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.
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.
REVIEW – Shingeki no Kyojin, or more famously known as Attack on Titan, just released the first episode of the series’ second season. Every fan has waited for a very long time to watch this anime series once more.
Although some people in the community were very displeased to hear that the second season would have a twelve-episode cour, the first episode’s release was met with excitement.
As for this writer, it was a much more… meh kind-of episode.
The second season’s first episode recalled to the events after that whole fist-fight between Annie and Eren, as well as what happened to the rest of the Survey Corps twelve hours prior that time.
The first episode focused on the 104th Survey Corps as they were defending against the titans who broke through Wall Rose twelve hours prior the events caused by the whole Annie and Eren carnage.
The Survey Corps split into four compass groups to warn the near villages as their Squad Leader, Mike (second to Levi), was buying them time and holding off the titans advance. Died, of course, quite horribly.
I find the whole interaction between the newly-introduced Beast Titan and Mike quite entertaining. It captures the whole emotion of fear around Mike as he grasps the situation: “Holy sh*t, this titan can speak Japanese?”
It also appears that the Beast Titan has the capability to control and order around the lesser and unintelligible titans. Quite similar to how Annie Leonhardt does it as the female titan but in a much more direct sense – literally telling them to do this and that.
The episode ends off with the big guys: Eren, Mikasa, Erwin, Levi and friends responding to the whole attack.
For me, this whole episode was showing nothing new other than the existence of the Beast Titan. It felt more like a recap of the previous season’s events and how it will lead to the events next episode.
Overall, it was a pretty disappointing episode for me. I was expecting some sort of thrill and excitement but it came out as a slow paced episode.
I hope the next episodes will pick up faster than this one.
Miandro's Side