And on that day humanity received a grim reminder – of how awesome Attack on Titan is! Welcome back to the Multiversity Summer TV Binge. We will be diving, swooping, and swinging our way through Attack on Titan season two. Light a torch , and open an ancient can of meat, because we’re about to get into season 2 episode 3: “Southwestward!”
1. Welcome Home
We begin right where we left off, the eerie village that seems to have been wrecked by titans. There are no bodies, no blood, and the only creature to be found is a titan lying in the wrecked remains of Connie’s house. The entire thing if you recall, gave me the serious jibblies. There was also the implication that perhaps the people who lived in this village were transformed into titans, which goes against everything we thought we knew.
Well turn my jibblies up to maximum and keep going, because this shit is getting even creepier. Seriously, we are in honest-to-badness horror movie territory here. After everyone else rides away to investigate, the titan garbles a chilling phrase: “Welcome home.” Only Connie hears it, so he can convince himself he’s imagining things. He’s definitely not.
Yeah, that titan clearly used to be his mom.
2. Good girl, bad girl
So let’s talk about Krista and Ymir. They’ve been a presence since last season, but so far off to the side I would say they were tertiary characters at best. We get a scene of them together, so it’s best that we review what we know about these two.
We’ve got a classic good girl/bad girl dynamic. Ymir is tall, dark, wiry and would be cruel if she wasn’t so charming. Krista is short, blonde, bright-eyed, and the most optimistic character on the show. Ymir is best represented by her cruelty, Krista through her kindness. They are heavily, heavily, heavily implied to be dating. I don’t know where gay representation in Japanese media is at these days, but nothing gets explicitly stated.
What’s cool about this exchange is that it doesn’t highlight their main features, but sort of their opposites. It is made very clear that Ymir cares about Krista, to lightweight crazy extremes. I have no doubt she would kill or die for her erm, best friend. And Krista, so lovely and polite, is a true soldier. She’s got an iron core. They’re for sure one of the best duos on the show, and we just got a not so subtle reminder that they exist.
3. The second wall… intact!?
The intense stakes force the Scouts to do a rare night operation, and it’s a reminder of how much better the production on the show has gotten. The nighttime animation is painterly and really spooky (noticing a trend with this episode?). The two Scout squads run into each other, and notably do not run into any titans. That’s because the wall seems to be intact.
Talk about your classic good news/bad news scenario. On the one hand, the lack of breaches in the wall means that Armageddon is still a week or two off. But on the other hand, how did the titans get beyond the wall if they didn’t get through it? Did they climb it? Burrow under it?
Oh. Oh no. Connie’s mom isn’t the only person transformed into a gigantic zombie.
4. The Fabulous Nova Wall Crystal Saga
Wow, for ostensibly being our main characters, Eren, Mikasa, Armin, and Levi haven’t done much this season. This quiet cart ride is the longest we’ve spent with them, and its largely for exposition. We learn a couple of things, and formulate a plan for moving forward.
Hange Zoe through Pastor Mike explains that the wall isn’t full of titans… it’s made of titans! That weird crystal power that Annie displayed last season? You force enough titans to do it, and you could make a big ‘ol wall of the stuff. Theoretically Eren could do it too. And that’s the plan. We’re going to get Eren to titan up in the big wall breach, turn into crystal, and hopefully save the human race.
There’s a not-zero chance that this plan could kill Eren, but he’s more than game. Good for Eren. It’s also the first time in a while the humans have had a solid plan for moving forward. This could be a big deal.
Continued below5. Crumbling Castle Utgard
The Scouts take refuge in an old fort, Castle Utgard. This squad includes a whole mess of characters we care about, including Krista, Ymir, Berthold, Reiner, and Connie. Also a few that we don’t care about, whose names I can’t be bothered to look up. They’re older Scouts, and I’ll bet you a nickle they don’t make it out of this castle alive.
What this castle is doing here is sort of confusing, but we get an intriguing hint. Reiner finds Ymir going through canned goods, and she’s able to read the label. That sounds boring, but its written in an ancient script that the others aren’t familiar with. This implies that the castle is older than living memory, but not older than the process of canning meat. Huh.
We don’t have time to figure out the implications though because (say it with me now) titans attack! They’re being led by that freaky beast titan and… oh the episode is over.
For an episode where nothing much happened, that was shockingly engaging.
