Quote Originally Posted by Randomguy View Post
What frustrates me though is that, while it was a very clever trick, Edward ends up using his own soul as a philosophers stone and shortening his own lifespan when there was a real philosopher's stone just a few feet away. It'd be one thing if they found it somewhere next episode, but it was right there. Honestly, what exactly is the moral of the story there? "It is important to pay attention to detail or else you might make unnecessary sacrifices."? "S*** happens."? "F*** you Edward Elric, sincerely The Universe."? One of those.
(This shouldn't be a spoiler, pretty sure it's an aspect of character that's already been portrayed, spoilering it as a precaution)

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While Ed was willing to use Envy's stone when they were stuck inside Gluttony, it was quite literally a last resort. Use the stone, or die a swift and unpleasant death. The great reluctance of both brothers to use the stones for anything else was quite explicit from the instant they found out what the stone was. Knowing that, Ed would probably have chosen to use his own, sacrificing willingly, rather than profit from a soul taken by force.




Apart from that, what struck me the most about this episode was that what Ed did, in any other series with similar magic, would be a deadly secret, as the ability to use a person in that way would be a foreshadowing of sacrifice-fueled magic and similar abominations. In this one, sacrificing one or two people to power your "spells" is so trivial as to be pointless, when it's so much more profitable just to make them into Philosophers Stones.