Crack Theories Week: War Chief Friday
The mysteries of the SnK world are manifold, but at least one aspect of this world is 100% clear: War Chief Zeke and his role in this story. It’s obvious that Zeke is a frustrated baseball player unwillingly dragged into the world of shifter politics.
All Zeke wants is to play baseball.
This is all he’s ever wanted. All of his flowing locks and washboard abs have been in service of universal baseball stardom.
However, the beginning of the end came when he encountered the First King. His team was unbeatable. Worst of all, the First King had mind mojo that wiped judges’ and audiences’ memories, and made it seem like the First King always won all the things.
The mistake being, of course, not recognizing Zeke’s greatness.
However, though all of this was bad enough, things took a true turn for the worse when Zeke’s father, Grisha, convinced him to inject himself with titan serum to gain extra strength. Zeke, not being interested in much more than his abs and perfect pitches, thought that this was just some doping. That he’d get better at the game and beat the First King’s team once and for all.
But no. With the titan injection came a bizarre beastly appearance and powers he had to learn to control. Random children from a nearby village started calling him a War Chief when he recruited them to play baseball. Zeke tried to deal with it kindly at first, and then he realized that his father–Grisha–had screwed him over in service of his own agenda. Grisha cared about world liberation (or something similar; Zeke hadn’t been listening, so he wasn’t sure). Zeke cared about baseball. But now Grisha had succeeded in subverting him from the straight path filled with baseball-related things and onto a confusing road to… well, Zeke’s not really sure where.
No wonder he sympathizes with his little brother Eren when he meets him:
It is Zeke’s hope that Eren, too, will embrace baseball and not world liberation or whatever uptight stuff Grisha was always on about.
But the truth is, Grisha’s teachings have sunk in too deep. Zeke, while trying to be a carefree dude and focus on his baseball career, has nonetheless started to feel the burden of his responsibilities in this strange shifter world. From time to time, he gets Genuine Feelings about the political situation, and after that happens he always needs to lie down with a cold compress, just to make sure he’s not losing his mind.
But this is the toll the war takes on everyone. Zeke might not know what he’s fighting for or against, and he may have nothing in his mind but dreams of baseball glory. He may think he’s hunting the Coordinate only because the First King used it to defeat him in all their games. But in actual fact the years of wandering in the wilderness, being called a War Chief, have been wearing him down.
In his heart, Zeke knows that the road to baseball greatness is closed to him forever.
But not even titan serum can give him enough strength to face this truth.
