Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14138255-20141017020106/@comment-6863431-20141118013224

Quickly I'm gonna explain the "Theory" thing before I move on to monsters, just for sake of clarification. My Physics professer described the difference as "Laws are heavily math associated, and Theories not as much." That is, the major definining characteristic between them is that Laws explain the mechanical aspects and theories explain the theoretical (hence the theore in theoretical).

Back to monsters, I'm gonna recap just about what everone has said so far and add a few of my own ideas.

According to the first episode, it is suggested Grimm were present before the birth of mankind. Also, they are referred to as "an inevitable darkness -- creatures of destruction" creating a connection between darkness and destruction. Man is pushed back by the Grimm, and nearly consumed before discovering Dust and fighting back to a place of relative safety. So far, pretty typical of any children's action show.

Now skip ahead to The Emerald Forest. Pyrrha describes Grimm as lacking a soul and "the manifestation of anonymity." They are then contrasted to people as being the dark to humanity's (and Faunus's) light, although then she says that people have both light and dark in them. Now we begin to get a bit more strange, as this could be inferring that the "darker" a person is, the more Grimm-like they are. This remind anyone of a certain red-and-black figure, or two?

In this World of Remnant, Grimm are furthur expounded upon. They exist solely to counter mankind, it seems. They have no need to eat or kill, yet they do so purely out of desire too. They exclusively attack that related to man, and feed off negative emotion. When they die, their bodies evaporate after a short time, leaving behind no evidence or way to study their weaknesses. Also, Grimm can adapt fairly well to survive and become more efficent killers. Jen Taylor summarizes it well with the final line of the episode: "And in the end... killing is all that matters."

Now, time to go speculate! So the monsters that are the Grimm are representations of darkness and anonymity, and are vehemently opposed to man. This could infer that darkness in general is symbolic of a hatred of mankind. It is believeable, with the other "dark" characters being Adam and Raven, both of whom have distanced themselves from humanity in various ways. Moving on to anonymity, this may explain further why color and individuality are so important to Remnant's society: to directly contrast the Grimm. This could become an issue for Atlas later on as they seem to be entirely fine with keeping everything uniform and orderly, forcing a form of anonymity onto its populace. Vacuo will probably be okay, as they seem to be the most diverse of the four kingdoms. Vale and Mistral are a good balance between the two, knowing when to keep things organized and when to let things roam free.

In conclusion, it seems that the Grimm, as we all have expected, are the direct opponent to mankind, yet I do not see them as being the greatest threat to humanity. I see the people who embrace the darkness which the Grimm represent as the ones to take that place. These will be the "true evil" of the show, who will stop at nothing until humanity is either extinguished or subjugated.