Mikasa is defined early on by what is probably her most iconic quote:

This line doesn’t simply describe how Mikasa sees the world, but tells us something about Mikasa herself because she too, like the world, embodies this duality.

Now let’s try to briefly define what the series depicts as cruel and what as beautiful.

Cruel is mostly the necessity to fight, to kill other creatures in order to survive and to protect the people one cares about. Cruel is also the necessity to assume a pragmatic outlook and to be ready to make ruthless choices. Basically it’s the necessity to disreguard and to sacrifice some of the beauty of the world.



Beautiful on the other hand is the chance to form relationships, to express one’s feelings, to feel happy and free and even sometimes to do illogical things because one wants to. Basically it’s the chance to escape the strictly selfish and pragmatic outlook the cruelty of the world imposes.

Mikasa grasped both concepts in two distinct moments:

Here is when Mikasa realizes she has to fight and that the world is nothing more than a place where only the strongest survive. It’s because of this epiphany that Mikasa is able to awake her powers and to easily kill her kidnapper.



Here on the other hand Mikasa is able to create a link with another person. This link is symbolized by the scarf Mikasa is constantly seen with. A scarf is something people use to keep themselves warm and it is with this idea that Eren wrapped it on Mikasa. However, by doing so Eren didn’t simply take care of a physical need, but of an emotional one as well because the “cold” Mikasa was feeling had to do not only with her body, but with her sense of loss and loneliness:

A place without you and dad is too cold for me to survive.



So the day Mikasa lost her parents she received both her strength i.e. a weapon to survive (symbolized by the knife), but also a new family which was necessary for her to truly live (symbolized by the scarf). However, because of how things happened, Mikasa ended up associating both her strenght and her sense of a new-found family to a single person i.e. Eren:

Mikasa’s words here underline this since she mentions both the fact that Eren is her place to return to and the fact that until Eren is around she can do anything.

The first sentence is a reference to this quote:

While the second one to this one:

In short since Mikasa makes both feelings (the convinction that the world is cruel and the one according to which the world has incommensurable beauty) converge in Eren they end up reconciling in this strange way:

I can be with Eren because I am strong. I can be strong because I am with Eren.



The world is cruel and tries to separate her from her loved one, but Mikasa is strong and can protect her loved one:

At the same time until she is with her loved one the world maintains its beauty and Mikasa herself is alright:

However, Mikasa’s assumptions are both wrong and the story itself has already given us proof of this.

Mikasa doesn’t really need Eren to be strong:

In Trost after Eren’s supposed death Mikasa was still able to fight and to protect others. She is seen as fundamental by her comrades and capable of incredible things even if Eren isn’t around. His absence doesn’t make her useless or her presence less vital for the other cadets’ survival.

At the same time she doesn’t really need to be strong to be with Eren and to be important for him:

In this scene Mikasa is wounded and she can’t even stand, forget facing a titan, but she is able to properly convey her feelings to Eren and it’s this which saves both her and Eren in that situation by giving Eren the motivation to fight.

As a matter of fact even if Mikasa associates the duality of the world to Eren, she is the one who ends up reminding Eren of these two concepts (the world being cruel and the world being beautiful) in two different occasions and both times it’s thanks to Mikasa that Eren finds his will to fight again.

I have just mentioned one circumstance:

Here Mikasa is reminding Eren that the world is beautiful and that Eren himself has value not because of his strength or his competency, but simply because he is. The callback to the scarf here makes the whole scene a parallel to when Eren wrapped that piece of cloth around Mikasa’s neck. With that simple gesture Mikasa is given a new world and in this scene such a simple thing like Mikasa thanking Eren gives him hope. Here, Mikasa’s action is totally illogical and impractical. They are surrounded by titans and are about to die. Having a conversation about feelings isn’t what you are supposed to do during an emergency. And yet, it’s because of this conversation that the two of them and all the others are able to come out alive from that situation. And this happens because Mikasa didn’t give up on the beauty of the world even if life was being cruel to her in that moment.

So there are times when relationships and feelings matter even if they shouldn’t rationally speaking. However, there are also times when one has to sacrifice the connections made because they are going in the way of one’s survival:

It’s what Eren is asked to do with his friendship with Annie and this time Mikasa’s role is to remind him that the world is indeed harsh and cruel and that one has to fight to live. The whole scene is interesting because in a sense Eren is asked to choose either his connection with Annie or the one he shares with Mikasa and Armin since refusing to fight in that moment would have meant the death of one of his two friends.



So Mikasa is the character who has given the best description of the world so far, but at the same time she struggles with this duality like the other characters. This is because to her “cruelty” and “beauty” aren’t really rational concepts, but more like feelings she needs to integrate within herself to truly grow. In the series we see these two feelings trying to combine themselves in several ways: sometimes their integration is successful (1), sometimes it creates a disaster (2) and some other times it simply doesn’t happen and they fight each other letting Mikasa stuck (3). At the same time Mikasa’s struggle is the struggle of the world and we can find examples of these three different attempts of integration in the story itself.

Let’s now try to underline them when it comes to Mikasa’s character and to the series as a whole.

1) The integration between “cruelty” and “beauty” is somehow successful:

In this scene Mikasa is making full use of the two things she learnt the day she lost her family. On one hand she is ready to fight even if the fight seems impossible to win. However, she doesn’t want to survive just for the sake of it, but she is determined to do so because she knows that the world can give her happiness. That is why both the moments I mentioned before are called back in this scene. In this moment the contradictive nature of the world has somehow found a good equilibrium and everything clings together in Mikasa’s mind.

Even if the modalities are different let’s compare this situation to the Uprising. Why did the Uprising work out? Was it because the SC were cruel or because they were kind?

The answer is both. The Uprising plan was able to succeed both because a bunch of kids accepted to kill their enemies, despite being horrified by the idea, and because normal people accepted to risk their lives to help the SC in exchange for the SC having always fought to protect the civilians. At the same time we have Historia accepting to kill her father:

And her acting completely for herself and subverting the logic of self-sacrifice which the series partially presents as a part of a pragmatic outlook:

2) The integration between “cruelty” and “beauty” fails and the outcome is a negative one.

We can give two examples.

a)

Here we have a crack in Mikasa’s reconciliation of her two drives. As it is explained above she is ready to become cruel to protect what she finds beautiful i.e. Eren. This is how in the beginning these two concepts are intertwined in her to the point that they seem the same thing. However, this moment clearly shows that they aren’t. As a matter of fact Mikasa has to choose if she wants to act according to the principle of cruelty (kill an enemy) or to the one of beauty (saving a friend). They seem the same: killing the Female Titan equates saving Eren for Mikasa, but they are not and Mikasa makes a specific choice. She chooses to kill the Female Titan and this almost costs her both her life and Eren’s. Levi underlines for us the subtle difference between the two options Mikasa was given:

So, despite what Eren told her it’s not true that killing the enemy always assures the survival of one’s friends. This is important for the current situation:



It is implied that Eren’s behaviour in the past arc is driven by the wish to assure his people survival and him reiterating his mantra the past chapter suggests that he is applying the same survival of the fittest mindset he embraced at the beginning of the series to his current situation. Then the scene with Mikasa and Levi might suggest to us readers that this mindset isn’t always correct and that things could have gone differently:

b)

This scene is the opposite of the previous one. If against the Female Titan Mikasa’s mistake was to try to kill the enemy when there was no need, here her mistake is not to cut the enemies down despite the incredible danger they pose to her and her loved ones. In short, if against Annie Mikasa is more cruel than necessary because fueled by anger, here she is softer than needed because impeded by love.



Soldiers being impeded by their feelings on the battlefield and dying because of it are recurring in the series:

The point isn’t that being kind makes you weak, but that they chose to put themselves in a situation where killing an enemy was deemed necessary and yet they hesitated. In short, they were too indecisive.

Sasha’s death is also an example of kindness and cruelty mixing together with other factors to give an awuful outcome. As a matter of fact Sasha’s death when it comes to her own actions can be read in two different ways.

Gabi in her restricted vision of the world reads it as a karmic death for the two guards Sasha killed:

That is why Sasha is killed with the rifle of the gatekeeper in the first place.

We, as readers who have seen the same pattern over and over, see Sasha’s death as a tragic consequence of her not killing Gabi when she spotted the child:

In short we see her as another tragic victim of a world who punishes people even when they are trying to do the right thing.

The truth is that she is another example of a person who was trying to balance morality and pragmatism out and her attempt is another example of how integrating these two concepts is difficult and there is not a correct way to do it. In the end luck will always be an important factor.

3) “Cruelty” and “beauty” oppose each other:

This is basically what is happening in this arc and if Armin’s vision of the world is highly idealistic, but diplomatic, Eren’s one is pragmatic, but also ruthless.

Mikasa is stuck between the two.

She is the one who is surprised by Armin’s doubts about things proceeding according to Yelena’s plans:

However, she is also the one who argues back at Eren and makes him notice they were able to connect with some Marleyan soldiers. What is more, she is also the one who suggests they need more time. A suggestion both Eren and Armin accept, but they give it opposite spins and motivations:

So, now Mikasa is probably caught in the middle not only of her two friends, but also of two completely different prospectives she can both empathize with.

Another example the narrative offered us of two opposite ethical systems coming into conflict would be the serum bowl which pretty much divided the cast in who was asking for a pragmatic choice:

And who decided to follow another approach and to choose after considering the two people involved as people and not because of their strategic value:

Right now, our protagonists are probably about to face such a choice again and the result of this choice will probably impact the world as a whole. Will they stick with Eren’s mantra?

Or will they embrace Armin’s point of view?



For now, Mikasa in the last chapter gives us an idea of where our cast and the series as a whole is:

Still clinging to a system of interaction with the world where “beauty” (Mikasa touching her scarf) and “cruelty” (Mikasa repeating Eren’s mantra) are inevitably intertwined, but at the same time possibly starting to doubt this correlation.

