Upon the battlefield Mikasa saves a crowd of people from a Titan. While continuing her work with the elites she remembers her dark andbloody past as well as the day she first met Eren Yeager.
Tropes:
- A Day in the Limelight: This episode focuses on Mikasa's past and explains how she became Eren's adoptive sister.
- Arc Words: Mikasa says part of her mantra that reflects the state of the world she lives in; "the world is a cruel place."
- Asshole Victim: All three of the kidnappers get brutally murdered by Eren and Mikasa but it's clear that we should have no sympathy for them considering what they did to Mikasa's family and what they planned to do to her. When confronted by his father about it Eren even says flat out that they were diseased scum that deserved to die.
- Bullying a Dragon: When Mikasa arrives and sees a merchant holding up a throng of people trying to escape Trost she comes up to him with the intent to put him in his place. The merchant tries to send his grunts at her and she promptly knocks them out and points a sword to his throat. He gets the idea after that and has the cart removed.
- Children Forced to Kill: In order to escape the human traffickers that had kidnapped her both Mikasa and Eren have to kill them.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Mikasa was once a happy girl living with her loving mother and father. Then one day three men arrived to her house with the intend of kidnaping her and her mother and selling them to a sex ring because of they are the last oriental people on earth. Mikasa's father was murdered on the spot and her mother died protecting her. In order to protect Eren, who had killed two of the kidnappers to protect her, she stabs the third kidnapper through the heart from behind. The experience traumatised her and is likely why she is much more stoic in the present day.
- Dramatic Irony: At the end of the episode, after she remembers her past, Mikasa says that, as long as she has Eren, she has someone to fight for. Unknown to her is that Eren was eaten by a Titan the episode before.
- Entitled Bastard: A merchant holds up the throngs of people trying to escape from Trost because his is trying to shove his cart of supplies in first. When Mikasa arrives and tells him that soldiers are laying down their lives because the citizens haven't escaped yet he basically says "not my problem" and tells her that he and her commander go back and he can pull strings if she tries something. Mikasa promptly points a sword at his throat and he gets the idea and pushes his cart out.
- Improvised Weapon: Eren combines a knife with a broom and uses it like a spear to stab one of the kidnappers with it when the man chases after him.
- One-Woman Army: When a Titan is heading towards a crowd of citizens a bunch of Garrison soldiers try to intercept it but fail because it's too fast. Suddenly Mikasa comes swooping in and easily closes the distance and kills it before it can kill the bystanders.
- Security Blanket: The scarf that Mikasa wears is revealed to be one that Eren wore on the night he saved her from the human traffickers. After their deaths, and after admitting that she now has no one left to go home to, Eren wraps the scarf around her. Since then she now wears it all the time.
- Sympathetic Murder Backstory: This episode shows that, long before the Titans invaded Wall Maria, both Mikasa and Eren were murderers who killed three men one night. Considering the fact that these three men were human traffickers, who murdered Mikasa's family, and were very strongly implied to want to sell her as a sex object, clearly the only sympathy shed is for the two children who had to kill them to survive.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: Turns out that, even before Titans ate his mother, Eren was already capable of rage filled murder against those he hates considering the fact he tracked the kidnappers down and murdered two by himself with no hesitation. Mikasa at least only killed the last one when her life and Eren's were in direct danger.
- Eren, as a small child, decided that to avenge the deaths of two people he met maybe once or twice before and save the life of a young girl he had never met to hunt down and kill an unknown number of adults who were almost certainly armed. Sheds an interesting light on how he is as an adult.
