I do love how FMA acknowledges that Ed is intentionally the opposite of a self-insert male power fantasy character like a lot of anime main characters are.
Like any time he threatens to get too cool the story completely guts it so fast and reminds us that he's a bratty little shit idiot bastard, literally so much of a dumbass jerk that his brother is aggressively offended that someone thought they might be alike.
Favorite example tho is them having Hohenheim IMMEDIATELY call Ed out for burning down their house like "you didn't do it bcs you're a badass who won't look back you did it cuz you're a dumbass kid who's running from his mistakes" like truly I'll never be over how this story starts to set Ed up to be so cool you can't even relate to him only to make you NOT WANT to relate to him bcs he's The Worst 90% of the time and nearly everyone hates him like 10/10 we love to see it
would like to clarify that I’m not kidding about unironically loving this, Ed is a fantastic character, I adore him, and more fictional teenagers should be allowed to be angry fucked up losers with hearts of gold especially in anime
like FMA shines specifically because it lets it’s characters truly be FLAWED!! the entire story is about how no one is perfect, everyone is fundamentally flawed and yet humanity is still worth fighting for because no matter how far we may fall, no matter how flawed we are, no matter how much harm we do, how much evil exists in the world, we are capable of just as much good and kindness and selfless, reckless love and we can always, ALWAYS, choose to be better
Ed spends the entire show trying to act older than he is and be cool and powerful and hide his mistakes and the show knocks him down every time, over and over, until he at last accepts that he is nothing more or less than a human and that it’s always been enough
god FMA is fucking incredible
I love it how at the end he tries one last time to be Cool Anime Hero with the whole "I'll give you half my life if you give me half" to Winry and she's just like "shut up you fucking idiot, that's not how it works, we give each other all of our lives because we love each other, we share our lives and the time we have, you shitty brat, you complete fucking imbecile"
even in the first arc, when he does the badass thing and take down a fraud cult leader, he gets called out for just doing it for petty reasons and trying to make a point to one specific person who was a grieving someone she lost