Welcome back to the titan war! The time has come to end things. We are finally watching the final season of Attack on Titan, and I got a feeling that not everyone is making it out of this one alive. If you are new to our coverage, this is the part where I explain to you that I’ve never been what you’d call a regular anime watcher, but something about this strange and at times horrifying has never failed to captivate me. Be careful what chair you choose to sit in, because we are charging into Attack on Titan season 4, episode 12, “Guides.”
First, a note on spelling: Since I first starting reviewing Attack on Titan in 2017, I have watched it in a few formats on a few different services. Subtitles and pronunciations have been different, so I’ve decided to shoot for internal consistency. Sometimes I had to make an aesthetic judgement call. That meant spelling it Connie instead of Conny, even though the latter is probably the one I’ve seen more often; I just like it better with the ‘ie.’ Same with Sasha’s last name being Blaus instead of Braus; the former is just so much more fun to say. But this week I’ve hit a block. I’d been spelling the main character’s name with a ‘Y’ as in Eren Yaeger. But this episode introduces a political faction that bears his name. And for whatever reason “Yaegerists” looks too wrong to me. So I will be referring to the group as the “Jaegerists” and I will be adjusting Eren’s last name accordingly. I wanted to be consistent about this, but apparently “Jaegerist” was a bridge too far. And now, back to your regularly scheduled review!
1. Getting Hitched
I was very pleased to reunite with Hitch, my favorite sort of corrupt cop in Paradis. We’ve actually been following her a long time; she was introduced as a friend of Annie’s back in the first season. Seeing Hitch mourn her best friend Marlo was one of the most heartbreaking moments of the show. Here, we find out what her gig has been the last few years- she’s been standing in a dark basement guarding her old comrade Annie. I just need to appreciate what a weirdo Hitch is. When she walks in on Armin talking to Annie and reaching for her crystal cocoon, Hitch doesn’t judge! In fact she seems weirdly stoked. When Armin tries to explain that no, it’s cool, he just wanted to do an experiment with titan memory transfer, Hitch has nothing to offer but a sly wink. I don’t know if that makes her good or bad at her job, but I know it makes her fun.
Her other gig seems to be guarding important figures, included the leader of the military, Premier Zachary. It uh, doesn’t go very well.
2. Toasty splat
So when we catch up with Premier Zachary, he is meeting with Armin and Mikasa. I actually really like Zachary as a character because of how useless he is. This is a guy who has gotten to the very top by being a marginal dude. We’ve never seen him make a tough call, or devise a strategy. He’s just confident and steady and so people turn to him. Case in point: he decides for some reason that he should confide in Armin and Mikasa that he is suspicious of Eren. Armin immediately smiles and offers to help in the investigation, which is obvious to me, a person who has been watching this show. But Zachary seems surprised, he is clearly against the idea, but he doesn’t explicitly order Armin and Mikasa… anything. This is why I’ve always thought Zachary was ultimately sort of a chump. Why bring this up? Why not make his orders explicit? I’m sure he’s a basically competent guy, but he’s nowhere near operating at Erwin levels. He’s not even at Levi levels.
It’s a moot point. After taking a seat in his big fancy chair, Zachary is blown to bits. There was a bomb underneath it! A few bloody chunks of the former head of the military land on the ground outside, where people are protesting his leadership. The unrest kicks up a notch as we are looking at a full blown insurrection.
Continued below3. Yakko and Wakko, meet Dot
How long did it take for the military high command to resort to a flaccid fascist freakout? Mere seconds. A Military Police commander named Roeg (I had to look it up, so little of an impression did tis guy leave on me) seems to think he’s going to be the next Premier. He blusters and yells a lot. His first decision is to lock up every member of the Scout Corps. You see, the bomb was planted by a faction within the military called the Jaegerists. They believe Eren should be their ruler, presumably because they are attracted to his nihilistic fatalism. There are Jaegerist defectors in every branch of the military, and there are hidden insurgents in every branch of the military… but I guess it’s believed that there are more Scouts than anything else, so locking them all up while doing nothing to address the rest of the problem is a thing to do I guess. Roeg loves to hear the sound of his own voice, and Hange Zoe is an unstable mad scientist type, so thankfully Dot Pixis rolls in to save the day.
First things first- he’s not about needlessly arresting anyone. In fact, he’s the only one with his eye on the prize. He makes priority one locking down Zeke. He believes that the Jaegerists are trying to bring Eren together with his half brother, and that would be bad news. His second move is verifying that Queen Historia is safe, as they are in the midst of (another) violent military coup. Pixis is so on top of the game, that it takes mere minutes for him to be installed as new supreme commander. The troops beg him for an order…
And he orders them to surrender! This is perhaps the coolest thing Pixis does. Everything he says is super reasonable. They are already at war; fighting an extra civil war isn’t going to end well for anyone. Plus at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who is in charge if they are all going to die. So Pixis in charge, Eren in charge, Historia in charge, none of it matters. All the matters is victory, and Pixis will achieve that no matter what. The show goes out of its way to show all the leadership clenching fists and gritting teeth. But Pixis is the “real man” here, because he is the only one brave enough to choose peace instead of unnecessary conflict. He reads as a competent adult. It’s all very effectively done!
4. I want an Eren with short pants and a long jacket
In the last few reviews, I’ve expressed confusion as to what Eren’s been really up to. What’s his real agenda? Why is he consenting to imprisonment? While we don’t know everything going through Eren’s head, this is the episode where we get some answers. See, it turns out that the Jaegerists want Eren in charge, they want to reunite him with his brother, and they want to listen to everything Floch has to say. He’s their leader. If those first two things weren’t a dealbreaker, following Floch has gotta be one. That dude is the worst. Still, how aroused do you think he was to lead a fascist coup that resulted in megabuff Eren walking in slow-mo up a hill at sunset? That was pretty hot, and I don’t even worship Eren like that. When Eren slipped on a cool long jacket? Steamy stuff!
The strongest writing move here though, is that Eren was in on it the whole time. In a lesser story, the Jaegerists would have stormed the prison and a reluctant Eren would have joined them. This story was both more realistic and more interesting. Eren’s been acting very suspiciously this whole season. Connie noticed it. Zachary noticed it. But they didn’t have enough evidence as to the specific wrongdoing until it was too late. This is the best kind of twist. It makes Eren thoroughly villainous, but he looks smart and makes active choices. And it doesn’t make everyone stupid for believing in him; they really wanted to emotionally! But now he’s got an army, a shitty lieutenant, and a cool jacket.
5. On the road again
So now we know where everyone stands as we move into the final four episodes of this (half of a) season. Eren is at the head of a creepy military cult, and is trying to meet up with his brother. Dot Pixis is in charge, and he is trying to secure his nation’s future in the face of multiple wars. Falco and Gaby are still out there, being cared for by their enemies. And now, Hange Zoe is leading a Scout squad that includes most of our surviving pals: Mikasa, Armin, Jean, and Connie. Their mission is to secure Zeke and maybe talk Eren off this cliff before it is too late. Do you think they are likely to succeed? Do you think Eren and Zeke will ever be able to see eye to eye? This newfound clarity brings us new questions, and I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next!
