Board Thread:Manga/@comment-5774380-20151209012906/@comment-24407809-20151213045344

I haven't said much on this chapter beyond some small speculation on Reiner's status (I'm not falling for your crap anymore Isayama! You've pulled a bait-and-switch with a main character's life one too many times! You don't have the guts to kill a major character!), but I really feel the need to speak my mind on Erwin's development in this chapter.

I have to say, I was amazed by the sudden revelation that Erwin may not be all he's cracked up to be. I've always assumed (and up until a few moments from now, stated on my profile page) that Erwin has been fighting for the good of humanity. In my mind, he was the Perfect Darkness (BOOM! MOVIE REFERENCE!) needed to lead the Survey Corps, because he was willing to sacrifice the lives of his men on missions because he truly believed that, if the mission succeeded, the benefit to all of mankind would ultimately outweigh any losses incurred during an expedition.

Now, we're seeing Erwin's veil of deception being lifted, and we're seeing him for what he truly is: a selfish person who, while guilt-stricken over all of the deaths he has caused, is still willingly offering up the lives of others for his own benefit. We're seeing that he never truly believed in the Survey Corps' cause, and only wanted to use it as a means to prove his father's theories about the world. And even now, as he is staring down an army of (possibly intelligent) Titans, commanded by the most dangerous and powerful Titan Shifter ever encountered, he is more concerned with Eren's basement than Eren himself (who is basically humanity's only hope at this point).

This was a very intriguing revelation, and it has caused me to start to reassess my opinion of Erwin, now that I know what his true motives were all along. It also went a long way in setting up the rest of Erwin's story arc, and does a good job of setting up suspense for the next chapter (or chapters, since Isayama likes to drag thing out): Will Erwin's guilty conscious convince him to stay by his soldiers and fight to the bitter end, or will he continue down the lonely path he has taken up until now, and abandon his comrades to be killed?