Hiromu Arakawa's hit animated series Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a steampunk fantasy adventure where brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric are on a quest to restore their mangled bodies, and they soon make new allies and enemies alike as they get dragged into a plot of world domination. But they haven't forgotten their humble roots, and their childhood friend, Winry Rockbell, is an important part of their lives.

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Winry isn't an alchemist or a fighter, but she and her grandmother Pinako provide all kinds of support, moral and mechanic alike, from the home front. Winry even found her way onto the battlefield once, though she didn't like it very much. So, what are the ten essential facts that make Winry Rockbell who she is?

10 Hair Color Swap

A number of anime series have been brought to life with live action, and the results, according to critics and fans alike, were pretty mixed at best. Fullmetal Alchemist took its turn, where Tsubasa Honda assumed the role of our favorite lady mechanic.

In this iteration, Winry has darker hair, as opposed to the vibrant blonde of the anime and the original manga before that. She also seems to favor darker clothes, too, almost a punk girl look. Well, it stands out strongly against Al's shiny body and Ed's red coat, if nothing else.

9 Tomboy Clothes

Winry Rockbell Fullmetal Alchemist

Most characters who meet her agree that Winry Rockbell is a very pretty young woman, and that she has ladylike charm. We bet many of Fullmetal Alchemist's viewers think the same way.

She doesn't always dress like it, though. Winry's appearance has some amusing contradictions, since she wears practical and plainclothes for her mechanical work, needing pragmatic duds that won't get snagged during work. Her baggy pants, simple sandals, tube tops, gloves, and bandana mark her as a working girl. She gets things done around here, that's for sure.

8 Serious Devotion

One of Winry's best personality traits is her utter dedication to all the things she likes to do. She is strong-willed and tireless, which are perfect traits for an aspiring engineer to have. While Ed and Al learned the ways of alchemy, their childhood friend learned about machines.

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This is how Winry can make first-rate automail gear, and repair if need be, in her mid-teens or so. She can keep pace with the much older mechanics at Rush Valley, and by the time she and Ed have started a family, we're sure that she's a proper mechanics master. Her hard work is paying off in spades.

7 Her Wrathful Side

Winry's passions run hot, and this is a real boon for her career in mechanics. She's also a kind and compassionate girl, but get on her bad side! As Ed demonstrates, crossing her means suffering a wrench to the head.

Winry is quick to make friends and support others, though if Ed or Al damage her handiwork, they'll tempt the wrath of her fiery side, as pictured. She's also willing to verbally berate her two best friends, and one of these days, they might even listen.

6 She Realizes Her Feelings Partway Through

It's a classic Shonen scenario: you get the tough, cool leading man and his best female friend slowly hitting it off, but both of them are slow to realize it and even slower to admit it! Since this isn't Shojo material, the sparks don't fly until much later, if at all.

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Still, Ed and Winry definitely have something for each other by now, and Winry is a little quicker to realize it. Ed gets comically flustered about it, but Winry tells herself (quite seriously) that yes indeed, she has major feelings about her childhood friend by now. She even noticed Ed's slow but steady physical growth as the series progresses. Now he's the man she always wanted.

5 She Is Important To The Hughes Family

Winry loves a good time, and she is happy to make new friends. So, it was almost like destiny when the outgoing Colonel Maes Hughes invited Winry to his young daughter's third birthday party (he actually dragged her there).

Winry was absolutely taken with little Elicia, who had just turned three years old, and she also has a good relationship with Maes' wife, Gracia. Even after Maes' tragic murder, Winry was there for the family, and for the Hugheses, she was like one of them.

4 Medical Expertise

Winry and Hawkeye Best Girl moral compass

More than anything, Winry is a mechanic, and she is right at home at Rush Valley, surrounded by automail shops and the newest gadgets to tinker with. But she also has some skill with medicine and human anatomy.

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Don't ask her to perform surgery or anything, but she learned a thing or two from her doctor parents, and she can use this expertise to install automail limbs on a person's body. And don't forget that time she helped deliver a healthy baby. Her hands are indeed those of a healer.

3 She Almost Entered The Cycle Of Revenge

FMA: Brotherhood - Ed convinces Winry not to kill Scar

It was Ed who directly told Winry (or simply reminded her) that she has the hands of a healer, not those of a fighter or a killer. However, Winry suffered the loss of her parents in the Ishval Civil War at Scar's hands, and this haunts her.

Eventually, Winry was in a position to take revenge, and she even trained a pistol on Scar. But as this anime argues, the cycle of hatred and revenge only ever brings more suffering rather than solutions, and Winry almost lost herself in this vicious cycle. That was a close one.

2 Her Last Name's Meaning

Author Hiromu Arakawa put a lot of effort into naming her characters, and many were named for military vehicles and weapons. Winry Rockbell, though, was named for something more peaceful and science-based, in line with her character.

Put simply, "Rockbell" is a variation of the Rockwell scale used to measure the hardness of metals in real life. We'll bet that Winry consults a scale like that all the time when developing or repairing automail parts.

1 Her Earrings

Winry prefers simple and practical outfits, like we mentioned earlier, but she sometimes wears light dresses while spending a day off, and she also likes jewelry. In particular, those earrings of hers.

She didn't always wear them, though. In fact, she got the idea from Riza Hawkeye when she met the older woman a few years before the main events of Fullmetal Alchemist. Ed and Al would soon buy her new earrings every so often, and she made sure to wear them all to honor their friendships. So, she's got quite the collection by now, and it's a lovely look.

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