Episode 30

Aired 20060929. Assault on South Headquarters. Same as original title. Here's the episode guide at TV.com. The detailed recap is pending. Yup, recap is rare.

It's moving away from the manga starting with the introduction of the mysterious boy (Wrath), and the story starts to develop holes. Lots of holes! Ed won't be stopped so easily by the lizard man in the middle of chasing Wrath, will he? That scene is inserted just to introduce the lizard man and link to Greed's side. And then the time lost is compounded by Archer and Armstrong. Ed would have lost Wrath after the chat. How can he find him afterwards? And on the roof? What a plot device! Grrr...

Archer is also not surprised by Al's empty armour, which doesn't make sense. He shouldn't be able to find out the whereabouts of Ed from Winry, because she shouldn't know where Wrath runs off to! If Wrath can give Ed such a hard time, he should be able to easily fight off, or escape from the army too, shouldn't he? Doesn't make sense either. Wouldn't Kimbly get hurt too when he explodes the wall at point blank? The Fuhrer magically appears in the East HQ? The refugees at the landfill are so organized that they have community meals?

There are way too much "convenience". This show has been successful in building up a solid and believable reality, but it's now damaged.

At this point, Kimbly only makes things confusing. He looks nothing like when he was in prison. I also had trouble relating Greed to lab 5. New characters are introduced too rapidly. Plus their names aren't mentioned often enough. Their scenes are short. Their impressions don't stick. It's hard for the viewers to follow.

The story at this point boils down to "every one's after Wrath". There are 7 lines going on! Ed, Izumi, the army, and Greed. And then Yoki, Scar and the rest of the Homunculi. Well, the staff did a good job on setting up the stage, but it's so confusing, I almost gave up watching. The only thing that kept me going was Ed's side. At least I wanted to know if he can get his limbs back.

What Armstrong said was awesome. Sometimes it's better not to know the truth. Ouch... so heavy. Too heavy. This gives an anchor point to pull the show back onto the realistic side.

However, it breaks down again when Izumi trashes the East HQ. Making the building grow tumours is the fastest way to show the degree of the battle, but also the cheapest and cheesiest way. (I hate it...)

And then the scene moves inside the building, which looks completely normal! Whatever Izumi is doing, doesn't match the tumours on the outside walls. It's the scale. The scale is wrong.

The music in the battle scene is very effective, though. It's a complicated scene that gives a 3-level parallel effect. The visual is real time on Izumi fighting her way to Wrath, while the dialogue is Shig talking to Winry off screen, telling her about Izumi's sorrow past. Yup... too many things are happening at the same time.

Haha... this has turn into a manga-anime-difference bash instead of dub bash!

Japanese sites spying time: (^_^)
The review of episode 30 at Yoo's blog Fuuyuu.
The review of episode 30 (page 1 & page 2) by Saori Amano at Egaoni Aetara.