Armin is guilty to be the only survivor as he witnessed what's happening around him. Later, we learned more about Mikasa's past and how she ended up living with the Jaeger's.
This episode can be divided into two parts, first part is about Armin's survivor's guilt and the second part is about Mikasa's past. The first part of the episode is really well done. I just love how every scene Armin is in it made him realize how worthless and how weak he is. The fact that Eren and Mikasa saves him from time to time and that he wasn't able to save Eren when he had the chance to save him, but nope, he just froze in fear. What added more to his guilt is him seeing dead bodies around him, realizing that he is indeed living in one cruel world.
Before the episode focused on Mikasa's past, we have a scene that showed us why she is such a badass. Seriously, aside from killing a Titan, she was able to help evacuate a group of people who can't evacuate because of one greedy merchant. The way she intimidated him is really fun to watch and showed us that she is not like your average soldier who just sucks up those merchants who pay them gold. After she is done with her work when it comes to evacuating the citizens, she then head towards to Eren's team wherein we have a flashback about her past.
Mikasa's past is really dark, it's dark in a sense that her parents are killed because of some greedy folks who want to sell the last pure blooded Asian to perverts, which happens to be her mom. Because she is now dead, that makes her the only Asian left. In short, she is now under the clutches of merchants who originally wanted to sell her mother. This is when Eren comes in and attempts to save Mikasa. Eren's rescue attempt is something I don't imagine a kid will do. I mean, did he just stab a guy?! It's scary how this world ruled by Titans turned humans into something this low.
When Eren was later put in danger, Mikasa realized something that she tends to ignore, for humans to survive, we must fight for it and that's what she did, she killed a man just to survive. Now that the guys who kidnapped Mikasa are now dead, we later learned Eren's reasoning why he killed them, they are animals dressed up as men. Yes, it's a symbolic representation of these guys but what Eren did is also something an animal will do. He killed to save his kin, a basic instinct in all animals. After this, Mikasa now lives with the Jaeger's and that the scarf that she is wearing is something that Eren gave her after the incident.
This is then she made her new goal in life, to protect her remaining love ones, in this case, Eren. But the question is how she will react once she discovers that Eren is now dead thanks to a Titan?
