And… what in the world?!!! We actually get a good episode of Titan this week? I never expected this. Maybe it has to do with the fact that they stopped explaining the long range scouting formation over and over again and actually made stuff happened.
Finally all that crap about trusting your teammates pays off, when Eren trusts them and they all immediately proceed to die. Still not worth all the heavy-handed emphasis they put on this theme… And his team would have died either way so no big deal, but I assume Eren won’t see it that way.
I am disappointed that Petra and the old guy died. The old guy was probably my favorite character at the moment, and Petra was really cute. Oh well. Levi’s reaction to seeing their corpses was nice.
And Mikasa is finally back in action! With some rather dirty lines. I wonder if her absence was part of what made the past arc suck so much. It didn’t help, but the bigger issue was probably that each episode consisted of alternating through each of the characters staring at each other and looking confused, combined with some lectures on trusting your comrades. Seriously, what were the creators thinking with the past arc? If this is what the manga was like, they should have just ditched it for a bit.
By the way, does anyone else think that the female Titan looks like Annie from their training group? (If you’ve read the manga, no spoilers please.)
The anime has problems with pacing and trying to make everything extremely dramatic and drawn out. What takes the manga a few short moments to cover, the anime spends a few minutes, and then with more minutes of recaps.
Yeah. Maybe I should have just read the manga… Oh well, when the series ends I guess I will have to anyway.
I also think it’s Annie, since last time this happened I thought, “Hey, that Titan looks like Eren” and look how that turned out.
Yep, I thought the same thing. They don’t seem to try to make this difficult to figure out.
Even though the action was top-notch I was, “WTH? After three episodes of whining about trusting your companions, THIS happens?”. I really dislike how this writer just kills off characters BECAUSE DRAMA. He’s wasted lots of time building characters who then proceed to die immediately. Basically anyone who’s not Eren, Mikasa or Armin is a red shirt. Even Levi is not safe imho. I mean, what kind of soldier at that point isn’t at least tempted to say Eren to try mellowing the Female Titan down a bit so that they can finish her off? Yeah, it would have been risky, but every time they do something that’s supposedly not taking risks, they end up munched upon or splattered on a tree. They really never learn, do they?
Yeah, their plan to take down the titan themselves was pretty stupid, especially given how it got out of the previous situation.
I actually thought that killing off the squad after all the talk of trusting your companions was great. (I would have preferred they skip all that talk entirely, but this helped redeem it slightly…)
I don’t mind him killing off characters, and to have any impact, you need to kill off characters you’ve spent time developing.
I think what the four of them did was rational…
So far their mission is to not let Eren go in to Titan mode and they don’t know what the purpose of this mission thanks to Erwin…
So why should they let Eren become Titan now?
However, as Erwin himself has said, his plan didn’t work because the enemy still have some trick up their sleeve, thus to defeat the enemy they must abandon their original plan and go into the most straightforward way…
But we can’t blame Eren and co. because only Armin and Erwin (and possibly Hange) seems to have capability of such thinking…
There are however some hint that Eren and co. could take from their mission which might prevent the outcome that happen this episode, which I also think what the writer seems try to convey as message…
1) Every choice has consistent consequence…
2) However, result of each choice may vary because of outside factor(s)…
So this is how these message play up in this scenario:
1) The choice of facing female Titan will always result in the death of the human attack – possible exception, if Armin expectation is true, are Mikasa and Levi – thus when the team decide to face Female Titan, it almost certain they would die
2) The result of last encounter (Eren and co. survive) is because Erwin strategy. Thus the escape of the Female Titan herself should be taken by Eren and co. as sign that Erwin strategy isn’t functioning thus they won’t get the same result
These points should be enough reason for Eren and co. to either run away without fighting (which is impossible) or fighting with Eren Titan as factor to substitute Erwin strategy…
However, as I’ve said, they aren’t Erwin or Armin that can come to this conclusion as they fight…
So for me, their decision and the outcome is not beyond expectation and isn’t used for the sake of drama…
It is within characters’ characteristic and what has happened so far…
Ahahaha. So sad but so true…
And yeah, I agree completely that having them run away and not change their plan is completely consistent with their characters and what they’ve done so far.
Now that Eren is currently being digested, hopefully we can expect to see some more action next week as well. That or Mikasa and Levi are going to discuss trust and camaraderie as humanity’s greatest hope starts to dissolve.
Damn both of your scenarios sound completely plausible. I sure hope they go with the first one… Watching them fight with the grappling hooks is way more interesting than Titan on Titan battles.
Yeah, nobody’s safe when it comes to this author, and since it’s still a running manga, we could say that even Levi and Erwin are no exception. Our main trio are protected by plot armors, though, so, don’t worry.
I have to point this out too, I didn’t really care when the squad died when I was reading the manga, probably because I can speed through pages, while in anime, I can’t. Sayonara, the girl who pissed herself and the old man who bit his own tongue. You guys will be missed.
Is that “don’t worry” sarcastic? Eren is the worst for me. I want a manga centered on Hanji cracking the mysteries of Titans and finding out how to defeat them with SCIENCE! That would be awesome.
Yes, it is. Jean as main character would be awesome. Also, remove the giant vs giant fight. I have had enough of it in awful movie called Pacific Rim. One can only dream….
Nah, the freckle girl that in earlier episode wish to marry Christa should have been the main character…
That would be amazing. Make that scientist girl the main character. Surround the giant wall with giant traps to blow Titans to smithereens.
It sounds like I would have enjoyed this much more if I’d read the manga instead. Being able to speed through pages certainly has its advantages over the animated format.
I thought, for sure, that the female titan would fight face to face as a human with Eren but I was wrong. The titan fight was awesome. What is she going to do with Eren thought? Mikasa is mad! So cute ^o^. Can’t wait to watch the next episode in HD on Rawranime.tv
You can watch it in HD (a whooping 750 MB) using torrent…
I wonder why some people still depends on web stream…
Maybe this count as spoiler…
But maybe not because possibly what I see is just an error…
I think they misinterpret Eren’s condition when they zoom in to Eren’s face when he is laughing…
They think the zoom in original material only mean to show how Eren is laughing inside his Titan body, but if what I think about what I see is correct, the zoom in original material was used to show that when Eren’s rage more and more, its Titan Body actually absorb Eren’s human body…
Thus make an interesting speculation that as Eren’s rage get deeper and deeper, he will eventually overwhelmed and become mindless Titan permanently…
Though as I said, maybe it is just drawing error…
I would believe that. I think that when he attacked Mikasa before he was pretty pissed.