This image in the second ending has bothered me for quite some time. I thought it was rather odd for them to picture Armin smiling, when that isn’t really his character at all. Then I started to think about it, and Armin is very often depicted in fanwork as well as this adorable, smart little guy who is often smiling. Which is weird.
I decided to go through the manga, therefore, and count all the times he actually smiles. Not just going by the scenes, these are all of the panels he smiles in. I can count 23, in 49 chapters. 23 PANELS. Out of these panels, 5 are childhood flashbacks, 5 are sad smiles, 1 is, you know, that smile… Actually, here, take a look at all of them and make up your own mind, on whether to actually consider them smiles or not:
First, let’s go over his real smiles, childhood flashbacks non-included.
You’ve got nine of them. Four of the panels are from two scene.
Then you have his nervous or sad smiles:
Making up five. Note that three of them are from the same scene.
Then you have three smiles I consider to be… maybe smiles? I am not sure if you even count them.
And finally, there is the childhood flashback smiles.
Four of which are from the same scene… and the fifth one might be a flashback of that scene.
Oh, and you have to mention this smile too, I guess:
My point is, Armin hasn’t been smiling brightly for a long time. During his childhood, he was a bit closer to the adorable shota much of the fandom perceive him as. But as you can see, he has never - as a teenager - smiled as brightly as he does in the ending.
Actually, the anime itself added scenes of him smiling. Compare:
and
for example.
So the anime tries to make Armin look more adorable, maybe. Or they missed the fact that 95 % of the time, Armin looks absolutely worried, concerned, or thoughtful. Observe:
Actually, look any random page with Armin on, if you want to create another collage like that in five minutes. That Armin is who you will see.
Am I saying not to portray Armin as happy and smiling? Not at all. He can be perfectly happy. But observe that his genuine smiles are rare and uncommon, and maybe describing him as a “happy kid” is pushing it. Armin/Happiness isn’t a crack ship, but it’s far from being canon.
I want to see him smile like he did when he was a child again. But going by his most recent smile, I think we’ll be going in another direction.
If you have more examples of Armin smiling, do let me know, these are all I could find.
