Episode 61 (2009 Anime)

A memory recalls the young brothers reading that the sun stands for the masculine and the moon for the feminine, and that uniting the two yields a perfect being, a god. In the present the towering Father drags God to Earth and, seated on his throne in a youthful body like Hohenheim's, claims he has swallowed it. Mustang notes that roughly fifty million people populate Amestris, the toll for so vast a Philosopher's Stone. When Ed attacks, Father seals off alchemy and conjures a tiny sun to finish them, only to sense that something has gone wrong.

Hohenheim reveals the countermeasure he laid across long decades, souls buried at points around the land, waiting for this day. Father sneers that no circle could span them, but Hohenheim answers that one activates on its own: the moon's vast shadow sweeping the Earth. As the eclipse's umbra crosses each location, the deposited souls flare to life and complete the array, stripping the fifty million Amestrian souls from Father and returning them to their bodies. Across the country the fallen rise, dimly aware of a moment of unspeakable anguish.

Drained of his stolen souls, Father can no longer contain God, though he boasts he could forge another stone from a hundred million lives and hurls energy at the group. May raises an alkahestric barrier that grows stronger the more force it absorbs, while Hohenheim shields them with hands that burn away, and the brothers hold him upright so he can keep fighting. Above, the reflected sun blinds Bradley for an instant, and Scar snaps his sword and deconstructs both his arms. Bradley makes a last stab with the broken blade clenched in his teeth before both men collapse. Asked by Lan Fan whether he has parting words for his wife, the dying Führer says none are needed between a king and the queen he chose, then passes as his hair whitens. Lan Fan draws a Philosopher's Stone from his pocket, and Scar begs her to carry him to the five-point circle at the heart of the nationwide array.

Scar activates the runes on his arms, sending power to the tarps his countrymen laid and around the whole country, dissolving the inhibiting layer of stone energy his brother had discovered beneath Amestris and freeing the Earth's power for alchemy. With their abilities restored, Ed, Al and Izumi press Father as Greed joins in, but the homunculus swats them aside and climbs toward the surface, feeding on Briggs soldiers' souls along the way. Pride snares Ed and tries to claim his Hohenheim-blooded body, until Kimblee's soul, still whole inside the vortex, refuses to let him take it, scorning Pride for fleeing death into the human form he despises. Ed breaks loose, turns himself into a single-souled stone, forces into Pride's mind, and crushes his skull, reducing the homunculus to a tiny sleeping infant that he cradles away while it cries for its mother.

The episode adapts the manga chapters "The Center of the World," "On God's Throne" and "The Abyss of Pride," and its title card shows the alkahestric portion of the Reverse Nationwide Transmutation Circle. It airs without the usual opening, playing the theme "Rain" over the episode itself, and skips several manga battle scenes of the newly empowered Father to reach Hohenheim's counter quickly. Greed, who stays with the group in the manga, is implied here to have hidden for the ideal moment to strike. The Ed-Pride clash is rendered far more directly than the manga's height-based, martial-arts choreography, and the chunk broken from Pride's face is placed lower, sparing his eye to lessen the scene's shock.