It’s the Multiversity Summer TV Binge! Although I’ve never been deeply into anime, I’m totally in love with Attack on Titan. Having already watched the first season with subtitles, I thought it would be cool to return to the dubbed version of the series. Be warned, here be spoilers!
1. The scouts arrive
This episode goes to some nightmarish places, but it starts with the most obviously heroic moment of the show- the arrival of the scout regiment! After introducing us to Commander Erwin Smith and Captain Levi, the scouts roll in and kick some serious titan ass.
Levi immediately establishes his supreme badassery by sending three guys to go after one titan, while he takes out two himself (then also takes out the third while they struggle). Hange Zoe, who I don’t believe has been named yet, also stands out. She’s wears distinct glasses, laughs while she flies into battle, and is completely psychotic. I love her. The scene ends with one of the scouts getting chomped, and Levi giving an inspirational speech. His voice actor, Matt Mercer (Overwatch‘s McCree), sells the hell out of it, but there’s a part of you that suspects he’s full of it, and just telling his dying companion what he wants to hear. Or maybe he’s just saying what he wants to hear? Levi is instantly intriguing.
2. In the belly of the beast
What depraved mind imagined this nightmare? We flash back to the moment of Eren’s “death” and… I’m still shuddering. Titan’s don’t digest their victims, so the creature’s belly is just filled with simmering blood and body parts as its victims bleed out and slowly boil to death. Eren sees one woman, still alive, call for her mother and pray for death. This triggers memories of his own dead mother, and then triggers his titan form.
I don’t usually have a lot to say about Bryce Papenbrook, who’s totally fine as Eren, but in this he blew me away. His manic monologue about wanting his titan victims to get back up so he could kill them again sounded like a stupid angry teenager, but I totally believed him. I got chills, and a new respect for Eren and his freaky powers.
3. The return of the Harrowing!
A few episodes ago, I dubbed one of the background human officers as the Harrowing, because of his sunken harrowed eyes. He returns this episode to be maybe the worst character in the series. He just seems to exist to suck and be wrong about everything. He commands the humans to point all their artillery at Eren. Mikasa, and Armin, and asks Eren, “Are you human or titan?”
Eren struggles with this, the easiest question ever, for way too long. I know he’s never seen Ghostbusters, but to paraphrase: “when someone asks if you’re a human, you say yes!” He ponders his answer for literally 15 minutes of screen time before venturing that yes, he’s human. And his answer doesn’t even matter! The Harrowing is just here to be terrible and to do the worst possible thing, so he fires on our heroes.
4. Welcome back Mr. Hannes
We take a brief detour to check in with my favorite loser, Hannes. The former beat cop from Shiganshina is still alive, and fighting his hardest in the battle. When one of his companions asks him about those three kids he rescued all those years ago, he has a beautiful speech that filled me with pride. Mikasa, he says, is the best fighter the army has ever seen, and she’s going to be the last human standing when this is all over. Eren is so stubborn, it drives him crazy, but he’s also probably too suborn to die.
I makes me unreasonably happy that someone still loves those kids. Hannes is one of the most complicated characters on the show. He’s a drunken loser, he’s guilty for letting so many people die on his watch, but his love for the three heroes is genuine. It makes me love him, and it reminds me why the Shiganshina Trio are so damn special.
5. Don’t trust Doctor Yaeger
In Eren’s painfully long rumination on his own humanity, he has a sudden flashback to his dad. We haven’t properly seen Doctor Yaeger in a long time, and what we learn… well, it ain’t good. He injected Eren with what I can only assume is Titan Juice, and then, while his son kicked and struggled, injected him with something to make him forget. He hopes that he’ll remember when it’s convenient. Well, that’s fortunate I guess. He also tells Eren to stare at the key he gave him, and that his basement experiments are the most important thing in the world.
Kids, if your dad injects you with a mysterious serum, roofies you, and then tells you to take a trip down to his science basement, that’s a dealbreaker.
