Fullmetal Alchemist 24

Hiromu Arakawa – Viz – 2011 – 26 volumes

It is so honestly aggravating that there are so many plot points to resolve before the end of the series. While this volume is amazing, and has a lot of battles that I’ve been looking forward to the whole time, I am dying to read the end of this series, and this all just seems like filler, or going through the motions, where it would’ve seemed great several volumes ago.

Wrath re-appears, and of course he needs to be dealt with. We learn a whole lot about him, and it winds up being Lin/Greed, Lin’s bodyguards, and Captain Buccaneer from Briggs that take him on. Don’t get me wrong. Wrath can really fight. Seeing him zip around with his sword, causing all sorts of hardcore mayhem without breaking a sweat, is awesome. This is probably one of the best fights in the series, especially because the characters wind up using extreme measures to take him down. But again… it’s not the conclusion. It doesn’t even really have anything directly to do with the conclusion. And I want to see Al get his body back. We don’t even really see the start of that path in this volume.

Elsewhere, Olivier and Alex Armstrong take on Sloth with others. I can see why Sloth was the last of the “children” to see action. He can hold his own as a homunculus for sure, but… he is inherently slothful. He doesn’t like to fight. He causes all sorts of damage, but he only winds up taking two or three passes total in this volume. And he dies pretty easily.

Izumi steps in, and I love that her husband and Alex Armstrong have some sort of strong-man bonding moment. But of course Izumi is a loose end from much earlier in the series, and we knew she would somehow be involved with the end, so we have to resolve her story too…

Again, as ready as I am to read the conclusion to this series, I still love every minute of these volumes leading up to it. I’m growing impatient with the fact that we haven’t even seen the beginnings of the apocalyptic final battle with Ed and Al and Mustang (though this war at Central could be construed as the beginnings, the main characters aren’t involved, so…), but that doesn’t mean that any of this isn’t worth reading. I’m still amazed by how much humor Arakawa puts into the story here, despite how serious everything is. This is largely due to the goofy characters, who can stay goofy while laying homunculi low and saving the country. All the characters in this series are really great, and these volumes always make me laugh, even when serious stuff like a resolution is happening.

But seriously. If the final battle doesn’t start next volume, I’m going to be upset.