More worldbuilding! More Van Hohenheim! More angst!

These are great.

Chapter 42: The Father Standing Before a Grave



There is something so weird going on with Van Hohenheim. He seems out of it.



He can't eat... that totally means something. Could it be... Sloth?



Wow. That's a lot of competition...



They seem to have really jumped on this idea, which is interesting but bothers me a bit. Why would the armor reject his soul? It doesn't have one of it's own. If anything, perhaps his soul would reject the body, but they seem sure it's the other way around for some reason.

Chapter 43: River of Mud



Oh... poor Al! That's gotta suck. But... how does he fight or do anything? He has to be able to feel something.



Adorable. The mixture of adorable and terrifying in these pages is excellent.



So... 4th wall breaking much? He can see thought bubbles!

Chapter 44: The Unnamed Grave



A standard identity test. But what if magic could bring those memories out of the world? It's not like he can store them himself... But then I guess... does it matter?



So squiggly. I like these darker parts.

Chapter 45: Scar's Return



That's an interesting idea (that Ed is sustaining Al's body). But I wonder what percentile body size he is. He could ... just be small. He's still a teenager. Sometimes teens haven't even hit puberty yet.



KA BAM! COMIC BOOK NOISES!
( )

It's down-home family time as Edward Elric returns to Resembool to a confrontation with his father and a reckoning with his failed attempt to resurrect his mother. Snooze villain Scar who has been wandering around the fringes of the storyline for several volumes comes booming back to the fore, unfortunately. Arakawa loves killing characters, and I heartily nominate Scar for the In Memoriam page in the very near future.

With over three dozen characters being shuffled through the chapters herein, I'm glad I'm bingeing this series after it has been completed, because there's no way I could have kept track of everyone if I was reading individual volumes with months between each one. ( )

Another fun installment of Fullmetal Alchemist. This one has great balance between plot and character development. I enjoyed the answers we got, and the additional questions that came from those answers. ( )

Confrontation! If volume 11 was going to have a one word title that would be it. This entire volume in the Fullmetal Alchemist series deals with various characters finally confronting some demons whether real, imagined, imminent or distant. Edward confronts his father on abandoning him, his mother and his younger brother ten years ago. His father confronts Edward about the human transmutation he attempted and Ed and Al’s decision to burn down the house. Colonel Mustang and his officers confront the reality of Havoc’s paralysis from the waist down. Al confronts the possible loss of his metal body once it eventually rejects his soul and the brothers both confront the reality of what they really brought back from the other side when they attempted to transmute their mother back to life. Finally the brothers prepare to confront Scar, determined that no one else will be hurt in their quest to get their original bodies back.

I love the art in this one just because so much in these scenes are shown and not said, whether through body language or facial expression. More is hinted at by frame layout and the arrangement of characters within those frames than is said aloud. This is a volume that has a vivid, layered and emotionally complex story to tell, and that needs to presented with both the written word and the art working together as one whole. It is pulled off in this volume wonderfully. There were moments when the posture of a character or the look on their face stopped me cold and I felt like I was really in the story experiencing it with them.

My only two small complaints was in the English translation I was reading they rearranged where the words were for two frames of speech bubbles and that made two people swap what they were saying so I was confused about who said what when it was referenced later as being the other way around. There was also one other typo where a word was omitted (but space was left for it) that was kind of jolting. Not the fault of Arakawa, just the fault of the translators, lettering folks and touch up artists state side. Normally they do such an amazing job (not just translating the work over to English but also reworking it with common slang and cadence that really reaches out to an American audience) that missteps like this stick out all the more when a mistake is finally made. ( )