Alphonse and Edward were always pretty tough fighters. Together there aren’t many fighters who can take them down! Alphonse has a lot of raw power and with it he pwns a lot of opponents. Of course Edward is faster and better at hand to hand combat.
Alphonse may be less athletic, but considering that he’s in a suit of armor it’s understandable. Edward has also witnessed true power and even used some of it at the end of the series. Alphonse is just a bit out of his league in this match. He was close, but in the end there’s a reason that Edward’s the main character. Edward wins.
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I disagree with this assessment.
Alphonse consistently defeats Edward in hand to hand combat. Edward never wins there. Also Alphonse is is definitely on par with Edward in terms of alchemy. Al scored higher than Ed on the written portion of the state alchemy examination, and the only reasons he’s not a state alchemist is because he would not be able to pass a physical, and because only one of them needed the certification to have access to the research materials.
Honestly, I don’t even know why Ed is the main character.
Well, it’s true that Alphonse usually won in their battles, but I just attributed it to hero vs hero reasons. Whenever two heroes are fighting, I don’t take the verdict as seriously since they’re both holding back. If Edward was going all out, I’m confident that he could defeat Alphonse. Alphonse is still very skilled, but I believe that Edward definitely outranks him in a physical battle. I’m not a huge fan of either characters, which hurt the FMA series a bit, but Scar is pretty epic.