Board Thread:Manga/@comment-31940900-20160807023851/@comment-5774380-20160808193129

Everyone has their own opinion, and as I have stated many times before, mine is the opposite. Bertolt is the character I hate the most, because I find him unbearably false and hypocritical. How he always goes around with that seemingly shy and insecure attitude, as if he wouldn't hurt a fly, and yet when he's the Colossus his attitude is completely indifferent, and he doesn't hesitate a second to try to murder his friends or cause lots of damage and pain.

I know his fans defend him highlighting that he's troubled and fighting for his reasons, but I have another point of view for that. He's willing to sacrifice thousands of innocents for his reasons, his friends, his people; which is intrinsecally an egoistic attitude. All those families within the Walls are mere collateral damage in his personal quest. I think that to be called "collateral damage" is one of the greatest disregards a person can get. That means that your life is considered less important than the accomplishment of something else. I think those people who have received such death sentence would answer "Hell no. I'm not collateral damage. I'm a good person, I lead a honest life, I have dreams, and family, and friends. You're not going to destroy all of that in order for you to reach your goals. I have never done anything bad to you, I don't even know you, I'm not the cause of your problems and I have nothing to do with them. You have never even asked for my help or opinion; needless to say that you don't give a shit about my problems either."

Since the moment you're willing to harm others to get what's important to you, you're giving those others the right to harm you in order to protect what's important to them. You can't possibly think that your goals are more important than the ones of the people you're damaging on your way to get them. And considering the incredible number of innocent lives Bertolt has destroyed or tried to destroy, whatever gruesome fate he gets in return is simply what he asked for. It's the just and fair order of things.

You say you like Bertolt based on your personal experience. I also have my own experience to think this way. I live in Mexico, a country ruled by the organized crime, so I can relate first-hand to the feelings of the people within the Walls. I know the fear of being at the mercy of enemies that want to harm you for reasons that you don't understand, against whom you're totally hopeless and helpless, from whom you cannot escape, and who don't listen to pleadings because they have already decided your fate, and that fate is that you have to die, the most horribly the better, no matter if you don't deserve it because you don't even know them and never did anything bad to them. And you see them destroying family after family and the horrors they unleash upon so many innocent people, and can't do anything but wonder when will be your turn and hoping it won't be anytime soon. Only people who have seen all the pain and suffering they can cause could understand the impotence and rage, and that uncontainable desire to make them pay, and make them feel on their own flesh everything they have caused to others. That's why I cannot relate to villains or to anyone who harms innocents. In works of fiction, I understand that villains are necessary, and need to be complex and do bad things in order to make the story interesting. But at a personal level, I cannot relate to them.

To me, Bertolt is not anything different. He may be internally troubled for what he's doing, but the important thing is that he still does it. And in the latest chapters we saw him entirely assuming his role and wanting to kill anyone who gets in his path, and even better if it's in a grisly way, so no one can excuse him anymore saying that he's being manipulated or that he doesn't want to do it. If I had to mention examples of weak people becoming strong, that'd the Survey Corps, because their lives were sealed by tragedies that forced them to fight and be brave, and they still retain a moral code and don't attack those who don't deserve it. Bertolt has nothing of it. No one who has done the things he has done could seriously aspire to have a happy ending after that.