Hey ~ Controversial opinion (it's a reply for the ask I got on tumblr a while ago)
"You mentioned in the comments on Twitter that the court scene (when Levi beats Eren up) gets misinterpreted a lot. What exactly do you mean?"
#ereri

When the anime first came out, this scene absolutely blew my mind, I watched it like 100500 times. It was so intense and interesting to me for all the wrong reasons lol

Looking back, I think it’s fair to say that this was scene that cemented Levi’s status of a violent and dominant person who is all about discipline and showing brats their place, so to speak. So yeah, in retrospect, this whole situation did him dirty.

After some time passed and we revisited SnK again, this scene suddenly felt… off. And this is why I love rewatching/rereading stuff: when you know Levi’s character better, his motives and priorities, and come back to this scene, you just know there is something wrong about it.

It was the first scene when Levi got physical. We’ll see him getting aggressive and kicky again (I’ll address this later…), but this particular scene is very different from the other ones.
I also want to mention that what really got me thinking about all that is this scene.

To me this reads as “oh come on, I said so much cringey hot bullshit to them, how am I supposed to show my face to them now that we failed miserably?”, and that was the moment when I realized that Levi didn’t mean anything there at all. It was all bs.

I also need to mention that we’re slow af and it takes ages for us to come to the most obvious conclusions, so I’m sorry if some of the things here are too obvious.

Since I can’t just write a short and lovely answer to your question, why don’t we analyze the scene and figure out what the hell happened back then.
Starting with Eren losing his shit and shouting, scaring the heck out of people who are already horrified of him.

These people have no idea what to do with Eren, to them he is a monster, an anomaly, an uncontrollable unpredictable beast who can end the humanity if they’re not careful (lol the irony). They panic to the point of almost shooting him to death.

They are scared shitless, they’re in panic.

And then there comes Heichou. Like a wrecking ball.

"Bonk"

At first glance, the scene is very obvious: the entire manga page is dedicated to Levi kicking Eren and basically asserting his dominance. He shows that he isn’t scared of the monster that Eren is.

Other people might be threatened by Eren, but he isn’t – he can deal with him easily and can shut him up with just one kick.

… except this isn’t true.
image

I want you to take a closer look at Levi’s face on this page, especially the third frame.

This frame got me thinking because at first I wasn’t sure about what emotion it can be (just in case Isayama doesn’t know what he draws, which isn’t really true. I feel bad for doubting him lol). And if his emotion isn’t important,

then why did Isayama make such a big deal about it: he basically dedicated an entire page to it, the frame with Eren is much smaller in comparison. Levi isn’t concerned about Eren slightly throwing up, all the people that watch them have mostly the same expressions.

The emotion on Levi’s face is fear. We’ve seen this face before:
If we don’t interpret it as fear, then well what is it? What did Yams want to say? Levi isn’t smug, he isn’t strict and stoic, he’s not mad or firm, he has a clear emotion on his face.

He’s most likely afraid that Eren might transform because he was kicked so harshly (or because Eren would get angry thanks to that horrible treatment), but Levi can't hold back: the whole thing needs to look believable. He knows that Eren is very dangerous better than anyone else

And yes, believable. Because this is a fucking stage play.

After looking at Eren all shook and stuff, he continues with his performance for the crowd:

What an interesting opinion you got there, Levi. The most interesting part is that you never ever mentioned it after that and we’ve never seen you act upon it, unless future chapters prove me wrong.

Also… a punishment for what? For Eren defending himself, especially when Levi was the one who said that people from inner walls were pigs? Levi himself was mad at MP and would actually most likely openly agree with Eren lol

I said it 1004552 times already: Levi doesn’t care about subordination or discipline. He never punishes his subordinates, he isn’t strict and he lets people decide for themselves.

He loves giving everyone a choice because it was his first lesson with titans which made him change his mind about many things. He is physical, can’t argue with that, but he isn’t sadistic and doesn’t think it’s a good punishment either.

… he said, looking at the people around them and not Eren.
Why is he looking at them and not Eren who he’s supposed to teach some discipline lesson? That’s because this lesson is not for Eren, it’s for convincing everybody else that there is a lesson to begin with.

He needs to see their reactions, he doesn’t give a fuck about Eren here, even though he’s supposed to be the most dangerous person here. Probably because if Eren wanted to transform, he would’ve done it already. Maybe it's the same logic with torn off fingernails with pastor Nick

In the court scene Levi plays the role of a lunatic who is also a titan whisperer with questionable but effective training techniques. Because people wanted an uncontrollable beast to be either tamed or killed.

Look at these frames and what they’re focusing on. The second frame takes 2/3 of the overall space there. We see what these people see, and they see something dangerous, something that can snap and kill them all Understanding how dangerous the situation is, Nile asks Levi to stop

But Levi is too busy smacking Eren, he says “what” like he’s doing something insignificant. Look at this frame. It’s small, it’s almost comedic. It shows how easy for Levi it all is. At least it looks like it to Nile and his folks, and this is what Levi and the SC are going for.

Aaaand this is where it gets more than obvious.

Now, when people started to have doubts about this whole situation and think that maybe Levi is the only one who can work with Eren, Erwin suddenly has something to say.

Look at this mastermind of a script writer lol
They couldn’t have just suggested this plan in court. They NEEDED to SHOW that the plan would work. They needed to show that Eren can control himself when he was beaten up. So they prepared an entire spectacle/improv show lol

It was just another gamble for Erwin. He gambled that Eren would lose his cool and they’d get a perfect opportunity to show that they can control him easily. With the ways that these people can understand – violence and aggression, something that’s hard to argue with.

And these aren’t Levi’s ways to control someone. Both Erwin and Levi know that people see Levi as a cruel lunatic and they wouldn’t doubt that Levi would be strict and controlling enough with Eren, so Levi easily takes this role for the greater good.

He even got Eren confused about all that:

By the way, I’m pretty sure you also remember that this isn’t the only time when it’s mentioned Levi plays the role of a lunatic. And although the situation is slightly different there, this is still the same role:

Ok, so back to the courtroom scene. I mean, the scene after that
This is one of those moments where I go “wow why didn’t I notice this earlier” because Erwin basically admitted it openly: he said that he was a gambler and he made his bet,

the bet paid off, the plan was successful, Levi was going to get recognized by the Academy for his amazing acting skills. But to be fair, I didn’t really carefully think about Erwin’s plan before, this is why the scene was so confusing to me.

Aaand the first thing that Levi does after all that is running to Eren to make sure what he doesn’t hate him, which to me proves ones again that Levi isn’t sadistic and he doesn’t really believe in what he was talking about back there.

He’s always so concerned about his subordinates, why would it be different for Eren?

I don’t see an aggressive and cruel man who is also a dog trainer that deals with every situation with disciplinary kicks.

What I see is a socially awkward grumpy man who ruined Eren’s first impression of him and doesn’t want Eren to hate him. He is relieved when Eren says that he understands that it was all a show. If he really believed in what he was preaching back there, he wouldn’t care.

So yeah, the thing about Levi being physical. He is physical and sometimes aggressive, I can’t deny that, it’s an important part of his character. But he kicks and punches people only when he’s emotionally frustrated (or angry), most likely thanks to Kenny who taught him how to..

..fight to survive in the Underground. That’s why it’s the first reflex for him when situations get stressful. All of this is purely my assumption though, the reasons for Levi being physical are purely something that I have no solid proof for, so feel free to disagree here.

He punches Jean and Eren when he’s mad at Erwin (and I think he feels guilty about it afterwards, when he went to talk(?) to Eren and ended up listening to EMA’s conversation about the ocean); he punches Eren on the roof because Erwin is fucking dying;

he stomps Annie’s head because he’s irritated and mad at her for killing so many people; he kicks Eren on a blimp because he’s sad af about Eren and doesn’t know what’s going on with him + the situation Eren put all of them in was extremely dangerous, and… you get the idea.

All these scenes (apart from Annie, ofc) show Levi being violent towards his own people, and they actually have little in common with the way he treats his enemies – Levi is brutal to them, he doesn’t show mercy, he breaks their bones like nothing.

I know Eren got the same treatment once, but let’s not forget that Erwin was dying, and Levi remembers that Eren can heal himself pretty well. Levi didn’t touch Mikasa who held a sword to his throat in the same scene.

And this is why I don’t think the courtroom scene shows us anything about Levi and what he believes in. this just isn’t the same. I’ve never properly been a part of the fandom, but you don’t need to be a genius to notice the way people treat this scene since 2013.

It fucked up people’s perception of Ereri and Levi, thus so much hatred towards them.

TL;DR: Levi kicked Eren as a part of Erwin’s plan, not because he wanted to show the brat™ his place and to discipline him with his sick moves.