User blog comment:Fire Eater/What would you do different?/@comment-1327106-20180215030802

One thing that I've been meaning to do a blog post on, but never actually got around to it, is Nile and the rehabilitation of the Military Police. Early in the story their role is an obstacle. The MPs get in the Survey Corps' way, their soldiers make fun of each other, Nile and Erwin butt heads, etc.

In the Uprising arc, we learn more about Nile and where his loyalties lie. He chooses to stand with Wall Rose and joins the coup. Presumably most of his soldiers stand with him. (The First Interior Squad wouldn't, but they were never under him.)

And then after that bit of character development, Nile mostly drops off the map and we see random MP officer A handling MP affairs in an important meeting where Zackly, Pixis, and Erwin are present. What happened to Nile? He's the head of his branch and he's not there with the other military heads. And the random MP officer is doing what the MPs are known for: being an obstacle.

I think Isayama found them to be too useful as the negative voice that doesn't want to support the Survey Corps, but shot himself in the foot when he made Nile sympathetic and Erwin's friend from the Training Corps. So Nile disappears a lot post-coup unless it has something to do with his friendship with Erwin. For anything else, Isayama would rather have someone else talk, because otherwise Nile's character development would take a step backwards.

But the result is that Nile looks like he's not doing anything to actually run his branch.

My suspicion is that Nile was not originally supposed to survive the Uprising arc. His original guidebook stats gave him a 10/10 out of Cruelty.

Now suppose the division between the regular MPs and the First Interior Squad did not exist and Nile was fully in command of that branch of the MPs. The 10/10 score would make sense, wouldn't it?

I think at some point Isayama changed his mind about Nile, but liked using the MPs as obstacles too much to change their basic function and the result is this weird Nile is there but not actually doing anything for his branch sort of thing.

Which I think is too bad. Nile could still have been the negative voice against Erwin's plans, and I think it would have been more meaningful if it had been two friends butting heads over the timeline for reclaiming Shiganshina than random MP officer A.

Of course, at this point in the story I'm not expecting anything, but it bugged me throughout all the post-coup through Return to Shiganshina parts whenever the MPs showed up or all the military heads except Nile got together. I get that he's not popular, but he's not a sicko like Zackly and he defected during the coup just like everyone else.