Parallels and Contrasts between Levi and Eren in "Bad Boy" and "Attack on Titan":
So one thing I find really interesting is the parallel and contrast between Levi and Eren in the two scenes in which we see them kill for the first time, and what it tells us about each of them.
I talk a lot about how Levi isn't naturally inclined toward violence, while Eren very much is, and I think we see that truth play out in how opposing these two scenes are, and how Levi ends up in the opposite position from where he started, and with Eren, vice versa.
In Eren's scene, he seeks out the men who have kidnapped Mikasa, and does so with the express purpose of killing them. Eren is the aggressor throughout the opening pages of this scene.
He uses manipulation to attack and kill the first man, pretending to be lost and seeking help. He gets the man to let his guard down and then stabs him to death.
This isn't normal for any child, but most especially one who's grown up with a quiet and stable life the way Eren has, free of violence or brutality of any kind. And yet we see him here take very naturally and easily to taking another human beings life.
He then uses further, manipulative tactics to draw the second man after him to catch him in an ambush, and we see here that Eren has come prepared. He's fashioned a kind of spear out of a mop, tying a knife to it's end and charging the man with it. This shows premeditation on Eren's part. Again, he came there absolutely planning on killing these men, and had a plan worked out as to how he would go about it. A plan that worked with frightening efficiency.
He runs the man through and then falls on top of him, taking up his first weapon.
And then begins to stab him repeatedly and violently, screaming that he's an animal and that he's getting what he deserves.
Now, let's compare this to Levi's scene.
Levi seeks these men out, too, but it's for a totally opposing reason and with completely different expectations. Levi goes there hoping to retrieve his mother's tea set, but we can see from him immediately getting beaten down that he didn't go into this situation with any, real forethought or plan. One of the men says he tried "sneaking onto a cart headed for the surface", but clearly he was caught, and we can guess that Levi didn't do a very good job of thinking this situation through or trying to be subtle. And, as we'll see in a few pages, he didn't go there at all with any plan of success.
Levi continues to get the hell beaten out of him, and appears completely helpless, which he is. Compare this to Eren, who easily took out the first man, and then proceeded to do the same to the second, using manipulation and premeditation.
Levi shows an honestly heartbreaking passivity here, telling the men to give "it" back, meaning his mother's belongings, but again, showing no real plan or initiative towards convincing these men to do as he asks. He continues to be manhandled and talked down to, easily overpowered and unable to do anything as they refuse, and begin talking about selling him as a prostitute. And then the man holding Levi by the hair says "We should make him do the same job as his mother. He might have inherited her talents."
And finally we see Levi fight back. Only when his mother is spoken badly of does he do this, and we see what happens. Levi's punch is totally ineffectual against the man, and only serves to make him angry, leading to the man beating Levi repeatedly and brutally with his head against the stone ground. It's important to remember, now, that Levi has been raised by Kenny for the last, several years at this point, and taught how to fight by Kenny, a man who makes a sport of taking human life. He's been raised in a world of violence and cruelty and desperation, a marked contrast to the world Eren was raised in, one of mundanity, safety and peace. Eren, who was raised by a doctor, a man of healing, vs Levi, who was raised by an honest to god serial killer, a literal man of death. And yet, it's Eren who shows unusual ability and determination in taking the lives of Mikasa's kidnappers, planning out exactly what he needed to do to succeed, using lies and manipulations to get these men into a vulnerable position and then striking unexpectedly, while it's Levi who gets beaten down and brutalized, because he had no, real, plan, because he went into a situation he couldn't handle, knowing he couldn't handle it. Levi shows no, real cunning here. No cleverness or deception. As he says on the next two pages:
He went into this situation expecting to die, only wanting to "rebel", wanting to "spit on this shitty world", to defy the ugliness of his life and this existence by refusing to give up the only good thing he'd ever had to it, that being this single memory of his mother. He knew he wasn't going to succeed, but he only wanted to stand up to the cruelty of it all, even if that meant dying.
And then Levi's power awakens, sparked by his physical body being put in mortal peril.
And here we see Levi's and Eren's positions flip.
Eren finally lets his guard down, thinking he's taken out all of the bandits, only for Mikasa to tell him that there were three.
And then, not expecting or planning for this, Eren starts to get beaten down. The same thing happens to him here as happened to Levi. He gets kicked in the stomach and immobilized as a result.
But even in this state of being beaten up, and then starting to be choked, we still see Eren struggling and fighting. His face is one of rage and determination, even as he's getting the life choked out of him. And he tells Mikasa "Fight!!". This, again, is a marked contrast to Levi's demeanor of passivity and helplessness while he was being beaten up. Levi was resigned and showed no, real anger until, again, they started talking badly about his mother. And even then, it wasn't enough to keep the fight in him. We see his limp hand against the ground as he begins to be beaten to death, his entire body language one of giving up. Compare this to Eren, who, even as he's being choked to death, stares with absolute hatred and rage at the man with his hands around his throat, as he tells Mikasa again to fight, that if she doesn't fight, they were going to die.
When Levi's power awakens, his mind is flooded with all the power and knowledge of every Ackerman that came before him, and it's THAT, not his own will to survive, that moves his body into action.
Levi says here that he didn't think it was strange that something had happened to him at the time. He talks about a calmness coming over him, and then:
He talks about the idea of what to do just coming to mind suddenly, and him following the instinct of that and acting accordingly.
This was similar to a fight or flight response, without any real, conscious thought to action on Levi's part. He's just doing what his body suddenly knows to do, rooted in his Ackerman lineage, more than anything to do with Levi's actual personality or will.
Again, this is a truly sharp contrast to what we see from Eren, who premeditated the murder of these men. Who went into his encounter with them fully determined and expecting to kill them. He only ended up needing Mikasa's help because he made a mistake, failing to account for the third man. In contrast, Levi would have certainly died if his power hadn't, totally involuntarily, awakened when it did.
It important to see how both these scenes basically play out in reverse, and I think the fact that they do demonstrates how Levi was always a foil to Eren's character, by showing how Eren was always naturally inclined toward violence, always had an affinity for violence, despite growing up in a peaceful life with a loving mother and father, while Levi was very much the opposite, very passive and showing no, real affinity for violence until his power awakened, this despite his growing up in desperate and cruel circumstances, and having spent years with Kenny, a brutally violent man, teaching him everything he knew.
