So I noticed that King Fritz was just proposed after all these years. Congrats. Oh, don't mind me, I'm just here butting in my own AOT candidate.
What's the Work[]
Shingeki no Kyojin, more well known under its English name Attack on Titan, is about a dystopian world where the human race is under threat of massive humanoid monsters called Titans, with an appetite for human flesh. It turns out that the Titans were originally people who were transformed into Titans through exposing them to a special spinal fluid that the kingdom of Eldia used as a living weapon to make their own powerful Titans. People can turn into Titans by being subjected to the fluid, or by consuming the flesh of someone who was cursed to become a Titan. But the kingdom of Marley just beyond the sea had an interest in the fluid as well and after a great war, Eldia fell and the survivors were taken as slaves for Marley, where they transformed the remaining Subjects of Ymir into Titans.
One Eldian man who survived the experience and learned the hard way about it was Grisha Yeager, the soon father of our anti-heroic lead Eren Yeager.
Who is Sergeant Major Gross[]
The military officer of Marley, Sergeant Major Gross is introduced when he and his right-hand Kruger discover a young Grisha and his sister Faye outside of their internment zone to watch the airships. Gross wants to have the children beaten. Grisha requests to take Faye's punishment as well. Gross agrees and has Kruger brutalize Grisha while he escorts Faye to her house. However, Faye never makes it home. Her mutilated body is found in the river the next day, to which Gross tells the Yeager family that it was her fault for wandering around town in the first place. But Grisha could tell through Gross' vocal tone that he was lying.
15 years pass and it is revealed that Gross has been taken charge of the procedure of turning the Eldians into Titans. He takes the Eldians that he deems prisoners to an island known as "Paradise", where the kingdom of Eldia once stood. He takes them to a steep hill with the Titans at the bottom. While his men do their orders and inflict the Titan serum into the Eldians, Gross rather pushes one or two nontitanized Eldian folk and sadistically enjoys himself watching them run and scream from their unavoidable demise.
Meanwhile, Grisha is now a young man and has formed a resistance group, marrying Dina (a descendant of the royals of Eldia) and they have a child: Zeke. When Zeke becomes young enough, Grisha wants him to become a spy to help him and his friends escape Marley to live happier lives elsewhere. However, Zeke instead betrays his family and sells out the resistance, where they are arrested for treason. Of course, that means Gross has his hands on them and takes them to the hill on "Paradise" where he has turned countless people into Titans before. Gross recognizes Grisha and decides to turn him into a Titan last.
On the cliff, Gross has the first resistance member pushed down the cliff without having taken the serum and taunts him to reach the walls before turning the other members, including Dina, into Titans, enjoying himself listening to their screams of agony as they painfully transform. With only Grisha and another person left, Gross decides to have the other person turned into a Titan and has Grisha pushed unturned so they can "fight" for his entertainment. But before pushing Grisha, Gross decides to hurt him even more mentally and coldly reveals what happened to little Faye all those years ago. See, Gross never escorted Faye to her house; instead, he took her to an empty field where he wanted to teach his sons about how the world works... by having his dogs maul Faye to death.
Gross then reveals his true goal to completely eradicate the Eldians, seeing them as rats who need to be exterminated. Suddenly, Kruger pushes Gross down the cliff instead, where he is eaten by the Titan. Kruger reveals himself to be a spy from "The Owl" resistance, with the power to shift into a Titan form and kills off the remaining soldiers. Nearing the end of his life, he lets Grisha eat his flesh to become a Titan himself, gaining the power to reach and infiltrate the walls of the remaining source of Eldia, which is where the flashback ends.
Mitigating Factors[]
Good lord, no. This guy is a complete Hate Sink to the bottom of his soul, showing no care or sympathy for anyone. He's also a total sadist considering he finds peace to be abnormal and the suffering of others amusing. He wants to exterminate everyone with Eldian blood just because they're different than him, and even goes out of his way to ignore his orders of turning them into Titans and rather watch them suffer. While he has a family, no love is given to them, as seen when Grisha asks Gross if his heart would ache the same way if his sons met the same death that Faye met. He simply responds "How could it?"
And let's not forget...
HE FEEDS A F**KING CHILD TO DOGS!!!
Heinous Standards[]
I am aware that Attack on Titan is one of the darkest franchises out there, but even so, Gross still stands out as one of the wickedest people in this universe. For all the faults that Marley has committed, the nation itself stands as extremists considering the way they plan to bring down the corrupt empire of Eldia from using their Titans. The human Titan villains (including Zeke) who had the ability to transform between human and Titan form are following their orders, while the others show remorse over their actions, such as Bertolt Hoover, the Colossal Titan responsible for infiltrating the wall in the first place.
While the residents of Marley were educated with anti-Eldian propaganda, Gross stands out as the worst example who sadistically tortures and kills Eldians for his beliefs that they are nothing but "subhuman". He even kills a goddang Eldian child for the fun of it. Maybe the Titans have killed children offscreen, but they act too animalistic.
The only one who could stand out further is the King (who is also a total douche of a person), but Gross has much lesser resources.
Verdict[]
He's only in two chapters of the story, but I'd say Gross definitely lives up to his name.
Yes: 5
No: 0
Undecided: 0
Scoring: +5
Verdict: Pure Evil