An imagined conversation between Mikasa Ackermann and Kiyomi Azumabito, aboard the battleship they were last seen on in Chapter 130 of the manga.
Mikasa talks about her hopes and dreams, and Kiyomi tells her all about the country of her mother’s ancestors, hoping she will learn about her heritage.
I’ve been trying to figure out Mikasa’s motivation for wanting to stop Eren. The canon Mikasa I’m familiar with should just blindly follow Eren’s wishes and kill anyone who tries to harm him. But we see her voluntarily aligning herself with Hange, and killing her own peers just to try to reach Eren and talk him down. I’ve been thinking she was only pretending to go along with Hange so that she can fly on the same aircraft with the group. Her ulterior motive? Kill anyone among them who tries to harm Eren.
If that’s not the case, then what is driving her? The motives of Kiyomi, Onyankopon, Annie, Reiner etc are clear: they have countries or towns they don’t want destroyed. But what about Mikasa? She was obviously very disturbed by the killing of civilians in Liberio, and perhaps she doesn’t want a repeat of that on a world-wide scale.
But what else is driving her? Is it merely a strong conscience? Her own moral compass? What else could it be? These are some of the questions I tried to explore in this story.
And, of course, being a jeankasa/jeanmika shipper, I’m concerned about one more thing.
We are this far into the final arc of the manga but there has been no significant mutual jeankasa/jeanmika moment so far. I know I should just give up on one of my favorite ships and content myself with fanfics, but something stubborn inside me still clings to the hope for a romantic canon ending for these two.
Unless there’s some major surprise in the very last chapters, there is obviously very little hope for them getting together.
Jean is in love with a woman who is crazy about someone else, and when this someone else dies, maybe the woman will finally turn to him for comfort. This narrative really cheapens him, makes him no more than a rebound guy. This puts our beloved Jean in a kind of consolation prize role.
He deserves better. He deserves to be with someone who adores him, is madly in love with him, thinks he’s the best guy in the entire world. But then canon Mikasa does not love him at all. Maybe she cares for him as a fellow soldier, sure, but no more than that.
It is pure, unrequited love on Jean’s part, and it breaks my heart. I just want Jean to be happy, live the life he wants, have that beautiful baby daughter with the girl of his dreams.
This story is a result of my desperate wish for a real jeankasa moment in canon. It features an in-universe fantasy conversation that, needless to say, will never happen. But that doesn’t prevent me from fantasising. Isn’t that what fanfics are for? 😉
It’s an attempt at fleshing out the meaning of love. It’s a jeankasa/jeanmika story that acknowledges Mikasa’s unfailing love for Eren.
The human heart is infinite in its capacity to love, and that’s what I tried to explore here.
[Note: Illustration above is an ukiyo-e woodblock print, Kurikaratoge Daikassenzu ‘Illustration of Major War at Kurikaratoge’ (1884) by Utagawa Toyonobu.]
Next – Chapter 1: Her Heritage
