The beginning of a legend.
Tales of The Master Summary:
18-year-old Izumi Harnet visits a northern town in hopes of learning alchemy from the famous alchemist Silver Steiner. Izumi manages to find a man named Steiner who gives Izumi a knife and tells her to survive in the wilderness of Briggs for a month. If she is able to survive then he'll accept her as his apprentice. Izumi follows Steiner's instructions and camps out on the Briggs Mountains. In the harsh winter environment, Izumi came close to giving up and dying several times during her first few days, but she manages to push through. During her month-long stay on the mountains, Izumi chased down rabbits, stole kills from wolves, took down deer with her bare hands, robbed mountain patrols of their rations, and even beat up a bear, and through this experience Izumi figures out the principle of "One is all, all is one."
You can run, but you'll never outrun Izumi.
Man, or, in this case, Woman is truly the king of beasts.
After surviving out in the wild for a month, Izumi returns to town (with the bear she beat up) to get Steiner to accept her as an apprentice. However, Izumi soon learns that the old man she talked to was Gold Steiner, Silver Steiner's martial artist older brother, and Silver Steiner himself had passed away a long time ago. Gold Steiner is impressed by Izumi surviving out in the wild and wants to teach her, but Izumi beats the crap out of him and storms off. Izumi's tale of survival would forever go down in Briggs military history as the month when mountain patrols were repeatedly attacked and robbed by a strange woman.
Gold Steiner powers up...
...but Izumi has already far surpassed his power level.
A legend is born.
Master's First Love Story Summary:
Izumi and Sig recalls how they first met to the young Ed and Al. After her training in the mountains, Izumi was on her way to begin training with her master when she bumped into Sig, and the two fell in love on first sight. Back to the present, Ed and Al give Izumi and Sig weird looks as Izumi and Sig act all lovey-dovey.
"Sometimes when we touch,
The honesty is too much,
And I have to close my eyes and hide."
And I have to close my eyes and hide."
"I want to hold you 'til I die,
Til we both break down and cry,
I wanna hold you 'til the fear in my subsides!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In my Simple People OVA post, I was wondering if Bones would animate Tales of the Master gaiden and it's great that they actually did animate it. Izumi's tale of survival was quite hilarious. As with all of the FMA gaidens, Tales of the Master is not an essential part of the central storyline but it explains some of the small questions in the main story. In this case, Tales of the Master explains why Izumi sent Ed and Al to the island, how she got her "One is all, all is one" principle and her infamy in Briggs mountain patrol history. Of course, the gaiden also explains why Izumi is so bad ass. Izumi's one month of survival was much tougher than the one month Ed and Al had to go through on the island, but on the other hand Izumi was much older (older than even the current Ed and Al). I wonder if the current Ed and Al (if they had their human bodies) would be able to survive in the Briggs for a month without using alchemy.
In addition to Tales of the Master, there is also the little skit about Izumi and Sig's first meeting. It was short and pretty predictable, but it was amusing nonetheless. I don't remember seeing this skit in manga form, so it's anime-original or an omake that I haven't read. I do wonder who Izumi started training under. Obviously it can't be Gold Steiner.
Given that there will be more FMA:B DVD/Bluray releases, I'm sure Bones will animate more of the gaidens. Maybe they will do the Elric Family Gaiden next. We'll see in a few months.
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