Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood 37
December 24th, 2009
"Ed, is that your automail malfunctioning or are you happy to see me?"
Summary:
Ed sings the Elements Song!
As Winry fixes Ed’s damaged automail, he warns her about Kimblee, but Winry counters with a flashback with Kimblee remarking to Winry about her ‘heroic’ parents. Still Ed insists on Kimblee being dangerous, and he thinks back to where he heard it all from and instantly recalls his discussion with Riza a few episodes back, and remembers Riza remarking that Ed is in love with Winry. While Ed gets all embarrassed at this, Winry wonders to herself why she fell for such a weirdo like him.
I guess gentlemen DO prefer blondes
As both of them act like idiots, Buccaneer walks in the room and steals Winry’s heart away with his totally awesome and newly improved DIAMOND TIPPED AUTOMAIL. Winry is further led away by the Briggs mechanic/doctor to see more treasures.
Was the Armstrong family flowerlady impregnated with the Armstrong kids, or is that their mom? Next time on 60 Minutes…
Back in Central, Mustang finishes his conversation with the flower vendor and learns of Olivier’s plead for help from the East army, and her offhand remark that it’d be better if Mustang were out of the picture (gotta love that girl!). Meanwhile at Briggs, Buccaneer and a small elite team search down Sloth’s tunnel to find any survivors. Amazingly they do find two survivors who are still alive and terrified after one week inside the tunnel. Pride is still around, but just before Pride is able to make a move, he suddenly shrinks away into the distance and the team is let to live.
Well this would have been more WTF if comments didn't keep hinting at something like this the last few weeks 
We flash back to the President Bradley’s house where Riza is making a delivery and Selim runs out to greet who he thought was his father, but was really just Riza. After chatting with Selim’s mom, Riza makes a startling discovery – Selim is not related to her, and with that Riza deduces who Selim really is. Before she has time to let this sink in, Pride confronts Riza and reveals himself to be Selim and also the first Homunculus.
Let me make you an offer you can't refuse…
Finally we return back to Briggs as Kimblee talks to Ed about some orders from Bradley himself. First of all, Ed is to find Scar and let Kimblee ‘take care of it’. Then he is to find Doctor Marcoh and let Kimblee ‘take care of it’. Finally Ed is to find a way to be the ‘Envy’ of Briggs by starting a civil war Ishbal-style. Kimblee reveals to Ed that he knows all about the Homunculus and knows that Ed knows. Disturbed that Kimblee would still be on their side, Kimblee only replies with the typical ‘evil villain’ response of ‘well why not, I want to see who wins’.
The episode ends as Ed reveals to Winry a bit of the truth, and together Ed, Al and Winry go off to find Scar and company.
Reaction:
Of course the big WTF moment of the episode and what all you people who’ve read the manga have been trying hard not to tell me directly is that Selim is actually Pride. I sort of guessed that something like this would happen back in episode 32 and I guess I was right! (It took Riza Hawkeye 5 episodes to catch up to detective Epi). Now I wonder about the entire ‘relationship’ between Selim and Bradley. I mean what purpose does it serve to have Selim run around, go to school and so on if he’s a Homunculus. What purpose does it serve to have his adopted persona worship Bradley? I get this feeling that it’s almost a big joke that Pride is actually kind of making fun of Bradley considering Pride is the first Homunculus and thus, much further up ‘on the ladder’ than the ‘youngest’ Wrath. Or is this Pride’s way of keeping tabs on Wrath to make sure that the half-human hybrid doesn’t betray the other Homunculus?
What we do see is that Pride has ENORMOUS power. He’s able to project his shadow arms power basically across the entire country and return back to his body almost immediately. I’m quite relieved that Buccaneer wasn’t killed and that it was for decent reason (i.e. Selim had to keep on pretending to be excited about his father’s return home) rather than something dumb. But it’s important to note that while Pride is powerful (power projection across an entire country!), he isn’t all knowing. Obviously his focus is only limited considering he could have easily figured out that it was Riza at the door, unless of course it was on purpose. The one purposeful scenario I can see is to actually purposely give Riza a hint about who he is, and also at the same time, let the survivors in the tunnel live as proof of Olivier’s betrayal.
One thing I am a bit disappointed at is how quickly Kimblee has become a two-bit villain. He had a pretty brilliant introduction, but it seems like he’s just one of those people who are just evil for no reason, and just wants to stick around to see what happens because people are gunna die. It would be more fun if Kimblee actually had some sort of objective (i.e. trying to usurp Father’s power) and was just pretending to Ed to be in it for the hell of it, but I don’t think so. The focus of the story isn’t on him, so I think that’s probably all there is to his character.
Finally, now that Ed, Al and Winry are reunited, I hope that we’ll see much more of Winry in the upcoming episodes. She was one of my favorite characters from the original FMA and her lack of screen time in FMA Brotherhood has left a big hole in the series (even if of course RAN FAN WAS SO AWESOME, but since she’s out of the story now (noooooooo!) we need more Winry).
Next Episode: AWESOME KICKASS FIGHT
P.S. Where in the continuity would Kimblee have time to meet with Winry and tell her about her parents anyway? Perhaps she was in a car in North city? But there was no snow…
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