Honestly. Honestly Ed vs Scar in episode 5 is striking me fresh, right now. Like by this point we've obviously established we're in a battle shonen by now. We know Ed gets into fights. He's scuffled with Cornello. He's a boy who knows how to hold a sharp object and use it.
But I think FMA does also does an excellent job choosing when to not let Ed come out on top. We just had the Nina episode and now Ed is in the middle of processing his first "catastrophic failure to save someone" type of failure since attempting to bring his mom back. He's dealing with a low that's absolutely hampering his abilities and the tonal shift hits for me in the way that 1) he doesn't notice Scar's initial attack against him (Al has to pull him away) and 2) Ed absolutely freezes up just thinking "This is bad."
This is, perhaps, baby's first "someone is coming at you with the full, concentrated, explicit intention of killing you" and Ed is so genuinely out of his depth with it. He really does try. He gets immediately bested. He's staring at a situation where Al is directly in harm's way. And Ed just lies down to die like a dog...
He does better later. He learns from this, later. But he's so young in this. It just hits.
