Winry Rockbell (ウィンリィ・ロックベル, Uinrī Rokkuberu) is a main supporting character of the Fullmetal Alchemistseries. She is a training surgeon and mechanical repair specialist/enthusiast, the daughter of Yuriy Rockbell and Sarah Rockbell (two surgeons that worked on the Ishval Civil War), the granddaughter of Pinako Rockbell (a well known mechanic and surgeon in her youth) and the close childhood friend of Edward Elric and Alphonse Elric from Resembool who supports Edward as his personal automail engineer and mechanic, making sure his prosthetic right arm and left leg are always in good working order.
Winry Rockbell in her iconic mechanic outfit as seen in the manga.
Winry has pale skin, big dark-blue eyes and long light blonde hair that reaches her hips with long bangs falling on the front and a fringe directed to the left. Usually, her hair is tied in a long ponytail, and while it's not entirely shown, her ponytail is held up by a purple or pink elastic hairband. Her hair, while it is straight, is often portrayed as wavy in some illustration of the manga and the anime. While in the 2017 live action adaptation, her hair is depicted as brown as opposed to blonde, unlike Edward and Alphonse who retained their usual blonde hair colored from the manga and anime versions respectively.
Winry is seen wearing different clothes in the story.
When she works as an engineer, Winry wears a beige (sometimes portrayed as green in some illustration of the manga and purple in the original 2003 adaptation) jumpsuit that normally is down and adjusted to her waist, exposing a black tube top. She also wears brown gloves (depicted as olive green in the 2003 anime), common sandals, a green kerchief (or red in the 2003 version) that covers her fringe, and her hair is tied in long ponytail.
After moving to Rush Valley to work with Garfiel, Winry wears a black zipped crop top with white stripe on the center. Winry has her ears pierced in an avant-garde style with two identical pairs of hoop earrings on each earlobe and an additional two cuff studs worn vertically on her right ear, above the others.
When she travels to Rush Valley, she is seen wearing a dark blue jacket with a white sleeveless shirt underneath, along with a dark blue skirt and black boots with ribbons on top and pink socks. Sometimes, she is seen without the jacket.
After the Promised Day, Winry is seen with her hair loose and using a pink jacket with a black shirt and blue jeans. In the anime adaptation, Winry becomes physically older, having a more adult face and appearance, while in the manga she still looks the same until the final chapter. In the end of the series, she is seen with her hair loose and wearing a white jacket with long pink sleeveless dress with a purple shirt underneath, along with blue jeans and light brown sandals.
Personality
"Whoa! What kind of reinforcement is that on the claws? They're not diamond tipped are they?!": Winry admiring Buccaneer's Modified M1910.
Winry is a kind, empathetic, and ambitious automail engineer who is devoted to her craft. To Winry, automail is not merely her job but rather her passion, prone to fangirling over advanced automail to the point that Edward makes fun of her for it with various nicknames like "automail freak". She is dedicated to her patients, going so far as to take multiple consecutive overnight workshop sessions and travel long distances by train to perform maintenance or make prompt repairs.
Winry is often seen acting hotheaded, being especially defensive of her automail which she takes immense pride in. This trait is seen in all versions of Winry, however the 2003 anime places extra emphasis on the pride she has in her work, falling into a short depression after realising Edward used alchemy to make her automail seem better than it really was.[4] Her temper also has a tendency to come out as her comedically flying into a rage and throwing her wrench at whoever has angered her (particularly Edward), but despite her occasional temper she ultimately cares deeply for her loved ones, always offering emotional support. She also has been known to cry if she's unable to help those she cares about and will do so openly. Winry is also known to be blunt, calling others out when appropriate.
She has a strong sense of morality and respect for her parents, who were murdered during the Ishval Civil War despite being medics only trying to save lives, harbouring deep contempt for their killer. In critical moments, Winry is shown to be very level-headed and resourceful, in the original manga's storyline using her medical knowledge to help safely deliver a baby in the middle of a storm,[5][6] and even being able to put aside her hatred and personal grievances to ally herself with her parents' killer, Scar.
While normally shown to be cheerful and optimistic, she does have her limits, expressing frustration in the Elric brothers' refusal to tell her what's going on in their lives. When faced with the sudden revelation of who killed her parents, she is overwhelmed with emotion and momentarily considers getting revenge by shooting him, but ultimately is able to be talked down and doesn't follow through.[7][8] Despite this, she later makes it clear that she will not forgive Scar for what he did even if they are acting as allies.
Relationships
Edward Elric- After losing his right arm and left leg, Winry took on the role of Edward's personal automail mechanic, building him sophisticated new limbs when she was eleven years old. Since then, Winry has served as Ed's constant well of support, both mechanically and emotionally, though they still find themselves arguing frequently due to their stubborn and hotheaded personalities. However, this affectionate hostility appears to be masking a deeper relationship. Although Edward has not outwardly admitted any romantic feelings toward Winry, he is rather overprotective of her and becomes unnaturally flustered at the mere suggestion of an amatory relationship between them. Winry, for her part, has admitted to herself that she had been falling for him all along. Edward also says in various occasions that he hates seeing Winry crying and he blames himself whenever it happens, which is something acknowledged by Winry, as she promises him that she will smile for his sake.
Alphonse Elric - Alphonse appears to be the little brother Winry always wanted. While Al remarks on the fight both he and Edward Elric had over which one of them would marry her, Winry doesn't appear to have regarded those feelings as being too deep, as she is very casual about how she turned down both brothers' affections at the time. However, Winry does seem to be the one person other than Edward who is most affected by Al's intangible state as a soul bound to a suit of armor. She also seems to unquestioningly regard Al as human, despite the doubts others sometimes express about that. She is both protective and defensive of Al's humanity, and cries openly for his pain as well.
Pinako Rockbell - Even since before the death of her parents during the Ishval Civil War, Winry has always had a close relationship with her grandmother, but since the tragedy that befell the Rockbell homestead, Pinako has served as Winry's sole caretaker and closest - if not only - blood relation. The two have a relatively amicable relationship, ribbing each other every so often as they go about their days jointly running their automail atelier, but the bond between them remains as that of doting grandparent and adoring grandchild. When Winry finally sets out on her own path as an automail engineer, Pinako worries silently that the greater world will be too hard on her little Winry, but is very proud when she sees and hears evidence of the young woman's progress. Conversely, Winry worries about leaving her grandmother alone and communicates with her regularly, knowing that there will always be a place for her at home in Resembool if she should so require.
The Hughes Family - Encountering Lt. Colonel Maes Hughes almost by chance during her first trip to Central City, Winry is immediately accepted into Maes' circle of friends as he practically drags her to his daughter Elicia Hughes's third birthday party. She becomes close to little Elicia, who quickly comes to regard Winry as an older sister, as well as Maes' wife Gracia Hughes, who periodically offers the teenage girl motherly advice while teaching her to bake. After Maes's death, Winry remains close to Gracia and Elicia, sustaining an almost familial bond.
Abilities
Winry is a very gifted and passionate mechanic, excelling in the repair of machines of widely varying complexity. Of course, her truest passion and most extensive expertise is in the crafting and overhauling of automail prostheses. Brought up under the tutelage of her grandmother and master automail engineer Pinako Rockbell, Winry has been working with automail for most of her youth and can be considered somewhat of a machinist prodigy, having built Edward a complex pair of limbs at the tender age of eleven. Since that time, her skills have improved to the point that she has surpassed even her grandmother (once hailed far and wide as the "Pantheress of Resembool") and gained a fair bit of notoriety in her position at Atelier Garfiel in Rush Valley.
In addition, Winry appears to have a remarkable wealth of surgical knowledge for her age (despite a lack of formal training), gleaned from having grown up in a family of surgeons. Edward remarks that Winry's early comprehension of advanced medical literature is on par with the familiarity with alchemical texts shared by the Elric brothers when they were young. She successfully delivered Ridel and Satella's child, further proving her medical knowledge.
She has also displayed a significantly strong throwing arm, able to pitch heavy wrenches long distance with deadly accuracy. Winry learns to bake from Gracia Hughes during her first trip to Central City and develops her ability to bake pies - specifically apple pies - as the series progresses.
Etymology
The name Winry means "Reconciled, blessed" in Welsh, which shows to be a girl who is strong willed individuals who stand up and fight for what she believes in.
Winry's surname Rockbell is a play on the Rockwell scale that is used to measure the hardness of different metals.
Notes
↑While the 2009 anime never gives an explicit birth year for Winry, official timelines for the manga—which are followed by the 2009 anime—definitively place Winry as being born in the year 1899.
Winry at six years old in the 2003 anime. The text on-screen reads: "Older Brother: Six Years Old. Younger Brother: 5 Years Old."
Official timelines for the 2003 anime give Alphonse's birth year as 1900, while Edward's is given as 1899, but none give which year Winry was born. According to various sources,[1][2][3] when Edward and Alphonse attempt to transmute Winry a birthday present at the beginning of Episode 3: "Mother", Winry is six years old. When this six-year-old Winry design is used, the text "Older brother, 6 years old" and "Younger brother, 5 years old" is displayed on screen during the episode. These ages for the brothers would later be reiterated in guidebooks.[1][2] This indicates one of two possibilities:
Winry was born in 1900 (same as Al), and her sixth birthday is in 1996. Her birthday is before both Alphonse's and Edward's, who will respectively turn 6 and 7 later in the same year.
Winry was born in 1899 (same as Ed), and her sixth birthday is in 1995. This would also mean her birthday took place after Edward's and Alphonse's, who both already had their own.
Alternatively, the Hagaren website lists these same designs of Alphonse and Edward as being 5 and 7 respectively, as well as putting Winry at 6 years old. This would mean that Winry is older than Alphonse but younger than Edward, but her birth year is still unknown. Edward being 7 when this design is used directly contradicts the anime itself, though, which states that he is also 6 during Winry's birthday party. As such, it's possible that the design being listed as 7 is an error. If both ages given by the anime and the Hagaren website are assumed to be correct, that would mean this design of Edward matches him from ages 6 to 7. If this is true, it would indicate that Edward was born the year before Winry and that Winry herself was born in 1900 in the 2003 anime's timeline.
Trivia
Winry's official color scheme for her first mechanic outfit was shown as early as November 2003 on the bonus cover page for the 11th issue of Shounen Gangan Magazine (for the year of 2003): a green bandanna with beige coveralls and a black tube top. In the 2003 anime however, her mechanic outfit would instead depict her bandanna as being red and her coveralls as a light lavender in Episode 17, House of the Waiting Family. Most merchandise featuring Winry in this outfit would also use her 2003 anime color scheme as well aside from those using the manga's art. Later on when Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood premiered, her first colour scheme would be the main one used from then onwards as seen with the merchandising and the much later full colour WEBTOON adaptation of the manga. Interestingly however, the GraffArt and Sanrio collaborations, done long after the manga and both anime had ended, both used her 2003 color scheme.
The reason Winry pierced her ears is because she saw that Riza Hawkeye had earrings when the two first met. In the same way, Riza admits that she got her hair long since she saw Winry having long hair too, when she had it short by the moment.
In a Brotherhood OVA, Winry explains that the reason she has so many piercings in her ears is because Edward Elric and Alphonse Elric gave her multiple pairs of earrings and she wanted to wear all of them.
In the most recent fan poll, Winry was ranked 5th most popular Fullmetal Alchemist character, making her the second most popular female character after Riza (who was ranked 3rd overall).
In the Brotherhood character theme album, Winry's theme song is called "Look Up at the Sky," sung by her seiyu, Megumi Takamoto.
Winry holding her wrench in the group picture.
On the cover page of Chapter 107: The Last Battle, Winry is included putting her hand in the circle with the rest of the protagonists.
Ed and Winry's romantic relationship is heavily implied throughout the FMA series and the relationship was confirmed during end of the manga as the two end up together with children, which is one of the most popular FMA pairings. It's also known as "Edwin". Apparently, the number "503" was also previously used as a name for this pairing, based on a brand of jeans of the same number by a company called Edwin. "503" was also the number of Winry's hotel room when she visit Ed and Al in Central.
References
↑ 1.01.1Fullmetal Alchemist Complete Book Material Side guidebook
↑ 2.02.1Fullmetal Alchemist Complete Book Story Side guidebook
↑Hagaren.jp website, 2003 anime section, Characters page, section "11～22話キャラクター". Link. (Note that the site does not display correctly on certain devices)
