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. And so now, as part of our 2021 Summer TV binge, we will yearn for scenes of Omni-Directional Movement gear. Lets charge into Attack on Titan season 4, episode 4, “From One Hand to Another.”
1. Falco’s in so much trouble
After a first reaction that had me recoiling from having to get to know new characters, I think I’m coming around on Falco. He’s just so doomed. Every time he has the chance to, he just says the wrong thing to the wrong person. Remember when he thought he could be open and honest with Reiner? Immediately led to horrible threats towards his whole family. And he can’t leave well enough alone. When an injured veteran asks him to deliver some letters, does Falco, who is already on the rocks for unpatriotic thinking, even question it? Nope. He just delivers the mail. You’ve got to appreciate a sad boy who seems so determined to hurtle towards his doom.
2. Ol’ Doctor Yaeger
Another bad decision Falco makes? He comes across Dr. Yaeger, who I believe is Eren and Zeke’s grandfather, Grisha’s father. Falco skedaddles before the scene gets really upsetting, but I feel like if he has the attention of the patriarch of the family with the greatest story significance, he’s about to meet his fate. And I’ll be honest, he doesn’t seem to have the steely stuff he needs. When wrath falls down on Falco, it’s going to get ugly.
Doc Yaeger instead talks to the injured soldier who is getting Falco to deliver his mail. The soldier makes what feels like it should be a normal, if sort of probing conversation. “Do you have any regrets?” That sort of thing. And sure. Doc Yaeger starts reflecting on the day his daughter was killed in front of his son, all the events we learned in that tragic episode last season. But before you know it, he’s having a shrieking insane episode. Nurses need to come to calm him down. That dude is not OK, and I’m worried what his volatile state is going to do to all these innocent little kids who are wandering into his path.
3. Jazz freakout
A lot of this episode followed Gabi and Falco on their day to day routine on the homefront. It’s made clear how much these kids are kids. They play and wrestle and flirt and call each other names. They really bring to mind our main cast of characters when they were just starting out in season one, which is a parallel that endears this new crew to me, even as I know they are destined to fight our heroes. I particularly liked an argument where Gabi demanded, “Zofia, cut it out with your weird act!” We haven’t seen a lot of Zofia yet but when she murmured, “Um, this is who I am,” she instantly won me over.
A strange musical cue stuck with me in this scene. As Gabi started to lose her temper towards her friends, the soundtrack turned to a cool jazz bassline. The score of this show is usually much more epic Howard Shore Lord of the Rings, but I really liked this other mode, especially as the world of Marley looks so much like the 1940s. Jazz and baseball gloves really make me want to see this world’s Captain America and Bucky. Or maybe that idea is horrifying.
4. Back on the Tybur grind
The new characters came at me pretty fast, and I did my best to write down their names. We know the Tybur family is coming, and that they are going to be a dig deal. We meet the young patriarch of the family, good ‘ol Willy Tybur. I always feel compelled to add a little flourish to his name. For such a fancy man, Willy sure feels a bit lacking a first name. We also get to know a man with a much better sobriquet, and that is Theo Mageth, who runs the Warrior Program. He is the main guy behind the SCHEME, the details of which become clear to us. So their plan is, in order to stop having constant war, they are gonna reinstate the draft to make the common people of Marley fight war so that they will learn to hate war. Sure. Can’t see any way for this to go wrong.
There’s also a lot of talk of Helos, is the great hero who defeated the Devil of All Earth. He is not a Tybur as it turned out. I’m only mentioning him because Willy and Theo talk about him a lot, while gazing at a statue of him. I’ve got a feeling we are going to be hearing a lot more about this guy. Stay tuned.
5. The international party
And I do mean international! It’s interesting- based on the names of the characters, the climate, the style of architecture, you’d think the show was taking place in Germany. I’ve never been sure if this was an alternate history, or a future apocalypse, or a secondary fantasy world, or what. But this episode makes me think it’s some version of our earth. We saw black people! (I know, right!) And they had names like Ogweno and Nambia. There was an Asian lady in a Kimono, in the crowd I spotted someone in a fez, and someone else in a hijab. Wherever we are is either a version of our world, or very uninspired. The part of me who likes this show hopes it’s the former. But the part of me who remembers the yellow armbands kind of thinks it’s the latter.
Where is this all headed? Why, to the theater! ‘Ol Willy Tybur is… pulling a Hamlet? He’s putting on a play for his various international guests. It’s all a part of his scheme, the one that is going to bring back the draft somehow. And it’s going to be about Helos. I… can actually get into that. If it was good enough for Avatar: The Last Airbender, it’s good enough for us!
