Winry Rockbell

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Winry Rockbell
Winry Rockbell, Ed and Al's childhood friend.

Winry Rockbell (ウィンリィ・ロックベル, Winrī Rokkuberu^?) is the heroine of the anime and manga series Fullmetal Alchemist. She is the best friend, and frequent travel companion, of the protagonists, Edward and Alphonse Elric.

[edit] Character profile

Born in 1899, Winry is Ed and Al's childhood friend. The brothers performed their first alchemical transmutation to create her a doll, but she becomes terrified by the transmutation process, which foreshadows both the amazing and horrible aspects of alchemy. She's a self-professed "gear head" who helped her grandmother Pinako build Ed's "automail", which are prosthetic limbs. She sometimes travels with the Elric Brothers to maintain Ed's artificial leg and arm. Her parents were doctors who were killed during the Ishbal War by "Scar" under Basque Gran's orders because they treated the enemy as well as Amestris soldiers. In the movie, Winry took care of Al for two years believing Edward would return to see her, and that belief came true when Ed temporarily returned. She embraced Ed in tears of joy seeing him back. When the Thule Society attacked she help fit Edward with new automail limbs (which were adjusted to his growth) once he came back from across the gate. After Edward's departure, Winry continued to work on automail with her Grandmother.

Winry is normally a very optimistic person and loves working on automail. She likes to do things her way and has a tendency to disobey the rules such as sneaking into Central or opening Ed's watch when he told her not to. Winry's love for her friends is only matched or even surpassed by her love of technology. She will absolutely lose herself finding a new piece of technology or tool. This often leads to some interesting scenes or situations, one extreme example is when she gets kidnapped by Barry the Chopper (when he had a human body) and almost gets killed. Usually these moments happen when she is asking Ed something or she just found out that the brothers were just returning from a dangerous mission. She constantly shows the fact that she worries about Ed and Al when they are gone.

Similar to the manga, Winry had a considerably deep friendship with Edward, though it does not seem as strong as in the manga because Winry constantly expressed her need to maintain Ed's automail limbs. However, as seen in the episode "Her Reason" Winry paid so much attention to Ed's automail because of her deep care for him, and therefore she felt accomplished when Ed won due to his automail. Winry accepted both Elric brothers as part of her family and often acted as the guardian/older sister of both boys, although in reality she probably never saw herself as actually their sister. Throughout the series, she tends to most express her feelings during moments of weakness, when she expresses genuine concern and romantic interest towards him. Both Ed and Winry never stated whether they had romantic interest in one another; however, it is generally assumed that they liked each other without realizing or admitting it. The relationship between them would ultimately end after the movie, where she comes to the conclusion she might never see either Ed nor Alphonse ever again. The future of relationship between Edward and Winry is still unknown in the manga.

Winry has blonde hair and blue eyes. She is taller than Ed in the anime, but about his height in the manga.

[edit] Trivia

• Winry has a temper not unlike Ed's. During the episode when Ed challenges the man with humongous metal arms in an arm wrestling match, Winry loses her temper when Ed's automail is called "half-rate", and behaves similarly to Ed. This doesn't appear in the manga since this chapter is very different from the episode.
• At the beginning, Winry wasn't a very popular character, but as the Manga series continued her popularity grew. Now, she is usually one of the top ten most popular characters.
• Many fans who believe Winry and Ed have a romantic relationship often refer to the episode "Night of the Chimera's Cry," where Winry is blamed as Ed's girlfriend while he writes to her and he acts very defensive, almost screaming that "she is only a friend". In the Manga, they refer to Manga Chapter 48 because it seems like Winry has developed feelings for Ed as she says "Mabye I've been in love with him from a long time ago". And in one chapter, Riza tells Ed that he loves Winry, and he spurts his drink all over her dog. Clearly embarrassed, he mumbles that he wasn't blushing, but doesn't deny it. Many more hints of their relationship are found within several episodes of the anime where Winry and Edward are alone; she always goes into deep sadness and admits many of her feelings to Ed but in a more subtle way. In the manga and the anime, Ed and Al used to have little fights, one of them being who gets to marry Winry; Edward laughs and Al concludes with, "That's when we fought the hardest". Although it was only viewed as a brothers' quarrel, only Edward shows feelings for Winry that go beyond friendship.
• In the dub credits, Winry is occasionally spelled as 'Wenry'. It can be speculated that her name should actually be romanized "Wendy", as all the other characters in FMA have European names.
• Anime fandom is seems split somewhat over whether Winry or Rosé is Ed's love interest.
• In the manga the Winry-Ed relationship is more romantic than in the anime. Winry states that she might have fallen for him a long time ago. Ed's also seems rather attached to Winry, protecting her and occasionally saving her life.
• In the manga, Wrath uses his influence to hold Winry as an unwitting hostage, stressing to the Elric brothers that she can be taken or harmed at any time unless they cooperate. This is later reinforced in chapter 69, when she arrives under military escort at Briggs to ensure the Elric brothers' complicity. Still unaware of her hostage status, Winry believes that she is at Briggs merely to outfit Ed with cold-weather automail.

[edit] Voice actors

Japanese Cast [1]	English Cast [2]	Brazilian Cast [3]	French Cast [4]	Spanish Cast [5]	Filipino Cast [6]
Megumi Toyoguchi	Caitlin Glass	Andressa Andreatto	Lucille Boulanger	Yensi Rivero	Grace Cornel

view • talk • edit Fullmetal Alchemist
Common characters:	Edward Elric • Alphonse Elric • Roy Mustang • Maes Hughes • Winry Rockbell • Scar • Izumi Curtis • Hohenheim • Minor characters of Fullmetal Alchemist
Anime-only characters:	Dante • State Military • Homunculi • Minor anime characters
Manga-only characters:	Father • State Military • Homunculi • Ling Yao • Minor manga characters
Media:	Anime (Episode list • Voice casts) • Manga • OVAs • Conqueror of Shamballa • Video games (characters) • Trading cards
Items/Concepts:	Alchemy • Automail • Chimera • Equivalent Exchange • Gate of Alchemy • Philosopher's Stone • State Alchemist • Transmutation circle
Locations:	Amestris • Ishbal • Lab 5 • Lior