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.
#this is scar's lowest point to me#he is attacking a panicking child#one who is visibly too young to have taken part in the genocide#he is pointlessly lashing out at the shadow of the war#and he feels FULLY justified. FULL 'soldier of god' mode#ed begs him to spare his brother and does this unbalance him?#does this remind him of his own brother?#it does not. he is unmoved.#he answers calmly that he has no quarrel with ed's brother#it is sooooooo clear that he SEES HIMSELF as perfectly calm and reasonable#when in fact he is being so completely insane.#he is about to slaughter a child on his knees#later in central when they face off again he'll be a lot more unbalanced#(having crossed paths with his master and all)#and it's part of why ed shielding winry from him WILL hit this time#my argument is also that ed begging for his brother to be spared doesn't hit for scar#because scar is in the mindset of 'why should i listen to your pleas when no one listened to mine'#(not that he even had the chance to beg)#ed shielding winry however#is making scar realize that Winry Is Him#except nobody was there to stop HIM pulling the trigger#and committing to lethal revenge#that is the crucial moment where he could have been saved#but no one was there to save him#from that moment on he spirals completely#and when he meets winry again he THINKS he's at his lowest point#calls himself human garbage and says he deserves to die#since she was able to remain dignified in the face of suffering and he was not#but that is not his lowest point. in fact the fact that he's clawing his way out of that pit is remarkable#(someone like wrath for instance never even tried)
@parkersgeorg
