If this episode earns some XP over BROTHERHOOD for giving Ed a more realistic amount of space to grieve about Nina’s horrific death, it probably loses the same amount of XP for having Winry just basically shrug off a serial killer imprisoning her. In the morning, she’s being tortured and intimidated in a scary meat locker; but in the afternoon, it’s all about shopping, right?
(And there’s double humor XP for me when I step back and remember that she and Ed are having these cute dating moments when they’re still supposed to be 12-year-olds. Courting with no consummation!).
No bones about it - - this episode was pretty stupid. I don’t know which version’s more accurate to the manga, but BROTHERHOOD’s vision of Barry the Chopper as a somewhat goofy, homicidal “hollow” or whatever is vastly more interesting than this muted psycho who seems to be based on somebody’s impressions of Hannibal Lecter after watching a cut of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS that’s been edited for safe viewing on a flight. As boring as seeing an invincible hero beat all potential opponents would be, it’s really more aggravating to see a show cheat like this to build conflict and tension by having its hero job (yet again) to a bad guy he shouldn’t have any problem with.
No cold thoughts of terror were running through my head whilst watching Barry play his lame intimidation game with Ed here. Instead, I was thinking about how there might a classification separating professional bad guys from amateur ones, and then I was imagining this pathetic excuse of a heavy getting verbal put-downs from all the more credible threats that I’ve seen the Elrics face down elsewhere.
Worse yet, the Barry in BROTHERHOOD at least added something to the series' overall concepts by showing another haunted armor to mirror Al's. This one-off, yet again, has the smell of an animation company fillebustering to fill episodes whilst waiting for new manga chapters to draw from.
So, yeah… big boo for this one.
Watch this episode, "Night of the Chimera's Cry" here and decide for yourself, then read my comments on the previous episode here.
Tom Pinchuk’s a writer and personality with a large number of comics, videos and features like this to his credit. Visit his website - - tompinchuk.com - - and follow his Twitter: @tompinchuk
