I mean, this is Bones we're talking about.
Some animes use the opening credits for more than the typical "advertisement for the show you're already watching".
We've seen this in the original FMA ending where the OP and the EC had the actual episode running.
And who knows? Maybe they'll do a special 1-hour episode or something.
But it would be hard for me to believe that after doing such a terrific job, they would cut corners at the finale.
Who knows, though? Bones has always had trouble with finales. Soul Eater crashed and burned, Xam'd explained very little and the ending of the original Fullmetal Alchemist was pretty controversial. Probably the best ending to a Bones anime was Eureka Seven's, and even that degenerated into sappy sentimentality at the end.
I hope they don't screw up because, as people have said, there's still a lot of material to go over.
It's not hard for me the belive since Bones has a history and letting us down on endings...plus just the awe of the last chapters I find it hard to believe. Though I do know they've had them for a good while.
But apparently official news now says there will be 64 episodes and I really think 1 more episode is enough to calm all my doubts.
This is a warning for non-manga readers: two pages from the manga's final chapter have been leaked and spoil a bunch of plot points. Just watch out where you're treading on the Internet since people cannot seem to shut up about it.
Oh it's much more than two pages. Much, much more. Last I counted it was 67 pages. And that's not even the whole scan. Seriously, they even have THE VERY LAST PAGE.
I think I'm gonna stop reading comments on Brotherhood blogs since I wanna wait for the scanlation and I'd suggest that the writers of these blogs do the same. Someone is bound the spoil something.
Oh yeah, and it's been confirmed in Gangan (the mag. that publishes FMA manga) that there WILL BE 64 episodes instead of 63. Yay! And on the 4th of July no less. ^^
Honestly, I was expecting the giant crucifixes to show up at any second. And when the "gate" opened up in the moon, I half expected giant Rei to come out.
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