Edward Elric (エドワード・エルリック)

Edward Elric (エドワード・エルリック, Edowādo Erurikku^?) is a fictional character and main protagonist in the anime and manga series Fullmetal Alchemist created by Hiromu Arakawa.

Rinciannya:

Romi Paku,
Junko Minagawa (first drama CD)

Character Outline & Personality

Edward Elric is a young alchemical prodigy. He is the youngest State Alchemist to be selected by the Amestris State Military, having passed the State Alchemy Exam and achieved the rank of Major at age twelve. The course of events that led to this extraordinary accomplishment included the tragic death of his mother and a failed transmutation that plays a key role in his story. Edward’s motivation stems from a love for his brother Alphonse, who he is desperately trying to return to a human form.

Edward, despite his occasional bouts of immaturity, is a selfless person and gains a reputation as a “hero of the people” during his youth, after catching serial killers and helping different types of small communities throughout Amestris.

His State Alchemist codename, “Fullmetal,” was given to him by the Fuhrer King Bradley, upon passing his State Alchemist certification. He refused to allow his brother Alphonse to complete the test, fearing that if there were a physical examination, Al would be taken to a lab for scientific study. Edward is also generally perceived to be very independent; he feels that he’s the only one who can solve a problem. Often, he too feels that the problem is his fault to begin with, and this inclines him to be more selfless. Bradley thought the title “Fullmetal” was appropriate for him, regarding his automail arm and leg. This can also be considered a playful knock on the boy, seeing that his brother, Alphonse, is truly “Fullmetal,” and the name would thus cause many cases of mistaken identity. In addition to this, and ironically, the name in Japanese could refer to a person of extreme stubbornness, a trait of Edward’s personality.

Ed is short for his age and slender, but compactly muscular. He has long golden-blond hair that he usually holds back in a braid or ponytail, and golden eyes. His body is that of an experienced martial artist, with noticeable muscles and a wealth of agility. Although he lacks both his right arm and left leg, Ed’s ability to fight is not impaired (in fact, it can be said to have improved) as he will often use alchemy to transform his automail arm into a blade or shield. He considers his automail limbs to be the very best in Amestris. They were made by his childhood friend and frequent recurring character, Winry Rockbell, and she is constantly working on them (much to her evident annoyance).

He is able to think quickly, even in desperate situations, though can still be frightened into paralysis. These qualities, combined with his alchemical powers and physical strength, make him a formidable, but very human, fighter.

Ed is very sensitive about his height, and overreacts to the slightest comment about it. He will occasionally break out into rants and outbursts, and isn’t above physically attacking those who insult him, however innocent the antagonizer. He also displays a childish immaturity when it comes to things like needles and milk (he detests both). Ed can hold a grudge for an eternity, and will go to extreme lengths to receive an apology or to possibly avoid giving one himself. He is extremely idealistic and strongly believes in Equivalent Exchange, using it almost religiously. However, he is agnostic and shows intolerance toward religion during most of his youth. He has said that alchemists are “about as close to God as you can get.” He has a hot temper, inherited from his father, which was only fueled after his father’s abandonment and mother’s death.

Despite these negative traits, he is generally a kind, laid-back person. He displays a maturity beyond his years and often is more intelligent than those who instruct him. He develops close bonds with people he cares about, and while not always displaying this openly, he is always willing to protect those in need. Early in the anime, he shows a devout abstinence in the destroying of others (even when his opponent is begging for death). While it’s regarded as noble, he soon realizes that there will be times he will need to kill someone – to save his own life or another’s. After his original dubiousness toward religion, he soon begins to argue the rights of Ishballans.

Also noteworthy is it is a running gag in the manga that Ed has very poor taste in art. Many characters will violently retaliate when he fixes their broken items to suit his odd taste, such as a woman in central when he fixed her balcony, or Lan Fan when he fixed her mask. Even Hohenheim showed distaste when he saw the statue Ed made in Lior.

 History

Edward Elric in the manga version

Edward Elric once lived a relatively idyllic life in the small town of Resembool with his brother Alphonse and their parents, the alchemist Hohenheim and his wife Trisha. However, their lives slowly deteriorated. Their father disappeared without an explanation, leaving them with their mother, whose loneliness they soothed by learning alchemy to entertain her. But even that was not to last – Trisha was afflicted with a disease that slowly killed her over the course of several months, leaving them alone. At her deathbed, Trisha said that she left some untouched money for them just in case something like this should happen. Standing before his mother’s grave, Edward made a decision that would forever change his life – He would dedicate himself to the study of alchemy. One day, when he had enough skill, he and his brother Alphonse would resurrect their mother.

Opportunity soon presented itself in the person of Izumi Curtis, a wandering alchemist who was able to singlehandedly save the town from flooding through the use of alchemy. Despite initial reluctance, Izumi eventually agreed to train the Elric brothers in her hometown. And after several months, they returned to Resembool with the skills that would seal their fate.

In February 1910, he and his younger brother attempted to resurrect their dead mother with a forbidden act of alchemy: human transmutation. The process required the correct proportion of elements that constitute a human body, (according to the dialogue, this includes 35 liters of water, 20 kilograms of carbon, four liters of ammonia, 1.5 kilograms of lime, 800 grams of phosphorus, 250 grams of salt, 100 grams of saltpeter, 80 grams of sulfur, 7.5 grams of fluorine, five grams of iron, three grams of silicon, and trace amounts of fifteen other elements), as well as the more metaphysical element of a human soul, which Ed and Al attempted to provide with drops of their blood (the same blood as that of Trisha Elric). It was obviously insufficient – the attempt backfired, and the results were horrifying. Ed’s left leg and Al’s entire body were consumed – just to create a macabre mockery of a human being. In the manga, it died within minutes, and was ultimately discovered not to be their mother. In the anime, it survived, and ultimately became the homunculus Sloth.

However, in the process, Ed found himself face to face with the Gate. His alchemical knowledge was increased by an order of magnitude and he gained the ability to perform transmutations without a circle. Upon returning to the physical world and realizing the consequences of the attempt, he immediately put these new capabilities to use; he sacrificed his right arm to bind Al’s soul to a nearby suit of armor. (In the anime, the incident is never fully explored until towards the very end, and Ed does not realize he has gained this ability until his first visit to Central.)

While recovering from the incident, the two brothers meet Roy Mustang, a State Alchemist who claims to have known the boys’ father. After a year of planning, Ed and Al make the decision to leave Resembool – possibly forever – to regain what they have lost. On Oct. 3, they burn down the family home so that they can never return, even if they want to.

Upon arriving in Central, Ed and Al are both allowed to reside with Shou Tucker, the Sewing Life Alchemist who is said to have created a talking chimera that died shortly before full examination. Here, they study for the Alchemy Exam, but only Ed participates in it; Since Alphonse is a suit of armor with no body, it would mean disaster if he were evaluated on physical condition.

Ed passes the exam with flying colors and gains the title “Fullmetal”, and then is put under the orders of Colonel Roy Mustang. After a few particularly shaking events, Ed decides resolutely that he will search with his brother for the Philosopher’s Stone, and regain their bodies.

 Manga

In the manga, the brothers went to Mustang after Ed got his automail. Mustang took them to Central, and only Ed took the test. He passed, and they returned to Resembool and burned their home down. In the anime, they stayed with Tucker while studying for the exam, and had burned their house down before they left. That explains why the date on the inside of Ed’s watch is different between the two canons: in the anime, it’s “3 Oct 10″ and in the manga is “3 Oct 11.”

However, because the brothers feared that their secret, the performance of human transmutation, would be exposed during the physical phase of the exam if Al were to take it, they decided that only Ed would take it. Ed easily passed, and, at the age of 12, became the youngest State Alchemist that the State has ever certified. His ability to transmute without an array surprised those who witnessed it, but he took it a step further by seemingly threatening President Bradley. The President, however, admires this act as one of guts and courage and passes Ed, making him an official State Alchemist.

After passing the alchemy exam, Edward and Alphonse set out to look for the Philosopher’s Stone. Since the Stone allows the owner to bypass the laws of equivalent exchange, Ed and Al believe that locating the stone will enable them to regain what they have lost in their failed attempt to resurrect their mother. In an effort to help the Elric Brothers in this quest, Mustang (Ed’s superior officer) issued orders to Edward to conduct an alchemical investigation into the Philosopher’s Stone. This allowed Ed to use his military position to legitimately search for the stone without raising suspicion among other officers in the military.

Edward, Envy, and Ling are swallowed by Gluttony in chapter 50. Ed learns from Envy that Gluttony is a fake Gate of Truth created by Father and concludes that going through the real gate can get them out. Using Envy’s stone as the passage fee, Edward transmutes himself while Envy and Ling jump in. At the Gate, Edward sees two Gates and Al’s body waiting at one of them, proving his theory that his and Al’s souls are somehow connected. As Edward is pulled back into the real world, he vows to someday get Al’s body back from the gate.

Later on in the series Ed and Al head north in search of “Rentanjutsu girl” (May Chan). They ally with Major General Armstrong and attempt to get information out of General Raven (who is later killed by Armstrong). Because of Raven’s disappearance Kimblee is called in (along with Winry, who replaces his automail with one more suited for the northern climate) and tells Edward he has to do his job as a state alchemist. Ed is assigned three tasks – 1) search for scar, 2) search for Marcoh, and 3) “carve a bloody crest into Briggs”. Edward chooses to look for Scar first.

In chapter 76 Edward is impaled by a metal rod after losing a fight with Kimblee and collapses (Al also blanks out in unison with Ed’s wound.)Chapter 77 show him saving Kimbly’s subordante Chimeras so that they can remove the rod, He then heals hole wound by using his life energy, At the expence of cutting short part of his life span.

Edward Elric was born in the winter, as stated by Hiromu Arakawa, at the end of manga volume 12. She also says that it is normal for winter to last up to six months in Japan, though this could be construed as a joke by the writer since in all of the flashback scenes a true winter has been shown in succession with the other seasons. Many people think that he was born in the year 1899; it is never stated if that is true or not. Ed’s parents are Hohenheim of Light, known in the manga as Van Hohenheim, and Trisha Elric. His birthday has never been specifically stated in either the manga or the anime. Hohenheim left the family while Ed was young, for reasons later revealed in the series.

Edward has a crush on Winry (though he is in complete denial). In chapter 15, when the boys were reviewing all the times they fought, Al said they had fought to see who’d marry Winry. While Ed began freaking out that he didn’t remember that, Al added that he had won, but got rejected (Ed sounded very relieved to hear this). Also, when Riza asks him if he loves her, he spits his drink all over Black Hayate and, blushing and stuttering, claims he doesn’t (“She’s like f-f-family, of course I’d p-protect her or whatever..”). When he thinks about this event again in chapter 70, Edward rolls off the table and recites the periodic table to get his mind off of it.

A running joke in the manga is Edward’s poor aesthetic taste in his transmutations. Often when he creates something with alchemy – either for repairs, combat, or simply to show off – the characters around him will remark upon how tasteless his creations are (Hohenheim stated that whoever transmuted the giant statue in Leto’s old church “can’t have had very good taste”, while earlier on in chapter Alphonse criticizes the excess of details in a wooden horse that Ed transmutes, to cite a few examples).

 Anime

At the end of the series, when Edward is killed by Envy, who was a homunculus created by Hohenheim of Light, Al uses the power of the Philosopher’s Stone (contained within himself) to heal Ed’s body and to reattach his soul. The revival, however, uses up all of the Stone’s power. Al appears briefly at the gate and then disappears. After being resurrected, Ed discovers that he has regained his arm and leg, but decides to risk everything to bring his brother back. He pulls Alphonse’s soul and body out of the Gate and reassembled them in exchange for his own. As a result, is thrust into a different world (the other side of the Gate). He is living in pre-World War II with Hohenheim, his father in London. Hohenheim appears to have been in London for a while, despite a relatively short passage of time between his being sent there by Dante in the anime, and Edward’s arrival there.

Hohenheim later offers the theory that the bonds formed in the four years the brothers spent on their quest for the stone served as the equivalent exchange in the transmutation (rather than Ed’s life, as he intended). Hohenheim also said, in an earlier episode, that one way for the Elrics to reclaim what they lost is to give up what they had gained. The death of Sloth, the Homunculus born when they attempted to transmute their mother, had given back a portion of what they had gained. In Al’s case, he loses all the memories he had of the time he spent in his armored form and reverted to exactly how he was, body and all, before the failed transmutation of their mother. Ed, on the other hand, could not keep his arm and leg because he gave them up in exchange for the soul of Alphonse.

Edward leaves to find Hermann Oberth to do research on rocket science, believing that outer space could lead him back to the Gate, since our world nullified his alchemic powers.

In the film, Edward travels to Munich, Germany with a young man named Alfons Heiderich, who resembles his brother Al, for research in rocket fuel. Befriending a young woman named Noa, Ed found himself embroiled in a conspiracy by the Thule Society, bent on invading his own home world. Edward teams up briefly with Fritz Lang, the Earth form of King Bradley to reach the society’s base to stop them from invading, but the sacrifical death of his father and Envy stops this attempt. Nevertheless, Edward returns to his home using a special rocket-powered plane. Reunited with Alphonse once again, the brothers went back to Earth to search and dismantle the atom bomb that was sent there.

 Powers and Abilities

Ed has the ability to create alchemical currents in his body when he connects his hands, because he saw the Gate, the source of all alchemical knowledge (and apparently, all knowledge that exists). With this, he can perform alchemy without the use of transmutation circles traditionally used by other alchemists. He commonly uses this power to change the shape of his metal arm into a blade or to make weapons from the areas around him. It has also been shown that he is becoming proficient in transmuting the elements in ones body as a way of injuring them. We have also recently seen that he is knowledgable enough to transmute himself to help control the effects of his wounds.

Aside from his alchemic abilities, Edward is also a very skilled at hand-to-hand combat, having trained under Izumi and often sparring with his brother to hone his skills.