This is probably my biggest criticism as well, but it's not really the point of the show. It's a story of (presumably) mankind as a whole fighting their way back from the brink, the MCs themselves are mostly just there to facilitate that.
The show does not do this theme well, assuming that's what it's going for. Right now we only have this one group of dudes on a train trailing bodies the whole way. Nothing about mankind as a whole doing anything.
They've got roughly the same level of nuance as AoT, except Ikoma here is actually smart and able to do stuff. Eren mostly just did epic scream face and got his butt kicked around.
Eren is fucked up. He killed two guys when he was ten, watched his mother get eaten by a titan, went through three years of military training starting at twelve years old, all but one of his entire team got eaten by titans on their first mission, and then there's the whole "stripping away one's humanity to fight monsters" theme that pervades the show. His extreme hatred and determination was
very built up, he didn't just have them by default for being the main character.
Not-wearing-bell-sandals-any-more girl is supposed to be abrasive; she's like 12 and doesn't have much in the way of social skills.
Pretty sure she's older than 12. Aside from that, there's a difference between lacking social skills and just being an ass. She's the latter. Also, just because she's
supposed to be abrasive doesn't make her character any less annoying to watch.
Even though the kabaneri are very clearly sane and not in danger of going full kabane
Except they're not:
She also doesn't tell the new kabaneri this and the noble girl nearly gets bitten as a result.
But they judged them as the same as any other kabaneri even before that incident, even after they both helped get them into the train and out of the city. The girl's abrasiveness might've made them think bad, but Main Character was right there with her telling her to not be such a massive asshole so it kinda gets cancelled out.
Mob mentality is a thing. The peasants are shitting themselves and want to remove any potential threat. I don't think it's unreasonable for them to be distrustful.
Distrustful I can understand, but they were all witness to the fact that they're the only reason they're all still alive. Being scared and distrustful of them I can understand, but outright discarding them when they've still got a long way to go and thus have more kabane to fight? It would've been much more interesting to see them struggle with their fears: the fear of the kabane versus the fear of the kabaneri.