Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood 53 - Mustang turns up the heat

'No I do not want any of your products, stop phoning me!'

Thoughts -

So this was an episode I was really looking forward to, and of course once you've seen it you'll understand. it was full Mustang flame madness goodness! Envy really taunted him a lot but he soon realized Mustang wasn't going to be easily swayed or distracted, Mustang appears to be dead set on burning Envy to death!

Now while this was a good episode I did feel a little let down. I was hoping it would match episode 19, the one where Mustang burns Lust to death, probably one of the best and most exciting episode's of the series. But really it was only the last half of the episode that focused on Mustang burning Envy. I have no problem with this though, next week we'll most likely get more burning fun, but I doubt it'll last an episode.

Ed certainly has talent in Alchemy, but it never looks as awesome as this now does it?

However thankfully the animation was fantastic, something this series has managed to keep throughout since the start.

Mustang's flames always look fluid and never look awkward, and it's always a joy to watch. I'm wondering what heights of animation this series will reach when we reach the climatic battle, very exciting indeed.

Also I have to give praise to Bone's as they manage to make a normally calm looking Mustang into a very scary looking Mustang, just from the look on his face you could tell he was filled with rage. I also enjoyed the scene where Envy turned into Hugh's wife, despite it being a different face and body you could still see Envy's mannerism's coming through, impressive work indeed.

However I have to give credit to the voice actors as well. Although we hate Envy for everything he's done, you can't help but feel sorry for him as he runs away from Mustang, screaming from being continually tortured. Mustang isn't trying to kill him as fast as possible, he's inflicting as much pain as possible, to the point where Mustang appears to be a bad guy all of a sudden. This is something that is achieved even better through the brilliant work of the voice actors.

Don't piss off Mustang, he'll make sure you regret it!

I may be mistaken but I believe a new piece of music was played during the scene where Envy was in Hugh's wife's form. It sounded new to me, but even if it isn't, like all the soundtracks for this series it really helped add to the power of the scene and I hope they've got a few more soundtracks left to use to amaze us with.

When I first finished watching this episode I was left feeling somewhat disappointed, but after watching it a second time I see it wasn't bad at all, in fact it was a nice change of pace considering the previous episode was jumping all over the place, this one was mainly set on Mustang and co.

Also it's interesting to see such a calm character lose their cool, where they completely go all out and their anger seems limitless. Mustang proves to be a formidable alchemist when you've done him wrong. I just hope that before this series ends we see him click his fingers one last time.

That Volcano in Iceland doesn't know how to bring the heat like Mustang does.

Next weeks episode appears to conclude this feud between Envy and Mustang, as we also get to see how the Armstrong twins are handling Sloth, thankfully this show won't be dropping the excitement for a single episode, which only makes me want each weeks episode more and more.

A solid episode with some much needed vengeance indeed.