Fullmetal Alchemist 19

Hiromu Arakawa – Viz – 2009 – 22+ volumes

What have I done to deserve all this Fullmetal Alchemist?  The release schedule slowed way down for awhile, presumably because we’d caught up to Japan.  While we were slow, a few more volumes came out in Japan, so now we can have three or whatever all at once.  I like this method, especially for a series with a plot as intricate as this one.  Having the volumes release close together is wonderful.  I’ve even got one more to read after this.

After complaining about the slow pace in my last review, I was kind of taken aback by how quickly things were moving in this volume.  Kimblee and Ed fight, and… bad things happen.  Bad things happen to Ed, and I’m not sure how he will recover from them, but he’s the main character.  I don’t like the idea of what it is that he’s sacrificing, either, and I suspect it’s not his life he’s working with.  But oh well.

We get to see an awesome, awesome conversation between Hawkeye and Mustang.  I have no idea how that worked so well in translation, but it did, and… wow.  I love that the two of them are so in-sync that something off-the-cuff like that would work.  I also like that it’s never a question of romance, either, just 100% devotion on both sides, presumably.

Aside from Ed’s fight, we also get a flashback that explains absolutely everything about Von Hohenheim.  I… didn’t quite understand what was going on, since it looks like the same person is the master of the homunculi as well as Ed and Al’s father.  Why would he bother to raise a family when he was doing the thing with the seven sins?  And… wouldn’t he be a homunculi himself, so why would King Bradley need to find out if he could have a son?  But all that is answered, and in a way that was entirely unexpected.  Now the only question is why he ran away from his family, I suppose, but the fact the series turned a villain around and made me love him and see things from his perspective is pretty incredible.  Also, the plot of the series makes a lot more sense now.  The only thing now is… I’m all worried that Von Hohenheim will sacrifice himself to save Ed and Al at the very end of the series.

Von Hohenheim’s past, the conversation between Hawkeye and Mustang, and the fight that ends badly for Ed.  Any one of these three things would have made for an awesome volume, but all three together, at once?  This was the best volume of the series yet, and it’s great to see that it hasn’t lost its touch after all these years.  I’ll be sad if things don’t move fast from here… but it’s very likely they will, since war has been declared and the tunnels are finished and all.

On to volume 20!