Favourite moments: Petra Ral
Petra is another one of those characters that I love every single moment they are on screen. Picking one particular frame is pretty hard under those circumstances, but, uh, if I have to zero in on just one Petra moment, I guess I’ll pick one which communicates her life values.
Petra is the Levi squad member with the highest number of titan kills in a team. She’s the ultimate team player, she believes in the joint power of the Survey Corps, and trust in her squad is essential for her. One person can’t do much just on their own, she says; we’d like you to rely on us. She’s berating herself for having lifted her sword against Eren when he transformed accidentally in front of the squad; she is genuinely sorry for having misjudged him and in doing so having potentially damaged the trust between them. She wants Eren to feel that he can rely on them, and they can rely on him. Petra is that person who reaches out to her team members, who cares, who tries to make them feel welcome.
I’ve seen someone say that Petra effortlessly embodies that which Christa Lenz tried so hard to be, and I find it quite true. Petra is that genuinely lovely, caring person.
But, and here’s one of the greatest things about her for me, she’s still very much a badass fighter, and not at all a pushover, and she’s a human being who can occasionally make a mistake. For all her niceness, Petra promptly calls Eren out when she feels he’s out of line, and she was among the people who mistrusted him and who urged Levi to get away from the transformed Eren because he was too dangerous. Because Petra didn’t come all this way by skipping through the fields and picking up flowers. She’s a hardened, experienced fighter, one of the best there is, and the cautiousness and battle-readiness that come with it are just as big a part of her personality as her caring side.
I just, uh. Love Petra a lot ^^
Favourite character moments, 17/20
