Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood 04

After returning to Eastern HQ, Ed and Al visit a State Alchemist named Shou Tucker who creates chimeras.

Summary:
Somewhere in Central HQ, State Alchemist Basque Gran is confronted by Scar, and after a brief battle Scar kills the State Alchemist. A while later a group of soldiers led by Mae Hughes and Alex Armstrong are at the scene investigating the murder, which fits the same MO as several other murders of State Alchemists. King Bradley also arrives on the scene and tells Mae to stop the killer at all costs.

Scar just can't resist making the cool poses.

Looks like Ed has some trust issues.

The next day at Eastern HQ, Mustang's subordinates are busy doing paperwork that the colonel himself has neglected, and one of the cases involve Yoki who was ousted from his post at a mining town by the Elric Brothers and is now on the run. At this moment Ed and Al arrive at the HQ to report back to Mustang. During the meeting Ed reports their findings about the fake Philosopher's Stone. Ed and Al have taken an interest in the chimera that was created with stone, with Ed thinking that the knowledge might help him and Al regenerate their bodies. To reward Ed and Al for their work in Lior, Mustang arranges for the brothers to see State Alchemist Shou Tucker, who specializes in creating chimeras. On the way to Tucker's house, Mustang states that Tucker got his State Alchemist certification two years ago by creating a chimera that can understand human speech. The only thing that the chimera said was "I want to die" and it passes away because it refused to eat anything.

This wouldn't have happened if you drank more milk and grown bigger.

Ed, Al and Mustang arrive at Tucker's mansion and are greeted by Tucker, his daughter Nina, and their dog Alexander. While Nina and Alexander play outside, Tucker and his guests have a discussion over tea where Ed reveals his past and explains that he wants to see if research into chimeras can help him and Al return their bodies to normal. Tucker agrees to help and shows the Elrics his lab and large collection of alchemy texts. Ed and Al immediately starts digging into the books, and Mustang returns to work. After studying for a while Ed and Al are interrupted by Nina and Alexander and they start to play together. At dusk, Havoc arrives to pick up the brothers and before leaving Havoc reminds Tucker that his annual evaluation is coming up soon. After the Elrics leave with Havoc, Nina asks her father about the evaluation, and Tucker explains that a State Alchemist must pass annual evaluation to keep his/her title. Tucker didn't do too well in last year's evaluation and will lose his title if he fails again this year. Nina hugs his dad and believes that he should have no problem passing, but Tucker knows that he is running out of time and out of options.

The Fullmetal Alchemist has been defeated by a little girl and her friendly dog.

I don't think Winry would approve of changing the automail arm into that.

The next day Ed and Al arrive to study in Tucker's library and play around with Nina and Alexander. Meanwhile, Tucker is in his study mulling over what to present for his evaluation. Back in Central, Maes and Alex Armstrong are talking about the series of State Alchemist murders, and Alex states that the murderer may be targeting State Alchemists because of the Ishval conflict. The conversation is interrupted when Maria Ross arrives to report that the suspect for the murders has been spotted at a train station.

Back in Tucker's mansion, Tucker talks to the Elrics about his upcoming evaluation. Tucker reveals that his family was quite poor before he became a State Alchemist and he argued with his wife a lot. Tucker's wife has finally had enough and went back to her parents two years ago, and soon after Tucker received his title as State Alchemist. Tucker tells the brothers that he'll do anything to pass the evaluation, and Nina lends her support to her father. Tucker tells Nina and Alexander that he'll play with them tomorrow much to Nina's delight.

Couldn't they make the chimeras cuter?

The next day the Elrics arrive at the mansion and discovers that the front door is unlocked. The brothers venture into the house calling for Tucker and Nina, and they finally discovers Tucker in one of the rooms. Tucker shows the Elrics the newest intelligent chimera that he had created, and the chimera can actually say Ed's name. Ed and Al are impressed by the chimera until the chimera calls Ed "big brother", and Ed realizes that Tucker had created the chimera by fusing Nina and Alexander, and therefore the chimera Tucker created two years ago was actually Tucker's wife. Ed is incensed and confronts Tucker, but Tucker tries to justify his action as a process of science. Ed argues that playing with human lives is wrong, but Tucker laughs at Ed because Ed and Al had played around with human alchemy. The frustrated and livid Ed punches Tucker in the face and had to be restrained by Al, and afterwards Ed can do nothing but let out a scream of frustration and sadness.

The face of a mad scientist.

Ed and Al eventually returns to Eastern HQ to report the incident to Mustang, who orders that Tucker's mansion be put under guard. Mustang tells Ed that as a State Alchemist he'll probably encounter similar incidents in the future and perhaps have to sullen his own hands, and the colonel wonders if Ed will become depressed like this every time something bad happens. Ed responds that he'll do anything to return his and Al's bodies back to normal, but this incident has made him realize that he is just an insignificant human who can't even save a little girl.

Leave it to Scar to make/clean up the mess.

Inside Tucker's mansion, Tucker sits with Nina and wonders why nobody understands him. At this moment, Scar walks into the room after having killed the soldiers guarding the door. Scar quickly kills Tucker, and after offering some words of pity he kills the Nina chimera as well.

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The Shou Tucker arc compressed into one episode and Scar makes his Brotherhood debut. For a "rehash" episode, this week's show wasn't too bad and was better than last week's Lior episode. The episode mostly followed the manga storyline with Scar killing Tucker and Nina in the mansion, but Bones also added in some elements such as the fight between Scar and Basque Gran which was never explicitly shown in the manga. Given the seriousness of this week's story, the jokes were toned down this week as expected with the only gag being Ed getting squashed by Alexander. I thought there were too many jokes in last week's episode so not having so many gags was a nice change. Jokes are good if they are used at the right moment, but throwing gags into the middle of the action during last week kind of threw the pacing off. The Tucker storyline is also better than the Lior arc in its construction and emotional impact, as what Tucker did was just so wrong and it gives off that sickening feeling. There are quite a few really nutty characters in FMA, and Tucker is just the first in line.

An interesting note from this episode is that is the mention of Yoki and his ousting by the Elrics, which means we won't have the mining town episode. This is interesting since Yoki shows up later in the manga as a supporting character, and if I remember correctly another character (May?) will make her debut at the mining town, so it's kind of weird that they are skipping over that part. By the looks of things the anime is trying to get through the "rehash" parts at the beginning as quickly as possible. I don't really mind it since I follow the manga and know what's going to happen, but it might be a bit confusing for those who only watch the anime.

Another interesting note is that in this incarnation of FMA, Scar's alchemy gives a blue colour just like the alchemy used by the Amestris State Alchemist. In the old anime Scar's alchemy is colored red, which I think makes more sense since the alchemy Scar uses is different than the alchemy used by the State Alchemists, so a differnt color to distinguish between the types would be nice.

Last note: after the end of this episode there was a trailer for the new Eureka Seven movie. I want to watch that for sure but it'll probably be a while before the movie is available on this side of the ocean.