pirata said:
EDIT: And, yeah, Vic is amazing as Ed, as usual. He knows that character inside and out by now.
Ehh...really? Vic's Ed was always waaaaay too douche-y to me in the old series, and I always thought he vastly over-inflated Ed's less admirable characteristics. I actively disliked Ed Elric in the dub of the first anime (in a series that otherwise had an excellent dub), whereas I very much liked him as a character in the Japanese version.
I will say this, though, and that is that Vic was much better in this episode than in the previous series, and I noticed a change in his performance between the first and second halves of the episode. In the second half his was much more playful and energetic and showing a much greater range (which is correct for this incarnation of Edward), whereas the first half of the episode felt like he was still playing Ed from the first series, causing him to miss the tone on one or two moments where Ed is supposed to be playing around a little bit. It was like he started off playing the character the same way as before and one of the directors part way through said "no, try and do it like this." Either way, the improvement was noticable. Hopefully he keeps it up.
Next week will be interesting, since there's a lot of young Ed. Generally speaking, though, I'm pretty pleased with the Brotherhood dub so far. The only issue I really have right now is that Alphonse's voice is a little TOO muffled and sounds a little too girly at times (though spot on about 80% of the time), but those are things I expect to get sorted out very quickly, probably over just the next few episodes.
As for the cut opening and ending, Brotherhood episodes at full length are 24 and a half minutes. Adult Swim's half hour timeslots are 22 and a half minutes long. So they have to lose 2 minutes somewhere along the way. It's a much better option than doing what Syfy does and just cutting up the show willy nilly.