Commentary on Reactions to Armin's Sexual Assault
We don't talk enough about the various reactions to Armin's sexual assault, and as I was rereading, I took more notice of the panels than usual. The one person most sensitive to his assault is Jean, with Sasha, Connie, and Historia being completely insensitive towards what happened to him.
(Figure 1, 2, Chapter 54, "Location of the Counterattack")
We can see in both panels that Jean is reacts compassionately towards his pain, stepping in to complete the task of fixing the man's gag when he starts to address Armin so that Armin doesn't have to be in his proximity or listen to his words, and later, comforting him as he's in tears over the incident, his distress over being pretty clear in the second panel. However, we can also see that Sasha and Connie are stifling laughter over the incident, which is frankly very disturbing; it's what made me step back and look at everyone else's reactions as well. But I was shocked by Sasha and Connie, laughing while Armin is plainly in tears.
There's also Historia, sitting at the same table as him, likely having already found out what had happened, and not appearing to react at all. Even before this scene, she shows no sympathy for his position.
(Figure 3, 4, Chapter 54, "Location of the Counterattack")
Eren himself is shocked by her blunt honesty. Even without knowing what had happened to Armin, he was still put in danger in her place, and she exhibited no sense of gratitude or sympathy for him, instead turning the attention back onto herself. While her honesty is arguably respectable—that's what her development from Krista to Historia was all about, after all—it doesn't detract from the ultimate selfishness of her reaction to Eren's statement.
As for Levi, he was completely oblivious to this situation altogether. Not only does Mikasa not mention the sexual assault taking place to him when he asks, but when he instructs Armin to 'hurry up' in fixing his perpetrator's gag (Figure 1), he is clearly out of earshot, as he precedes it with 'What are you doing?' He has no clue that the man is accusing Armin of 'turning' him homosexual, practically still lusting after Armin even in restraints. However, with Levi's mother's past and the place of his birth, I doubt Levi would have reacted insensitively had he known. That's even more obvious in the way he comforts Armin in his distress in the aftermath his first murder; he wouldn't have left Armin alone.
Mikasa's reaction addressed the situation at hand, but didn't provide much. The response towards his assault—when she sees it happening herself through the window of the building—is more focused on the mission at hand than on his violation.
(Figure 5, Chapter 53, "Smoke Signal")
Really, the only trace of sympathy she shows for him here is in a bleak, offhanded comment, which she adds to fortify the recommendation that they hurry—not primarily because he's being groped, but because said assault is going to quicken the rate at which takes it the captors to discover his true sex and foil their plan. On that level, she reacts logically, with the plan in mind. It's also likely that she's masking her worry in order to carry out orders. Mikasa isn't, after all, always as outwardly emotional as she feels internally, like Levi. Still, that this is the only incident in which she addresses what happened to him is really sad. What irks me a bit about this reaction, too, is that, at this stage in her development as a character and her still-potent attachment to Eren, I feel like she would have had more of an incentive to compromise the plan had Eren been in Armin's place. She has disobeyed orders in order to protect Eren before, such as when she goes to save him from the Female Titan and goes for the kill, against Levi's orders (Chapter 30, "Losers"), and causes him to injure his ankle. Though that's when Eren is in life-threatening danger, she has disobeyed on a smaller scale for him, such as in Chapter 53, "Smoke Signal," when Hange and Levi are performing investigations on Eren's hardening ability, and she rides forward on her horse to meet him when he becomes unresponsive, against Levi's orders once again. Still, there's a reason for that; due to her trauma, she is more deeply attached to Eren than to Armin, but it vexes me all the same that her intervention came off so mildly.
It's been said a couple times that a scene six chapters later is in reference to his assault, where he is crying, vomiting in the grass outside of where the Levi Squad is staying, rather than in reference to his recent murder for the first time, done to protect Jean. He asks Mikasa, "Did this happen to you, too?"
(Figure 6, 7, Chapter 59, "Soul of the Heretic")
In that sense, this scene has been taken two ways. The pain Mikasa is experiencing on his behalf is apparent to anyone, but what is her empathy directed towards? Did Mikasa feel as horrible as he currently does for killing another human, or did Mikasa feel the way he does when she was a child and her captors were talking about selling her to a sex trafficking circle? Either way, Armin is referencing the same scene: where Eren kills Mikasa's first two captors, and she finishes off the third. However, since we're assuming Armin knows all about how Mikasa met Eren, he should also have been able to differentiate between his own sexual assault, and Mikasa's incident, which is more akin to sexual harassment, especially given that her captors showed no personal interest in contrast to Armin's. They were trying to make a sale to the "rich perverts" in the Underground market. On top of this, Armin's breakdown in the context of the murder rather than the assault actually makes more sense than the reverse, not only due to the outlined difference in Armin and Mikasa's incidents, but also because Mikasa's first act of murder was, like Armin's, forced by circumstance. She experiences a similar panic to Armin's before she murders her captor, and afterwards, she appears to be calm, but regardless, her conscience at the time had been in tune with Armin's.
There's also the obvious context of the situation; addressing his assault a couple chapters later, right after he killed someone for the first time, doesn't line up, especially with the other scenes surrounding this one, as well as the title of the chapter, "Soul of the Heretic," which directly acknowledges the impact of the act of murder on Armin's conscience. It aligns with his character completely, as, of all the characters, he is one of those who advocate the most for peaceful transactions and negotiation. So unfortunately, this scene confronts Armin's act of murder, not his sexual assault.
But overall, I just found this quite saddening. It's Jean who shows the most empathy towards his situation, who watches out for him in the aftermath, and who handles the situation gently and with care, and it's not because he was there to witness it firsthand.
