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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | If you leave rats in your household alone, you might be infected with a disease sooner or later, so the desire to eliminate them is natural. | „ |
| ~ Gross. |
Sergeant Major Gross is a minor but pivotal antagonist in Attack on Titan. He is a cruel and sadistic commanding officer of the Public Security Authorities, a law enforcement branch of the Marleyan military.
In the anime, he was voiced by Ikkyuu Juku in the Japanese version and by Bradley Campbell in the English version.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Close to Being Pure Evil?[]
In General[]
- While he holds hatred toward Eldians for their barbaric past of oppressing humanity, he goes well beyond the point of being an extremist due to the extreme amount of sadism he takes in torturing innocent Eldians who have nothing to do with the crimes of their ancestors.
- This is further un-mitigating due to the fact he wasn’t alive during the final century of Eldia's domination and oppression (although his older family members were), and even his cohorts think his amount of sadism is disturbing. He justifies his hatred by expressing his belief that Subjects of Ymir are not real human beings and that their real physical forms are the Titans they become after injected with a serum. Therefore, he claims he is not harming actual human beings.
- He does not even approve how his country Marley and the rest of the world keep agreeing into keeping all Subjects of Ymir alive, and wishes they could all be exterminated already, as he is convinced they will eventually try to rise again and restore Eldia one day, using the existence of the Eldian Restorationists as an example.
- If all the Subjects of Ymir in the world were exterminated as he and multiple parties in the world wish, it is possible that he would seek to direct his cruelty and sadistic needs towards different groups, as he calls his habits "fun" and appears to have beliefs of racial social darwinism.
- He also displays hypocrisy in this as he follows it up after a whole monologue of how he enjoys cruelty and finds it interesting watching humans getting eaten by Titans and the concept of peace boring, it being made clear he is taking advantage of the discrimination they receive to perform whatever cruel acts he wants with them for fun, and when Grisha begins to tell him what was taught to him and his allies as the "real history", believing that the Founder Ymir helped people prosper on the continent, Gross, bored, decides to brush him off and proceed to try to feed him to a Titan.
- This is further un-mitigating due to the fact he wasn’t alive during the final century of Eldia's domination and oppression (although his older family members were), and even his cohorts think his amount of sadism is disturbing. He justifies his hatred by expressing his belief that Subjects of Ymir are not real human beings and that their real physical forms are the Titans they become after injected with a serum. Therefore, he claims he is not harming actual human beings.
- Although he is shown to get along with fellow officer, Eren Kruger, this is likely only because he thinks he shares his mutual sadism and cruel views. The friendship is also completely fake on Kruger's part, as he is disgusted with Gross's actions and was secretly a spy.
- He raised his three sons to be cruel and sadistic people willing to murder children for fun. Gross claimed it "built character" for them and that he has simply educated them about how the cruel world works. Gross bluntly admits he enjoys to see cruelty.
Actions[]
- He takes Faye, an 8-year-old girl, away from her brother, Grisha, under the guise of returning her to her home, in their city's internment zone, when in reality, what he did was have give her a brutal fate by having his sons use their dogs to maul her to death. He even later states watching Faye getting killed was fun for him and his sons.
- After ranking higher to become a sergeant major, Gross carries the duty to turn many Eldians into Titans by injecting them with a Titan serum needle, as per Marley's policy against Eldian criminals with a life sentence. This is giving them a fate worse than death since he's practically stripping them of their humanity and turning them into mindless monsters by doing this. According to Kruger, they tortured and Titanized thousands of Subjects of Ymir, children included.
- He would routinely spare some Eldians from being turned into Titans, just so he could push them down into the pit to watch them run from their inevitable demise at the hands of newly made Titans just for fun, under the pretext that it is to make the Titans go away from the island's borders, telling the "spared" convicts to run for the Walls.
- What makes this even worse is that he's forcing the Eldians he just turned into Titans to kill their own fellow convicts, or even accomplices, against their will as mindless monsters.
- Even worse is that this is made clear to not be part of the job, as when a rookie member of Public Security questions him when he kicks Grice down the wharf's wall without injecting him, Gross explains to him that this is how they do things while he's in charge, claiming that it makes the job easier by clearing the area of any Titans, who are bound to chase running humans to the inner lands of the island.
- He repeats to Grisha that he still wishes for humanity to eliminate every Eldian from the planet out of pure prejudice and indiscriminate hatred.
- He sadistically taunts Grisha about what happened to his wife, Dina, and what happened to his sister, Faye.
- When confronted about Faye's murder, he straight up and unapologetically admits that she never did anything wrong to deserve her fate, feeling no remorse nor sympathy, callously stating that Faye was pitiful and unfortunate for being born an Eldian.
- When Grisha asked him how he can live with himself, Gross answers that he does not feel any remorse for his actions and the people he hurt, admitting he is well aware that people like himself are seen as abnormal and insane by society, but claiming that it is normal to want to see cruelty and violence. He uses this to justify his sadism and thinks that most people who feel uncomfortable with brutality have simply "lost touch with life and death".
- After bashing Grisha just for existing and being an Eldian, he proceeds to try to feed him to a Titan while mockingly telling him that his sister is calling for him only to be pushed by Kruger to the Titan himself, causing him to receive his comeuppance and be eaten by that Titan while panicking.
- Despite the atrocious Heinous Standards of the series, Gross easily stands out due to a fair lack of resources and limited screen time of one episode, his very brutal murder of Faye, and enjoyment of turning people into Titans against their will.
What Prevents Him from Being Pure Evil?[]
- He genuinely cares for his children, admitting that his heart would be broken if they were to suffer the same horrific fate he tossed Faye into. Additionally, his reason for having them maul Faye was his twisted way of wanting to teach them his philosophy. Nothing suggests that Gross lied about his love for his sons, nor was this subverted in any way.
External Links[]
- Sergeant Major Gross on the Villains Wiki
- Sergeant Major Gross on the Hate Sink Wiki
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 Near Pure Evils
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