ANIME, REVIEW – Ever since the last episode aired on Saturday, Attack on Titan has been receiving mixed opinions whether or not it had a great run. From the sudden change from action-packed to character-heavy writing, Attack on Titan has improved drastically from its previous season.
Spoiler-alert.
ANIME, DISCUSSION – If you have followed through the second season of the Attack on Titan series, the ending theme and its animation visuals are full of references but for us, viewers, we have little to no clue as to what they represent. I’ll be going detail-by-detail of what I think about the ending theme’s visuals and make sense of it all.
ANIME, DISCUSSION – Ymir as a character has unexpectedly grown in terms of character development. In the first season, she was nothing short of this douche-y tomboy who had a thing for another female character, Christa. However, as we see her in every episode of the second season, she has indeed grown.
REACTION – As Erwin and the entirety of the Scouts and Military Police go ahead to pursue the two traitors who have kidnapped Ymir and Eren, Hanji tries to get to Connie’s village to investigate the Titan that flattened his home. However, her assistant goes to do it for her as she is too injured to move at all.
REACTION – We continue where we left off in the previous episode as the Colossal Titan dives headlong into the pinned down Eren from the tops of the wall. The resulting impact blew and burnt most of the Scouts such as Mikasa and Hanji.
REACTION – Never have I felt so satisfied after watching an episode of Attack on Titan. It was a wonderful development of maturity to see Eren understanding when to go all out or when to lay low.
REACTION – We return to the story as the reinforcing 104th Survey Corps clean out the titans attacking the group of Christa, Ymir, Reinhart and Berholdt. It is very evident now to everyone that Ymir was a titan and Christa is the disowned daughter of a noble family.
The entire group convenes on top of the walls and takes the now in coma, Ymir, back to Trost. Shortly, a patrol led by Hannes shows up and informs Hanji that there are no visible breaches within the walls, leaving everyone in confusion. Seeing no use of staying, the group decides to head off back to Trost.
Now this is where the most stupidest yet the most thrilling scene comes up.
Reiner and Berholdt converse with Eren as the others leave. Reiner just casually reveals that he is the Armored Titan and that Berholdt is the Colossal Titan, and tells Eren that their mission to eliminate Humanity would be avoided if he would just go with them back to their “hometown.”
When then go to a flashback where Sasha hands the scroll to Hanji containing the background information of Annie Leonhardt, the Female Titan, and points out that Annie, Reiner and Berholdt come from the same area and all of their background info were in fragments after those attacks on the walls.
Hanji asks everyone if Annie has conversed with Reiner and Berholdt at all during their training for the Survey Corps and they say that they never talk. However, they all note that at one time during a formation, the Female Titan who attacked them somehow got info on Eren’s position. Armin deduces that Reiner might have carved the position into Annie’s hand after releasing him from the Female Titan’s grip.
Hanji then tells everyone to not act suspicious when around Reiner and Berholdt.
The flashback ends and we return to the Eren dismissing that Reiner might just be tired. Reiner and Berholdt decide that they’ve been compromised and need to finish their mission now. Mikasa swoops in an attempt to kill them but the two still manage to transform into their titan forms and captures Eren.
In a feeling of betrayal, Eren shifts into a Titan as well and fights the two.
The whole Reiner and Berholdt thing was pretty much anticipated for me since I was semi-spoiled by people who read the original manga. However, even if without such spoilers, it was pretty obvious to discern the true identities of these two characters after that flashback about their background information.
However, we can safely assume that Ymir had no knowledge of the two and Annie, Reiner and Berholdt are accomplices bent on destroying humanity. It is still confusing on how they aim to achieve “destroying humanity” and how does that mission turns obsolete if they capture Eren.
Again, more and more questions pile up but it’s safe to say that this season is turning out better than its first. We’re getting more into details rather than fist-fighting, which is something I prefer much more.
On to the next episode!
REACTION – In this episode, we are finally given some sort of answer when it comes to what happened in the castle before the Scouts were attacked by Titans and what is the deal with Ymir.
The scouts were resting up for the night. The castle tower was full of contraband and the scouts helped to themselves. What’s really interesting was when Reiner interrogating Ymir about “what does this mean?” – the scene where we ended off last episode.
Ymir was scavenging a box and said that it was full of canned herring. But here’s the best part – how does she know it was herring? The canned good was labeled in another language.
Then the Titans attack, surprisingly, in the dead of night. The scouts going all out in eliminating the attacking Titans whilst unarmed soldiers were trying their best to hold off the attack however they can.
Reiner being a bad-arse and just went on by himself to barricade the castle tower’s doors. After being his arm being bitten, Reiner gave it his all to carry the small Titan in an attempt to throw it off the tower along with him.
Berholdt was somehow suspicious throughout this episode – dropping remarks as Reiner was “more of a warrior back then.” What does that mean? Is that hinting that Reiner has something up his sleeve that even he doesn’t know?
What was horrendous in the episode was how each of the armed scouts were getting picked off one-by-one. They all died hideous deaths – the guy who found booze was desperately trying to find that beer bottle before he died but when he found one, it was empty. Pretty hilarious when he remarked “Who the hell drank this?” as he was caught by a Titan.
Ymir, Connie, Christa, Reiner, and Berholdt were the ones remaining in the tower.
Ymir started going around that she’d fight with Connie’s knife and jumped off the edge of the tower. Only to transform to a titan. Yep, kind of expected for me but man, what a way to reveal it.
Throughout the entire episode, there was a lot of hinting and foreshadowing which leads me to a lot of theories for the next events and all that.
This episode was quite enjoyable. It’s slowly kicking the series into full overdrive and I can’t wait for the next episode.
REACTION – For the past two episodes, Attack on Titan’s second season has been giving us some interesting information about the creation of the walls, the Order of the Wall cult, and some of the characters’ backstories – which is something that wasn’t really focused in the first season since it was mostly about Eren, Mikasa and Armin setting their place in the Survey Corps.
At the beginning of the episode, we resume from where we left off when Connie found his family’s house being smashed by a barely living Titan. What caught me off guard was that Titan spoke “Welcome Back” to Connie as he was about to move along with the rest of the group. Did one of his family turn into a titan? If so, then is it possible that Titans we see now were once human?
All of this is pure suspicion and warrants a separate article of its own.
On other parts, Ymir asks her group leader to have her and Christa to leave the group since they are unarmed and would be Titan fodder in the process. Now, the interaction between these two is interesting. Christa was going about “you don’t have to protect me. Are you doing this because of my family?”
Ymir denies this though and says that she joined the corps for personal reasons. What’s up with that? Is there something important about Christa’s family?
Moving on to the remaining groups, they eventually find out that there was no breach in the wall and rest up at a nearby abandoned castle. Only to be attacked by a large group of Titans, much to their surprise since Titans can’t move at night. The Beast Titan, which was shown scaling the wall, could’ve been the cause of this rare event but how it does it is still very confusing.
Another thing to note about this scene is that Ymir is caught in the act of doing something. Is this related to the attack that happened afterwards in the castle?
On Eren and the gang’s group, Armin and Hange come up with the conclusion that the walls may be made of hardened Titan skin – which is pretty much obvious from the build-up of the first two episodes. So their plan is to retake Shiganshina by using Eren to re-build the breach in the wall which was made in the first season.
Also, Pastor Nick got spooked after seeing a huge exodus of refugees from the outer walls after the wall breach. He discloses that Christa is the one that they should be looking for, which is quite alarming since Christa is in the aforementioned castle that is currently being attacked by Titans.
It’s a race against time.
This episode has left me asking so many questions and answered only few to none. I hope Eren’s basement, Christa’s involvement, and Pastor Nick’s words will provide more answers in the next one.
REACTION – The second episode starts off with Eren, Mikasa, Armin, and the rest of the soldiers behind the walls as they set out to help out the Survey Corps near Wall Rose. They bring along with them, Minister Nick, a priest of the Order of the Wall under the goal that he’ll speak up once he gets to see the real action beyond the walls.
Armin thinks that a titan’s body has the ability to harden itself – his way of making sense in regards to the titans in the wall. He supports this by bringing up Annie and her crystallization.
Eren and Mikasa remain the same.
Eren is still does things without thinking and Mikasa is still clingy to Eren.
Throughout the episode, we focus on Sasha as she travels to warn her village of the wall’s breach. As she arrives in the abandoned village, she encounters a small titan munching on an old woman whilst her daughter watches the whole thing unfold. Pretty devastating for the young girl and our hero, Sasha, rushes her the hell outta’ there.
It shows a very emotional side of Sasha as she remembers about her old roots in the forest – how she never gave two sh*ts about the world, as well as her confrontation with Ymir about “being too polite and ashamed of her dialect.”
The whole ordeal gave Sasha a sense of duty – that the world doesn’t revolve around her and she has to give a damn as well. That showed as she was fighting off a titan to save this young girl.
It showed a whole new and deeper side to the “potato girl” we once deemed as.
At the last part of the episode, we get to see Connie and his desperation to know whether his village was alright or not – since the titans attacked from the village’s location.
As he arrives at his house, there is a titan on it, unable to walk but alive. End episode.
This episode provided some great screen time for Sasha’s character. I can relate much more to her now after watching this episode – not just a funny, comic-relief character but someone who has grown in her time as a soldier fighting titans.
Overall, great episode. Quite an improvement from the first. Honestly, they should’ve debut the first episode with this instead of the heavy recap.
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