Welcome back! Are you prepared?! Assuredly, you are not. We are back behind the walls again, but the safety they offer is fleeting. It’s time for another episode of Attack on Titan. This is the part where I let you know that I am very much not a regular anime watcher but that this strange and at times horrifying show continues to captivate me. We are continuing on through the third season, as part of our 2020 Summer TV Binge and beyond. Let’s get into it! Buckle up your Omni-Directional Movement gear. Lets swoop into Attack on Titan season 3, episode 21, “Attack Titan.”
1. Nite Nite Owl
First thing that happens when we pick up in this one- we learn the name of the Owl! We were introduced to the character in the last episode and he is gone by the end of this one, but I already feel like we’ve been with him for a long time. His name is Eren Kruger. When Grisha restarted his life behind the walls, he named his son after the man who tortured him and then saved him. So having a real normal one.
Grisha demands to know why Eren Kruger spared him and no one else. And he sort of ducks the question at first, but then makes it seem like he’s dying. This actually continues to be a non answer. He would have been just as dying if he managed to save everyone else. I guess that would have put Grisha’s ultimate undercover mission at risk but… not very compelling Eren I. You could have saved Dina, she seemed nice.
Of course, Dina’s kindness or you know, inherent humanity, is not what they discuss. Instead they talk about her royal blood. Now, I’ve long maintained that Attack on Titan is a sly subversion of fascist propaganda, in the spirit of Starship Troopers. A lot of hay is made out of the nebulous but probably unsavory politics of the creator of Attack on Titan, Hajime Isayama. I don’t think he has a lot of involvement in the making of the show and even if he did, I continue to find it very anti-fascist. But then it dips into a fantasy convention that gives me pause, that of magic bloodlines. That gets real eugenics-y to me, and I don’t care for it. The Eldians have unique magic powers in their blood that allows them access to titan powers. And Dina’s ultimate value is her “royal blood” which is like having even better Eldian blood. I don’t like it guys!
2. Once in a lifetime
Well it turns out Grisha’s entire life, the Owl has been fostering a special hatred for Marley within him ever since the day his sister died. Eren I just recognized a certain superhero-origin-potential in Grisha and decided to go for it, making sure that Grisha experienced all the horrors of the Marley police state. This is sort of a point in passing. Grisha grimly acknowledges it, but then immediately moves to future plans which from a storytelling perspective makes sense. But man, there is a lot of unresolved emotionally fraught tension between those two. I get why Grisha admires Eren I’s bravery and all, but the dude put him through hell and never said sorry. It’s pretty clear now where a lot of Eren’s damage comes from.
Also it’s the mark of an excellent show that now that I know its secrets, I cannot wait to go back and watch it from the beginning.
3. 13 years of bad luck, then death
Oh yeah, I mentioned that Eren I is dying. Turns out he’s got the CURSE OF YMIR. He’s not the only one- every titan shifter suffers from it. As we’ve seen, to become a titan shifter an Eldian gets turned into a mindless titan. If they eat one of the 9 shifters, they get special titan powers and the ability to revert back to their human form. Turns out that’s not the whole story. If a titan shifter goes 13 years strong, they will drop dead and the power will get passed on to a random Eldian baby. I’m assuming Avatar the Last Airbender rules apply.
Continued belowSo if you’ve done the math, that means that Eren has 8 years left. The story of the show has been happening for about 5 years. Armin just started his 13 year clock and all things considered, doesn’t seem all that perturbed about it. He was recently dead and now he has 13 years to be an unstoppable brilliant psycho. Mikasa doesn’t accept it at all though. She is ready to kill the concept of death before she lets any of that go down.
4. The two queens
In all the excitement, I had completely forgotten Ymir’s letter to Christa/Historia. And it is straight up the gayest thing that’s happened on this show. It’s not subtextual at all. Christa/Historia reads it and Ymir explicitly calls it a “love letter.” She ends it with her only regret, which is not marrying Christa. This is an amazing messed up fairy tale. Especially because we know that Ymir shares a name with the founder of the royal dynasty, but we don’t know why. It’s probably not just a popular name. Is she the heir? A reincarnation? Is this more weirdo bloodline eugenics powers?]
Something about the letter is… well it’s difficult to put to words. Somehow the letter is… infused with memories or something? When Christa/Historia reads it, she seems to get flashes of something. It’s dramatic enough that Hange Zoe notices it, along with Eren and the whole gang. Part of it is that they’ve seen Eren doing the exact same thing. He’s so lost in the Nostalgia that he keeps having these seemingly random outbursts, talking to people long dead. If only because the show is showing us both of them at the same time, is there some way that the same thing is happening to Christa/Historia?
5. Remembering both ways
Even though they look like flashbacks to us, Eren is experiencing his dad’s memories in the moment in the present of the story. He learns his dad’s specific mission: to find the cowardly king and strip him of the coordinate titan power. And he was successful! Eren I believed that only someone of royal blood could wield that power, but we saw Eren II do it successfully at the end of season 2. There’s something up, something we don’t quite understand yet.
Well, it turns out that’s an understatement. The episode ends with the final words between Grisha Yaeger and the Owl, Eren Kruger. “To save Mikasa and Armin and everyone else you must endure,” Eren I says. Grisha asks who those people are. “I don’t know,” Eren I says. “Whose memories are that?” And folks, I got chills. Looks like these memories can flow both ways and I am not ready to grapple with those implications yet.
