It’s the Multiversity Summer TV Binge! Although I’ve never been what you would call an anime person, I’m a huge fan of Attack on Titan. I first fell in love with the subtitled version of the show, so I thought it would be fun to revisit the dubbed version. What along with me, but be warned, here be spoilers!
1. Meet the SOS Scouts
We journey to a vast, dirty castle that the Scouts call home. They spend most of their time ranging, and hardly make use of it. Eren also introduces us to the Special Operations Squad a.k.a. Captain Levi’s handpicked elites. There’s Petra (10 kills, 48 assists), who seems reasonable, compassionate and competent. We don’t learn all that much about Gunther (7 kills, 40 assists) or Eld Jinn (14 kills, 32 assists), but they seem like good blokes. Then there’s Oluo (39 kills, 9 assists), who spends most of the episode taunting Eren and his fellow soldiers. He runs his mouth so much that when he trips, homeboy bites his tongue almost completely off! Under unusual legal circumstances, Eren is technically the latest member of Levi’s Elites.
2. Spit shine!
The Scout castle is such a mess, most of this episode is framed around cleaning it. This ends up being pretty delightful, as we see elite soldiers in aprons and face-masks, with feather-dusters instead of swords. It seems that the more elite the soldier, the more fussy they are, and no one is fussier than Captain Levi. He’s terse, but obsessed with cleanliness. We never hear a definitive origin for him, but his soldiers like to gossip. It sounds like he was once a scumbag criminal, but when he met Commander Erwin, his life turned around. Those two are definitely in love. Honestly, it’s probably the healthiest relationship either of them have ever had. I don’t get the feeling that Levi and Erwin have a lot of non-eaten friends.
3. The Serious Scouts
Eren remarks upon how serious the Scouts are, and he’s right. It marks a strange turning point in the show. Until now, our story has almost been a young adult war story, following a bunch of kids as they come of age under the most dire of circumstances. Now we’re with a season crew of eccentrics, and you can feel the show turning around. The Scouts are weird and funny, but the humor can barely conceal the loss they all carry just beneath the surface. Honestly, Eren fits in perfectly. He’s already lost, already found out he’s a freak, and is totally driven to complete the mission. He’s just got to not get eaten (again), and maybe he’ll become a real Scout.
4. Beware of Section Commander Hange
The star of this episode is Section Commander Hange Zoe. From what I understand, in Japanese Hange is given gender-neutral pronouns and is supposed to come across as gender-queer and somewhat androgynous. That doesn’t come across so well in English. The voice actress is unmistakably feminine, as are the pronouns. I’ll try to remember to respect them.
Hange is the best, the funniest character since Sasha, and one who opens up a new world of possibility. They are a titan researcher, probably the best who ever lived. They’re also completely insane, with a macabre love for titans (not to mention a titanic love of the macabre) that is off-putting, but more cinematic than you can imagine.
5. Sawney and Bean
After a crazy monologue about cannibalism, Hange names the captured titans Sawney and Bean. The research is barbaric, but yields useful results. They do an experiment timing how long it takes for sun-deprivation to lull a titan to sleep (sun is their only source of energy). They experiment with pain, and drive nails and spears into the titans. It’s pretty upsetting to watch, but also funny, and also fascinating. That’s pretty much Hange summed up. “We’ve been fumbling in the dark, our primary tactic based in fear,” they tell Eren.
When Sawney and Bean are found murdered, Hange freaks out, shrieking and crying with more emotion than some characters have shown for the death of their immediate families. It’s… no a stable reaction, but you can’t help but fear for crazy Hange Zoe. Of course, Commander Erwin asks the tough question. Who sabotaged the research project? Who’s the real enemy? Erwin sees farther than anyone we’ve met on this show, and he’s the only one who seems to be looking beyond surviving into the next day.
