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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | Everything that you thought had meaning: every hope, dream, or moment of happiness. None of it matters as you lie bleeding out on the battlefield. None of it changes what a speeding rock does to a body, we all die. But does that mean our lives are meaningless? Does that mean that there was no point in our being born? Would you say that of our slain comrades? What about their lives? Were they meaningless?... They were not! Their memory serves as an example to us all! The courageous fallen! The anguished fallen! Their lives have meaning because we the living refuse to forget them! And as we ride to certain death, we trust our successors to do the same for us! Because my soldiers do not buckle or yield when faced with the cruelty of this world! My soldiers push forward! My soldiers scream out! My soldiers RAAAAAGE! | „ |
| ~ Erwin's famous and final speech as he leads the Survey Corps in a suicide charge. |
Erwin Smith is a major supporting character in the Attack on Titan franchise. As a commander in the Survey Corps, he often rallies up soldiers willing to fight into battles as their missions to take out the Titans while being willing to sacrifice as many of them as necessary to complete them. When learning of Abnormal Titans, he dedicates himself to trying to capture them to discover secrets about them, even being willing to stoop to more unscrupulous means to accomplish this like endangering the civilians in Stohess District in the process. At first, it seems evident that he is doing this all for the sole goal of protecting humanity, but as the series progresses, there is an element of selfishness revealed in the goal in that he is also performing his actions to prove his father's theory about humans being outside their walls being right, a truth he was obsessed in confirming.
He is voiced by Daisuke Ono in the Japanese sub and by J. Michael Tatum in the English dub.
What Makes Him Magnificent?[]
- He has a strong sense of charisma that he uses to rally people to his side, often using this as part of his well-delivered motivational speeches to motivate soldiers into dedicating their hearts for the causes they fight for humanity.
- He often courageously leads his soldiers into battle against Titans while being a professional at taking some out himself with his weapons, skills, and intellect, even if not quite on the level of soldiers like Levi Ackerman.
- While his goal is revealed to have a selfish element in it for his actions through being obsessed to prove his father's theory correct, the safety of humanity does still play a factor into it with his objective through taking out Titans being to keep as much civilians safe as possible, him overthrowing the corrupt Royal Government when they expose themselves as being willing to sacrifice their own civilians just to preserve their power, and going out of his way to lead a mission to retake Shiganshina for the civilians to reclaim their home.
- He plays the proposal he and others set up for the debate over Eren by ear at the courthouse to let Eren rejoin his ranks for them to utilize his Titan ability to retake Wall Maria through a plan that involves departing from Calaneth District to the East to make for Shiganshina while establishing a new route, managing to get the courthouse to let Eren be placed under Levi's supervision while they conduct a retcon mission outside of the wall that Eren will join them in.
- As a very effective military strategist, he would often come up with brilliant plans to be able to complete a lot of missions he has at hand.
- He accepts that lots of people decided to leave and go to other regiments instead of staying to risk their lives in battle while saluting those that did.
- He sets up a precisely detailed, meticulously calculated formation for an operation to retake Wall Maria where the rookies will be between the Wagon event squad and the Scout support squad and run spare horses as well as relay signals while the Special Squad position is on standby while getting Eren all the way to Shiganshina, having coordinated it all well and leading the troops on, this having worked mostly well until Annie's interference and killing many of the troops.
- Knowing that Titans have used a certain path due to a lack of vegetation and that it should be a cinch for the wagons, he orders for only the center wagon defense squad to enter the forest and the formation to break up and go around as the only tactical option in order to lure Annie Leonhart in her Female Titan form into a trap set up in the woods involving spears being launched at her to keep her still (albeit temporarily) with Levi taking Eren with him along with other troops while having other troops come in to distract her so that she wouldn't succeed at catching up enough to get Eren, knowing that she is targeting him. He even has second and third waves of spears be fired against her to ensure she remains within.
- Realizing that the Titans the Female Titan summoned are breaking her out, he orders all hands to commence combat and defend the Female Titan at all costs to prevent her from escaping though this doesn't succeed.
- He realizes that the person inside the Female Titan didn't get eaten by the Titans with her Titan body form and has Levi replenish, knowing that the person would equip themselves in ODM gear in advance and that this, along with her ability to summon Titans, proves a new sort of skills that Titans had and realizing that they were naïve to think that a novice like Eren would set the bar for it.
- He sets up an ambush for Annie Leonhart upon realizing that she's the Female Titan by having Armin, Mikasa, and Eren tell her that the government seeks to kill Eren out of paranoia, convince her to help them escape while Jean goes in disguise as Eren, and take her into an underground passage in Stohess District en route to the capital well below street level where the soldiers would be waiting for her hiding along with civilians that came to try to apprehend her to easily immobilize her and stop her from transforming with her only doing so because of her own clever move of slitting her finger with a material.
- Once the time to reveal the gig is up, he has his troop take the materials needed to rendezvous with the Squad Corp.
- He has a net be set up to capture Annie in case everything else doesn't go according to plan, this nearly succeeding if not for her swinging her feet at everyone and set Eren up to battle her in Titan form through the streets.
- He willingly confesses that he was aware of the casualties his plan of having Eren fight Annie in Titan form to capture her would lead to and admits that he has no excuse for it, even being willing to let Niles shoot him by telling him to do as his conscience dictates and accepting his arrest at Niles by telling him he'll accept the high court's judgement while ordering him to take his post and to ensure the Female Titan does not escape. When conversing with the court, he takes full responsibility and admits he didn't foresee the full extent of the scale of the damage and tells them to blame his incompetence.
- He lures the Titans to Reiner, Bertolt, and Ymir while they are being pursued by the Scouts so that they could take them on and it would be easier for the Scouts to reclaim Eren before boldly leading them forward into the cause.
- Even when his arm is caught in the mouth of a Titan, he continues to order his troops to advance towards the mission.
- When Armin distracts Bertolt by lying to him about Annie being tortured to provoke him, Erwin takes the opportunity to swiftly swoop in, even with his large wound, and slice Bertolt and set Eren free to allow Mikasa to catch him before ordering all the soldiers to retreat.
- Knowing the government's intentions, he notifies Levi of this through a letter that leads to him and the others evacuating the house before it's infiltrated by the government's officers.
- He discovers that Reiss is the true royal house through Hange's help in a confession from an interior squad member that was tortured by her and deployed his scouts to retrieve Eren and Historia before crowning Historia as the country's queen and go to the people to expose the system for its hidden lies.
- He gives a word of respect towards a murdered Reeves for planting his feet to save Trost when it was on the verge of collapse and revive the city and swears to avenge his death for his nobility.
- In honor of his father, he makes it his mission in his life to atone to his father for his demise by showing the world he was right about his theory on Titans.
- He assists Dot Pyxis in coming up with a gambit to retake Wall Maria overthrow the government members, whom he recognizes as corrupt and not genuinely caring about the citizens they're in charge of and instead caring about their own needs, through a coup d'etat that involves a false alarm being set up of Wall Rose being breached to see if they will try to help save as many people as possible, exposing their true colors when their response is instead to close the gates and forbid anyone from being saved and taking them out of power.
- He was fine with being hanged along with the others should the government actually show care for their people, showcasing that he is able to take his death with dignity.
- Knowing the direction that Rod's Titan is going and with the others arriving, he orders the squad to head back to the wall with a plan to, once it approaches Orvud District knowing that it is attracted toward the largest group of people, he formulates a plan to bring it down using the wall cannons and artillery and if it doesn't work to throw everything the Scout Regiment has at it, managing to cause it to lose balance from the combustion launched at it and Eren stuffing gunpowder down its throat to ignite from the fire within with the knowledge that it's more vulnerable there and has it be brought down by the Scouts instantly attacking the bits with Historia delivering the final blow against her father to stop the Titan and save the district.
- He openly tells Levi to use him as bait for the plan to retake Wall Maria if necessary to show his determination to learn the truth about their world.
- Once the scouts rediscover Shiganshina, starts off the operation to retake it by having his troops switch to ODM gear, go over the gate, and seal off Wall Rose and Wall Maria to keep Shiganshina isolated and let them be able to kill the Titans inside. He even suspects that the enemy would predict this plan and counter it by targeting Eren which he covers by having all 100 of their soldiers keep their faces covered with hoods so that by the time the folk have relocated Eren, he'd have plugged up the outer gate.
- He deduces based off the information Armin provided about Bertholdt, Reiner, and whoever else was with them that they had predicted their arrival with plenty of time.
- He places trust in Armin to discover traces of the enemy and command his soldiers, knowing how intelligent he is, leading to Reiner being discovered in what would have been an impossible to find spot.
- He has his soldiers maintain a safe distance from Reiner Braun in his armored titan form so that he can understand their strategy first, knowing that their primary objective is to capture Eren and that they are unable to escape if their horses are slaughtered, he has Dirk Squad and Marlene Squad join Klaus Squad and protect the horses at the gate and Levi Squad and Hange Squad take down the Armored Titan and employ the thunder spears at their own discretion albeit having Levi be with him to use him to strike the Beast Titan down and having a plan for the Armored Titan as well to leave to Armin and Hange, leading to Eren transforming into a Titan to change his target from the horses to Eren and prevent Reiner from giving any time to think.
- He internally admits that a lot of the people he sacrificed wasn't entirely for the goal of saving humanity and was partially for the objective of proving his father's theory right, even having some guilt over this, thinking about how now on all the corpses, he has quite the view in a somber tone. He even further admits this to Levi while conversing with him about plans to take down the Beast Titan and comes to accept how he's not going to live to see his dream of proving his father's theory fulfilled.
- He rallies up the troops to sacrifice themselves while serving as decoys to distract him so that Levi could sneak up, dispatch the Titans, and take him out himself, managing to at least lead to them winning the battle due to the Beast Titan retreating with his Titans and Shiganshina being reconquered, facing his death with full dignity and courage while simultaneously encouraging his soldiers to do the same with an epic speech.
- He denies the opportunity for Levi to use the Titan serum on him to save his life and give him Titan powers, accepting his death with full on dignity even further and resting in peace.
What Makes Him A Baddie?[]
- He regularly sacrifices the lives of his troops in battle against the Titans, getting them killed through having them fight them. A good example would be when he orders some soldiers to accompany Levi leading them and Eren to bait Annie Leonhart in Titan form into a trap, this getting them ruthlessly killed by her.
- He marks the bodies of Ivan and the other soldiers that died in battle as missing and refused to permit getting their bodies from Titans lurking in the forest.
- He knowingly endangered the citizens in Stohess District with his plan of trying to capture Annie Leonhart including Eren in Titan form fighting her in her Female Titan form, being aware that this would lead to casualties that will get multiple citizens caught in the crossfire and endangered with buildings destroyed and caught on fire. While he admitted that he didn't foresee the scale of the damage, he did admit that he knew there was going to be an extent of it to Niles.
- He gets some soldiers killed in his move of luring the Titans to Reiner, Bertolt, and Ymir while they were pursued by the Scouts.
- After being told by Hange Zoe of the possibility of the Titans actually being humans the whole time, he smiles in spite of this knowledge as this means another step closer to the truth.
- He allows Rod Reiss' Titan to go all the way to Orvud District and orders that the civilians stay exactly where they are in spite of their lives being potentially endangered.
- He leads his troops in a suicide charge against Zeke Yeager in his Beast Titan form as a distraction to allow Levi to be able to take out his Titans along with him, getting many of them brutally killed by means of being viciously mauled apart by his bombardments.
External Links[]
- Erwin Smith on the Heroes Wiki
- Erwin Smith on the Inconsistently Admirable Wiki
- Erwin Smith on the Attack on Titan Wiki
[]
 Magnificent Baddies
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Annie Leonhart | Dot Pixis | Eren Kruger | Eren Yeager | Erwin Smith | Kenny Ackerman | Levi Ackerman | Ymir | Zeke Yeager | ||