A few thoughts on Edward Elric. My first FMA work.
Edward Elric is made up of elements: silver and gold and knowledge of the Periodic Table that stretches deeper, more natural, than anything else.
He's all contrasts: small but strong, half-gone but more alive than most will ever be, a child prodigy the likes of the world has never seen but can't understand people even when they're explained flat-out to him.
Edward Elric is all alliterative, everything lined up like it should be, a name that rolls off the tongue and fits together just right. Edward. Elric. Fullmetal. Ed. It's all the same and all linked, all one to him, something unconscious, his identity bound up in mere letters and sounds, lucky that they fit together so neatly.
He's old for his age, young for his life, and all jumbled up as a result. He's an adult in the military, he's mostly responsible and thinks of people his own age as "kids", as "civilians", is confused and disoriented when Hughes suggests he socialize with them more. That's right, they are a "them", because Ed is built around his life now, full of adults, and he is their equal and more sometimes. The only people he knows close to his own age are Al and Winry, and he doesn't understand why that can't be enough.
Edward Elric is on a quest. He is hunting down a myth, intent on making it true, and he fights foes that should not exist. There's no princess in his story, just a brother that can no longer feel pain, and no wicked witch or dragon, just Ed's own mistakes, his own folly and sin. Later there's conspiracy too, and it turns out there was a dragon pulling strings all along, lurking deep under the castle and puffing contented smoke rings as it ripped Ed's life apart by arm and leg, then turned to his mind, piece after piece.
He's too smart. A genius and prodigy, gifted by a Gate, he knows too much of the wrong things, and too much of the right ones as well. His mind is stuffed full of knowledge, and he reads libraries by the day, just adding to the mess. It would drive anyone a little crazy, and Ed is no exception: but he's always been too much, so far ahead that the distance can't even be measured anymore, and he doesn't even realize the difference. He eats too much, sleeps too much, and kills himself with learning, atoning, not thinking about what he's doing to himself because he's never mattered. He shoves the consequences off into the future, ignores the pain and ignores the knowledge, just adds more on top of it, and more on that, pushing and pushing, bending his breaking point.
Edward Elric is just one of many, for all he's unique. He's a warchild for all that the war didn't catch up to him until he was in his teens. He has those same sort of eyes, that see the blood and death and gore and feel it but shove on anyway, and he scares people sometimes because they start to wonder if he really does see it at all. They don't know that he does and never forgets because he's got those eyes and buries it deep with everything else that should have spilled out long ago.
He's a hero, he's got titles and fans and likely statues somewhere in his honor, people three times his age sing his praise and wait for him to save them because he's not the only one who can, just the only one who will. They have no idea who he is which is why it's a miracle that they've kind of got him down anyway, because for all he says he will always save them, alchemize their lives as close to fixed as possible, do all he can do before moving on.
Edward Elric is never going to change, never going to fix himself, and somewhere deep he's recognized that a long time ago.
He's not broken exactly but glorious and smashed, glinting in the light and people watch in awe. He moves them to great feats and does the same himself, and it's all his fault – not because it really is his fault but because he makes it so, he can't be satisfied unless he's atoning and unsatisfied, and when everything's over there's a good chance he will lose himself forever.