Do we like Mikasa Ackerman?
A character from Attack on Titan (2013–2023)
Our score: 8 out of 10. Yes, we'd back her. She's loyal, brave and one of the best fighters alive. Her tunnel vision about one person is her only real flaw, and it makes her more human.
Mikasa is a child when her parents are murdered. The Yeager family takes her in, and she becomes fiercely attached to Eren, the boy who gave her a reason to keep going. The red scarf he gives her becomes her emblem. Attack on Titan is set in a walled-in world where humanity is hunted by enormous Titans. When the walls are breached, Mikasa and her friends join the military to fight back.
She is a prodigy, top of her training class, and she moves through the air with her gear like no one else. She is quiet and sometimes cold, but she is deeply caring toward the people she trusts. Her devotion to Eren drives nearly everything she does, and it makes her both a rock for her friends and a bit of a worrier. She tends to see the world through the question of who she can keep safe.
We give her an 8 because she is brave, capable and kind where it counts, and she keeps pulling her friends back from the brink. She loses points for the times her single-minded loyalty clouds her judgment and she acts on instinct and attachment rather than a wider moral view. Even so, she is the sort of ally you would want next to you in a fight.
As the story darkens, Eren's choices put her loyalty to the test. She has to decide whether protecting him means standing by him or stopping him. Her answer, and the price she pays for it, is the emotional heart of the ending and a big reason fans see her as the series' conscience.