Armin confesses to the sleeping Annie that he thought he knew Eren better than anyone, but he doesn’t understand him anymore. Eren shares a similiar sentiment with Armin before the timeskip, that there’s something inside of Armin, a dream that drives him, that Eren does not understand because he’s forgotten a long time ago.
It’s ironic that the two of them claim to be unable to understand each other despite in my opinion, being far more like each other than Eren or Armin is to Mikasa. Ironic and what I will spend most of this meta discussing in tandem with Armin’s actions in 124 and 125.
1. “It Should Have Been Me”
Armin and Eren are both driven by ideas, and not people. That’s what makes Mikasa the odd one out of the trio, despite the fact that they’ve been together their entire lives it’s really only Mikasa who is driven by her connections to other people. Armin is always looking at the big picture of the world, and Eren is always looking at his own internal motivations and struggles and because of that the two of them easily lose sight of the people around them. It’s just the ideas they follow are different, Armin intellectualizes, Eren goes with his heart.
The strongest case I can make for the fact they are the most similiar to each other is this clear parallel between Trost, and the return to Shinagashina. Armin and Eren have been close friends since childhood, they’ve grown up together in the most literal sense possibile as the three of them have survived as a unit since being orphaned and then joining the army together. Eren obviously thinks that Armin is an important friend, he just chose to die for him without hesitation, but Armin’s response is this.
He should be the one to die. It’s unthinkable Eren should sacrifice himself for a person like him, because Eren is obviously so better. This formative trauma in Trost is what we see Armin dealing with for the rest of the manga. Armin feels so absolutely weak and inferior in comparison to everyone around him that what he absolutely cannot stand is the idea that he might make a decision which would cost other people to die, or even his important friends to die while he himself might live. For Armin the better choice will always be to sacrifice himself so other people can live.
Eren and Armin both assume that they are the weakest member of the group. That they are the ones who always hold everyone else back. No matter what they accomplish, no matter how hard they train, Eren and Armin both fundamentally believe themselves to be weak people. They are always fighting against that weakness they see within themselves. The reason Armin and Eren can’t let anybody close, or really anybody understand them is because they don’t want others to see how weak they are.
They believe no one would ever accept them if they ever exposed their weak selves. For them there’s no such thing as unconditional love, it’s something they have to earn by proving themselves again and again. Because of this while Armin and Eren have intensive drive and motivation, they have to live continually running away from their own weakness.
Armin and Eren take everything on their shoulders to prove that they’re strong, but on the reverse side they can’t handle it at all when things go wrong because that weakness is not something they can process. They live believing themselves to be constantly inferior to the people around them. Armin is literally so bad at talking about his feelings that he cannot talk to either Eren or Mikasa about his doubts, and instead rambles to a girl in a crystal because she’s the only one who would listen to him without judging him.
Which is why the reverse parallel in RTS is so important, because the same way that Armin cannot accept Eren’s sacrifie for him, Eren absolutely could not accept Armin’s. Eren believes the exact same things, that all he can do is depend on Armin, that he’s the weakest one of the group, that he’s the burden.
Armin and Eren cannot understand each other because their inferiority rubs against one another in the worst way possible. They’ve been friends but always at a comfortable distance. Neither of them wants the confrontation that comes with true understanding and friendship, because that would also mean confronting themselves.
The most extreme result of this behavior, of always assuming it’s better if they’re the ones to suffer, if they’re the ones to die is Eren and Armin always choosing to sacrifice themselves. While Armin is so frustrated at Eren for choosing to go off on his own and bear the burden of the control titan all alone and make the decision for what happens to the world, Armin is the exact same. There’s more important parallel.
Chapter 112, besides all the lies and Eren’s clear efforts to distance himself what is Armin’s breaking point in this conversation? It’s when Eren chooses to lash out Mikasa because he hates Mikasa’s greatest strength. Mikasa defines herself by her relationship to others, she forms strong connections and attachments to other people which is why she’s so genuine and loving of a friend to both of them. The flip side of that, the weakness, is that Mikasa has trouble deciding things on her own or understanding her own thoughts. However what rankles Eren is that attachment. Eren believes himself to be completely worthless so he can’t understand why someone like her would always rely on him. It gives him the love he so desperately wants, and yet Eren can’t be secure in himself and because of that can’t understand that love.
Eren chooses to lash out at Mikasa instead. He doesn’t want to face his own feelings right now, so he takes it out on Mikasa. That’s the absolute breaking point for Armin, choosing to hurt Mikasa rather than face his own feelings.
Yet we see Armin do the exact same thing this chapter. Armin’s explosion had nothing to do with Mikasa, and entirely to do with himself. Yes, Mikasa does need to learn to think for herself but we’re also shown in the same scene she’s the only person whose close to having her priorities in order and realizing the central problem with all of this that needs to be confronted is Eren.
Armin yells and screams all of his personal insecurities out on her, and then makes her apologize for it. When Armin’s in a crisis he’ll do the exact same thing. It’s not that he was annoyed at Mikasa for always clinging onto him or asking him for help, it was entirely about his own insecurity. He has no idea why people are looking to him as the leader right now. He doesn’t want to be, he doesn’t believe he’s good enough, so when Mikasa tries relying on him even a little bit because she genuinely believes in him as a person Armin is unable to receive those feelings and just pushes her away.
Eren and Armin are lost boys stuck in neverland together. What both of them are afraid of most of all is growing up and having to live with the losses of life, and that makes sense as they’re both child soldiers who have lost pretty much everything and are clinging to what little remains.
2. Armin and Erwin
So, down to their ugly and slimy insides Armin and Eren are similiar because of how insecure they are. While there obviously is a tremendous pressure on Armin right now, I actually don’t think his breakdown is reasonable. Rather, Armin’s being unreasonable because he wants to run away.
The difference between Armin and Eren is that Armin internalizes and Eren externalizes. Eren will throw himself in conflict, whereas Armin tries to keep his internal conflict all within himself because he’s so absolutely terrified of hurting other people. Which is exactly the problem. What Armin has been afraid of since the ambush, is that when he makes a decision people on the other end of that decision inevitably get hurt. Instead of trying to accept that, what Armin has done is continually act helpless like there are no decisions for him to make. He avoids any decision making, but that in itself is a decision. You can hurt people just as much by doing nothing, and trying to avoid hurting people as you can by intentionally hurting them.
Which is also what Bertolt and Armin share in common as the colossal titan wielders, they’re both extremely kind boys but because of that despite having literally the strongest titan at their disposal they always, always, always, hesitate.
We’re already seeing the fallout of Armin’s indecision. It’s not just that Connie decided to kidnap Falco, a child was about to die in front of Armin’s eyes because he didn’t do a good enough job of standing up to his friend to stop him. Despite Armin being the moral one, and the righteous one, he lets bad things happen because he himself cannot bring himself to decide, ironically because he’s so afraid of the wrong choice.
Armin’s able to make logical arguments but he can’t reach people’s feelings because he is so out of touch with his own feelings. It’s a complete failure on Armin’s part to reach Connie, because Armin’s argument is so abstract.
Armin’s constantly caring about the consequences of all of his actions at the same time, and because of that it makes him absolutely paralyzed to make any kind of important decision. Armin’s not being kind in that case, he’s being a coward. Armin can run into battle and try to sacrifice his own life just fine, but he can’t do what Hange said was an inevitable part of growing up.
There’s no theoretical point where you get strong enough that you never have to lose anyone again. There’s no good decision that makes absolutely everyone happy. However, Armin and Eren live their lives like there is. Moving forward means accepting those feelings, whereas running away is the opposite of that. During that scene the only person that could let Armin go was Mikasa, almost like she’s the most sensible of the three when it comes to her relationships with other people.
Armin saying that Erwin should have lived is running away. He’s relieving himself of the responsibility of making a choice. It’s easier for Armin to tell himself that there’s nothing he could do, that Erwin would do it better, rather than to try to be better. It’s the same pattern of avoidance that Armin has repeated his entire life. Armin’s so insecure about himself and unable to come to grips with his own feelings that he’s rendered himself helpess. These insecurities are like hairline cracks in his bones that could cause his whole skeleton to shatter, making him far more fragile then he appears.
Hange argues that growing up, or growing into a soldier is being able to accept those feelings of loss and move forward. If you were to ask me what the difference between Armin and Erwin was, it has almost nothing to do with who is smarter.
Erwin’s strongest moment as a character to me wasn’t the charge, but rather this very human moment. When Erwin, much like Armin who has spent the past few years chasing a dream realizes that he has to compromise with reality and let go of that dream. It’s a moment of acceptance.
Erwin is caught in a situation where there are no good choices, only bad ones. The differene between Armin and Erwin, is where Armin has continually tried to escape making a choice, Erwin chooses. Even though it’s a bad choice, he chooses. And even Erwin wasn’t that strong enough to make the choice but you know what he did. Rather than avoid a confrontation and try to hide how weak he felt he admitted all of his selfish feelings to Levi, and Levi helped him make that choice. His ability to connect with Levi, and the unfettered emotions the two of them shared allowed the two of them to become each other’s strength. Whereas as of this moment not only is Armin pushing Mikasa away to run off on his own (because that’s the only thing Armin is comfortable doing anymore) but his greatest weakness is Eren.
It doesn’t feel like Levi is choosing for Eren but rather it’s a choice they make together. For Armin that weakness he desperately wants to run away from is never going away, even Erwin still had that same weakness. The choice is if he’s going to keep being avoidant, if he’s going to repress those feelings and stop himself from feeling them or if he’s going to try to live with them like Erwin did.
3. Armin and Annie
Which is why finally the foiling between Armin and Annie that has been built up since the female Titan Arc is so interesting. The first thing Annie does to Armin as the female titan is spare his life. Armin who thinks his own life is worthless. Armin who thinks he’s nothing more than a burden to others is spared by the same girl who kills her other comrades indiscriminately.
We see in 125 the full extent of that parallel as Armin and Annie are now almost complete opposites in their drive and motivation. Armin is unable to live and is trying to throw his life away rather than face the future or make any kind of choice. Whereas, Annie’s strongest and most powerful driving factor has always been to live.
Annie and Armin have both done terrible things to people, people have died as a result of their actions. However, there’s a difference in their reactions, Annie is trying to take the path of living with what she’s done.
The reason she can is because she has a secure connection that Armin lacks right now. As messed up as her relationship with her father is, there’s also geniune love there. This gives Annie at least some sense of worth, as closed off as she is to everyone around her she’s open to that connection with her father. She’s able to define herself as someone who wants to live to see him again.
Armin has nothing. He has vague and very distant dreams of the future, he has no idea what he wants anymore. He has no idea what is right and wrong, and rather than thinking about it he just abstracts himself further and further.
We literally see this in the paneling, Armin is being torn in half by the sheer number of decisions he has to make but is not making. While Annie’s trying to live for some kind of future at least, Armin’s desperately avoiding the future and distracting himself going after Connie which is the least helpful thing he could be doing.
If Armin si completely out of balance right now then Annie is in balance. Her failure during the female titan arc has allowed her to realize that both things are important, that she has her own loved ones, but also there are complete strangers who have loved ones just as important to them as her father is to her. The key is to make a balance between this tension, rather than let yourself be pulled apart by it with worry like Armin is. He can’t lose Eren, but he also can’t lose the world, even when he’s forced to choose between the two.
Which is why a confrontation between the two is inevitable. Annie’s motivations are primarily selfish, she wants to see her father again. However, the world won’t let her see her father because the outside world is going to be destroyed if she does nothing and pretends like the current conflict is none of her business.
Whereas Armin is to worried about the consequences his actions will have on the world to admit what his own personal feelings are. He’s too selfless but that ends up hurting people worse with his indecision. The world is going to end while he’s still arguing with himself and avoiding Eren. What Armin needs is what Annie has that strong sense of self, and what Annie needs is what Armin has that ability to think outside of her own perspective and let herself connect to other people. Annie wants to fight for her connections and try to do the right thing the same way Armin does because she clearly felt too much guilt as the female titan which led to her loss, and Armin wants to fight for himself and figure out what it is he wants with the same confidence that Annie alredy has.
Both of them child soldiers who through confonting one another will probably help the other grow up the same way Levi helped Erwin finally be able to decide. Growing up means accepting that you might one day lose those connections, but opening yourself up to those connections and even letting them see you at your absolute worst, fighting with them, grappling with them, helps determine grow into the person you need to be.
