It’s dawning on me just how genuinely difficult it is to figure out if an FMA character is good or bad when they’re introduced.

And this is because literally 90% of them debut by trying to beat the shit out of Ed. Seriously. If you tally up every good/ally character at the end and divide them into “tried to beat up Ed in their introductory episode” and “did not try to beat up Ed”, I’m willing to bet the first category is larger. 

A list of eventually “good” characters who were introduced by assaulting Edward Elric:

• Roy Mustang
  
• Winry Rockbell (manga introduction)
  
• Scar
• Izumi Curtis
• Greed
• Greed again
• Slicer(s)
• Tim Marcoh
• Ling Yao
• Lanfan
• Fu
• Mei Chang
• Buccaneer
• The Entire Briggs Mountain Army
• Jerso
• Zampano
• Darius
• Heinkel

I made a helpful collage

Extra fun fact, the series Big Bad, Father, is introduced to Ed by healing Ed’s wounds. Ed and Al spend at least five minutes of that episode thinking “Maybe this dude isn’t so bad” which honestly I understand when you consider 2/3 of the people Ed meets typically try to kill him.