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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. | „ |
| ~ Sergeant Major Gross. |
| “ | I wouldn't call it pleasure. I just find it interesting. Does that sound a bit crazy to you? Well, the fact is most people want to see cruelty. Don't get me wrong, I think peace is a wonderful thing, but something about it just feels lacking. We've pushed death out of sight and mind... now that's no way to live death is always near in nature... and some might think me abnormal for investigating such things. But to them, I'd say I faced this cruel world head-on. And because I bothered to deepen my understanding of death, I can accept it when my time comes. See, it's about education my boys learned from watching their dogs eat your sister. | „ |
| ~ Sergeant Major Gross explaining his worldview to Grisha. |
Sergeant Major Gross is a minor albeit pitvotal antagonist in the anime and manga series Attack on Titan. He is a commanding officer of the Public Security Authorities and Faye Yeager's killer, making him the archenemy of Grisha Yeager.
He was voiced by Ikkyuu Juku in Japanese and Bradley Campbell in English.
What Makes Him Pathetic?[]
- Not only he is a cruel and sadistic man who constantly abuses his position of power to hurt civilians, but he is also a bad, lazy and corrupt police officer in general, as back when he is still working on the streets of Liberio, before rising up the ranks as a sergeant major, he is seen lazing around on a river bank with Kruger, neglecting their work when they were supposedly on duty.
- Gross even lies to the Yeagers by telling them he was "busy with work" and couldn't watch over Faye and bring her back to their house.
- Despite being a blatant sadist, he justifies this by calling his love for cruelty "interest".
- However, in the manga he does admit twice that he finds cruelty and brutality funny, basically admitting he is a sadist, which he considers an interest and a way to learn about social darwinism.
- While it's true that he had a reason to hate Eldians due to the long brutal history of the Eldian Empire, he still comes across as an overly cruel and sadistic madman who makes a plea for a genocide on the Eldians.
- He also uses his hatred for Eldians as an excuse to indulge his own sadism and harm people, and in a world without Eldians he'd simply look for other excuses and groups of people to continue hurting others for fun.
- He grooms his own sons to be child murderers who target young kids for fun by teaching them about how the cruel world works and admitting that he loves seeing cruelty.
- He kidnapped Faye, an 8 year-old girl, and had her mauled to death by dogs, giving him the most brutal kill in the entire franchise.
- He tortured approximately thousands of normal people and transformed them into Pure Titans against their will, causing them to become large and mindless monsters who kill people brutally by eating them, which is treated as a fate far worse than death by the narrative. It's even implied that he did this to children, as Kruger reported that prisoners that young were among those he and his comrades mutilated and "Titanized".
- Even though this is a standard procedure and a policy issued by the Marleyan government, being part of the job of Public Security, it's shown how cruel Gross is toward the convicts, even mocking their fate or taking some liberties to have them tortured through abuse of power.
- He bluntly states that he did not regret killing Faye in the slightest, all while admitting she did nothing wrong, with him doing this just to emotionally break the already distraught Grisha.
- In his last moments, he attempts to feed Grisha to the latter's own Titanized friend just for fun, while mockingly telling him that his sister is calling for him, which ultimately results in Kruger pushing Gross down the wall, where he was eaten by the Titan that he created.
- He is an absolute hypocrite:
- He criticizes people for enjoying peace in Marley and avoiding violence, while complaining that there hasn't been any war in Marley's territories for many years, thus lacking the "feeling of being alive"; yet he picked a military police organization that is focused on maintaining peace and civil order, when at any point of his life he could've simply changed job and enlisted in any other military division like the Marley Army, which constantly goes to war against other countries in Marley's campaigns of global conquest, so Gross could've enjoyed brutality and lived every day as if it was his last, as he preached.
- He claims that he'll accept his death when the time comes yet he resorts to flipping out when he is killed by a Titan, fighting for his life like any normal person instead.
- Even though he cares for his own children as he explicitly states that he would cry if they died the same way Faye did, this is a very minor redeeming quality and it is only confirmed in a single throwaway line, even if the redeeming quality is genuine.
What Makes Him a Pinhead?[]
- He literally has Faye kidnapped and murdered out in the open, given he let his sons' dogs brutally attack and maul her in the middle of the Marleyan part of Liberio, outside the internment zone, which could have gotten him and his sons caught by witnesses.
- Additionally, since it was stated that Faye’s corpse was found at the scene of the crime, Gross likely didn't even bother to cover up his killing of the girl, making it easier for him to get arrested. The only reason he got away with it was because Faye was Eldian, and the local authorities presumably didn't bother to invest time in properly investigating her violent death.
- His testimony of having showed Faye back to the internment zone's gate and leaving her there is foolish and doesn't hold up at all, as the gate guards of Public Security could have told the higher local authorities that they never saw a fellow officer escorting an Eldian little girl back to the ghetto that day, although Gross still managed to get away with it thanks to the law system's corruption.
- He apathetically doesn't even try to play innocent when Grisha correctly accuses him of having fed Faye to his dogs, in front of several officers who were present, which led to some of them showing concern about it in the manga.
- Rather than denying his crime to at least avoid the risk of being reported, Gross simply ordered his subordinates to go back to their ship without further question, much to the concern of a rookie soldier, who might have reported this to superiors back in Marley (had he not been killed by Kruger, along with Gross and all their comrades).
- In the end, he causes his own death as he attempts to sacrifice Grisha to a Pure Titan that would instantly devour him just for his own amusement, only for Kruger to push Gross into the pit and have him eaten by the aforementioned Titan while screaming and pathetically attempting to escape the clutches of the Titan that killed him (since he wasn't nearly as strong as the Titan and his fate was inescapable either way).
- Although Kruger was already planning to kill him anyway, as he had picked Grisha for his plans, Gross could have met a quicker and better death, had he not indulged his own sadistic urges and injected Grisha's comrade earlier, along with all the others who ran off chasing Grice moments before.
Trivia[]
- He is currently the only PP from Attack on Titan.
- Him being a Pathetic Pinhead is ironic, as his colleague and ally Eren Kruger is a Magnificent Baddie.
External Links[]
- Sergeant Major Gross at the Villains wiki
- Sergeant Major Gross at the Near Pure Evil wiki
- Sergeant Major Gross at the Hate Sink wiki