Shingeki no Kyoujin - 10

"Answer - Defense of Trost 6"

I move we dethrone Eren and get Armin on the MC chair stat.

I'll admit I don't really understand what people see as whiny versus someone who is realistically portrayed as weak. Not that anything in Shingeki is particularly subtle or realistic, but really, most of us in Armin's situation would be screaming and crying too; hell, most of us in any situation of this world would be acting exactly like most of the soldiers have been this entire time, barring some dramatic inserts. That doesn't make those characters useless or whiny or whatever; it just makes them human. People don't act like Mikasa under pressure unless they're a very specific kind of person and have seen certain things, and while we can all appreciate that kind of GAR in any character, it'd be very boring to have everyone be like that all the time; it just doesn't happen. True, the opposite is just as valid an argument, but that's why I like Armin. He's afraid, but even though he is afraid, he still does what he has to do. Tears are only natural here.

That being said, there's still a ways to go for any character in this show to strike the proper chords with me. Armin and Mikasa are the closest for me, seeing as they've been given some time just for characterization, but the rest are far less noticeable. That doesn't mean I dislike the characters, they're just not quite real for me yet. I see them getting eaten and I don't feel tugs on my heartstrings; I feel sorry for them, but since Karla's death and that cruel death where the girlfriend was giving CPR to her half-eaten boyfriend, I've not really been emotionally affected to an empathetic level. Because of this, I really appreciate Armin taking the lead here, even with Eren's mysterious Titan-ability so crucial to everything. Armin is really the brains, though he hadn't quite realized this until now. He's never been useless, though he's felt that way for most of his life. Having brawn isn't the only thing a soldier is good for, and a good head can save more than a few lives if used correctly. That's evident in the lack of thinking their superior officer utilizes when threatening to kill them all, and evident in Armin's own desperate attempts to change his mind.

Of course, none of this clarifies Eren's situation one bit. He's still as ridiculously mysterious as ever, and he's perfectly justified to wonder why his father did this to him without revealing it to anyone else. I find this constantly to be the bizarre case with Eren's character; he makes sense, but why is he constantly the one who does? I have no doubt that he's a psychopath, especially after Mikasa's backstory, but he's normally so impulsive and preachy that it's hard to take his perfectly good observations seriously. How does a mere boy point out flaws in this society so easily since he was a child, and why is he so determined to see it righted? In other words, even before the Titans attacked, Eren was always so angry about the way of the world, and I'm not really buying his trauma as the reason why.