Bwahahahaha! The series continues not to pull punches; I'll stop there. I have archived my past posts (http://pegasus.cityofveils.com/test/bookslj.phtml) if those are of interest (links, rather; doing a search on "alchemist" is probably faster than paging through the very long index); they don't spoil beyond the episodes indicated.

Yes! Another Roy fan! Yes!

We get some more interesting female characters later on, but the perfect glowing motherhood and sweet little girl thing pissed me off for, ah, idiosyncratic reasons you are familiar with. *wry grin*