Attack On Titan: The Hate For Gabi Is Unwarranted - Animehunch

No, Gabi is not the Marleyan version of Eren Jaeger. I know some, perhaps even the show/manga itself, are trying to draw parallels between the two, but these two characters at their cores are very different and their motivations and drive couldn’t be more different. Gabi is a hateful little brat who takes obvious delight to killing soldiers on the opposing side, be they Eldian or just from an ‘enemy’ nation. I hated her long before she killed Sasha (I never cared much about Sasha anyway, so her death wasn’t as upsetting to me as it was to so man y others), I despised her from the moment she was introduced and they showed how she played on the enemy soldiers sympathy for a seeming child ( I don’t care what her age is, that’s no child) then proceeded to blow them to high hell with a bomb she had tied around her ankle. Afterwards she laughed in outright glee and pride.

You could argue that she’s been brainwashed, but that arguments holds no weight when you have characters like Falco who, despite being raised in Marley and taught that his kind are all devils who must be endlessly punished and castigated for the crimes of their ancestors, still show empathy and compassion for their ‘enemies’. Gabi, on the other hand, shows zero. And the brainwashing defense falls flat when you see how much pride, and blatant delight, she takes in killing not just enemy Eldians, but any enemies of Marley, non-Eldians included. Eren, all throughout the show, demonstrated a deep, enduring love for his comrades to the point where he’d sacrifice himself to save them. Gabi has no demonstrated such a love in any way, shape, or form. In fact after escaping the gaol she was immediately willing to endanger Falco by lashing out at any Eldian she encountered. He was constantly having to hold her back. Gabi showed no willingness whatsoever to see the Eldians as human beings despite being shown over and over that they were just people, the same as anyone and everyone anywhere else. Not once did she show the same level of devotion to her friends as Eren has shown to his throughout the entire series. Her little self-pitying speech to Mikasa and Armin about how they should kill her and not Falco was a fat load of garbage considering she has done nothing whatsoever to help and hasn’t even demonstration a real inclination to do so. It’s all been about her and what she wants. To punish all the bad Eldians, to prove she’s a ‘good’ Eldian and to get answers from Zeke. Falco and his safety or wellbeing weren’t even on her radar.

Eren, whatever his faults may be, saw the Marleyans as people after sneaking behind enemy lines. He showed compassion and understanding towards Reiner and while he still forged ahead, he did so fully acknowledging that there was nothing righteous about what he was doing, that it was just a simple matter of one side must lose for the other to live. Gabi is an ignorant, spiteful wretch who spouts self-righteous, bigoted hate speech about how the people of Paradis must all accept their guilt and, basically, lie down and die like good little devils all so Gabi can prove what a good Eldian she is to the Marleyans.

Eren has always fought for the freedom and wellbeing of those he holds dear. When he learned the truth about titans and what they really are his blind hatred of them went out like a snuffed candle. He was horrified to know he’d been killing innocent people. Gabi shows no such reservations. She went in knowing her enemies were people, she just justified her hatred of them by seeing them as the ‘bad Eldians’, as monsters lesser than herself and the ‘good Eldians’ and thus only fit to be slaughtered, but unlike Eren, who didn’t know Titans were actually people, Gabi knew full well who and what her enemies were. And let’s not forget — I can’t stress this enough — that she just as cheerfully kills non-Eldians, too. She’ll happy murder anyone the Marleyan military points her at without a shred of compassion or sympathy, without ever bothering to think of them as fellow human beings with family and loved ones. She’s a sociopath incapable of empathizing with anyone that’s outside her little sphere of “worthy” individuals and even towards those people within her sphere, such as Falco, she’s never shown the level of love and devotion Eren has shown towards those he cares for.

Gabi was murderous, delusional and hateful LONG before Eren’s attack on Liberio. She was positively eager to become a Warrior so she could go over to Paradis and slaughter all of the island devils as proof of her loyalty as a ‘good’ Eldian. Eren has only ever fought for freedom and, after learning the truth and Titans and Marley, yes for revenge (at first, until he lived in Marley for a while and accepted them as just people), though I think a desire for freedom is still at the core of everything he does, as well as a deep, enduring love for his friends. Gabi may have eventually come to understand why Reiner felt the way he did after his time in Paradis, and she may eventually have come to see the Eldians of Paradis as people after being slapped in the face (sometimes literally) by that truth over and over again, but that doesn’t change the person she’s been right from the beginning. It doesn’t absolve her of guilt and it sure as hell doesn’t make her the Eren Jaeger of Marley. Not to mention just how much it took for that horrible little prat to even start seeing the Eldians of Paradis as people. How many acts of kindness and forgiveness for how truly awful she is did it take for the scales to fall from her eyes? Far too many. And she doesn’t deserve it.