"Bad Boy" Analyses Master Post

Hey guys, so just to make it easier for anyone wanting to read all the numerous posts I've made analyzing "Bad Boy", I'm putting all the links in this one post. If I make any more, I'll add them to this as well, lol.

Hi there, and thank you so much for your kind words!

There's every possibility that the scouts would have found a solution to the problem facing them, if they'd simply been given more time. But Eren completely robbed them of that chance by doing what he did.

People that think that's what Levi was telling Eren are complete morons, I don't know how else to put it. Levi told Eren to make the choice he would least regret. The choice he could live with. The choice he felt, in his heart, was the right choice, even if it turned out to be wrong. Whether that was depending on his comrades, or on himself. Levi was essentially telling Eren, too, that not every situation is the same. Every situation calls for a different reaction. Sometimes you'll choose to depend on yourself, sometimes you'll choose to depend on your comrades. He wasn't ever telling Eren to "act independently to keep people from getting killed". How the hell do people even come up with that? He was telling him to do, at any given moment, what he felt was right, but also to understand that you can never know for certain what the right choice is. All you can do, as Levi said, was make the choice that sits well in your heart.

Eren did literally the opposite of that. He literally went against everything Levi tried to impart to him.

He made the choice he KNEW was wrong, and he did it for nothing but selfish gain. Eren was never laboring under any delusion that what he was doing was justified, or even necessary. He told people that it was, like Historia, but that was just a manipulation. And he told himself at points that's what he was doing, as a means of coping with his guilt, but we see he never truly believed that, through his confession to Ramzi, and through his confession to Armin at the end. He always knew, deep down, that what he was doing was for himself, and that it was completely wrong.

It wasn't that Eren didn't trust his comrades. It was that he knew if he confided in them about his actual plans, they would intervene and stop him from doing it. If Eren had ever done that, or tried to do that, then the future he saw never would have been shown to him, because it wouldn't have existed. It only existed because it's always what Eren was going to do, always the end he was going to pursue. He had to keep his comrades in the dark in order to enact the Rumbling the way he did. Eren didn't want to be stopped. He didn't want any other "solution". Because it was never a solution to begin with. It was Eren indulging his own, most base desire, reaching for what he perceived to be a personal sense of freedom, no matter the cost.

That people don't get this is honestly depressing. I honestly think it's just people's absolute refusal to accept that Eren was a bad person, and thus, trying to justify and explain away his actions through increasingly convoluted explanations, rather than just accepting reality.

Oh I definitely have a hate boner for Zeke, lol. I just posted another analysis on this very thing, actually, haha. I have no idea who actually likes him. He's a narcissist with a savior complex, and beyond just that, he's intentionally cruel. So, yeah, fuck Zeke, lol.

Levi and Zeke and the Way "Bad Boy" Demonstrates How Empathy Can Overcome Hardship:

One other point I want to make about how “Bad Boy” demonstrates Levi’s inherent goodness is by comparing what we realize is Levi’s single, good remembered experience with his mother, to Zeke’s own, multiple good experiences growing up, and how through their responses to those experiences, and through their divergent outcomes, we once again see the prevailing of nature over nurture in the world of “Attack on Titan”.

Zeke had numerous, clear and solid memories of being loved and cared for, both by Mr. Ksavar and by his grandparents.  He had the love of Mr. Ksavar in his life into his late teens, and of his grandparents throughout his entire adulthood.  Mr. Ksavar would play catch with Zeke and spend quality time with him just for the pleasure of his company and because he cared about Zeke’s well-being.  And we see Zeke’s grandparents overjoyed at Zeke’s safe return from Marley’s war with the East, greeting him upon reentering Liberio, plainly relieved.  They clearly loved him deeply.  It's interesting to note, though, how Zeke could never see it. He was blind to it, and dismissive of it, because Zeke was always filled with this bitter hate, too wrapped up in his anger toward Grisha to notice he was loved by others all along, too addicted to his resentment to appreciate and cherish the love he had.  He rather chose to believe he was unwanted and uncared for, giving in to the world’s cruelty because he was always cruel himself. 

Levi, by contrast, had no clear or solid memory of his mother.  All Levi had was a vague impression of her beauty.  Of her elegance.  A single memory from early childhood of them sharing tea together, and her smiling at him. We know it's only a vague impression that remains of her, because Levi says so, that the only thing he remembers clearly of her is her elegance, and also through the fact that, from Levi's perspective, we never see a fully clear shot of Kuchel's face.  And yet, despite the obvious hardship of their lives together, the poverty and despair and deprivation, the filth of their surroundings and the hopelessness of their circumstances, and despite his final experience with his mother being one of pointless death and suffering, he remembered her with great fondness, and fought to preserve her in his memory.  He held on to his one, good memory of her with fierce dedication and cherished it with all his heart, even romanticized it in his mind as being better than it surely was.  Because Levi was always filled with kindness and compassion and gratitude, and always believed in those things, in spite of the suffering in his life.  He even rebelled against the ugliness of the world by refusing to give up his one, good memory to it.  He refused to give in to the world’s cruelty because he was always a good person.

And yet, it’s clear to me that that fleeting image of kindness from his mother wouldn't have been enough to overcome the years of cruelty, abuse and violence Levi was subjected to afterward unless Levi himself was already predisposed to being kind and compassionate. If he wasn’t simply naturally empathetic.

Levi’s childhood, I think, is meant to be directly contrasted with Zeke’s in particular.

Levi had a worse life than Zeke, and a worse childhood, by far, and yet, he remained a good man.

Zeke, by comparison, became an ever-increasingly bad man.

"Bad Boy" in many ways demonstrates to us how one’s nature, ultimately, is what decides who we are, not our environment, and also, I believe, how empathy, and the presence of empathy in our hearts, is what ultimately makes us strong, not weak.

Our environment can serve as a trigger for certain aspects of our natures and personalities coming out and manifesting, but it's never the root cause. It’s never the thing that creates those aspects of our personality.  Those things have to be inborn.  We have to have a predisposition to developing them.  The same as how certain people are more predisposed to developing certain diseases than others.

It was Levi's inborn nature that allowed him to overcome the brutality of his childhood. An inborn strength, rooted in his inborn empathy.

Anyone who thinks Levi is weak for having been a victim, and for continuing to be impacted by the abuse he suffered, completely misses the entire point of this story. It's Levi's empathy that makes him strong. And yes, his sensitivity of heart makes him such that he's deeply impacted by and affected by his traumas. And yet, that in itself is the symbol of his strength. It's exactly because Levi is still impacted and still suffers the trauma of what he went through as a child, but in spite of that, continues to be the kindest, most compassionate character in the story, that marks him out as "humanity's strongest". It was always his heart that earned him that title, not his physical ability. That's what this story is, at it's center, actually about.

In contrast, we see demonstrated for us Zeke’s weakness.

Zeke allowed his childhood experiences to bring out his own, inherent cruelty. Zeke gave in to the cruel circumstances of his upbringing because of an inborn lack of empathy, and an inborn narcissism.

After all, one of the defining traits of narcissism is a lack of empathy.

"Bad Boy" demonstrates in the most stark terms a direct contrast between Levi’s childhood and Zeke’s, as well as Levi’s and Eren’s, and shows us how much stronger Levi always was than either of them.

Empathy, and the importance of empathy, is one of the core themes of AoT as a whole.  So, it makes sense that the presence, or lack of it in each of these respective characters would serve to demonstrate that theme by showing us where each of them ends up as a result of either having or lacking empathy.

Through the divergence in Levi’s and Zeke’s paths, we see how it is that empathy actually makes us stronger, not weaker.  We see how those with sensitive and kind hearts are the ones with true strength.

I think we also see this contrast between Levi and Zeke in their respective views of their abusive parental figures.

For Zeke, even his perception of his mother’s and father’s treatment of him is warped by his lack of empathy.  Because, while they were certainly extremely abusive toward him, they still treated him as special and even necessary, not as unwanted or uncared for.  He hated them, and particularly, he hated Grisha, and even wanted to exact revenge on him by accomplishing the exact opposite of what Grisha fought for, by destroying the Eldian race entirely. That is, for Zeke, really the underlying, root cause of his euthanasia plan, despite what he says about wanting to end other people's suffering.  Zeke was absolutely convinced, through his self-absorption, that his parents didn’t want him, despite them never, really sending him that message, and he essentially decided to take his bitterness over that belief out on everyone else. 

This is supported, I think, by the fact that Mr. Ksavar, whom Zeke got his antinatalism philosophy from, didn’t impart that philosophy to Zeke until Zeke was nearly full-grown, well out of any truly vital, childhood developmental stage.  And Zeke’s idea to euthanize the Eldian race didn’t come from Mr. Ksavar at all.  That was entirely Zeke’s own brainchild, rooted again, I think, in his desire to get back at Grisha, by destroying what he thought was Grisha’s dream.  More important to note, still, is that before all this, Mr. Ksavar actually sent the distinct message to Zeke that his life mattered and that he was loved and wanted by telling him to turn his parents in to the authorities to save himself.  He sent Zeke the message that his life was more important than his parents, that Mr. Ksavar himself saw it as a fair exchange, Grisha’s and Dina’s lives for Zeke’s.

For Levi, despite Kenny’s abuse and eventual abandonment of him, and despite introducing brutal violence and a disdain for life into Levi’s world by exposing him to and teaching him the practice of killing other human beings for sport, Levi never actually developed any, real hatred for Kenny, and never sought to exact any sort of vengeance on him, despite the trauma he subjected him to.  And Kenny, by abandoning Levi without any explanation, truly did send Levi the message that he was unwanted. And yet, Levi never blamed Kenny for abandoning him.  He never blamed Kenny for not wanting him.  He blamed himself.  He thought it was something inherently wrong in himself that made Kenny leave, some inherent lack of worth in himself.  Despite all that, Levi still held the strong belief that the lives of others mattered.  That the lives of others were worth protecting and preserving and fighting for. 

Again, that comes down to empathy.

Levi was shown just as much as Zeke that his life was worthless; through his environment, through his upbringing, and through the people he found himself surrounded by growing up, through their treatment of him.  And we see that feeling of worthlessness in Levi demonstrated in “Bad Boy” through his plain suicidal ideation and actions. 

But we never see Levi project that sense of worthlessness onto others the way Zeke does. 

Again, because he has empathy.  Because it’s a quality he was born with.

Levi is able to see and recognize the thoughts, feelings and desires of people outside of himself.  Because he’s able to see and recognize other people as individuals, and because he doesn’t need to be able to directly relate to or see himself in people in order to respect them and acknowledge them as legitimate and real.  He doesn’t need to be able to directly relate to other people in order to connect with them.

Zeke wasn’t able to do that because Zeke never had empathy.  It was a quality he was born without.  It’s why Zeke believes so strongly that the lives of everyone are worthless.  Because he’s unable to recognize that just because he feels and believes his own life is worthless, that doesn’t make it true for others.  It’s why he’s unable to understand that his own experiences, beliefs and feelings don’t give him the right decide that for others. It's why he does project his feelings onto everyone else, and why he sees everyone else as suitable tools for enacting his revenge against Grisha.

Because he’s incapable of, and further, unwilling to see or recognizing the thoughts, feelings or desires of anyone outside himself.  Because he’s incapable of seeing them as individuals.  Because he needs to be able to recognize himself in other people in order to respect them and acknowledge them as legitimate and real. 

It’s why Eren is the only person Zeke ever pretends to love and care about, because he sees Eren as an extension of himself, as someone who went through the exact same experiences as him, and so, as the only person capable of understanding and worthy of sharing in his master plan.  It’s why, in the end, Eren was able to manipulate Zeke so easily.  Because Zeke didn’t see Eren as a real person, or as an individual outside of himself.  He couldn’t conceive of Eren having his own thoughts, feelings or desires, because to him, Eren was just an empty vessel for him to project his own thoughts, feelings and desires onto.  The same way Zeke did with everyone, in the end.

Again, that comes down to a lack of empathy.

I think all of this demonstrates the fundamental difference between Levi and Zeke, and proves beyond doubt that, though their upbringings and the environments they were raised in definitely had an impact on certain, surface-level qualities in their characters, their most essential, core selves are fully the product of their inherent natures and innate personalities. 

Levi overcame the wretched circumstances of his childhood because he always had empathy in his heart.  Because he was always innately kind and compassionate.

Zeke was unable to overcome the wretched circumstances of his childhood because he always lacked empathy.  Because he was always innately narcissistic and cruel.