Connie Springer

A shaved head of brown hair is Connie's trademark. Gray-eyed and slightly built, he begins his military career as one of the shortest soldiers in his class, a full two centimeters under Levi Ackerman. Standard military gear makes up his usual dress, topped with the Survey Corps cape on expeditions; off duty he settles for a plain white long-sleeved shirt and brown slacks cut at the shin.

The years fill him out. By 854 he has shot up past average height, his features have hardened, and his hair, though a touch longer, keeps its old shape. For the Liberio raid he switches to the black rig of the anti-personnel gear, its uniform strapped with support rods and belts.

His brief stint as a Pure Titan produces a body tall enough to claw at the Armored Titan's head, its cheeks and upper lip stripped of flesh so that teeth and gums sit permanently bared, while the rest of the face stays recognizably his own.

Loud, impulsive, and eager to show off, Connie treats his trainee years half like a contest and half like a game, needling his friends and boasting about talents he cannot explain to anyone else. He is not the sharpest of the 104th, and new developments sometimes take him a beat longer to process, a fact that frustrates him more than anyone.

Combat strips away the clowning without ever killing his warmth. He learns exactly where his limits sit, hates feeling powerless, and pours himself into protecting the handful of people he counts as family. Each betrayal and loss chips at his optimism, pushing him toward anger and a readiness to strike at enemies he once called friends.

Watching his mother become a Titan nearly breaks him. Desperate to restore her, he abducts Falco Grice with a plan to feed the boy to her, lying to him the whole ride north. Only when Armin Arlert offers himself to the Titan instead does Connie pull him free, understanding at last that his mother would take no joy in a life bought with someone else's, and that she would rather see him become a soldier worth her pride.

Connie enlists in the 104th Training Corps dreaming of a comfortable Military Police posting, and his first day ends in punishment for saluting with the wrong hand. He proves a natural on vertical maneuvering equipment, graduates 8th in his class, and, stirred by Eren Yeager's words, chooses the Survey Corps instead. The Colossus Titan's attack on Trost throws him into real combat, where he survives the desperate push to retake the supply headquarters alongside Mikasa and Armin.

Disaster strikes closer to home when Titans are reported inside Wall Rose. Riding to warn the villages, Connie finds Ragako emptied of people and an immobile Titan sprawled across his own house, one that looks unsettlingly like his mother. The truth, confirmed later with Hange Zoë, is that the villagers themselves became the Titans the military had been fighting. Soon after surviving the siege of Utgard Castle, he learns that Reiner and Bertolt, comrades he loved like brothers, are the Armored and Colossus Titans, and his appeal to their shared past helps crack Bertolt's resolve during the battle to recover Eren.

Folded into the new Squad Levi, Connie guards Eren and Historia through the coup against the royal government and helps bring down Rod Reiss's massive Titan at Orvud District. At Shiganshina he fires Thunder Spears into Reiner's nape, carries a gravely wounded Sasha to safety under the Beast Titan's bombardment, and stands among the survivors honored after the battle, later riding in the expedition that finally reaches the ocean.

The Raid on Liberio costs him what no battlefield ever had: Gabi Braun slips aboard the escaping airship and shoots Sasha, and Connie reports her death through tears. Grief curdles his bond with Eren, whose laughter at the news convinces Connie he no longer knows the man. Imprisoned by the Yeagerists, then freed to defend Eren against Marley's assault, he watches the Rumbling begin and slips away with Falco to attempt the feeding at Ragako before Armin's gambit stops him. He joins the alliance of former enemies, and at the harbor he kills his old comrades Daz and Samuel to save Armin, a deed that finally lets him grasp what Reiner's generation of Warriors carried.

In the final battle Connie fights the resurrected Nine Titans above Eren's colossal form, catches an unconscious Levi before he can fall to his death, and helps rescue Armin from the Okapi Titan while Jean detonates the charges on Eren's nape. With the power of the Titans erased, his mother returns to human form, and Connie spends the following years as one of the peace ambassadors who sail for Paradis in 857, trusting Historia's goodwill toward the families she protected.