SnK 84 Thoughts

Ordinarily, this is where I make funny comments to take up space before the cut.

I’m waiting for my brain to supply some funny comments.

The title of this chapter is “Midnight Sun.” It’s a term that takes no imagination to understand; it’s literally what you call it when the sun is visible at midnight. Figuratively, the concepts involved are so familiar that it would be a waste of breath to point out the juxtaposition of overwhelming darkness and light.

Luckily, I’m typing.

As titles go, it’s appropriate to call attention to the deep despair and hope on either side of the inevitable decision.

It’s just more worth pointing out that there’s nothing remotely sunshiney about this chapter. There is no joy to be found, only the pained relief that comes from temporary suffering.

Altogether, I’d imagine the Twilight project of the same name might be less agonizing to read.

Ha, there, I found one.

If someone put you on the stand, brought this chapter up to you, and asked, “Now, show me the page where it hurt you,” the only real option would be to laugh hysterically, because even with the last page, I’m not sure there’s a single moment of this chapter that doesn’t hurt.

Age has always been a footnote-type detail in most anime/manga series I get into. Between the way characters are drawn, the voices they’re given, and the gravity of what they’re in the plot to do, age tends to feel like nothing more than a number. Some series are better than others about making it look like the creators didn’t just select them out of a hat.

Then we have this series.

We have brave soldiers with the fate of the world on their shoulders.

Children.

Mikasa and Eren skip a lot of the developmental signs that characters like Jean, Connie, and Sasha go through. Their first experience with murder is when they’re nine. The first time they see a titan up close, the more traumatizing part is that their family is being gobbled up.

Of the core 104th cast, they’re the ones that give the impression of being the most stable. They’re competent in the field and not prone to panic. Titans don’t scare them. They don’t need to be coaxed into killing.

They’re far from invincible aces, but the average stress and trauma inherent in the life of a Scout doesn’t have the hold on them that it does on their squadmates. It marks them as definitively Not Normal enough that no one bats an eye at them sitting at the grownup table.



But they’re still so very young, and being removed from the average human experience hasn’t removed them from their own path of development, covered in its own scars and hurts.

Eren and Mikasa do not know how to be helpless.

The iconic theme of the series pumps through their veins; if you don’t fight, you can’t win. As young children, outside of the incident with the slavers, they aren’t strong enough to even be part of that first step.

So they grow. They turn into people who can win fights. Eren, driven by his dream of freedom and rage, and Mikasa, refusing to fall prey to anything that can remove her from her family.

They want to win.

Life keeps screwing them over, and the world is cruel, but it’s also so, so beautiful, and as long as they’re strong enough, they can win all of the fights that threaten that beauty. They can be victors instead of victims.

That’s how it’s supposed to work.

That’s how it doesn’t when Eren watches the first Levi Squad die. When all of the strength in the world can’t keep Mikasa from watching people take Eren away from her. When they look up at the titan that ate Eren’s mother and can only watch as it devours Hannes.

They’re strong.

They’re never strong enough.

They are standing on a rooftop with their dying best friend, listening to what could be his last breaths, and there’s a way to save him within arm’s reach, and they’re being told no.

These are kids who have sworn their hearts to humanity. Eren’s idolized the Survey Corps since he was a child, and Mikasa’s sense of duty runs deeper than nearly any other character’s.

But they’re kids, and Armins is theirs.

Soldiers care that Erwin is the logical choice. He’s the smart choice, and humanity’s choice, and maybe that makes him the right choice–but he is not Armin, and that is all Eren and Mikasa can care about.

Eren tries to justify it. He probably even believes what he’s saying. In his heart of hearts, Eren is an idealist who loves his friends, and has never doubted Armin’s importance.

Armin matters so much. Armin’s dream is the reason he’s still here at all.



He cries and shouts about all of the times Armin has saved them, and how his best friend has been so essential to the fight, and how could they even talk about doing this without him? Forget Erwin, forget commanders, look what Armin has done, so how does it make any sense to let him go?

“It’s not me or the commander who’s going to save humanity! It’s Armin! Right, Mikasa?!”

Mikasa, though. Mikasa has that sense of duty. Mikasa is a human soldier who can stand up through her own despair and yell her comrades into following her–then remember herself, and remember that she’s encouraged all of her friends to continue a mission that her heart has abandoned.

Mikasa is the one who will do anything to get Eren back from Annie, but quietly bears the guilt and shame when those actions cripple one of humanity’s greatest champions.

Mikasa is the one who has the reflexes to slice her swords through her former allies, but the heart to hesitate just long enough that they survive, and again, the heart to bear the responsibility.

Mikasa loves Armin.

Mikasa will do anything to protect her family.





Mikasa’s a good soldier. Her idealism isn’t like Eren’s. Hers walks hand in hand with the knowledge of the world’s cruelty.

She never says that Armin is the right choice. Not once. She never argues with the sense saving Erwin makes. She’s in tears by the time she says that Armin could serve as the hope Erwin provides, because she has the same faith in him that Eren does. She wants to believe in everything her friend can be, and walk away from all deeper implications of what’s happening.

Because at the end of it all, Mikasa knows how significant Erwin is, and no amount of begging or belief will change that.

Armin is still her choice. He and Eren will always be her first choice.

She’s still a good soldier. And the decision doesn’t fall to her.

Hange doesn’t tell her anything she doesn’t already know, she just makes it impossible for Mikasa to turn away from her duty. Mikasa may want to throw all of humanity’s possibilities in jeopardy for one life, but she also knows all the reasons why that’s wrong, and when Hange offers compassion, the madness that hits with the loss of her family melts away into pure grief, and the fight leaves her.

(From what we know of Hange’s backstory, this is probably all too familiar to her. Before scientific curiosity, there was rage. Animalistic suffering is no stranger to her. Hange’s one of the few people left alive who has come out of that darkness and learned to let it change her for the better.

That’s the person Moblit dies saving)

Eren, of course, even with the dawning acceptance of the inevitable, doesn’t know how to stop fighting. Armin’s always been the smart one, and Eren’s always tried to be his sword. With Armin down and out, that makes it Eren’s job to defend him, and everything he is.

Armin still dreams. That matters, doesn’t it?





I agreed with an anon last month that with how Levi was approaching things, it didn’t seem likely that some ocean talk would change his mind. Putting Armin over Erwin? Yeah, right.

Letting a kid and his friends keep dreaming instead of bringing back someone he loves so that person can keep going through hell for other people?

That’s a little more complicated.

Levi asked Erwin to give up on his dreams and die for humanity. Erwin did so. The way the new recruit describes it, what that entailed was horrific, and monstrous. He adds that humanity needs that, so they still need Erwin.

Without that, I’m not sure that Levi would make the choice he does. A decision where Erwin ends up dead is not a decision Levi can ever make happily.

A decision to make the person you love most fight your battles for you might have even less appeal.

In any other mission, Erwin and Armin would both die. There would be no way out. Floch wouldn’t have taken Erwin from the field, and Armin would succumb to his injuries on the rooftop, leaving Mikasa and Eren with nothing to do but watch.

In any other mission, Erwin is already dead.

In this mission, the reason for that is because Levi asked him to sacrifice everything.

If he brings Erwin back, he’ll be asking it again. He’ll be putting someone he cares for dearly through all of this–again. Why? Because humanity needs him? Because Levi wants him there? They can’t carry their own weight?



He can drag Erwin back from the grave. Or he can save this one kid who still knows how to dream.

In the end, he comes back to Kenny. A man who constantly chased after someone who saw a world he wanted to know, but could never see.

“They were all… slaves to something… even him.”

When Levi tells Erwin to abandon everything for the sake of humanity, including his dreams, Erwin does so. Gratefully. The smile that accompanies his thanks is freer than anything we’ve seen from the commander before.

Levi’s request frees Erwin.

Levi bringing him back throws him back under the yoke of duty.

“Stop letting your feelings bias you.”

That’s what Levi says to Eren, and Eren rightfully recognizes it as inane hypocrisy. Feelings are driving everyone. The only difference between Eren’s and Levi’s is that Levi has logic backing up his move.

In the end, though, his feelings win out.

They’ve ruined Erwin enough. Let him be free. Let the dumb kids with their flailing emotions keep some of their innocence while you’re at it.

Hange doesn’t argue the point (that we’re shown, anyway, but whatever).

They’re old. They’ve seen countless friends die. This is the very first time they’ve had the option of saving someone. In every other mission, they all went out knowing that if something happened, that was it. They’d be gone, just like all the rest.

I imagine that makes something like a miracle injection hard to include in concrete plans. It’s a freebie. Yes, some uses are more logical, and less likely to completely screw them over, but at the end of the day, these veterans, constantly surrounded by death, have the chance to bring someone back to life.

From one perspective, it’s impossible to choose wrong with a gift like that.

From my perspective, I’m quietly reminding myself that even with Erwin, the disaster of having nine people left in your entire military branch would probably be. well. a problem.



Thematically, it’s great that the young kids are being protected to live better lives than the old guard. It’s also great that dreams were allowed to flourish instead of duty.

Emotionally, our group of heroic teens isn’t as horrifically shattered as they probably would have been, and Levi and Hange at least have the warmth of pure altruism to guide them through whatever whirlwind they’ll be reaping.

There are all of these things that are great and wonderful and etc.

Their commander is still a dead man.



My guess is that they’ll be going the route of, “so many things went wrong, in the grand scheme, one more questionable strategic decision is no big deal,” and it could turn out that they get away with that. It wouldn’t be a very hard sell.

But the sheer magnitude of everything Erwin did for them isn’t something that can be replaced so easily. With those remaining, they have people who can come up with new strategies. They’re covered on intellect, and while their offensive power is… not good, the very best soldiers are still alive.

They don’t have connections. Hange’s on good terms with the papers, and Trost won’t turn their backs so quickly, but within the bureaucracy, they’ve lost their main voice. Pixis and Dok may be allies, but each branch of the military has been left in charge of itself for a reason. The ideals that drive them are all very different.

The Queen is unlikely to abandon them, but Historia’s power comes from the people loving her, and the force of her personality. She’s new at this, and the influence that comes with popularity can only go so far.

Erwin has charisma and natural talent for all aspects of leadership. People listen when he ropes them into insane plans. He knows how to get things done.

As a covert, “we’re talented enough that we literally can do anything good luck stopping us,” group, Our Heroes are fine. As a military branch that needs to work with other members of government–er.

You’d better start hoping there’s something spectacular in that basement, guys, because you’ve somehow managed to make your drastically bad situation worse.

And I don’t want shifter!Armin why why why why

…Erwin would have been just as bad but we clearly no longer have a reason to discuss that.

So what’s left?

Ah.

Bertolt being left on a roof for a titan to eat while people he once called friends watch.

It’s good to know that Isayama is picking up fandom’s slack in keeping Marco relevant.

As death scenes go, I can’t say I’m much of a fan. The rest of this chapter overwhelms it to the point that I almost wish Isayama had left him unconscious. That would have had its own problems, but Bertolt waking up just long enough to scream for help before he’s eaten alive is a tad anticlimactic.

Or it could be that I kept hoping we’d get more on Bertolt, and the more we got turned into him being even more of a slave to fate, removing himself from the equation of his own actions, but at the very end he still wants to be saved.

I realize this joke has probably been made before. But.

You’d think a guy sixty meters tall would have more of a spine.

Not all characters have to be likable, and driving home the lack of a starring role Bertolt takes in his own life isn’t an unsuitable end, but he’s awake for three pages in the chapter he dies.

It doesn’t help that the rest of this chapter is impressive.

You could make the usual thematic comments on what Bertolt’s use represents and says about his character and–agh, I’m not feeling it. It’s an unsatisfying death to read. As part of a volume, I think it will work a little better, because Bertolt will have been read doing things more recently, and this would just be the final thump of the book closing.



As part of a monthly series, it just falls flat.

(Moblit’s death, all one page of it, is way better.

Geez, did we really watch three named people die this month?)

Anyway, when all’s said and done… this is a rough chapter, and one of the greatest things this series has produced in months. It’s incredibly painful to read, but if I had a list of favorite chapters, I think this would have to be on it.

…

I can’t believe they still have to deal with the basement before they make it back to the interior.

