Re: FMA 47 - Sealing the Homunculus


"Liz Broadwell" <ebroadwe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:slrndvmbkq.gf0.ebroadwe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dave Baranyi <a_nospam.b_nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Liz Broadwell" <ebroadwe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 19 Feb 2006 21:20:00 GMT, elsie <lcubbison@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:









Beware! Spoilage remains ahead!









The episode opens as Sloth approaches Al.



<snippage>

"She's our responsibility!"

"Which is why we're the ones who have to kill her!"

"No!"

"Damn it, Al!"

Ouch. So Ed wants to take responsibility for his mistake by denying its
personhood (or potential personhood) and wiping it out of existence,
while
Al, less willing to dismiss Sloth's vestigial humanity (even though it's
only deceit and sham in relation to him), plants his heels and demands
another answer. But he doesn't have one himself and Ed doesn't want to
construct one. Ouch.

Once again the dialog in Japanese is subtly different. Al is telling Ed
that
he agrees with him, but continuously ends his sentences with "but",
leaving
open the idea that he isn't really agreeing with Ed.

That suits his polite-younger-brother persona. Going out on a cultural
limb: I'm not tremendously up on Japanese sociolinguistics, but in a
situation like this "Yes, but -- " might require a dynamic translation,
mightn't it? I mean, it's probably indicating a stronger disagreeement
than "Yes, but -- " would in English, right?


Al sounds as if he desperately wants to believe that Sloth has something of
his mother in her. But he also doesn't want to alienate Ed, and no one knows
better than Al how Ed can be when he is being challenged.

Meanwhile, Ed keeps on
responding by yelling "stop it" to Lust and Al.

Making him sound a little more defensive, perhaps? Not just determined to
maintain his premises, but aware that they're more tenuous than he needs
them to be.


Ed doesn't want to hear what Lust, then Sloth are saying. If he listens he
may not be able to act.

"Maybe you are right." We see flashbacks of Scar's brother's
transmutation
as she says, "Where did I come from, and where will I go when I die?
Maybe, all this time, that is what I wanted." We see the boy who grew
up to become Scar. "The freedom to find out:"

Here I paused the tape, stood up, and applauded Laura Bailey. What a
wonderful scene on which to bow out of the series. The pathos of this
speech is beautifully rendered. (It also makes me think about Dante --
does her flight from death amount to a denial of her humanity?)

She already suggested that during her meeting with Hohenheim.

I must go back and rewatch the latter half of the season once the Olympics
are over. They kind of take over my life while they're on, even the
biathlon and the curling.


Olympics? <L>

Way back when I was in University (and as my daughter says, "and Dinosaurs
ruled the Earth" <L>) I gave up watching sports in order to spend more time
chasing women. Watching sports has never regained any of my interest, even
now that the woman who I still "chase" sleeps next to me every night...<g>

And Tucker continues
to be a survivor, as y'all have been pointing out. I'm interested to
see
what finally happens to him. Narrative justice has to catch up with him
at some point. Maybe Archer will reel him back in and he'll get his in
the coup that's developing.

"Narrative justice?"...<nasty grin>

It makes my skin crawl when you show your teeth like that. But yes,
"narrative justice". I doubt his failure to revive Nina constitutes a
sufficient counterweight to his previous actions, even in a story like
this. *Especially* in a story like this. FMA doesn't do black-and-white
character fates, but it does know how to resolve relationships and tie up
loose threads. Tucker can't be left to dangle, and I'll be quite
disappointed if he simply wanders out of the story after all the time he's
spent near the center of things. (Or else I'll expect him to show up in
the movie, my copy of which is currently making its way across the
Pacific. My thanks to Aya for the, um, pointers on electronic civil
disobedience. :-)


Whatever you do, DO NOT watch the movie before you finish the end of the TV
series. Don't even open the package! <g>

BTW - what to you mean by "electronic civil disobedience"? Aren't you
"allowed" to buy "foreign goods" in the Land of the Free any more? <g>

<snippage>


"I might even come to love you two. And how can I allow that? I should
always hate you for creating me."

Nngh. This speech just didn't work for me. I haven't been as impressed
with Lydia MacKay's interpretation of Sloth as I have with Laura
Bailey's
Lust or <blanks briefly on the name> Ed Blaylock's (?) Pride. She
doesn't
seem able to get the same kind of tension between emotions into her
delivery. This speech ought to build quietly through confusion and
vulnerability and self-loathing to a visceral disgust with the boys and
anger at the moment of her attack on Ed, and it doesn't. It's too much
on
a single level. I'm looking forward to hearing the original voicework
for
this scene.

That's interesting, because the Japanese voice actress, Yoshino Takamori,
changes her voice quite effectively. When she is cajoling Al or Ed she is
using the softest of "sweet mother" voices. On the other hand, when she is
talking with Tucker, Lust or Wrath she is imperious.

Hmm. How does she handle this speech? Does the Japanese version require
a build or a consistent level?


Sloth talks as if she is really just talking to herself. In the Japanese
version that makes it even more eerie.



I'm more and more worried that Ed and/or Al (or possibly both of
them) is headed for a sacrificial death out of a sense of atonement or
the
inability to resolve all the contradictions between what events demand
of
them and what they demand of themselves.

"Atonement" tends to have a very, very steep price in Japanese literature,
and in anime... One of the classic anime examples is "El Hazard", in which
atonement takes the form of 10,000 years of isolation with only a glimmer
of
hope for eventual redemption.

Another reason I like this show, besides the tight plotting, good
characterization, neat world-building and hardnosed approach to
consquences, is that it keeps its cards pretty close to the vest. With a
couple of exceptions (that is *not* Winry; Hohenheim is coming back), I'm
reluctant to make predictions about the upcoming episodes. Yet, anyway.
A lot depends on how Ed and Al settle things between themselves over
Sloth's death. I can't see a way out of their predicament that doesn't
involve one brother sacrificing himself for the other, but then I also
can't see, from a character-development perspective, how either would be
able to accept that sacrifice and go on living.

You write as if it were a given that Ed and Al control their own fates free
from the interference of others...

(The best example of plot
imperatives colliding with character fundamentals in anime/manga I have at
the moment is Kenshin learning the amakakeru ryu no hirameki in _Rurouni
Kenshin_. Nobuhiro Watsuki had to pull a punch on the plot side in order
to continue to have Kenshin function as a hero-protagonist. The logical
end of the plot strand was psychologically nonsurvivable for the
character.) So either this is all going to end *really* badly or there's
a well-fed, very smug rabbit hiding in plain sight in the plot, ready to
be pulled out of a hat and astound me. :-)


You've been given all the hints fairly, but I expect that you will still be
"astounded"...<g>

The next episode is titled "Good-bye"? Excuse me while I make sure
there's enough room for me under that couch.

As I wrote last Friday, the next episode is a relative "breather"...

And then the midden hits the windmill. I've got all the dust bunnies
cleaned out from under the couch in anticipation.


Just wrap yourself in a warm blanket to ward off the cold fingers that will
go up and down your spine...<g>

Cheers -

Dave Baranyi

Peace,
Liz

--
Liz Broadwell (username-in-header at orphco dot org), Charter Orphan
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
"Surely it's about time for a truce between genre fiction and the
mainstream. We've had enough bickering by critics who were frightened at
an early age by Grimm's Fairy Tales and are still nervously resentful of
magic and monsters." -- David Langford, _SFX_ 134 (September 2005)


.

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