Attack on Titan / Shingeki No Kyojin: What's for Lunch?

[HandofShadows]

Previouse Thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?289499-Attack-on-Titan-Shingeki-No-Kyojin

Time for a new thread since the old one hit page 50.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

That pack mule titan's a real MVP for the enemy side, eh. I wonder if it's a shifter, really sharp, or somehow being directed by Beast. Also, it would not surprise me at all if the titan serum doesn't work quite as well as the protagonists hope, regardless of how the Armin/Erwin struggle develops. At first I was like, oh great their come-back-to-life potion that cheapens the loss of previous chapters is back online thanks to them catching an enemy titan. But then when half-dead Erwin showed up I was like, hell yeah here comes the drama.

[HandofShadows]

This one was mostly about the cast going back and forth about who to save. Levi finally chooses who to save and it's not Erwin. Armin get the shot and promptly eats Bertolt. So who won this battle? The Beast Titan or humanity. The trap failed and the gate has been sealed so the Wall Maria can be retaken. And since they have the Wall the also have what's in the basement of Eren's house (and the Beast Titan doesn't have a clue about what's there.) But the Survey Corps has been gutted loosing a huge number of people and very importantly, it's commander. The Beast lost Bertolt and they means he lost the Colossal Titian. That is a HUGE blow to him worse Armin now has those powers though it will be some time before he masters them. He failed to get Eren which was the main purpose of the trap.

[Kato]

So, I was almost convinced this would not happen. But of course Armin had to be saved because he's younger and the young ones always survive*. So, a lot of drama before he gets fixed and that's about all that happens this month.

As for who won... well, Survey had to sacirifice a lot of men but they were mostly worthless meat shields. They won a lot more, and they gave Beast a run for his money thanks to Levi being beyond OP. Too bad they didn't also get Reiner but whatever.

So will we finally see the basement?

*almost

[Lurkmoar]

So, I was almost convinced this would not happen. But of course Armin had to be saved because he's younger and the young ones always survive*. So, a lot of drama before he gets fixed and that's about all that happens this month.

As for who won... well, Survey had to sacirifice a lot of men but they were mostly worthless meat shields. They won a lot more, and they gave Beast a run for his money thanks to Levi being beyond OP. Too bad they didn't also get Reiner but whatever.

So will we finally see the basement?

*almost


If you're talking about the main cast, yeah, the younger ones will probably make it. But that doesn't promise survival, ie the Battle of Trost. I'd say the Survey Corp won. However, unless what's in the basement pays off in more titan serum/augmentations/answers the price might have been too high. The wall was sealed at least...

..edit: Also... it looks like Berolt was for lunch.:smalleek:

[lord_khaine]

Yeah, it does look like a huge win for the survey corps. The price was steep, but the gain is so much higher. They had to pay what were most likely their best leader, and the majority of their grunts.

But in return they have 2 major victories. One of them is longterm, since it takes a while for a new titan shifter to learn control. But the advantage of suddenly having 2 titans on your team instead of one cant be measured when it comes to fighting. I mean, just imagine having to fight Levi while some other titan is trying to grapple with you?

At the same time they also got a very visible victory to rally the populace behind. For the first time in history humanity has recaptured lost ground. Suddenly the loses the survey corp suffered were not a tragic defeat, those that died can be painted as heroes who allowed for the recapture of Wall Maria. And building on that sense of accomplishment should make it easy to gather enough recruits to cover their loses.

Though for that matter, i wonder if they ever will come up with the idea of using their own Titans as sparring targets for new recruits. Give them dull blades and let them lose on Eren, to give them a sense of what it means to fight a wild titan. It could perhaps help to lessen the catastropic loses recruits normally suffer during their first real engagement.

[danzibr]

Late to arrive!

I won't be posting regularly because I'm partway through it (chapter 35?), just wanted to pop in and say I'm loving it so far.

[Lurkmoar]

Late to arrive!

I won't be posting regularly because I'm partway through it (chapter 35?), just wanted to pop in and say I'm loving it so far.

This manga will finish up before Guts meets up with Griffith again. Sigh.

[danzibr]

This manga will finish up before Guts meets up with Griffith again. Sigh.
Ahh...

...

...

Whelp, thanks for the info. At least it's not dead >.>

[noparlpf]

Eren: "This is the wrong key!"
Everyone: "GASP! Now what do we do?"
Levi: "...really?" *kicks down door*

[Ramza00]

So someplace outside the walls have at least 1839 technology (the Daguerreotype which was the first commercial camera first came out in 1839, do note earlier cameras did exist). While the technology inside the walls seem to be roughly the 1700s though with some exceptions such as steam engines / railroads on top of the wall for transports and the absurd 3d maneuver gear. Now the area outside the wall can be far newer than 1839 but I am just trying to gauge relatively the earliest they can be on the technology scale if the technology development was relatively similar to our world.

It would be funny if someone did a Crimson Bow and Arrow remix (1st opening song) where everyone dressed up in revolutionary war fare, stuff like redcoats and funny hats and such.

[Devonix]

So someplace outside the walls have at least 1839 technology (the Daguerreotype which was the first commercial camera first came out in 1839, do note earlier cameras did exist). While the technology inside the walls seem to be roughly the 1700s though with some exceptions such as steam engines / railroads on top of the wall for transports and the absurd 3d maneuver gear. Now the area outside the wall can be far newer than 1839 but I am just trying to gauge relatively the earliest they can be on the technology scale if the technology development was relatively similar to our world.

It would be funny if someone did a Crimson Bow and Arrow remix (1st opening song) where everyone dressed up in revolutionary war fare, stuff like redcoats and funny hats and such.




I'm honestly expecting it to turn out that the whole Attack on Titan City is nothing but a large Prison colony like Australia. And that the Titans were sort of a security system/guards to keep the prisoners in check. Its just that this has been going on for so long that the original prisoners died out and we've got their decendants with a bunch of passed down missinformation. The Royalty could even be the decendants of the prison wardens.

[Ramza00]

I'm honestly expecting it to turn out that the whole Attack on Titan City is nothing but a large Prison colony like Australia. And that the Titans were sort of a security system/guards to keep the prisoners in check. Its just that this has been going on for so long that the original prisoners died out and we've got their decendants with a bunch of passed down missinformation. The Royalty could even be the decendants of the prison wardens.

I been thinking this for years, but personally I am noticing way too many parallels between the civilization of the walls and a totalitarian state, thus my instincts are always asking the question is the civilization of the walls effectively North Korea? What would it be like in modern days to be born and raised in such a society...similar to how in the matrix if you were born in the matrix how would you know what is normal and what is reality...similar to Plato's the cave metaphor.

I am now dropping this for this is way too close to the rules of politics that our boards frown getting close to, and will do infringements and bans if you go too far.

[noparlpf]

Probably more like some kind of biological weapons experiment gone wrong, so now the rest of the world just avoids this one island. Kinda like that one manga where it turned out the characters had been transported into the future on some Jurassic Park-type island gone to ruin.

[Devonix]

Probably more like some kind of biological weapons experiment gone wrong, so now the rest of the world just avoids this one island. Kinda like that one manga where it turned out the characters had been transported into the future on some Jurassic Park-type island gone to ruin.

Possibly, though the thing is even with our current level of tech Titans would pose absolutely no threat to our military. So if there were people there that they cared about evacuating there would be nothing stopping them. Titans are big, easy to spot targets, with exploitable weaknesses. If the world had the knowledge of creating Titans in the first place, as well as the tech level we suspect, there's nothing shown that could stop them from intervening.

[Devonix]

I wonder how long we till we get memes of "M Night Shyamalan's The Titan. " Since it's also looking like the plot to Attack on Titan could pretty much be The Villiage, only with actual monsters

[noparlpf]

Possibly, though the thing is even with our current level of tech Titans would pose absolutely no threat to our military. So if there were people there that they cared about evacuating there would be nothing stopping them. Titans are big, easy to spot targets, with exploitable weaknesses. If the world had the knowledge of creating Titans in the first place, as well as the tech level we suspect, there's nothing shown that could stop them from intervening.

1800s weaponry would have more trouble with titans than modern tech, though; and keep in mind, when the titans got loose and the walls originally went up they would have only had 1600s-1700s tech, which is what we see inside the walls in the present day. And if it's an isolated island it would be tough to get troops and weapons there to eradicate the titans, whereas they could just send a couple of small rescue boats to evacuate any important people. Plus, if the rest of the world wasn't aware of it, only some shady government organisation, then there wouldn't be any push to reclaim or evacuate it. Maybe some combination of prison camp and secret research program—prisoners were experimented on, became titans, but either A. it went wrong and they lost their consciousness, and in the ensuing chaos the rest of the prison population revolted and took over the inner district, or B. it went wrong and some of them retained their consciousness, becoming shifters, and the shifters took over (later the shifters split into two factions, the royal family and the outside "village"). The researchers and wardens were either eradicated, or they were evacuated by a couple of small rescue boats; either way, the shady government organisation couldn't mobilise the resources to actually reclaim the island, so they just abandoned it, and things developed to where they are now.

[Devonix]

1800s weaponry would have more trouble with titans than modern tech, though; and keep in mind, when the titans got loose and the walls originally went up they would have only had 1600s-1700s tech, which is what we see inside the walls in the present day. And if it's an isolated island it would be tough to get troops and weapons there to eradicate the titans, whereas they could just send a couple of small rescue boats to evacuate any important people. Plus, if the rest of the world wasn't aware of it, only some shady government organisation, then there wouldn't be any push to reclaim or evacuate it. Maybe some combination of prison camp and secret research program—prisoners were experimented on, became titans, but either A. it went wrong and they lost their consciousness, and in the ensuing chaos the rest of the prison population revolted and took over the inner district, or B. it went wrong and some of them retained their consciousness, becoming shifters, and the shifters took over (later the shifters split into two factions, the royal family and the outside "village"). The researchers and wardens were either eradicated, or they were evacuated by a couple of small rescue boats; either way, the shady government organisation couldn't mobilise the resources to actually reclaim the island, so they just abandoned it, and things developed to where they are now.



Apparently there's been a lot of references to modern day things that people chalked up to just easter eggs and jokes for the audience. One specifically being the Shifter titan talking about Basketball. Which didn't exist until 1891 and wouldn't have become something popular enough for a character to joke about until even later. I wouldn't be surpised if this was set in present day or a few decades in the future. Another Shifter mentioned throwing a " Perfect Game. " That term didn't exist until 1908

[HandofShadows]

The tech that "creates" the Titians seems to be some sort of solar powered nanotechnology (Most wild Titians go to "sleep" at night). Almost everyone is infused with it. The nanotech has different functions and there are different types of nanotech. The "basic" nano that most everyone has can turn people into Titians and also alter even erase memories. But you need someone with a higher level (Coordinator) nano to do order it to do so. The Beast Titian has the nano and so does Eren (From the Reiss family). There are other higher level nano's used for the Colossal Titian and the Armored Titian (and all other Titian Shifters). These nanos can heal a person from horrible injuries and regrow limbs. A few aberrant Titians may have malfunctioning nanos or for some reason they do not work correctly. Some of these aberrants still may have *some* control of their actions and part of their minds and memory working.

Not NEARLY as much time has passed as the characters think it has. Ymir was only a Titian for 60 or so years before she was freed. So how can so little time have passed? Remember the Coordinators power? With it you can control Titians and most people. And this control extends to making them forget and likely creating false memories. This power could also be used to force the Titians to make the Walls and make everyone forget about them. Well not quite everyone. There are some people who seem to be immune to the Coordinators control and these would be the Ackerman family (which was why the Govt was out to get them). They may not even be able to be turned into Titians against their will. Also the Ackerman's we have (Levi and Mikasa in particular) have super human dexterity, reflexes and physical strength.

Side note, inside the Walls the tech is actually in the 1800 range in some areas, but was suppressed by the MPs.

Basic theory: Man got nanotech and something went wrong on a planetary scale. When everything crashed some people "hacked" they nanotech system (or might even been responsible for the disaster) to build their own societies (The Reiss family) or just managed to survive somehow. The civilization in the Walls is just ONE example of these post disaster civs. Titians are still about in large portions of the world though keeping most civs out of contact with each other. The Titian shifters (and Eren's Father) are from outside the Walls and the Beast Titian has a MAJOR hate for the people inside the Walls (reason unknown) and wants the Coordinator Power that Eren has. It's possible that Eren's power outstrips his own. When everything crashed a lot of tech was lost or could no longer be supported. You can know how to build a laser rifle, but unless you have a large and varied industrial base behind you there is no way to actually make one. So most civs are using tech they can support/build locally. Hence the "old style" photograph in the latest chapter. So what we are seeing here is a clash of post fall civs where one was a brutal dictatorship and the other is quite willing to commit genocide. Next month we might get the reason why.

[HandofShadows]

Possibly, though the thing is even with our current level of tech Titans would pose absolutely no threat to our military. So if there were people there that they cared about evacuating there would be nothing stopping them. Titans are big, easy to spot targets, with exploitable weaknesses. If the world had the knowledge of creating Titans in the first place, as well as the tech level we suspect, there's nothing shown that could stop them from intervening.

I suspect that whatever happened affected the entire planet. There wasn't a small number of Titians that could be targeted and destroyed, but tens, HUNDREDS millions of them showing up all over the planet at nearly the same time. And also inside military bases as some of the troops became Titians. :smalleek:

[lord_khaine]

But to start with we cant know if those modern day references are intentional, or just a result of a bad translation.

Even if they were intentional, then this is clearly not our world, nothing says that basketball were not invented earlier here.

[Battleship789]

But to start with we cant know if those modern day references are intentional, or just a result of a bad translation.

Even if they were intentional, then this is clearly not our world, nothing says that basketball were not invented earlier here.


Seems pretty intentional to me. The Beast Titan clearly goes into a pitcher's stance, while performing many pitcher mannerisms, when throwing the crushed rocks at the trapped members of the survey corp. Either the mangaka added the scene in homage to baseball or the Beast Titan has played baseball before (or both.) Either way it is intentional (though for different reasons.) IMO, the Beast Titan played baseball in his past and I find his dialogue to fit the scene quite well (A Perfect Game in baseball means no opposing batters make it to base, which fits the Beast Titan's goal of not allowing anyone to escape.)

Also, where is the basketball reference? I can only recall the baseball references above.

[Kato]

So someplace outside the walls have at least 1839 technology (the Daguerreotype which was the first commercial camera first came out in 1839, do note earlier cameras did exist). While the technology inside the walls seem to be roughly the 1700s though with some exceptions such as steam engines / railroads on top of the wall for transports and the absurd 3d maneuver gear. Now the area outside the wall can be far newer than 1839 but I am just trying to gauge relatively the earliest they can be on the technology scale if the technology development was relatively similar to our world.


What kind of an assumption is this? :smallconfused: "They have the technology of the earliest camera so their tech level must be of that time"? That's like suggesting "they have jazz music, so it must be the 1930s". That is not how technology works... or, well, has to work. You can have cameras and still no... whatever was incented before 1839. Or you can have no cameras but futuristic 3DMG...




I wonder how long we till we get memes of "M Night Shyamalan's The Titan. " Since it's also looking like the plot to Attack on Titan could pretty much be The Villiage, only with actual monsters
Hehe, actually looking forward to that. Thinking of some stuff from the movie.......


Possibly, though the thing is even with our current level of tech Titans would pose absolutely no threat to our military. So if there were people there that they cared about evacuating there would be nothing stopping them. Titans are big, easy to spot targets, with exploitable weaknesses. If the world had the knowledge of creating Titans in the first place, as well as the tech level we suspect, there's nothing shown that could stop them from intervening.


The tech that "creates" the Titians seems to be some sort of solar powered nanotechnology (Most wild Titians go to "sleep" at night).

So... that is probably one of the most far fetched theories yet. Because they go to sleep at night it must be solar powered nano tech? Because "weird disease" or heck, even just "magic" is too simple? But let's assume we got to the point where someone made nano tech gone wrong... what happened to the rest of technology? Royalty decides to surpress 200 years of development because...? Ruling is easier that way? Life is more comfy?



More in general... way to drag out that reveal this month. But maybe next month we will get some answers?

[Ramza00]

What kind of an assumption is this? :smallconfused: "They have the technology of the earliest camera so their tech level must be of that time"? That's like suggesting "they have jazz music, so it must be the 1930s". That is not how technology works... or, well, has to work. You can have cameras and still no... whatever was incented before 1839. Or you can have no cameras but futuristic 3DMG...


You seem to miss a few words I wrote, so let me bold them for you


Now the area outside the wall can be far newer than 1839 but I am just trying to gauge relatively the earliest they can be on the technology scale if the technology development was relatively similar to our world.

Do note I agree with your logic and my longer part I am not quoting said as much. I was trying to make a relatively baseline assuming technology happened in a similar way to our society. Technology does not have to work like that, especially in a steampunk campaign world. But since worldbuilding is an art and most people when they do worldbuilding they do not try to do a miss mash of technology unless it is necessary for it wastes screen time and it feels out of place on an unconscious level.

The more you change underlying assumptions of tech and such people start having more arguements that X does not make sense. It takes people out of the narrative. Like how come they did not do X to kill titans more effectively.

[HandofShadows]

So... that is probably one of the most far fetched theories yet. Because they go to sleep at night it must be solar powered nano tech? Because "weird disease" or heck, even just "magic" is too simple? But let's assume we got to the point where someone made nano tech gone wrong... what happened to the rest of technology? Royalty decides to surpress 200 years of development because...? Ruling is easier that way? Life is more comfy?


We actually have some evidence that it is some sort of nanotech because it can be transferred between people and it is programed to an extent. The King's Power (Coordinator) the Reiss family had was transferred from person to person and that it contains memories of how the world was before. The people who got the power acted differently than before and despite them wanting to use their power to stop the Titians, they couldn't. After the military revolt was over the captured nobles claimed that Reiss would fix everything and make "them loose their memories". In Chapter 63 we learn that Frieda Reiss had erased Historia's memories of her with the Coordinator's power. It is also stated by Reiss that the Walls were only put up only 100 years ago and that people were ordered to forget the past. The Reis family suppressed technology to keep themselves in power. No other reason is needed.

As for tech loss, Ymir found canned food in Casket Utgard labeled "Herring" (Chapter 38). The can was the same shape and size as modern cans of fish. (early cans where usually much larger and shaped differently) Also Ymir was able to read the label on the can when someone else couldn't. It is VERY easy to loose technology, hell the Greeks lost the ability to read and write at least once. Look at all the Myan lost when their civilization crashed. They went from large cities with advanced stone work to simple huts. Look at what was lost when the Western Roman Empire fell. Advanced road construction, aqueducts, the knowledge to make concrete, HAMBURGERS! (Yes, the Romans invented hamburgers.) Do you think you could design a computer ship? Do you know anyone that could make even a simple radio? Think out it.

[Kato]

We actually have some evidence that it is some sort of nanotech because it can be transferred between people and it is programed to an extent. The King's Power (Coordinator) the Reiss family had was transferred from person to person and that it contains memories of how the world was before. The people who got the power acted differently than before and despite them wanting to use their power to stop the Titians, they couldn't. After the military revolt was over the captured nobles claimed that Reiss would fix everything and make "them loose their memories". In Chapter 63 we learn that Frieda Reiss had erased Historia's memories of her with the Coordinator's power. It is also stated by Reiss that the Walls were only put up only 100 years ago and that people were ordered to forget the past. The Reis family suppressed technology to keep themselves in power. No other reason is needed.

As for tech loss, Ymir found canned food in Casket Utgard labeled "Herring" (Chapter 38). The can was the same shape and size as modern cans of fish. (early cans where usually much larger and shaped differently) Also Ymir was able to read the label on the can when someone else couldn't. It is VERY easy to loose technology, hell the Greeks lost the ability to read and write at least once. Look at all the Myan lost when their civilization crashed. They went from large cities with advanced stone work to simple huts. Look at what was lost when the Western Roman Empire fell. Advanced road construction, aqueducts, the knowledge to make concrete, HAMBURGERS! (Yes, the Romans invented hamburgers.) Do you think you could design a computer ship? Do you know anyone that could make even a simple radio? Think out it.

Yes, nobody argues there wasn't memory manipulation. But jumping from "the power to control minds (and turn into giant monsters" does not equal nanobots. (This isn't the Metal Gear franchise) I'm not saying it's not a possibility but I find the leap from one to the other quite large, because we have no idea what tech level we're even talking about.

Regarding tech loss, sure you can do that but on the one hand that implies quite a huge catastrophe, like more than the titans appearing because a civilization with technology capable of making nanotech titans can also nuke titans, or at least send in tanks to fight them.

I guess if we assume titan city is really just a small part of the world where royals decided to cut down on technology I'd be willing to accept there are e.g. no massive roads around, or other signs there once was a high tech divilization (even building standards should be more modern, at least some). But just saying "we lost all technology... " And obviously I can't build a computer ship or even a computer but that's not the same as the world losing the capabilities to do so. Of course if we accept a titan apocalypse can happen just as easily as a zombie apocalyse supposedly can...

sidenote: It might just be a matter of fashion but it doesn't seem like the outside world is really on a modern tech level either.


You seem to miss a few words I wrote, so let me bold them for you

Geez, I really shouldn't post stuff when I'm in a hurry. :smallredface: In my defense, it was at the very end of your statement and I was already half typing while reading... ahem.

[Ramza00]

We actually have some evidence that it is some sort of nanotech because it can be transferred between people and it is programed to an extent. The King's Power (Coordinator) the Reiss family had was transferred from person to person and that it contains memories of how the world was before. The people who got the power acted differently than before and despite them wanting to use their power to stop the Titians, they couldn't. After the military revolt was over the captured nobles claimed that Reiss would fix everything and make "them loose their memories". In Chapter 63 we learn that Frieda Reiss had erased Historia's memories of her with the Coordinator's power. It is also stated by Reiss that the Walls were only put up only 100 years ago and that people were ordered to forget the past. The Reis family suppressed technology to keep themselves in power. No other reason is needed.

How titanization works can have numerous different sources and in the end it will be just technobabble or some other form of babble of some sort. It could be nano bots. Or it can be an organic cause like some form of virus or bacteria, etc. Or it can be mystical like some form of curse. Or it can be metaphysical and start bring up stuff like angels and the ark of souls like this is some form of neo genesis evangelion. Or it can be a dozen of other factors. For all we know this used to be New York City in the 1980s and this is what happens when you have the EPA throw the Ghostbusters into jail. Someone else would have met up with Gozer instead of the Ghostbusters Quartet and this was the "Choose the form of your destructor" that someone accidently unleashed when they saw Gozer for the first time. Gozer unleashed ghosts that bonded with humans and turn them into Titans, beings who look like runaway toddler/ children except they eat people, except these children can look really really wierd.

Ultimately it does not matter since we do not have any real indications in the comics it is going to be X or Y.

[HandofShadows]

Regarding tech loss, sure you can do that but on the one hand that implies quite a huge catastrophe, like more than the titans appearing because a civilization with technology capable of making nanotech titans can also nuke titans, or at least send in tanks to fight them.

The point I am trying to make is that there was a catastrophic event. (Assuming it was the appearance of the Titians.) You seem to think that a limited number of Titians showed up and that a modern military would destroy them. You would be correct if just a few Titians showed up. But I am talking about 10, 20, 30 even HALF of the worlds population being turned into Titians ALL AT ONCE. No military would be able handle billions of Titians all at once especially since people in the military would be turning into Titians as well. We have already seen a whole town turned into Titians in a very short period of time in the manga.

PS. The nanotech idea actually isn't mine. Someone else here came up with it.

[Green Elf]

Hey guys, could you keep me up with the story by quoting this message and tell me what happened? Thanks!

[danzibr]

Hey guys, could you keep me up with the story by quoting this message and tell me what happened? Thanks!
Since when?

Speaking of which (sorta), I'm finally caught up!
I was getting pretty frustrated with the manga, fighting the same guys over and over, almost kill them numerous times, making little to no progress. Then finally, Armin becomes a titan and eats Berthold (or however you spell it), and they reclaim wall Maria. The loss was great, but hey, progress.

Oh, and yeah, Beast Titan gets away with Reiner. Of course, can't off all the bad guys.

[Green Elf]

Since when?

Speaking of which (sorta), I'm finally caught up!
I was getting pretty frustrated with the manga, fighting the same guys over and over, almost kill them numerous times, making little to no progress. Then finally, Armin becomes a titan and eats Berthold (or however you spell it), and they reclaim wall Maria. The loss was great, but hey, progress.

Oh, and yeah, Beast Titan gets away with Reiner. Of course, can't off all the bad guys.

Start on manga 15.

[Ramza00]

Start on manga 15.

Manga 15?

Do you mean Chapter 15?

Or Manga Volume 15? Which starts with Chapter 59 and ends with Chapter 62?

[Green Elf]

Manga 15?

Do you mean Chapter 15?

Or Manga Volume 15? Which starts with Chapter 59 and ends with Chapter 62?

Manga 15.
Manga Volume 15.

[Ramza00]

Massive Infodump

I have not seen an english version of this manga translation yet with the english in the speech bubbles (but that will come soon), but so far there has been translations of Attack on Titan Chapter 86 in several different languages.


Making sense of the history / infodump that was presented.


Almost two thousand years ago, 1820 years ago, A girl known as Ymir Fritz made a deal with a devil and gained the power of the titans. She was a titan that was extremely humanoid with boobs and tits, and she and her people conquered the world. Here people was the Eldia.
When Ymir Fritz died, her "soul" was split among 9 people and we have 9 titan shifters
About 1700 years later (so 120 years ago), the Titan War started, Mare which is a collection of multiple tribes who were oppressed by the Eldia. Somehow acquired some of the titan shifters, and after 80 years of fighting they gained 7 of the 9 Titan Shifters
I am speculating here, but based off what was revealed in Chapter 86 the Titan Wars is probably when mindless titans appeared, but that does not mean they were widespread.
During the titan wars King Fritz inherited the coordinate and he was of the Eldia (the people who ruled the world for 1700 years, but lost 7 of the 9 titan shifters). King Fritz decided to go to Paradi Island. He used the coordinate to create the 3 walls (out of titans) and many of the Eldia entered the walls and had their memories wiped. This action more or less made a ceasefire / limited peace of the Titan Wars. He was the 145th descendent of Ymir Fritz
Mare now rules the world besides the walled areas of Paradi Island. They also possess 7 of the 9 Titan Shifters. They now turned the tables and are oppressing and ghetozing the remaining Eldia who stayed behind.
Eldia Revivalists exist in the ghetto and are plotting revolution / warfare
Some of the fritz family stayed behind and did not go with King Fritz to the 3 walls. One of such people and probably the only survivor is Daina Fritz. The plan of the Eldia Revivalists is to sneak into the walls civilization and kidnap and acquire the coordinate with Daina Fritz leading them
Daina Fritz and Grisha Yeager get married and have a son. His name is Zeke / Sieg which means victory.
Turns out Mare wants to also acquire the lands of the walled civilization on Paradi island. They have the military power with world war 1ish technology with airplanes to easily conquer the walled civilization (full of Eldians) but they can't for the person with the coordinate could easily free the titans within the walls and unleash a hell on earth.
Instead they must also acquire the coordinate via subterfuge. They stated to the Eldians in ghettos that they want 7 children between the ages of 5 to 7 to become honorary Mare warriors, and it seems like they will inherit the titan shifter ability. Besides the titan shifters becoming honorary Mare there families will as well
Daina Fritz and Grisha Yeager enlist their son Zeke to this program
Zeke betrays them (when he becomes 7) and turns them over to the secret police
Daina Fritz, Grisha Yeager, and the rest of the Eldia Revivalists will be sent to Paradi Island, note this also is being called sent to heaven (a colloquialism for being disappeared) and Daina Fritz and Grisha Yeager and rest will be turn into mindless titans

More stuff but this remaining stuff is speculation

Some of the Eladia Revivalists look like some of the mindless titans we have seen
Notably, Daina Fritz (mother of Zeke and Grisha's 1st wife) looks like the smiling titan, the titan who ate Eren's mother. If so Daina Fritz ate Eren's mom and Eren via the Coordinate caused other titans to eat Zeke's mom
Paradi Island and the nearby continent look like Africa and Madagascar except flipped with the South Areas of Africa in the real world would be the north areas of Attack on Titan in their world. Note the climates of the lands are very different with Paradi Island being more like northern europe. In other worlds this is not the world we live in today, unless some form of Ragnarok type thing happened similar to how in the Tolkein universe the world was destroyed and rebuilt / heavily warped several times throughout history.
We do not know how much of this history we can take at face value due to unreliable narrator problems. For example the history of the Eladia is told via three different "sources", one of a source of people meant to keep the Eladia as underclass citizens and to instill fear into their children and fear of a secret police, the second was ruins and hieroglyphics which no one can read but people can glance at, and the oral histories of Daina Fritz. No doubt Zeke will claim different histories, and one of the big themes of this series is unreliable narrators, secret histories, and the power of propaganda.
We do not really know how mindless titans arose, but it is evident that they became more numerous during the titan war, and that the Mare have the power to convert people into titans (probably related to the aerosolized thing Zeke did to create titans)
Edit: Forgot to mention on the unreliable narrator part, anybody that read chapter 86 should reread chapter 54, for we also got a different version of the story of what happened 1800 years ago in a scene involving Historia Reiss and Freya Reiss, pay particular attention to the book Historia is learning to read from with instructruction by Freya. Freya then wipes Historia's memories in chapter 54.

[HandofShadows]

English version is out.

[HandofShadows]

Ramza00 has gotten it right.

Huge info dump. :smallbiggrin: So Eren and Zeke are half brothers. :smalleek: And Historia and Eren as distantly related (by marriage) as well. Grisha must have forgotten about his first wife or thought she was dead. I do note believe in "deal with the devil" for the Titian power, but it does prove my idea nanotech was wrong. :smallannoyed: There are supposed to be a total of 9 Shifter Titians and we have not seen that many yet, so we might get some new players in the game at some point. And one last point. The first person with Titian Powers was Ymir Ftitz. And oddly we have a Ymir wandering the story who we don't have a solid history on other than she is a Shifter Titian and is old. :smallconfused:

[Kato]

Yeah, not much to add to Ramza... the unreliable narrator bit might never get totally cleared up, but I guess the truth is somewhere in the middle.
The hint with Ymir is almost too obvious to be true :smallannoyed: we'll see..
Also.... yikes, I hope the author knows what he is doing with these.. parallels... to history... :smalleek:
And this background explains a lot about our shifter's characters...

[lord_khaine]

Refresh my memory, is Zeke the beast titan? would explain his slightly strange attitude.

And why should the author care about the parallels to history he might be drawing? its an exiting time with lots of interesting drama.
Though reminds me, are we allowed to discuss that? isnt it history at this point?

[Kato]

Refresh my memory, is Zeke the beast titan? would explain his slightly strange attitude.

And why should the author care about the parallels to history he might be drawing? its an exiting time with lots of interesting drama.
Though reminds me, are we allowed to discuss that? isnt it history at this point?

Yes. I had vague memory of it, others much clearer, apparently. It was mentioned back in chapter 70 or so.

Well, I think we are allowed to discuss things that happened, but we should be careful about any... controversial parts?
I'm pretty sure he cares for the parallels or he wouldn't put them in so blatantly... pretty sure the predominant German names in the cast are not coincidental now.

[Ramza00]

We should be careful about talking about fictional world history, and its parallels with our history here on earth, not because talking about history is banned on GITP forums, but because talking about controversial topics such as Politics, Religion, etc is banned.

One of the themes of the manga is it takes alot of inspiration from Norse mythology which is a mythology that includes things such as Ymir (which is part of the creation myth, note there is not 1 creation myth but many in Norse mythology), wars between Gods and Giants, and so on. In fact several of the names in Attack on Titan are heavily involved in Norse Mythology, or the mythology of other places in northern europe.




Another theme of the manga is looking into the ideal of totalitarian governments, governments runned by dictator's, secret police, official history of the world (vs the real history), propaganda, etc. Some people will say X will be like the Nazi's, or the Stalinist USSR, or the North Koreans, or X.

Who this totalitarian government is most like really does not matter for this story is not a 1:1 allegory where the totalitarian government is supposed to represent X, like in George Orwell's animal farm which is supposed to represent the Russian Revolution. Yes the story does deal with totalitarian themes, but it is not a 1:1 allegory, where certain things are proxies for other things.

[danzibr]

Huh. Knowing this, it'd be really interesting to go back and reread the series. Moreso when the next chapter comes out.

Oh, and I just discovered Before the Fall. Just read the first couple pages, get into that tomorrow.

[Green Elf]

Sorry, I lost you at "there are nine Titan shifters":'(

[Ramza00]

Sorry, I lost you at "there are nine Titan shifters":'(

That comment was not me explaining what happened in Chapter 59 to 86, but instead just talking about 86 and trying to make sense of it all for it was an infodump chapter and the info did not come from the same source (narratively it was a person recalling his past, but the sources of info from his past are different and each source of info is partial and disjointed). In addition it was a nested story where you are telling a general person life story but also exploring a greater history of a people and a culture. It was me making sure I understand what happened by laying out step by step what occurred over 40 something pages.

[danzibr]

So there was some mega Shifter that gave her powers to 9 of her people? Which do we know?

Fritz line->Fritz sister->Dr. Yeager->Erin: Controller
Mare people->person at the beginning of the manga->Ymir: Speedy (though this may not be an actual power)
Mare people->Berthold->Armin: Colossal
Mare people->Dude whose name I'm forgetting: Armored
Mare people->Zeke: Beast
Mare people->Dude: Quadruped
Mare people->Annie: Dunno what her special power is

That leaves 2 more, one which the Mare people had, and one not.

Huh, so I guess before the fall of Wall Maria, those 7 people came over to get the Controller power, right? Can't attack with an army because of what we learned in this chapter. Come to think of it, I'd better read Before the Fall before I continue in this thread :P

Damn, this manga just keeps getting better.

[HandofShadows]

Annie has a variant of armor hardening. Instead of hardening most of her body, she only hardens small sections (most often the back of her neck) She was also encased in a slab of super hard crystal last time we saw her.

[Ramza00]

Annie has a variant of armor hardening. Instead of hardening most of her body, she only hardens small sections (most often the back of her neck) She was also encased in a slab of super hard crystal last time we saw her.


Annie also has a roar that can summon titans, giving limited control over the titans.

[Lurkmoar]

Whelp...

Now my next question is... who did Dr Yeager eat to get his humanity back? The other shifter that left with the King to Paradi Island?

[noparlpf]

Whelp...

Now my next question is... who did Dr Yeager eat to get his humanity back? The other shifter that left with the King to Paradi Island?

Hmm. So there were two shifters left in the walls a hundred years ago or whatever, right? We know that Grisha stole the Coordinate power from Frieda Reiss (which is how Eren was able to get it from Grisha), but Grisha was already a shifter at that point.

Shifters we currently know are from Mare/"the village":
1. Armored Titan (Reiner)
2. Colossal Titan (Bertholdt; now Armin)
3. Female Titan (Annie)
4. Dancing Titan (Ymir; previously Marcel, who was sent along with Reiner, Bertholdt, and Annie)
5. Beast Titan (Zeke)
6. ??*
7. ??
Shifters we currently know are from the walls:
8. Progenitor Titan** (Frieda Reiss, Uri Reiss, &c., back to the King Fritz; now apparently part of Eren's titan)
9. ??
Shifters whose origins we don't currently know:
Rogue Titan (Eren; previously Grisha, from an unknown source***)

*It's possible that the Quadrupedal Titan is another Mare Shifter, but we don't know yet.
**Also, the Progenitor Titan doesn't exist as a distinct Shifter anymore; it seems to have been subsumed into Grisha/Eren's titan.
***Grisha shows up outside the walls as a human (presumably already a Shifter) in 830. Eren is born in 835. Annie, Reiner, Bertholdt, and Marcel don't attack the walls until 845. (Grisha eats Frieda Reiss and turns Eren into a titan in 845.) Zeke doesn't show up until 850, and he's obviously an adult at this point. It's hard to tell because of how sketchy the art style is, but I would guess he's around 30+. So it's probably been around 25 years since Zeke (age 7) turned his parents over to the Mare government. (The wikia timeline guesses Zeke was born ~816, which would make him 34 now, and that he turned his parents in ~823. The wikia authors also have access to some of the light novels and official guidebooks that I haven't seen, though, so maybe they're right.) However old he is, that leaves at least 7 years in between Grisha being caught by the Mare government and Grisha showing up outside the walls. That's probably too long for us to assume that there's any way he escaped without being turned into a mindless titan and then gotten Shifter powers later in some complicated plot twist. So if we're assuming that he was actually a mindless titan outside the walls, he has to have eaten somebody to become a Shifter. Since that was 15 years before the attack on the walls, I don't think it's particularly likely that he ate a Mare Shifter. So he probably ate the as-yet-unknown second Shifter from the walls. That said, I would have expected the Reiss family to know who the second Shifter was, that they had died, and that somebody had taken their power, but Rod Reiss specifically said that he didn't know anything about Grisha. So yeah, I have no idea where Grisha got his power.

[Lurkmoar]

However old he is, that leaves at least 7 years in between Grisha being caught by the Mare government and Grisha showing up outside the walls. That's probably too long for us to assume that there's any way he escaped without being turned into a mindless titan and then gotten Shifter powers later in some complicated plot twist. So if we're assuming that he was actually a mindless titan outside the walls, he has to have eaten somebody to become a Shifter. Since that was 15 years before the attack on the walls, I don't think it's particularly likely that he ate a Mare Shifter. So he probably ate the as-yet-unknown second Shifter from the walls. That said, I would have expected the Reiss family to know who the second Shifter was, that they had died, and that somebody had taken their power, but Rod Reiss specifically said that he didn't know anything about Grisha. So yeah, I have no idea where Grisha got his power.

The funny thing is, it's likely that Grisha has no idea WHO he got the shifter mojo from. Armin and Eren had no recollections of their mindless states. Grisha would only have the lore he got from his time in the Elodian Restoration Movement and knowledge about Titans from Diana, so he probably knew that the transfer happens via cannibalism. The identity of the shifter could be one mystery that Grisha racked his brain about for years and never got an answer. But... there were three journals... so maybe someone was around to clue him in?

Also... if one Titan Shifter eats all the others... does that mean Ymir Fritz is reborn mentally?

[noparlpf]

The funny thing is, it's likely that Grisha has no idea WHO he got the shifter mojo from. Armin and Eren had no recollections of their mindless states. Grisha would only have the lore he got from his time in the Elodian Restoration Movement and knowledge about Titans from Diana, so he probably knew that the transfer happens via cannibalism. The identity of the shifter could be one mystery that Grisha racked his brain about for years and never got an answer. But... there were three journals... so maybe someone was around to clue him in?

Also... if one Titan Shifter eats all the others... does that mean Ymir Fritz is reborn mentally?

True, although if he was able to access some of the previous Shifter's memories he might have figured it out on his own eventually. He seemed like a pretty smart guy.

Maybe? But who knows. We know that the Reiss family inherited King Fritz's will with the Progenitor Titan power, but Eren only seems to have fragments of Grisha's memories without any of the Reiss's or King Fritz's. There might be some kind of "oh, it's genetic memory so it has to be a direct relative" bs explanation later.

[Lurkmoar]

Maybe? But who knows. We know that the Reiss family inherited King Fritz's will with the Progenitor Titan power, but Eren only seems to have fragments of Grisha's memories without any of the Reiss's or King Fritz's. There might be some kind of "oh, it's genetic memory so it has to be a direct relative" bs explanation later.

Eren did have a few flashes of Frieda's memories. It might explain why he felt the Krista persona was somehow 'off'

[noparlpf]

Eren did have a few flashes of Frieda's memories. It might explain why he felt the Krista persona was somehow 'off'

Oh, I'm probably misremembering then. It can be kinda hard for me to keep track of everything with a long-running monthly series. Do you know which chapter(s) that was?

[lord_khaine]

Was Grisha a shifter before he got the Cordinate power though? Im asking because i dont recall if he harmed himself, or injected himself with something before he stole it.
But from a storytellers perspective, then it seems like a waste to remove one of a limited number of shifters like that.

[Kato]

The funny thing is, it's likely that Grisha has no idea WHO he got the shifter mojo from. Armin and Eren had no recollections of their mindless states. Grisha would only have the lore he got from his time in the Elodian Restoration Movement and knowledge about Titans from Diana, so he probably knew that the transfer happens via cannibalism. The identity of the shifter could be one mystery that Grisha racked his brain about for years and never got an answer. But... there were three journals... so maybe someone was around to clue him in?

Also... if one Titan Shifter eats all the others... does that mean Ymir Fritz is reborn mentally?
Jup, just like in Naruto... just what we need...


Was Grisha a shifter before he got the Cordinate power though? Im asking because i dont recall if he harmed himself, or injected himself with something before he stole it.
But from a storytellers perspective, then it seems like a waste to remove one of a limited number of shifters like that.

I was thinking the same. It seems stupid to attack the Reiss' with just any old titan, to the point of being suicidal. If he actually combined two shifters there and then we might not get an answer... unless it's in the journals.

[noparlpf]

Was Grisha a shifter before he got the Cordinate power though? Im asking because i dont recall if he harmed himself, or injected himself with something before he stole it.
But from a storytellers perspective, then it seems like a waste to remove one of a limited number of shifters like that.

You should probably put that in spoiler tags.
Yeah, it seems like he has to have been. We've just been told that he was sentenced to be turned into a mindless titan, and we know that he showed up as a human ~7-10 years later. It's remotely possible that somehow he escaped being transformed and survived outside the walls as a human that entire time, but that's stretching suspension of disbelief a bit much even for SnK. It's simplest to assume that he ate a Shifter to be able to turn back into a human.
Plus, when he attacked the Reiss chapel his Titan form didn't look like a standard mindless titan. Also, it would be really dumb of him to try to attack the Reiss family as a mindless titan and just hope that he'd get lucky and be able to eat Frieda despite her having the Coordinate power.

[Lurkmoar]

Oh, I'm probably misremembering then. It can be kinda hard for me to keep track of everything with a long-running monthly series. Do you know which chapter(s) that was?

It was chapter 53.

[noparlpf]

It was chapter 53.

Ah okay, thanks. That was what, like two years ago now? Wow.

Oh, that's right. He remembered seeing Frieda's face in a mirror, so that has to have been her memory. But I wonder why Grisha and Eren don't seem to have been strongly affected by the Fritz/Reiss family memories when all of the Reiss family to inherit Coordinate apparently exhibited significant changes to their personality.

Edit: Oops, accidentally deleted one of the spoiler tags. Fixed.

[Lurkmoar]

Jup, just like in Naruto... just what we need...

Hey, Ymir Fritz was at least stated to exist so it won't be a surprise if that's someone's end goal(Night Owl: Hahaha, my evil plan to have all TEH TITAN POWERS WILL NOW HAPPEN, ONCE I EAT EREN YEAGER!). Kaguya was pretty much dropped in audience's lap in the last story arc. I'd also argue that Danzo, the Rinnegan and the Sage of the Six paths should have been mentioned MUCH, MUCH earlier given their legendary status(okay, Danzo isn't legendary, but he was a rival of the Third Hokage).

[Kato]

Hey, Ymir Fritz was at least stated to exist so it won't be a surprise if that's someone's end goal(Night Owl: Hahaha, my evil plan to have all TEH TITAN POWERS WILL NOW HAPPEN, ONCE I EAT EREN YEAGER!). Kaguya was pretty much dropped in audience's lap in the last story arc. I'd also argue that Danzo, the Rinnegan and the Sage of the Six paths should have been mentioned MUCH, MUCH earlier given their legendary status(okay, Danzo isn't legendary, but he was a rival of the Third Hokage).

But you can't do that if you make up your story as you go along :smallbiggrin: Nah, I'm sure Kishi had that all planned out.. ahem.

Anyway, I'll admit, here I'd actually like it to happen. And then the combined forces of humanity to rid Earth(?) of it. (Which I guess means Levi and Mikasa)

[noparlpf]

But you can't do that if you make up your story as you go along :smallbiggrin: Nah, I'm sure Kishi had that all planned out.. ahem.

Anyway, I'll admit, here I'd actually like it to happen. And then the combined forces of humanity to rid Earth(?) of it. (Which I guess means Levi and Mikasa)

Nah, it'd be Levi vs. Mikasa because Levi's trying to kill Eren. Mikasa only cares about Eren, not humanity as a whole.

[danzibr]

Huh. I just got up to date with Before the Fall. Not many thoughts to share... pretty decent.

[Kato]

Huh. I just got up to date with Before the Fall. Not many thoughts to share... pretty decent.
Oh, is that still ongoing? I think I dropped it after the first three chapters or so... ahem.


Nah, it'd be Levi vs. Mikasa because Levi's trying to kill Eren. Mikasa only cares about Eren, not humanity as a whole.

Good point. But I'm going to guess Eren will somehow be safe then (?)

[noparlpf]

Oh ****. The Smiling Titan was Grisha's first wife.

Edit: Oh ****. Well, it doesn't answer how Grisha ended up getting the Shifter power yet, but it must have come from that guy. And it's also still not clear whether it's one of the Mare Shifters or the other Wall Shifter.
He's huge though. That looks like over 20m, judging by the two humans right next to him (they're a similar size, say a human is roughly ~2m tall even though that's a pretty tall human). I count ~14-15m from his knees to his head.

[Kato]

Oh ****. The Smiling Titan was Grisha's first wife.

Edit: Oh ****. Well, it doesn't answer how Grisha ended up getting the Shifter power yet, but it must have come from that guy. And it's also still not clear whether it's one of the Mare Shifters or the other Wall Shifter.

Ugh, I hate stupid, pointless coincidences...

Same with the guy from thrity years ago being the same guy to bring Grisha there.
The Owl thing I'm okay with, I guess. I mean, it's a bit weird but fine. But that other guy just being there... er... why? Dina being the titan? WHY? Because yh'e secretly attracted to Eren who is her.... nothing? Well, her husband's son but that doesn't mean anything...

Now I want to know what kruger did to Grisha to hand the titan power over...
And what happens to a "normal" human if they get injected? Does that mean the Ackermann's would be immune since they're not... Eldian?

[Razade]

If this were another manga, by another author with another art style all of this might actually have been a decent reveal. Unfortunately Attack on Titan is just Claymore: The Yaoi Addition and it's a pile of steaming hot garbage. For the life of me I cannot understand how it got so popular and has maintained that popularity. On the bright side, it gave us The Promised Neverland so I guess I can't be too unhappy.

[HandofShadows]

Ugh, I hate stupid, pointless coincidences...

Same with the guy from thrity years ago being the same guy to bring Grisha there.
The Owl thing I'm okay with, I guess. I mean, it's a bit weird but fine. But that other guy just being there... er... why? Dina being the titan? WHY? Because yh'e secretly attracted to Eren who is her.... nothing? Well, her husband's son but that doesn't mean anything...

Now I want to know what kruger did to Grisha to hand the titan power over...
And what happens to a "normal" human if they get injected? Does that mean the Ackermann's would be immune since they're not... Eldian?


Actually it's probably not a coincidence. The killing of the sister by the dogs was something that made that guy realize that he was on the wrong side. As for what happens to a normal human, they transform. The Ackermann's are something different and not normal humans. We really don't know what would happen if they were injected.

[danzibr]

Oh ****. The Smiling Titan was Grisha's first wife.

Edit: Oh ****. Well, it doesn't answer how Grisha ended up getting the Shifter power yet, but it must have come from that guy. And it's also still not clear whether it's one of the Mare Shifters or the other Wall Shifter.
He's huge though. That looks like over 20m, judging by the two humans right next to him (they're a similar size, say a human is roughly ~2m tall even though that's a pretty tall human). I count ~14-15m from his knees to his head.
That was my first thought, that the dude was huge. Then again, Grisha looked really big in Titan form, way bigger than Eren, at least.

Ugh, I hate stupid, pointless coincidences...

Same with the guy from thrity years ago being the same guy to bring Grisha there.
The Owl thing I'm okay with, I guess. I mean, it's a bit weird but fine. But that other guy just being there... er... why? Dina being the titan? WHY? Because yh'e secretly attracted to Eren who is her.... nothing? Well, her husband's son but that doesn't mean anything...

Now I want to know what kruger did to Grisha to hand the titan power over...
And what happens to a "normal" human if they get injected? Does that mean the Ackermann's would be immune since they're not... Eldian?

Eh, I liked it. And, as HandofShadows points out below, it may not be pointless. Well, not the guy that died.

If this were another manga, by another author with another art style all of this might actually have been a decent reveal. Unfortunately Attack on Titan is just Claymore: The Yaoi Addition and it's a pile of steaming hot garbage. For the life of me I cannot understand how it got so popular and has maintained that popularity. On the bright side, it gave us The Promised Neverland so I guess I can't be too unhappy.
So you're saying I should read Claymore, too?

Actually it's probably not a coincidence. The killing of the sister by the dogs was something that made that guy realize that he was on the wrong side. As for what happens to a normal human, they transform. The Ackermann's are something different and not normal humans. We really don't know what would happen if they were injected.
I got the feeling they're just different bloodlines. Not not normal humans.

[noparlpf]

That was my first thought, that the dude was huge. Then again, Grisha looked really big in Titan form, way bigger than Eren, at least.

My suspicion is that Isayama just isn't very good at scale. According to his official guidebook, Frieda's Titan is 13m and Grisha's is 15m. I'm going to go over the pages from ch63 and see how well their Titan forms scale up relative to the rest of the Reiss family.

Edit: Yeah, I don't know.
-For example, the page 10-11 spread with the Reiss family lined up and Grisha opposite them; assuming Grisha is supposed to be at the same scale as the Reisses, everybody's a little bit off. I'm measuring from a scan, so it'll be [cm of character height]/[inch on this page as measured using photoshop]. Based on their official heights, Frieda (171cm) is at a scale of about 15.3cm/in, Rod (158cm) is at a scale of ~17.4cm/in, and Grisha is at a scale of ~13.2cm/in. That's accounting for the bent posture - I measured Grisha from head to pelvis, hip to knee, and knee to heel, then added them.
-On page 16, I'm assuming the Reisses running away are closer to us than Titan Grisha and Titan Frieda, so I'm skipping the humans on that page. Neither of the Titans is standing straight, so I did my best to measure in straight lines from joint to joint again. It's a bit hard because Isayama's rendering of limbs doesn't always seem to obey human anatomical constraints, especially on titans. Anyway, the scale seems pretty good here - Grisha (15m) is ~123cm/in and Frieda (13m) is ~125cm/in. That's close enough that I'll call it measuring error from trying to accommodate the posture.
-Then on page 21, looking at the panel where Grisha is holding the older Reiss brother, it's a little hard to measure because of the angle, but the Reiss brother seems to be roughly 4x as tall as Grisha's hand is across the knuckles. Back on page 16, based on a scale of 123cm/in, Grisha's weird disproportionate Titan fist is only ~86cm across the knuckles. That would make the Reiss brother on page 21 ~350cm tall. I give up.

[Kato]

Actually it's probably not a coincidence. The killing of the sister by the dogs was something that made that guy realize that he was on the wrong side. As for what happens to a normal human, they transform. The Ackermann's are something different and not normal humans. We really don't know what would happen if they were injected.


Eh, I liked it. And, as HandofShadows points out below, it may not be pointless. Well, not the guy that died.

Eh... I know I have no proof but I'm pretty sure he was "good" all along and just punished Grisha to teach him to be more careful. Obviously, I could be totally wrong, but the story doesn't mind it's good guys doing bad things, so that seems like it makes more sense than him switching alingments because of what happened.


My suspicion is that Isayama just isn't very good at scale. According to his official guidebook, Frieda's Titan is 13m and Grisha's is 15m. I'm going to go over the pages from ch63 and see how well their Titan forms scale up relative to the rest of the Reiss family.


Yeah, I'm quite confident if you try to do the math on the titan sizes you'll often run into problems...

[Lurkmoar]

Night Owl couldn't save the Restoration movement without tipping his hand and revealing his identity. This is just a guess, but I doubt his superiors knew that he was a shifter. If anything, I'd guess that he was the second fragment of Ymir's power that was thought to be with the rest of the Elodians on Paradi Island.

Diana didn't seem to have been tortured, so at a guess, Night Owl did intervene to keep her from revealing any information.

Danzib, Claymore is worth reading. And it's all done!

[danzibr]

Hey, cool about Claymore. I'll get on that. Thanks!

[HandofShadows]

New Chapter

Finished off the history leason. And we learn that the Titians power will kill you after 13 years. :smalleek:

[Kato]

Eff you Isayama and your pun...


Titans die after 13 years! That explains why the king doesn't want the ultimate power. Also, it doesn't quite explain the line of succession, though.
Even worse... titan power goes to random babies?! REALLY? I know you need an excuse for why they didn't just disappear but that's just... okay.
Grisha doesn't want to fight but he owes it to his comrades or something... what exactly is the plan again? Getting the titan power, waging war against the normal humans and kill a bunch more? Seems like that will make many happy. And why didn't Eren use the power earlier? Grisha kept pushing for that but he never really gave an answer. Yeah, you didn't want Dina to be a baby machine, good reasoning but what the hell has it to do with the question asked?!

Anyway, I guess decent chapter overall. We're done with the backstory and now we need a few more real-canon(?) names for the titans... though I guess Colossal, Armored, Female, Beast, Founding, Attack... work well enough.

[Ramza00]

Most recent chapter, Attack on Titan Chapter 88 (Dec 2016)


So Eren in modern times is 15 and it has been less than a year since he learned he has titan powers (probably closer to a period of 4 to6 months, but I would have to do lots of counting). He learned of his titan powers after the 2nd wall was breached and also repaired at the battle of trost. This happened in the year 850 in the wall calendar. In this manga chapter 88 he states he probably has 8 years left.

The First Wall was breached in the year 845, and it was at this time that Eren inherited his father's titan powers and thus has the abilities of the Attack / Rogue and Progenitor / Coordinate Titan.

In the Year 842, Frieda Reiss inherits the power of the Progenitor / Coordinate Titan. She had it for 3 years before Grisha Yeager stole the power at the Reiss Chapel and killed much of the royal family. She was supposedly unpracticed in how to use it to its full potential.

Ymir the character who has the power of the dancing Titan probably ate Marcel in the Year 845 right before the "Warriors" attacked the wall. (The Warriors being the Marleyans sent out the Colossal / Reiner Braun, Armored / Bertolt Hoover, Annie Leonhart / Female titan and Marcel to try to obtain the Progenitor / Coordinate Titan.) So she probably has 8 or so years left but less time than Eren does since Ymir acquired her titan power prior to the 1st wall being attacked while Eren acquired his power after the 1st wall was attacked.

We do not know how much time Reiner, Annie, or Zeke have left. I wonder if Annie being in a coma / crystal counts against this time and if so talk about a productive use of your last few years.

---------

So what is making me question the 13 year number is chapter 71 of the manga. Former Survey Corps Commander Keith Shadis stated that he found Grisha Yeager 20 years ago (so 15 years prior to the first wall being attacked). Is this a mistranslation of Chapter 71 or is the timeline messed up?

Lets ignore this




If instead we take the fact Eren was 10 years old when the first wall was attacked and he ate his dad and acquired the titan power, combined with a 9 month pregnancy, and the time it took for Grisha to meet Eren's mom Carla, Grisha learning about the walls, Grisha curing the plague, etc then Grisha did not have much time left.

Grisha was getting close to his 13 year limit since we know he had a 10 year old child and all the other stuff. If Grisha Yeager was running out of time, was he relying passing the coordinate onto his son instead of using the Titan Power of the King himself with the goal of hoping that Eren would be better at using the power and further away from the First King's goal due to the fact there was an intermediary (Grisha) in between Frieda Reiss and Eren Yeager blood since Eren did not eat anyone of royal blood?

So is the timeline accurate, is there a mistake in the timeline, or are we getting more unreliable narrator? Is Former Survey Corps Commander Keith Shadis giving us unreliable narrator with him finding Grisha Yeager 20 years ago or is Owl / Eren Krueger giving us unreliable narration with the 13 year Titan Shifter Ymir Curse, or are both of them unreliable narrators? Why did Grisha decide to pass the Coordinate onto Eren was it the 13 years or some other reason (we were given other reasons prior to this chapter)?

[Lurkmoar]

RE: The Rogue Titan's real name...

Is there a different translation? I think Assault would sound cooler.

[Kato]

Holy cow, how do people remember these things? But yes, something doesn't add up there...
Frankly I think lowly enough of Isayama he didn't think of tha back then... rather than Keith being a poor narrator or a translation issue. OR he's going to pull another trick, like Grisha is such a good doctor he fixed this somehow...

[Ramza00]

Holy cow, how do people remember these things? But yes, something doesn't add up there...
Frankly I think lowly enough of Isayama he didn't think of tha back then... rather than Keith being a poor narrator or a translation issue. OR he's going to pull another trick, like Grisha is such a good doctor he fixed this somehow...

I remembered the 5 year gap first wall and second wall / battle of trosh for it was important in the story. I had to look up Eren's age and the specific year 850.

I remembered Frieda and the predecessor to Frieda for it was an important plot point due to the people in Freida's life such as Historia.

I had to look up chapter 71 which was the backstory explanation of events that occurred prior to the titan attack on the first wall. Knowing it was chapter 71 was found via google and the wiki.

-------




Believe it or not you can fake an awesome memory by having enough rudimentary facts, a framework, and then the ability to use that framework to "build upwards" using information sources such as the internet.

While it was not the first person who argue this, but I loved how the character Abbe Faria, the monk / priest who befriends Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo. He made the point in his education of Dante's that once you have read the right 100 or so books (the exact number escapes me) that you have learned almost all of human knowledge for you now have the framework to digest the rest of human knowledge. An educated man he explains to Dante is a person who has enough of the basics to incorporate the more advanced stuff later. I am not doing this scene justice rigt now.

Well a person who has awesome memory, or is smart, is not a person who remembers everything, but instead remembers enough that if he knows where to look he can use tools to fill in the blanks.

-----

I am going to stop for I am now sounding like a pompous jerk. I am not a person who is that full of himself, I deal with my shortcomings day to day (I have a HORRIBLE memory, ADHD, and other issues) and figuring out ways to adapt and merely keep up is sometime exhausting.

But it makes me really good at Attack on Titan trivia and analysis :smalltongue:

[noparlpf]

Most recent chapter, Attack on Titan Chapter 88 (Dec 2016)


So Eren in modern times is 15 and it has been less than a year since he learned he has titan powers (probably closer to a period of 4 to6 months, but I would have to do lots of counting). He learned of his titan powers after the 2nd wall was breached and also repaired at the battle of trost. This happened in the year 850 in the wall calendar. In this manga chapter 88 he states he probably has 8 years left.

The First Wall was breached in the year 845, and it was at this time that Eren inherited his father's titan powers and thus has the abilities of the Attack / Rogue and Progenitor / Coordinate Titan.

In the Year 842, Frieda Reiss inherits the power of the Progenitor / Coordinate Titan. She had it for 3 years before Grisha Yeager stole the power at the Reiss Chapel and killed much of the royal family. She was supposedly unpracticed in how to use it to its full potential.

Ymir the character who has the power of the dancing Titan probably ate Marcel in the Year 845 right before the "Warriors" attacked the wall. (The Warriors being the Marleyans sent out the Colossal / Reiner Braun, Armored / Bertolt Hoover, Annie Leonhart / Female titan and Marcel to try to obtain the Progenitor / Coordinate Titan.) So she probably has 8 or so years left but less time than Eren does since Ymir acquired her titan power prior to the 1st wall being attacked while Eren acquired his power after the 1st wall was attacked.

We do not know how much time Reiner, Annie, or Zeke have left. I wonder if Annie being in a coma / crystal counts against this time and if so talk about a productive use of your last few years.

---------

So what is making me question the 13 year number is chapter 71 of the manga. Former Survey Corps Commander Keith Shadis stated that he found Grisha Yeager 20 years ago (so 15 years prior to the first wall being attacked). Is this a mistranslation of Chapter 71 or is the timeline messed up?

Lets ignore this




If instead we take the fact Eren was 10 years old when the first wall was attacked and he ate his dad and acquired the titan power, combined with a 9 month pregnancy, and the time it took for Grisha to meet Eren's mom Carla, Grisha learning about the walls, Grisha curing the plague, etc then Grisha did not have much time left.

Grisha was getting close to his 13 year limit since we know he had a 10 year old child and all the other stuff. If Grisha Yeager was running out of time, was he relying passing the coordinate onto his son instead of using the Titan Power of the King himself with the goal of hoping that Eren would be better at using the power and further away from the First King's goal due to the fact there was an intermediary (Grisha) in between Frieda Reiss and Eren Yeager blood since Eren did not eat anyone of royal blood?

So is the timeline accurate, is there a mistake in the timeline, or are we getting more unreliable narrator? Is Former Survey Corps Commander Keith Shadis giving us unreliable narrator with him finding Grisha Yeager 20 years ago or is Owl / Eren Krueger giving us unreliable narration with the 13 year Titan Shifter Ymir Curse, or are both of them unreliable narrators? Why did Grisha decide to pass the Coordinate onto Eren was it the 13 years or some other reason (we were given other reasons prior to this chapter)?


Yeah, I was going to bring up the timeline too. I've spent the last half hour working on it (instead of studying for my biochem final tomorrow, ugh) and I think it just barely works out. It also explains why Grisha gave the Titan power to Eren instead of using it himself.
We previously thought that Grisha showed up in 830 based on what Shadis says in chapter 71: "I met Grisha what...twenty years ago now?" That's pretty vague and could be a bit off. The current year is 850. Grisha transferred the Titan power to Eren in 845 when the walls fell. If we assume that he did that instead of using it himself because he was near the end of his thirteen years (or at least thought he was, regardless of whether it turns out to be true later), that would mean that he actually showed up in 832, not 830. And that he didn't waste much time getting to the walls, despite apparently having amnesia when he first turned up.
(That also means Zeke is a lot younger than we thought. A few chapters back when he revealed his name, I had guessed 30+ and the wikia editors had guessed 34. But they've already updated a bunch of stuff, and now they're saying he's 25. He doesn't really look 25, but I guess it's impossible to tell with Isayama's art style.)

Edit:

RE: The Rogue Titan's real name...

Is there a different translation? I think Assault would sound cooler.

Here's the original page in Japanese (http://i.imgur.com/I8IHS2A.jpg). It says "na wa shingeki no kyojin" (thank goodness for furigana) which means "[its] name is attack titan." Other translations are "advance," "charge," or "assault," but Isayama decided it's "attack" so that's what we're stuck with.
Also explains why the official English name of the manga is "Attack on Titan" when that's a lousy translation of "Shingeki no Kyojin." Don't try to make bilingual puns, dude. Though to be fair, it doesn't really work in English due to the way English handles plurals ("the Attack Titan" vs "Attack of the Titans") and the way it handles words that can be both a noun and a verb (making attack a noun, "Attack of the Titans," or making attack a verb, "Attacking Titans").

[danzibr]

Here's the original page in Japanese (http://i.imgur.com/I8IHS2A.jpg). It says "na wa shingeki no kyojin" (thank goodness for furigana) which means "[its] name is attack titan." Other translations are "advance," "charge," or "assault," but Isayama decided it's "attack" so that's what we're stuck with.
Also explains why the official English name of the manga is "Attack on Titan" when that's a lousy translation of "Shingeki no Kyojin." Don't try to make bilingual puns, dude. Though to be fair, it doesn't really work in English due to the way English handles plurals ("the Attack Titan" vs "Attack of the Titans") and the way it handles words that can be both a noun and a verb (making attack a noun, "Attack of the Titans," or making attack a verb, "Attacking Titans").
All this time I was wondering about the title. Like, slapping "no" after a noun can turn it into an adjective, so it'd be attack titan(s).

[Kato]

Here's the original page in Japanese (http://i.imgur.com/I8IHS2A.jpg). It says "na wa shingeki no kyojin" (thank goodness for furigana) which means "[its] name is attack titan." Other translations are "advance," "charge," or "assault," but Isayama decided it's "attack" so that's what we're stuck with.
Also explains why the official English name of the manga is "Attack on Titan" when that's a lousy translation of "Shingeki no Kyojin." Don't try to make bilingual puns, dude. Though to be fair, it doesn't really work in English due to the way English handles plurals ("the Attack Titan" vs "Attack of the Titans") and the way it handles words that can be both a noun and a verb (making attack a noun, "Attack of the Titans," or making attack a verb, "Attacking Titans").
Many translations fall victim to this, especially if they are ments as puns or as a double meaning... even more so when the translater has no idea it's meant to be like that.
I guess we should consider what it sounds like to Japanese... after all it's kind of misleading/confusing in the original, too, or at least not entirely clear.


All this time I was wondering about the title. Like, slapping "no" after a noun can turn it into an adjective, so it'd be attack titan(s).
That's... not really what "no" does. It's more literally your English possessive "s". Like... "danzibr no xyz" is literally danzibr's xyz. Of course this sounds sometimes more awkward, like when they use it with pronouns "watashi no" is I's instead of my.
(sidenote: this is from my limited knowledge. Of course feel free to correct me)


I had to look up chapter 71 which was the backstory explanation of events that occurred prior to the titan attack on the first wall. Knowing it was chapter 71 was found via google and the wiki.

That was mostly the part I was wondering about... I kind of remember Keith reminiscing but twenty years totally slipped my mind.
I guess as you say, it just barely works out... if we allow for him to be generous on the time and if he did pass it on quite late.

[noparlpf]

That's... not really what "no" does. It's more literally your English possessive "s". Like... "danzibr no xyz" is literally danzibr's xyz. Of course this sounds sometimes more awkward, like when they use it with pronouns "watashi no" is I's instead of my.
(sidenote: this is from my limited knowledge. Of course feel free to correct me)

The particle "no" has multiple uses. One use is the possessive. It can also be used to make a noun act as an adjective. For example, "kemono no kyojin" is meant as "beast titan," not "the beast's titan." Another use is kind of like the English preposition "of." Japanese grammar is weird.

[danzibr]

That's... not really what "no" does. It's more literally your English possessive "s". Like... "danzibr no xyz" is literally danzibr's xyz. Of course this sounds sometimes more awkward, like when they use it with pronouns "watashi no" is I's instead of my.
(sidenote: this is from my limited knowledge. Of course feel free to correct me)
Just a sec...

The particle "no" has multiple uses. One use is the possessive. It can also be used to make a noun act as an adjective. For example, "kemono no kyojin" is meant as "beast titan," not "the beast's titan." Another use is kind of like the English preposition "of." Japanese grammar is weird.
There we go.

The example that came to mind for me is this: "renga" means brick, like as a noun, but if you want to talk a brick house or something, to adjective-ify it, you'd use "renga no."

The best way to think of "no" (at least in my mind... I took 8 semesters of Japanese but I'm far from a pro) is as a backwards of. Like "A no B" would be "B of A" in English. It handles both possessive *and* the adjective business!

[Lurkmoar]

So... did Eren Kruger have the titan power already when he first encountered kid Grisha?! Geez, the 13 year thing really eats up a lot... might have been better to pad it out to 25 or something... man.

[noparlpf]

So... did Eren Kruger have the titan power already when he first encountered kid Grisha?! Geez, the 13 year thing really eats up a lot... might have been better to pad it out to 25 or something... man.

Hm... It does work out, but again, it's tight. And leads to the question, who recruited Kruger and when? Isayama really doesn't give his characters much downtime between major events.

Here's all we know for sure of Grisha's timeline:
-age 18 c. 824 when he joined the Eldian Restorationists (basing the ages off of this - explicitly stated in ch86)
-> age 19 c. 825 when Zeke was born (I mean, I guess it was pre-birth control...)
-> age 26 c. 832 when Kruger died (basing the years off of this - estimate based on the new info from ch88)
-> age 29 in 835 when Eren was born
-> age 39 in 845 when the walls fell

We saw Grisha as a kid in chapter 86, plus two panels where he's probably in his mid-teens (his sideburns were shorter than on the page when we're told he's 18), which were probably meant to indicate that he was a younger tween at the beginning of the chapter. His younger sister wasn't much shorter and she was clearly pre-pubescent, so it's reasonable to assume Grisha wasn't any older than 12-13. But it's hard to say how old anybody's supposed to be with Isayama's art style.

Assuming Kruger had only recently become a Shifter when he met kid-Grisha, that would have happened c. 819 when Grisha was about 13. That's a plausible age for a kid to do dumb things their parents told them not to...

...But dang, Isayama's art style is so sketchy and disproportionate.
Chapter 86 page 4 shows Grisha, Fay, and an adult male Eldian standing next to each other. Grisha comes up to this guy's chest. (It looks like he only comes up to the waist of some of the Marleyan men.) Based on a couple sources, the average height of adult German men in the mid-1800s was around 165cm (5'5"), so let's assume that guy is about 165cm. He's about 6.75 heads tall, whereas the average person in figure drawing is about 7.5 heads tall. Anyway, assuming that guy is about 165cm tall, kid-Grisha is very roughly 112cm tall (3'8"). That's absurdly small for a 13-year-old boy, regardless of likely malnutrition. That's like, 0.1 percentile. A modern 50th-percentile 13-year-old boy is ~88-89% of a modern 50th-percentile adult man's height. And we know Grisha grew up to be a pretty tall guy at 182cm. I give up, man. I'm not doing any more of these. I can't believe I just spent over half an hour working this out.

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot. We knew that he was bad at drawing kids' proportions from the beginning. 10-year-old Eren and Mikasa were waist-height too. Keep in mind that a modern 50th-percentile 10-year-old boy is ~139cm (4'6").

[danzibr]

Hm... It does work out, but again, it's tight. And leads to the question, who recruited Kruger and when? Isayama really doesn't give his characters much downtime between major events.

Here's all we know for sure of Grisha's timeline:
-age 18 c. 824 when he joined the Eldian Restorationists (basing the ages off of this - explicitly stated in ch86)
-> age 19 c. 825 when Zeke was born (I mean, I guess it was pre-birth control...)
-> age 26 c. 832 when Kruger died (basing the years off of this - estimate based on the new info from ch88)
-> age 29 in 835 when Eren was born
-> age 39 in 845 when the walls fell

We saw Grisha as a kid in chapter 86, plus two panels where he's probably in his mid-teens (his sideburns were shorter than on the page when we're told he's 18), which were probably meant to indicate that he was a younger tween at the beginning of the chapter. His younger sister wasn't much shorter and she was clearly pre-pubescent, so it's reasonable to assume Grisha wasn't any older than 12-13. But it's hard to say how old anybody's supposed to be with Isayama's art style.

Assuming Kruger had only recently become a Shifter when he met kid-Grisha, that would have happened c. 819 when Grisha was about 13. That's a plausible age for a kid to do dumb things their parents told them not to...

...But dang, Isayama's art style is so sketchy and disproportionate.
Chapter 86 page 4 shows Grisha, Fay, and an adult male Eldian standing next to each other. Grisha comes up to this guy's chest. (It looks like he only comes up to the waist of some of the Marleyan men.) Based on a couple sources, the average height of adult German men in the mid-1800s was around 165cm (5'5"), so let's assume that guy is about 165cm. He's about 6.75 heads tall, whereas the average person in figure drawing is about 7.5 heads tall. Anyway, assuming that guy is about 165cm tall, kid-Grisha is very roughly 112cm tall (3'8"). That's absurdly small for a 13-year-old boy, regardless of likely malnutrition. That's like, 0.1 percentile. A modern 50th-percentile 13-year-old boy is ~88-89% of a modern 50th-percentile adult man's height. And we know Grisha grew up to be a pretty tall guy at 182cm. I give up, man. I'm not doing any more of these. I can't believe I just spent over half an hour working this out.

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot. We knew that he was bad at drawing kids' proportions from the beginning. 10-year-old Eren and Mikasa were waist-height too. Keep in mind that a modern 50th-percentile 10-year-old boy is ~139cm (4'6").
Nice analysis!

And haha, that reminds me... I didn't really have any clue how tall kids were until I had my own. My son's 5 (getting on 6), and is right around waist high on me (I'm 6'0").

[noparlpf]

I've been thinking more and it seems a bit weird to me that Grisha would name his kid after Kruger. Like, he barely knew Kruger, and when he did it was just to find out Kruger had manipulated him his whole life, was indirectly a party to his sister's murder, and was directly responsible for his wife's murder. Even if he did inherit some of Kruger's memories it seems weird to me. Unless it was supposed to be symbolic, like, this child will inherit Kruger's name and will, therefore I don't have to do it myself? I'm also curious about Grisha's amnesia (he obviously remembered everything later, so maybe that was just disorientation from a prolonged first Shift) or whether there was any subconscious influence from Kruger's personality.

Bloody hell, I need to stop getting distracted... I have to study for my five-hour anatomy final tomorrow. :smalleek:

[Lurkmoar]

I've been thinking more and it seems a bit weird to me that Grisha would name his kid after Kruger. Like, he barely knew Kruger, and when he did it was just to find out Kruger had manipulated him his whole life, was indirectly a party to his sister's murder, and was directly responsible for his wife's murder. Even if he did inherit some of Kruger's memories it seems weird to me. Unless it was supposed to be symbolic, like, this child will inherit Kruger's name and will, therefore I don't have to do it myself? I'm also curious about Grisha's amnesia (he obviously remembered everything later, so maybe that was just disorientation from a prolonged first Shift) or whether there was any subconscious influence from Kruger's personality.

I'd imagine having dreams that were someones memories could be pretty trippy. Though given how Eren Yeager's life has some parallels to Eren Kruger's... it does seem fitting. Strange, but fitting.


Bloody hell, I need to stop getting distracted... I have to study for my five-hour anatomy final tomorrow. :smalleek:

All possible speed along with luck, pluck and hard work mang!

[Kato]

Oh, wow...


Now we're discussing Eren's puberty. And Mikasa is troubled because...?

Also, they actually made that horrible coincidence or whatever a plot point... Like, what the hell? And now we're getting way, WAY more magical than ever.

Almost forgot Ymir's letter. Kind of cute, I'll admit. And hell, is this world full of coincidences.

Finally: Way to be subtle with the armband with a star on it... I mean, I guess some people didn't catch on before?

[t209]

Oh, wow...


Now we're discussing Eren's puberty. And Mikasa is troubled because...?

Also, they actually made that horrible coincidence or whatever a plot point... Like, what the hell? And now we're getting way, WAY more magical than ever.

Almost forgot Ymir's letter. Kind of cute, I'll admit. And hell, is this world full of coincidences.

Finally: Way to be subtle with the armband with a star on it... I mean, I guess some people didn't catch on before?

Not sure if
the armband people can turn into giant beast, albeit more monstrous than their ancestors, counts. Not to mention, the titan serum can get some military power as herds of war beasts. Depends which versions of Titan history are true.

[lord_khaine]

And i still have not caught on about the armband with a stars. What is it suposed to say?

[Kato]

And i still have not caught on about the armband with a stars. What is it suposed to say?

In Nazi Germany jews were required to wear armbands with yellow stars so "normal " citizens would know and could treat them... uhm... according to their status.
As Marley technology seems around 1930 earth tech and jews were blamed for... Well, everything, it's unlikely to be a coincidence.

[danzibr]

Oh my gosh. This chapter was so hard for me to follow. And only in part due to the translation. I need to go back and read the past like 88 chapters.

[noparlpf]

Oh, wow...


Now we're discussing Eren's puberty. And Mikasa is troubled because...?

Also, they actually made that horrible coincidence or whatever a plot point... Like, what the hell? And now we're getting way, WAY more magical than ever.

Almost forgot Ymir's letter. Kind of cute, I'll admit. And hell, is this world full of coincidences.

Finally: Way to be subtle with the armband with a star on it... I mean, I guess some people didn't catch on before?


Yeah, I didn't really follow this last chapter because of a mediocre translation job (I'll check again in a few days, probably) but it seemed like they spent half of it calling Eren chuuni.


In Nazi Germany jews were required to wear armbands with yellow stars so "normal " citizens would know and could treat them... uhm... according to their status.
As Marley technology seems around 1930 earth tech and jews were blamed for... Well, everything, it's unlikely to be a coincidence.

I think there was an armband with a blue Star of David earlier in nazi-occupied Poland, but I'm pretty sure that was replaced by the yellow cloth patches to be worn on clothing pretty quickly.

[Lurkmoar]

Uh...

For Chapter 89, was the translation right?! Where Kruger was talking about Armin and Mikasa?! I heard that Attack on Titan was inspired by Muv Luv Alternative, but this is just insane.

[Kato]

Uh...

For Chapter 89, was the translation right?! Where Kruger was talking about Armin and Mikasa?! I heard that Attack on Titan was inspired by Muv Luv Alternative, but this is just insane.

There was some terrible translation in parts but I'm sure this was intentional because now there is... Well, not exactly time travel but close enough I guess..

[lord_khaine]

Here is a trick question.

Whats the difference between Erens memory of what happend on that wall, and of what actually happend on that wall?

[Cuthalion]

I... was slightly underwhelmed. Not much happened. It felt a little rushed, but I think it'll do. Am curious to see what the next chapters bring.

[Ramza00]

New Chapter in Februrary, Chapter 90 is a nice bookend


So as of the end of Chapter 90 its been 6 years since the 1st wall has been breached, thus Eren has only 6 years and lots of weeks (almost 7 years) of life yet. It appears all the titans on the island have been removed not just within the 3 circles of the 3 walls but even outside the wall that could wander free. This is due to setting up a Guillotine on outside of the wall. Now if its been 6 years since the 1st wall was breached that means its been about 8 months since the 2nd wall was attacked and Eren then sealed back the hole in the 2nd wall.

Oh I really did not see grisha sister being eaten by those dogs (from when Grisha was a child when him and his sister wanted to see the Zeppelin landing.)

Now this next paragraph is me applying logic to try to kill cat girls. But if all that was needed to kill all the titans outside the 3rd walls was time plus the natural ability of the Titans to seek out the walls, wouldn't the canons kill all the titans by now even without a titan guillotine. How was Annie and company able to attract all these titans for the attack 6 years ago unless they specifically have been sending new titan recruits at least once a year? Surely if they need to send in new titan fodder constantly the survival rate of the survey corps would be much higher. How could Ymir / the dancing titan survive for 60 years as a titan without feeling the need to attack the walls. End me trying to apply logic to how titans work and going back to seeing just as a narrative story.

[Metahuman1]

So, I logged into Facebook after work this morning.

And somehow, even thought it had fewer people "talking about it" then half the other things trending, at the very top,


Was the god damn season 2 Attack on Titan Anime premiere date announcement.

:smallmad:

It's gonna come out and be inescapable for months on end all over again short of just quitting the internet, isn't it?

[Cozzer]

Just as inescapable as the "nobody asked me but you need to know about just HOW MUCH I dislike this popular series" hipsters, it appears. :smalltongue:

That said, I've read the latest chapter and it seems the last arc has officially started. But...

Eren's "we need to kill them all to get freedom" conclusion doesn't feel a very good idea. It's pretty clear that sooner or later Eren is going to have to do the thing he's been avoiding. I hope the story can end with a truce of sorts, and not with the re-ignition of the war.

[Metahuman1]

And yet, shockingly, even thought it had only 37K people talking about it, topics at the same time with 1M people talking about it were deemed less important for me to be told about by Facebook, even though I stopped caring about animation as a whole on FB last time JUST to try and stop getting AoT to stop cropping up on my damn feed!

Hell, the New Samurai Jack Trailer had over 100K people talking about it (forget the exact number.) but it didn't get that kind of special treatment in trending, and it stayed out of my feed till other friends started actively sharing it to my timeline.

[Kato]

@cozzer it's not like Eren thirsting for revenge is a new thing. He's been like that pretty much since the series started.

More in general : yes, the last chapter is rather underwhelming. Many subjects get touched upon and then rushed over for the sake of the next bit. I feel they could have made three chapters out of this one.

[HandofShadows]

New Chapter

Oooook. Time jump. It's years after the last chapter and the Marley have invaded. We don't see any of the main characters. :smallconfused:

[noparlpf]

New Chapter

Oooook. Time jump. It's years after the last chapter and the Marley have invaded. We don't see any of the main characters. :smallconfused:

Yes, there was a one-year timeskip in chapter 90. However, I'm fairly certain that Chapter 91 is actually a flashback. No, nothing made any sense to me either.

[HandofShadows]

Don't think it's a flashback. This is WWI tech and they mention the loss of the Colossal and Female Titians.

[Kato]

Yeah, quite sure this is not a flashback.
But I'm also not entirely convinced this is four years in the future because I couldn't find hard evidence this war is against Paradise (?). It certainly seems the most likely, but then they talk of some Union as the enemy and this might just be a different front Marley is fighting on.

However... why the eff did we need this sudden change of scenery and perspective? :smallannoyed: Sometimes it seems this story is taking turns just because the author feels like throwing the audience off... again.

[-D-]

However... why the eff did we need this sudden change of scenery and perspective? :smallannoyed: Sometimes it seems this story is taking turns just because the author feels like throwing the audience off... again.


Call me grumpy :smallannoyed: , but I disliked this chapter. It's just another stupid timeskip, except you don't see our heroes, instead you see some random shmucks and redshirts.

[Spacewolf]

Isn't this supposed to be Marley fighting the other superpower that was mentioned in Erens flashback?

[noparlpf]

I'm going to need to re-read it, maybe find another translation. I'm positive this isn't anywhere on Paradis, but I'm not clear whether it's on Marley or another continent.

[Cuthalion]

From what I understood from comments:

1. This is four years later, looking at Marley candidates for becoming new shifters.
2. Since they lost two, they've been set back militarily and are now at war with the Union, which is not Paradis.
3. They put off the Paradis attack for now.

[Kato]

From what I understood from comments:

1. This is four years later, looking at Marley candidates for becoming new shifters.
2. Since they lost two, they've been set back militarily and are now at war with the Union, which is not Paradis.
3. They put off the Paradis attack for now.

So, what tells you it's four years later? The statements I find are war with the union has been going for that time, but not that it started after the Paradis mission. Yes, plans need to be made and messages reach the main land but this war could be even older possibly.

[t209]

I feel that Marley is taking elements from Austro-Hungarian Empire, as in having multi-ethnic troops with history of mistrusts. I mean the Eldians are even allowed to fight in the first place.
Except the AH experienced "sorry, sir. I don't speak your language and unable to carry out orders" and "screw this, I won't be fighting the ones where I came from".

[Kato]

New chapter. In short: more war, still not totally sure when we are, Reiner does look kind of aged.
Interesting tactics, anyways. I guess Marley really are nice people....

[lord_khaine]

Brings a new meaning to terror-bombing, though i cant argue with how effective those boms must be, really hard to defend against that with anything but fighter planes.

[HandofShadows]

Don't think we have seen heavier than air craft yet. Yeah that tactic is effective, but monstrous. I think some of the new characters introduced in the last 2 chapter are going to be facing Erin and company soon.

[noparlpf]

I just found out that season two of the anime started recently.

[Cozzer]

I really liked the first two episodes of the second season. The pacing feels better, probably because in this storyarc there are more things happening at once so they have less need to stretch the scenes in order to keep their episode-to-chapter ratio.

Also, a bit of focus on the secondary characters was really needed.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

I am as confused as anyone else in this thread. I think it must be after they lost the colossal titan to the protagonists though. I assumed they got called back to deal with other military situations, and their enemies are clearly adapting their technology to counter the titan advantage.

We do get to see the beast titan's triggering power used on the "paratroopers". Or is it some other thing unique to Zeke.

[HandofShadows]

That does seem to be something unique to Zeke as he is the only one who is ever seen doing it.

[Kato]

I am as confused as anyone else in this thread. I think it must be after they lost the colossal titan to the protagonists though. I assumed they got called back to deal with other military situations, and their enemies are clearly adapting their technology to counter the titan advantage.

We do get to see the beast titan's triggering power used on the "paratroopers". Or is it some other thing unique to Zeke.

I'm pretty sure by now that's the case. First chapter was less clear but now there's little room for interpretation.

We don't have definite proof but I think it's the beasts power.

[lord_khaine]

Don't think we have seen heavier than air craft yet. Yeah that tactic is effective, but monstrous. I think some of the new characters introduced in the last 2 chapter are going to be facing Erin and company soon.

The plane the titan bombs were kicked out of did seem heavier than air?
Also, i do think any case where normal titans are employed in combat should count as a war crime.

Its also why im really glad to see that technological progress are slowly eliminating the advantage of titans. Those people are complete and utter monsters, i really do look forward to the point where their titans no longer provide enough advantage to substain their empire.

[HandofShadows]

The plane the titan bombs were kicked out of did seem heavier than air?
Also, i do think any case where normal titans are employed in combat should count as a war crime.

Considering they were tossed out of a zeppelin and not an airplane.... :smallwink: Totally agree though that employing normal titian in combat should be a war crime. But I really don't think the Marley CARE if it's a crime.

[lord_khaine]

Gahh.. alright my bad for mixing a cargo plane and a zeppelin up then. Though at the tech level we have been shown, with those ships, then the technology should also be there for making smaller planes.

[HandofShadows]

I agree the basic tech for WWI style aircraft is there. Something might have stalled development and even a few years could make a big difference. (No one studied bird aerodynamics enough. :smallbiggrin:) Also some real militaries didn't see how useful aircraft could be.

[lord_khaine]

Well, its just you need even less than WW1 planes to shoot down a zeppelin. A smaller faster one with guns should be enough for that :smalltongue:

[HandofShadows]

Don't need a plane or another zeppelin to take a zeppelin down. The one we saw in this chapter was low enough guns on the ground should have been able to hit it with ease. It may be that zeppelins being used in combat (as bombers) is a reletively new concept.

[lord_khaine]

Well it should have been flying a bit higher though. Or at least could have been doing so even if it meant a risk of spreading its titan cargo over a wider area.
It did seem like airdropping titans were an atrocity noone were prepared for though.

[Silverraptor]

Hey guys. Didn't notice this new thread. Now that Season 2 of Attack on Titan is out, was wondering if I could drop in and fanboy freak out on episodes as they come out. I know most of you read the manga, but I haven't so bear with me hear. Also, the intro is AWESOME!!!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKP-vZvjbh8

[Lurkmoar]

Seeing Captain Mike's death animated was... pretty damn brutal.

[LaZodiac]

New chapter!

So...did anyone actually not realizes these weren't flashbacks but was just a shift in scale of then story over to the mainland? Cause that's all it is. Anyway, lots of intrigue and cool stuff going on! I'll admit I stopped reading around the time the hat man with a gun showed up a billion years ago but came back when they got to the basement. I'm liking things so far. I like how they're also putting a big emphasis on "all the pointless deaths have meaning, in that they're the repetition of a black future we're trying to avoid by breaking it".

Also, all the babies that whine "Titans would be so easy to kill with modern weaponry" can have their bottle now because they've made it very clear that YES, THIS IS IN FACT TRUE.

[HandofShadows]

I didn't expect this to come out early. Gold week and all. Ymir is dead. :smalleek::smallfrown: :smallfurious: The Marley have royally screwed up by sending repeated "exploration teams" to Paradis Island I mean sending 32 destroyers in 3 years? That's a LOT of ships and crews in a wasted effort. (I guess they don't have wireless yet.) Also it gives the folks on the island prisoners and a look at the technology of the out outside world. Seems the Marley don't know there is a way to transfer the powers of Titian without killing the person. And is it me or did the art change some part way through?

[noparlpf]

Yeah, I had only thought it might be a flashback because the first time I read the first chapter after the timeskip it was a bit poorly translated.

[Ramza00]

Are we sure Ymir is dead?

We know the current possessors of 8 of the 9 titans.

Either the Dancing Titan (Ymir) is the same thing as the Jaw Titan (Galliard) and Ymir somehow brought back the Jaw Titan which is herself and we are now calling the Dancing Titan the Jaw Titan and thus there is still one more titan shifter to be revealed.



Or the Dancing Titan (Ymir) is different than the Jaw Titan (Galliard). Somehow Ymir / Dancing Titan allowed the Marley / Warriors to recapture the missing essence which is the Jaw Titan.

We now for a fact that Gallard saw the memories of Ymir but we do not know how the memory transfer occurred. Let me create an alternate theory. When Eren touched a blood relative of a person his titan eaten in one of its lives. When Eren touched Historia Reiss who was related to the Founding Titan user Freyia Reiss he was able to access unlock memories and a memory transfer occurred both in Eren but also Historia got the same memories inside of her mind. Gallard is the brother of Marcel, if you do not remember who that is Gallard is the brother of a person Ymir ate to acquire her titan shifter ability. Marcel the 4th titan shifter sent out to enter the Wall kingdom of Paradise, but the mindless titan Ymir ate Marcel during this journey and acquired her shifter abilities 9 years ago (and thus Ymir has about 4 years left of her life), and we never saw Marcel except in flashbacks or people referring to him long dead.

I bring up the fact that is a dual possibility, for the technique used her is a form of misdirection that the author of attack on titan has used before. He creates a scenario where you fill in the blank and he gives quite obvious directional images but he does not show the key image to confirm the theory. Instead he lets you fill in the blank with your mind's eye. Well this is a narrative trick, when you want to do a twist, and the twist is meant to enhance the drama. It is the same type of technique magicians use with misdirection, or people who claim they are psychics and can read minds give called a "cold reading" where you control the nature of the conversation, and you make guesses based off body language and such, where there are multiple possible right answers and you let the person who is getting the reading on control not the conversation but tell you where to direct the conversation, like I am seeing a letter M, and then you say M is my sister's Mary's first letter of her name, or M stands for Maine and I grew up in Maine. You then get the person so engrossed with the subject that when you get an question that you know the answer to they believe you are magic due to how they been really controlling the real conversation with the direction, and the cold reader has been shaping your excitement and your anticipation with very little information.

Aka you hypnotize yourself and believe something must be true out of self deception without using critical reasoning abilities and challenge each individual piece of evidence, instead of seeing it as a long chain but if a single piece of evidence is faulty or you made a cognitive leap, you can destroy the chain or create a new chain in a different direction and explain a new theory.

Effectively it is a confidence trick, where your own confidence creates your own illusion in the mind's eye.

[Kato]

Also, all the babies that whine "Titans would be so easy to kill with modern weaponry" can have their bottle now because they've made it very clear that YES, THIS IS IN FACT TRUE.

Yay, give me my bottle! :smalltongue:

Good chapter, lots of interesting and well done things going on.
I wonder if Marley will remain the focus for long, though.

[noparlpf]

He showed her chained to the same kind of sacrificial altar as when Reiss was going to have Historia eat Eren. If she isn't dead it's not a twist, it's deliberate and lazy misdirection.

http://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1468518930i/19717610.png

http://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1468518930i/19717611.png

[LaZodiac]

Are we sure Ymir is dead?

We know the current possessors of 8 of the 9 titans.

Either the Dancing Titan (Ymir) is the same thing as the Jaw Titan (Galliard) and Ymir somehow brought back the Jaw Titan which is herself and we are now calling the Dancing Titan the Jaw Titan and thus there is still one more titan shifter to be revealed.



Or the Dancing Titan (Ymir) is different than the Jaw Titan (Galliard). Somehow Ymir / Dancing Titan allowed the Marley / Warriors to recapture the missing essence which is the Jaw Titan.

We now for a fact that Gallard saw the memories of Ymir but we do not know how the memory transfer occurred. Let me create an alternate theory. When Eren touched a blood relative of a person his titan eaten in one of its lives. When Eren touched Historia Reiss who was related to the Founding Titan user Freyia Reiss he was able to access unlock memories and a memory transfer occurred both in Eren but also Historia got the same memories inside of her mind. Gallard is the brother of Marcel, if you do not remember who that is Gallard is the brother of a person Ymir ate to acquire her titan shifter ability. Marcel the 4th titan shifter sent out to enter the Wall kingdom of Paradise, but the mindless titan Ymir ate Marcel during this journey and acquired her shifter abilities 9 years ago (and thus Ymir has about 4 years left of her life), and we never saw Marcel except in flashbacks or people referring to him long dead.

I bring up the fact that is a dual possibility, for the technique used her is a form of misdirection that the author of attack on titan has used before. He creates a scenario where you fill in the blank and he gives quite obvious directional images but he does not show the key image to confirm the theory. Instead he lets you fill in the blank with your mind's eye. Well this is a narrative trick, when you want to do a twist, and the twist is meant to enhance the drama. It is the same type of technique magicians use with misdirection, or people who claim they are psychics and can read minds give called a "cold reading" where you control the nature of the conversation, and you make guesses based off body language and such, where there are multiple possible right answers and you let the person who is getting the reading on control not the conversation but tell you where to direct the conversation, like I am seeing a letter M, and then you say M is my sister's Mary's first letter of her name, or M stands for Maine and I grew up in Maine. You then get the person so engrossed with the subject that when you get an question that you know the answer to they believe you are magic due to how they been really controlling the real conversation with the direction, and the cold reader has been shaping your excitement and your anticipation with very little information.

Aka you hypnotize yourself and believe something must be true out of self deception without using critical reasoning abilities and challenge each individual piece of evidence, instead of seeing it as a long chain but if a single piece of evidence is faulty or you made a cognitive leap, you can destroy the chain or create a new chain in a different direction and explain a new theory.

Effectively it is a confidence trick, where your own confidence creates your own illusion in the mind's eye.


Yeah no she's dead.

WE called it the Dancing Titan. The official name is now revealed as then Jaw titan. "She returned the Jaw Titan to us, which she stole after eating my brother". Yeah, she's dead.

[Lurkmoar]

Yeah no she's dead.

WE called it the Dancing Titan. The official name is now revealed as then Jaw titan. "She returned the Jaw Titan to us, which she stole after eating my brother". Yeah, she's dead.

It's a bit hard to call it theft if you're completely mindless. Also, the more I see of the Marely, the more I despise them.

[lord_khaine]

Seems the Marley don't know there is a way to transfer the powers of Titian without killing the person.

There is? When have we seen this happen?


Also, the more I see of the Marely, the more I despise them.

Yeah they are completely horrible. That technological progress makes their ace (the titans) obsolete is rather well deserved.

[HandofShadows]

There is? When have we seen this happen?

I don't think I could find it without a long search, but IIRC there was a scene with the Reiss's where someone who had had the power of the Founding Titian no longer had it and was still alive. The Titian's power can be removed by removing spinal fluid from the base of the neck. But it seems almost no one knows that.

[lord_khaine]

You dont think that was a case of a bad translation?
I mean it seems like every case of transfer we had seen involved sacrifice. And if the Reis family had a better way then i doubt they would have had the whole sacrifice cave and all.

[noparlpf]

Guys, this should maybe be spoilered for the anime people.

During the Reiss arc it was shown that shifters can "upgrade" their powers by ingesting or injecting another shifter's CSF, which is how Eren got the armor power. As for transferring the power... I'm not sure if this was a weird translation thing, but I think Reiss did tell Historia that she didn't actually need to eat Eren, just his CSF; but I'm not clear how that would work, because there's apparently a limited number of shifters possible at one time (nine), so if the "donor" shifter were still alive, I don't see why the power would shift to the recipient of their CSF?
But even assuming that were true, I think it's more that one has to be a titan first in order to become a shifter (whereas a normal human ingesting or injecting titan CSF just turns into a mindless titan; otherwise all the Eldians they were injecting with Zeke's CSF would just trade the Beast titan power back and forth instead of becoming mindless titans under his control), and a mindless titan is just going to eat the entire "donor" shifter and not wait around for a nice chilled glass of CSF to be served up.

[Quiver]

Guys, this should maybe be spoilered for the anime people.

During the Reiss arc it was shown that shifters can "upgrade" their powers by ingesting or injecting another shifter's CSF, which is how Eren got the armor power. As for transferring the power... I'm not sure if this was a weird translation thing, but I think Reiss did tell Historia that she didn't actually need to eat Eren, just his CSF; but I'm not clear how that would work, because there's apparently a limited number of shifters possible at one time (nine), so if the "donor" shifter were still alive, I don't see why the power would shift to the recipient of their CSF?
But even assuming that were true, I think it's more that one has to be a titan first in order to become a shifter (whereas a normal human ingesting or injecting titan CSF just turns into a mindless titan; otherwise all the Eldians they were injecting with Zeke's CSF would just trade the Beast titan power back and forth instead of becoming mindless titans under his control), and a mindless titan is just going to eat the entire "donor" shifter and not wait around for a nice chilled glass of CSF to be served up.

Honestly, the fact that powers can 'stack' the way Eren managed kind of confuses me, if only because I can't see why anyone wouldn't abuse the heck out of that system. Eren kept the co-ordinate ability that Grisha had after he ate him, so it seems as if the powers don't reset to a default when they get passed along...

Maybe the difference is taking them naturally (via eating ashifter) vs artificially (spinal fluid), but... I dunno? I'm kind of confused by that, and I'm not sure if it's a case where the confusion is intentional by the writer and we don't have the answers yet, or if I'm just kind of dumb...

[noparlpf]

Honestly, the fact that powers can 'stack' the way Eren managed kind of confuses me, if only because I can't see why anyone wouldn't abuse the heck out of that system. Eren kept the co-ordinate ability that Grisha had after he ate him, so it seems as if the powers don't reset to a default when they get passed along...

Maybe the difference is taking them naturally (via eating ashifter) vs artificially (spinal fluid), but... I dunno? I'm kind of confused by that, and I'm not sure if it's a case where the confusion is intentional by the writer and we don't have the answers yet, or if I'm just kind of dumb...

I mean, with Isayama it's probably intentional. He doesn't like people to understand things.

[Lurkmoar]

Honestly, the fact that powers can 'stack' the way Eren managed kind of confuses me, if only because I can't see why anyone wouldn't abuse the heck out of that system. Eren kept the co-ordinate ability that Grisha had after he ate him, so it seems as if the powers don't reset to a default when they get passed along...

Maybe the difference is taking them naturally (via eating ashifter) vs artificially (spinal fluid), but... I dunno? I'm kind of confused by that, and I'm not sure if it's a case where the confusion is intentional by the writer and we don't have the answers yet, or if I'm just kind of dumb...

Seems that unless whatever method the original Ymir used to diffuse her powers is used, the Founding Titan and Attack Titan are going to be in one vessel unless Eren gets dies without the power transferring. I also believe that Rod was lying about not needing to kill Eren to Historia, as another manipulation.

[HandofShadows]

It occurred to me that there could be another reason for all the Marley ships vanishing. What if Aren got the Coordinator power to work? :smalleek:

[Quiver]

So... I have another question. And sorry to keep asking these, but maybe someone can cue me in on this:

Why don't the Shifters just eat Eren?

I can't remember them ever going for that option; they just keep trying to kidnap him. And I guess I wonder why they keep doing that, when there i the easy option of "Eat him and get the co-ordinate that way, and also the Attack Titan."

I mean... I can think of reasons why they might not want to go that route; Zeke might have told his sub-ordinates not to do that, since he wants to wake Eren up from Grisha's "lies", or maybe Bertholt of Reiner (reasonably) aren't comfortable with the idea of eating a guy they trained with...

But yeah. Wondering if there is any "canonical" reason why they haven't tried eating him, or if we're just supposed to infer character-based motives like the ones above.

[LaZodiac]

So... I have another question. And sorry to keep asking these, but maybe someone can cue me in on this:

Why don't the Shifters just eat Eren?

I can't remember them ever going for that option; they just keep trying to kidnap him. And I guess I wonder why they keep doing that, when there i the easy option of "Eat him and get the co-ordinate that way, and also the Attack Titan."

I mean... I can think of reasons why they might not want to go that route; Zeke might have told his sub-ordinates not to do that, since he wants to wake Eren up from Grisha's "lies", or maybe Bertholt of Reiner (reasonably) aren't comfortable with the idea of eating a guy they trained with...

But yeah. Wondering if there is any "canonical" reason why they haven't tried eating him, or if we're just supposed to infer character-based motives like the ones above.

You cannot have more than one Titan power in you, if I recall. Eren, due to having royal blood and having the coordinate ability, can slide around that due to the fact that as a direct descendent of the original titan, all the pieces are meant to go to him eventually.

I also feel this is how they'll get around the "he's going to die soon due to the Titan time limit.". I also don't really know if he's a royal blooded person, but it feels like that's the implication those flashbacks with his Dad were going for. It's the same reason why the Beast Titan, Zeke, is so good. He denies it in the latest chapter, but we know his mother was an actual princess and that's why his control over the Titan power is so good.

[Cozzer]

Well, the latest anime episode has

the "oh hey Eren, dude, we're the Colossal and Armored Titans" scene, and it's done perfectly. The whole episode was great, with a tense atmosphere that ends up being completely justified. Also Mikasa's "kicking ass first and asking question later" response. I'm really loving Season 2.

[noparlpf]

I'm pretty sure Eren doesn't have royal blood. Zeke does, but that's because his mother did, not Grisha.

I'm honestly not really sure why Zeke didn't just try to eat Eren himself... I assume the reason the advance team didn't is because they believed only a royal could use Coordinate, but Zeke is a royal, so he ought to be able to. Maybe they have orders to capture Eren so Coordinate can be transferred to a specific person back in Marley, but I don't know who that would be if not Zeke.

[Kato]

I'm pretty sure Eren doesn't have royal blood. Zeke does, but that's because his mother did, not Grisha.

I'm honestly not really sure why Zeke didn't just try to eat Eren himself... I assume the reason the advance team didn't is because they believed only a royal could use Coordinate, but Zeke is a royal, so he ought to be able to. Maybe they have orders to capture Eren so Coordinate can be transferred to a specific person back in Marley, but I don't know who that would be if not Zeke.

Neither Zeke nor anyone in Marley military know about his mother. Eren sen. told Grisha he went out of his way to keep this a secret.

[Frozen_Feet]

IIRC Zeke never was in a position to eat Eren. It has been confirmed, more or less, that you do need royal blood to use the co-ordinate; this was Eren Junior's epiphany not many chapters ago, when he realized the only time he could use the co-ordinate was when he was in physical contact with Zeke's titanized mother.

[lord_khaine]

That time were most likely the closest the coordinate power has been to falling back into the hands of someone with true royal blood?
Who in addition would have knowledge of how things were in the outside world. Kinda fun to think about how much things could have changed there.

[noparlpf]

Interesting, seems like the anime is incorporating some hints much earlier on than the manga.

[Lurkmoar]

That time were most likely the closest the coordinate power has been to falling back into the hands of someone with true royal blood?
Who in addition would have knowledge of how things were in the outside world. Kinda fun to think about how much things could have changed there.

I doubt that she would have said a word out before Mikasa would have loped her head off.

Or, even worse, Dina might have been influenced by the will of the King and had the Titans eat everyone.

[Ramza00]

New Attack on Titan Manga Chapter and I am mighty impressed with the storytelling.

[LaZodiac]

New Attack on Titan Manga Chapter and I am mighty impressed with the storytelling.

It's real good! It's a great mirror and it really humanized that *******. I can't remember his name I'm not super into Attack on Titan.

[Kato]

It's real good! It's a great mirror and it really humanized that *******. I can't remember his name I'm not super into Attack on Titan.

It's Reiner and yeah, it does a pretty decent job at that. I do wonder though, if this will end by the shifters turning against Marley and give them the beating they deserve.

Sidenote : something I've been wondering for a while... Paradis must be a quite large island.

[lord_khaine]

It can be that paradis is actually a small continent. I think thats a bit more likely from what we have seen of its size and population.

[HandofShadows]

We saw a map a few chapters ago. It didn't really seem that large.

[lord_khaine]

You cant really tell that sort of things though. Especially not if the map lacks anything to scale the distance with.

Also i dont recall that chapter. Who had made the map?

[noparlpf]

Wall Maria has a radius of about 480 km, so the total area inside the walls is about 724,000 km2. And the ocean is about a day's ride from Wall Maria. A quick Google search for "how far is a day's ride" yields about 80-100km for mounted soldiers riding fit, trained horses. Conservatively assuming an average of about 50km from Wall Maria to the ocean and a perfectly circular island, we're up to about 882,000 km2. That's more than three times bigger than the UK, more than twice as big as Japan, and about 50% bigger than Madagascar. That's a pretty darn big island, but not quite continent-sized; Australia is about 9x bigger.

I also have no idea what real-world landmass it's supposed to be, though. We know it's in the northern hemisphere because it's supposed to be colder in the north of the walls than in the south. And it's supposed to be northeast of a larger landmass. Greenland is way too big and probably too far out in the middle of the ocean relative to Canada, the UK is way too small and on the wrong side of the adjacent continent, &c. I'm assuming it's nowhere near Asia because the people seem to be Germanic. Who knows, maybe Marley is on Atlantis.

[Ramza00]

That's more than three times bigger than the UK, more than twice as big as Japan, and about 50% bigger than Madagascar. That's a pretty darn big island, but not quite continent-sized; Australia is about 9x bigger.

I also have no idea what real-world landmass it's supposed to be, though.

I am not saying this takes place in actual our world, but Paradise Isle looks mightly alike Madagascar off the coast of Africa.

Spoiler block to keep image spam down


http://i.imgur.com/1KvGHuy.jpg

Note this is how it is presented in the manga, aka the tail of the contient of Paradise / Paridis is facing the direction we commonly call North on our earth made Maps.

But if the flip the map over you get an image that looks like this compared to africa.

Before I show Africa noticed that this image is flipped upside down in the 2nd version and that the writting looks all weird because of it.

http://i.imgur.com/qsYSttD.jpg

https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/shingekinokyojin/images/d/dd/Eldia_and_Paradis_compared_to_Africa_and_Madagasca r.png/revision/latest?cb=20161008160318



We also see later on a map of greater Marley and the nearby continents and it looks like the nearby continents are part of Europe and Asia.

Note maps is politics, there is a great scene about this from the west wing.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY

From a biology standpoint what you assign to be the top and what the bottom in a map assigns unconscious biases in our heads without us even realizing it. This is because humans are biological creatures with hands and feats, and eyes, but we still have a universal constant which is gravity and the bottom, the horizon, rarely changes, yet the top often changes, and thus we look to the things in the north and assign them more importance if we make the north the top, but there is no reason why we have to make the north the top, the east could be the top, the west could be the top, the south can be the top. It is just so often we make the north the top, it has become an accustomed habit that we do not even think about it.

And thus I do not think Attack on Titan literally takes place on this Earth set in the past or set in the future. Instead it is more of a comment about our unconscious biases that we do not really even realize. Do we question our culture, our history, is it literally true, or is it a fabrication. It is very disorienting, like you turn the world upside down, if you suddenly question the culture you were raised in and if its true or not. For if its not true you have to figure out on your own merits what could be true, and what is not true, and it is just cognitively simpler...it is just easier...to be a machine and just listen to the history that you were taught even if the history is a lie.

Hajime Isayama, the author of attack on titan, by making the attack on titan world look very similar to our world, but slightly different like North is South (really what we call South is just the top of the map, but our brains sometimes forget the distinction of North and Top) it makes us question our own reality out of a sense of deja vu but at the same time the deja vu is OFF, it does not feel right, and thus we enter a stage of doubt that makes us reconsider our own past, to try to find the balance that makes everything feel like up is up, down is down, top is top, and so on.

Note the Gall Peters Projection has its own flaws even though in my opinion the Flaws are minor and the advantages are Major. That said the XKCD author disagrees.

See https://xkcd.com/977/ But understand he is not really hating the Gall Peters Projection, he is instead hating the arrogant people who think the Gall Peters Projection is without flaws, aka the people full of hubris for they are preaching something they do not really understand. Every form of map has flaws, you can't make a 3d map into a 2d map accurately. But people who say the Gall Peters Projection has no flaws has fallen to marketing. Aka see https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/977:_Map_Projections

This is actually a very big deal in philosphy and especially the philosphy of perception, memory, and motivated reasoning. It is called the map is not the territory (and vice versa). Human Beings actually are smarter for we do not try to accurately see and perceive reality but we can easily truncate information to make it easier to manipulate in our minds in a symbol / abstract way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation

If we did not do this, it would be too much data, we could not make useful decisions. Aka motivated reasoning (propaganda we tell ourselves) is the secret to human intelligence, both its virtue and its sins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

We actually even have a specific brain area called brodmann area 10 to deal with this idea of cognitive dissonance and motivated reasoning, but we only use this brain area when we feel we have to, and we do so in a non stress, introspective manner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brodmann_area_10 Note BA 10 is one of the biggest differences between us / humans and monkeys / and other primates, this area of the brain has had a recent expansion between us and other primates. Note there are also major differences between primates / monkeys and humans in the Inferior Frontal Cortex which is one of the brain areas that deals with language but also many other things.

[Kato]

Hm, I didn't notice back when the map was shown but yeah, this looks a damn lot like Madagascar and Africa. But I'm more inclined to believe the map was merely used because the author didn't feel like making something up on his own and decided to instead be lazy.
It's too small, it's on the southern hemisphere and I'm pretty sure the story is not meant to take place on Earth what with our lack of a titan race and stuff.

[lord_khaine]

Well it could just be an alternate reality, but really good find regarding the simularity to madagaskar. It is certainly also a good point regarding how North dont need to be the top of the map.

[HandofShadows]

There is even a better map on page 4 of chapter 93 that shows much more to the "south". You can see most of Europe, a good chunk of Russia and over to India and Indonesia. The other way to can see part of South America, though that does not seem to be quite the right shape. Given the weather, I wonder if the planet may not have flipped over at some point and people are rebuilding from that.

[noparlpf]

I am not saying this takes place in actual our world, but Paradise Isle looks mightly alike Madagascar off the coast of Africa.

Spoiler block to keep image spam down


http://i.imgur.com/1KvGHuy.jpg

Note this is how it is presented in the manga, aka the tail of the contient of Paradise / Paridis is facing the direction we commonly call North on our earth made Maps.

But if the flip the map over you get an image that looks like this compared to africa.

Before I show Africa noticed that this image is flipped upside down in the 2nd version and that the writting looks all weird because of it.

http://i.imgur.com/qsYSttD.jpg

https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/shingekinokyojin/images/d/dd/Eldia_and_Paradis_compared_to_Africa_and_Madagasca r.png/revision/latest?cb=20161008160318



But...that's not how flipping maps works? You can rotate it, which retains the relationships between things and just changes the orientation, but you can't flip it, because that inverts the east-west relationships between things. That would be a mirror Earth, not just Earth turned upside-down.

Edit:

There is even a better map on page 4 of chapter 93 that shows much more to the "south". You can see most of Europe, a good chunk of Russia and over to India and Indonesia. The other way to can see part of South America, though that does not seem to be quite the right shape. Given the weather, I wonder if the planet may not have flipped over at some point and people are rebuilding from that.

Wait, which map? This is chapter 93 page 4:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/DWrdFWIvJaYEJshqk_sla_YTYdmBUOlz_teMVY1cGc_4nFSE9s NplluX3qUPBNNOcu8aOTyeJPpEya2asutqtHpSQQW_8AjHocIL y5NxrcNzN2z47ay38j7eGJsVEOIIHTHUjA=s0?title=003_14 93484212.png

That doesn't really look at all like Europe. Maybe very vaguely like Scandinavia rotated about 45° clockwise, but still not really, and Scandinavia isn't that pointy and doesn't have a huge island in the Barents Sea. And where do you see India or South America?

[HandofShadows]

Flip it upside down, that should help. As the map sits now though South America is on the far left but as I said it does not look right. The Mediterranean is clearly there though Italy is a stub as is India. It looks like something chunk out of France and Spain but what is left of the British Isles at the bottom. On the far right at the edge you can clearly see the Strait of Malacca between Indonesia and Malaysia. The Black Sea is a larger as the Caspian Sea is a LOT bigger. And it looks like we have a couple new seas further to the right. I think what you are calling Scandinavia is actually Denmark. Something REALLY bad happened to old planet Earth here. :smalleek: :smallconfused::smallfrown::smallmad:

[Kato]

What HoS said. That's very clearly Africa upside down. Yeah, there is a lot of things that don't fit reality but going from a "drawn with a rough idea of what Europe looks like" that's still pretty accurate. India is a tad short and so on, but frankly, off the top of my head it wouldn't look better. Either it's meant to reflect their lack of information or cartography or it's not quite Earth, but the inspiration is very obvious once you pay attention...
Also, now I wonder which part pf Madagascar is actually cooler... but I feel there won't be much of a climate change there.

[noparlpf]

Oh wait, I did flip it but didn't see what you were saying because it's still inverted east-west. Maybe Isayama just didn't understand how flipping maps works and just flipped it vertically instead of rotating it 180°.

[Ramza00]

Oh wait, I did flip it but didn't see what you were saying because it's still inverted east-west. Maybe Isayama just didn't understand how flipping maps works and just flipped it vertically instead of rotating it 180°.

Why does the map design have to be with the north being on the top. Now viewing something that is already a premade map 180 degrees is natural for you do not need to redesign the map. But when you created the map in the first place why does north have to be the top, south could be the top, or east could be the top

[HandofShadows]

Early Chinese maps often where "upside down", so it's nothing new. The thing is if the map is just "upside down", then the continents would be facing the other way. As for Madagascar, it's listed as being tropical for the most part. It even has a desert like area. Very different from what we see in AoT. It also does not have giant redwood trees.

[noparlpf]

The climate on this mirror-Earth is presumably significantly cooler, hence larger ice caps, lower sea level, and a Madagascar that's 50% bigger. That's the easiest way I can see to reconcile both the climate and the estimated size of the island at once.

[HandofShadows]

Actually, it look like sea level has risen as a lot of places that are above water now are gone on this map and there are a lot more lakes/seas in place that don't have them know. . :smallconfused: It does seem to be cooler though.

[noparlpf]

Yeah, I really have no idea. It's a weird map.

[Quiver]

Could it just be that he's using a map because he doesn't know how to build his unique continent?

And I don't mean that as an insult, since I wouldn't know either. Using a "normal" earth map and flipping some stuff around certainly seems like an easy way around the "How to make X" part, especially if it's not a major part of the story.

[Ramza00]

Could it just be that he's using a map because he doesn't know how to build his unique continent?

And I don't mean that as an insult, since I wouldn't know either. Using a "normal" earth map and flipping some stuff around certainly seems like an easy way around the "How to make X" part, especially if it's not a major part of the story.

I agree with what you are saying, and let me be the devil's advocate anyway even though we are in agreement.

Has anyone ever heard of Catatumbo lightning?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catatumbo_lightning

It is a location on real life earth and not some sci fi or fantasy place where roughly 3/4ths of the nights of the planet in a year this location will have one large thunderstorm thousands of bolts of lighning, far bigger than a normal thunderstorm, with 250 to 300 bolts of lightning per hour, 10 hours a night / day, and each single lightning bolt producing more energy than a traditional lightning bolt (if I recall it is an order of magnitude more energy for a single lightning bolt in catatumbo than a normal lightning some place else either the median energy for the lightning bolt or the mean.)

How does this occur? We really do not know, we know several of the reasons but we do not know them all and how much each of these individual reasons are.

Well first Catatumbo is a lake, well more of a cove where there is a river on one side of the freshwater lake, and then the lake has a small opening to the sea.

https://www.battleface.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Capture.png

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9QX_AMkyt60/maxresdefault.jpg

Around the lake on roughly 3/4ths the sides there are very tall mountains. And on the side that is not part of the mountains you have the ocean but it is not just the ocean but the angle (aka north south stuff) where the normal winds of the caribbean ocean is hitting the different types of winds from the mountains, and the different type of winds from the lake and this creates a pressure system that makes it very easy to have thunderstorms and not just have thunderstorms but have really big thunderstorms. Storms that you can see from 400 kilometers away / 250 miles. If you imagine the map of the united states and then imagine kansas in the center of it, the north to sound border of kansas is only 343 km / 210 miles aka it is further than that.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YYVWb_QgQwU/maxresdefault.jpg

There is also probably other factors in play that makes Catatumbo the famous Catatumbo lightnings like probably the botany that occurs right before the lake around the river. There is a theory it is the biological mass decomposing that may also modify how easy it is to create lightning. There are other places with similar stuff around the world but not to this extreme.






Could it just be that he's using a map because he doesn't know how to build his unique continent?

And I don't mean that as an insult, since I wouldn't know either. Using a "normal" earth map and flipping some stuff around certainly seems like an easy way around the "How to make X" part, especially if it's not a major part of the story.

My entire point of this post was not to nerd-off about this really cool place, but to point out the details matter, and the details matter so much that even if you think you understand all the details a small change can make a dramatic effect. Change the slope of the mountains of Catatumbo, or change the angle of the 3 sides so it hits at a slightly more to the right or the left and it changes everything, or widen the cove output area so there is no big lake of freshwater before it becomes saltwater and so on.

Eventually you have to just handwave it away. The author just has to say because I said so. (Effectively I am agreeing with Quiver). There is a point where the lands you draw on a piece of paper would not have happened naturally, sure the land would still be there but the height of the mountains, or the climate, or something else, would be all wrong for there are so many forces in play we get a perfect example of chaos theory and the power of jerksphysic term / physic joke, aka the 3rd derivative of position, or the 2nd derivative of velocity. Aka those sudden lurches where you thought you understand everything but somehow one minor detail, a butterfly causes a "lurch" and we are nolonger talking about a linear system, something that can be graphed with normal mathmathics of algebra or calc 1 and 2, but we have to use higher levels of math aka differential equations, a jerk equation is the ... let me quote wikipedia so I do not butcher this. From the wikipedia article about jerk systems

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_(physics)


. It has been shown that a jerk equation, which is equivalent to a system of three first-order ordinary non-linear differential equations, is in a mathematically well defined sense the minimal setting for solutions showing chaotic behaviour [the wikipedia article then links to another article about chaos theory]. This motivates mathematical interest in jerk systems. Systems involving a fourth or higher derivative are accordingly called hyperjerk systems.

https://i.imgflip.com/1qplud.jpg

There will always be a fly in the ointment, or a butterfly in your system that you did not take into account for.

Ian Malcolm actually likes being the jerk, that is why he choose to specialize in chaos theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

----------

So my point of my long ass post is to tell the people to stop trying to critique a beautifulish story Hajime Isayama has given us.

[Quiver]

My entire point of this post was not to nerd-off about this really cool place, but to point out the details matter, and the details matter so much that even if you think you understand all the details a small change can make a dramatic effect. Change the slope of the mountains of Cataumbo, or change the angle of the 3 sides so it hits at a slightly more to the right or the left and it changes everything, or widen the cove output area so there is no big lake of freshwater before it becomes saltwater and so on.

...

So my point of my long ass post is to tell the people to stop trying to critique a beautifulish story Hajime Isayama has given us.

Details absolutely are important, but I think your last paragraph sums up my thoughts: Isayama isn't a Brandon Sanderson. The setting is obviously important to some extent, but I don't think it's something crucial to the underlying story.

I like detailed worldbuilding. Again, Sanderfan!... but I don't think that Isayama's jam. He's interested in telling a story, and he gives us enough information about the setting to facilitate that... but I don't think he's planned out the world of Titania much beyond that.

And I don't mean that as a criticism! He's just a different kind of storyteller. It just makes me surprised/confused as to why people pore over his maps so much; I don't think knowing if this story is set on a past/future version of earth will really tells us that much about the conspiracy, setting and so on.

... but that's probably my own biases at work!

(Also, thanks for the above post, was interesting!)

[Ramza00]

Details absolutely are important, but I think your last paragraph sums up my thoughts: Isayama isn't a Brandon Sanderson. The setting is obviously important to some extent, but I don't think it's something crucial to the underlying story.

I like detailed worldbuilding. Again, Sanderfan!... but I don't think that Isayama's jam. He's interested in telling a story, and he gives us enough information about the setting to facilitate that... but I don't think he's planned out the world of Titania much beyond that.

And I don't mean that as a criticism! He's just a different kind of storyteller. It just makes me surprised/confused as to why people pore over his maps so much; I don't think knowing if this story is set on a past/future version of earth will really tells us that much about the conspiracy, setting and so on.

... but that's probably my own biases at work!

(Also, thanks for the above post, was interesting!)

I think we are in agreement. Let me use a metaphor. Details are the spices of the literary world. They can't be the base ingredient, that has to be the story, but details can enhance and modify the base ingredient. The goal of spices is 3 things 1) to add a type of flavor that the main dish did not have. 2) to enhance the already existing flavor 3) to cause the mixing of flavors, for example bitter sweet, sweet and sour, sharp and tangy, etc.

I am not dissing details, just reminding you details are not an exception for a good story.

On the subject of details and trainwrecks, I read the first 10 books of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I then gave up and tried twice to reread and then get to the later stories of the series. How bad is the remaining WoT series under Brandon Sanderson's pen. I here it is better than what Jordan was doing, but Jordan had a trainwreck every since Book 6, and in hindsight books 1 to 6 were not as good as I remember them as a teenager.

[Quiver]

I think we are in agreement. Let me use a metaphor. Details are the spices of the literary world. They can't be the base ingredient, that has to be the story, but details can enhance and modify the base ingredient. The goal of spices is 3 things 1) to add a type of flavor that the main dish did not have. 2) to enhance the already existing flavor 3) to cause the mixing of flavors, for example bitter sweet, sweet and sour, sharp and tangy, etc.

I am not dissing details, just reminding you details are not an exception for a good story.

On the subject of details and trainwrecks, I read the first 10 books of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I then gave up and tried twice to reread and then get to the later stories of the series. How bad is the remaining WoT series under Brandon Sanderson's pen. I here it is better than what Jordan was doing, but Jordan had a trainwreck every since Book 6, and in hindsight books 1 to 6 were not as good as I remember them as a teenager.

This is maybe a little off-topic, but...
I've never read the Wheel of Time, so I can't comment on that series.

Sanderson's own books, on the other hand, I quite like, and would definitely recommend. His Mistborn series was one of the first books to actually feature a protahonist I identified with, and Warbreakeris one of my favourite books, period. His Stormlight Archive series is a very "standard high fantasy" in terms of plot, but the world building is phenomenal.

[Kato]

Regarding the anime... They've really put in quite a reveal with Ymir's backstory portrayed as they did. It might be more obvious if you know the manga but even if not... Though, maybe you could also consider it a red herring.
I do have to wonder how she knew how long she was a titan, though.

[noparlpf]

Regarding the anime... They've really put in quite a reveal with Ymir's backstory portrayed as they did. It might be more obvious if you know the manga but even if not... Though, maybe you could also consider it a red herring.
I do have to wonder how she knew how long she was a titan, though.

Well, the walls have only been up for "about 100 years" and the people inside the walls have a calendar with 800-odd years on it, so maybe it's the same calendar she grew up with. Who knows, though.

[Ramza00]

Well, the walls have only been up for "about 100 years" and the people inside the walls have a calendar with 800-odd years on it, so maybe it's the same calendar she grew up with. Who knows, though.

We can't trust the 800 odd year history calendar, for the history teacher (see the father of one of the recon / survey corps) points out the history is regularly manipulated via the people inside the walls, and his history books are proof that they do not have a neutral observer and are not the way normal people would write history books if they were organically written. See chapter 55 and 85.

Honestly the only way to truly know what is true and what is not is to find falsifiable claims and then test then with multiple sources. I am not even sure we can rely on titan memories such as Founding Titan / Progenitor Titan / The Coordinate, for this titan is poisoned via the will of the First King.

Hell the Progenitor Titan has one of its powers is to modify memories and alter sensory recall of experiences. Who is to say that the Progenitor Titan can't edit its own memories, or suppress certain details, for we already know the Progenitor Titan will exists even after a person's death, so why can't he modify the memories the Progenitor Titan exposes itself to. After all another one of its powers is titan control, so who is to say the will of the previous or future progenitor titan can't control the will of other titan shifters who are the progenitor titan.

And did I just do a matrix inside a matrix theory via accident. Talk about an Descartes Malicious Demon Thought Experiment (Descartes is recognized as the modern father of modern western political thought, science, math, and philosophy...Note Descartes is also the inventor of the coordinate system aka the coordinate...Cartesian Coordinates is literally Descartes name without the des and then with the Ian added to it. Descartes is just the french version of the latin name Cartes)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_(thought_experiment) and specifically this link for the Descartes Malicious Demon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon

Someone remind me, what was the exact translation they used for the Progenitor / Coordinate power that allows it access to the memories of the world. Book of the world or something? Effectively the power of the progenitor titan is accessing the Akashic Records, the Truth, the Spiral of the Root, etc. Links to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashic_records and the similar but older theory of the book of life from religious thought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Life

[noparlpf]

Okay, I guess that's all nine titans accounted for now. This makes seven from Marley (Colossal, Armored, Jawed, Female, Beast, Mule*, Warhammer) so I guess now we do actually know that the Attack titan was one of the two from Paradis. It still seems weird to me that the Reiss family had no idea about it, but at least that's something cleared up.

I've seen a few translations for the quadrupedal titan. The kanji literally means something like "car power" and the wikia page is calling it "Cartman" which just sounds dumb. I think "Mule" works a bit better.

[Ramza00]

Okay, I guess that's all nine titans accounted for now. This makes seven from Marley (Colossal, Armored, Jawed, Female, Beast, Mule*, Warhammer) so I guess now we do actually know that the Attack titan was one of the two from Paradis. It still seems weird to me that the Reiss family had no idea about it, but at least that's something cleared up.

I've seen a few translations for the quadrupedal titan. The kanji literally means something like "car power" and the wikia page is calling it "Cartman" which just sounds dumb. I think "Mule" works a bit better.

So noparlpf what is one of the words they used in chapter 95 before it is translated

On panel 5 I think it is, they use the translated word path, what is the original word that they used in the sentence "clear the path"...for the future of Eladia

[noparlpf]

So noparlpf what is one of the words they used in chapter 95 before it is translated

On panel 5 I think it is, they use the translated word path, what is the original word that they used in the sentence "clear the path"...for the future of Eladia

I don't actually speak Japanese, I can just read hiragana and then use Google translate to piece together sentences. Also took a bit to find the raws, let alone with legible furigana. Darn you, jpeg compression!

Page five, center panel:
Text bubble 1: 大丈夫 (daijobu)
Text bubble 2: 二人で刀を合わせればきつと... (futari de katana wo awasereba kitsuto...)
Text bubble 3: 切り開けるからエロデイアの未来は (kirihirakeru kara Elodeia no mirai ha)

I'd probably translate it as, "It's okay. If the two of us combine our strength, we can carve out the future of Elodia."

[Lurkmoar]

So, wow, Reiner was a mess before they broke down Wall Maria. All of a child's efforts, tears and blood shed and all he has to show for it are a bunch of dead people and an entire island nation hating his guts.

I'm still trying to get a handle on how the Marely government thought sending four children would actually succeed. They did almost capture Eren twice, I'll grant, but I think they were just looking for an excuse to get back home. And why were they told that the King wouldn't unleash the Titans in the Walls? To keep them from backing out, or did they have some insight into how the King would think after all this time?

[LaZodiac]

So, wow, Reiner was a mess before they broke down Wall Maria. All of a child's efforts, tears and blood shed and all he has to show for it are a bunch of dead people and an entire island nation hating his guts.

I'm still trying to get a handle on how the Marely government thought sending four children would actually succeed. They did almost capture Eren twice, I'll grant, but I think they were just looking for an excuse to get back home. And why were they told that the King wouldn't unleash the Titans in the Walls? To keep them from backing out, or did they have some insight into how the King would think after all this time?

Presumably because the King doesn't want people to know the secret of the titans, since otherwise they'd revolt?

As for their belief that the kids could do it...I mean you said it yourself. They basically almost DID. They coulda done this for like, LEGIT.

[Kato]

Presumably because the King doesn't want people to know the secret of the titans, since otherwise they'd revolt?

As for their belief that the kids could do it...I mean you said it yourself. They basically almost DID. They coulda done this for like, LEGIT.

Jup, well trained child soldiers can do pretty well... especially if they can rely on titan strength in a pinch.
I mean, I would have totally send adults because... they are STILL better but whatever. Target audience, I guess?

It's a bit curious how much screen time Reiner gets but... well, I guess we need a person we already know for this bit.

Also: The coincidences in this series are amazing at times.

[Lurkmoar]

Also: The coincidences in this series are amazing at times.

My favorite one was in the first chapter, when Armin was saying that just because the Titans haven't gotten inside the walls yet, doesn't mean they never will...

[Ramza00]

One reason why you may want to use Child Soldiers is specifically they are bad at critical thinking. You give them a goal, and you force them to obtain the goal via the triumph of will.

Of course this in turn means the child soliders get there but kicked if the enemy knows how to make the battlefield into a tactical form of a trap. For example reduce the titan's mobility, have stuff like the thunder spears, cannon barrels, etc and suddenly your child solider actually is making things worse due to the fact they expect only to solve problems with raw power of the titan or will power.

This is why Annie is still the scariest of the titan shifters. She may not have certain styles of raw power, but her adaptability and her intelligence means she is the true threat of the warrior titan shifters.

[HandofShadows]

New chapter. Still following the three shifters as they attack and infiltrate. They sure spend a LOT of time making up excuses for killing people who have done nothing to anyone.

[Lurkmoar]

New chapter. Still following the three shifters as they attack and infiltrate. They sure spend a LOT of time making up excuses for killing people who have done nothing to anyone.

Because if they admit that, it would make the Warrior Trio the bad guys...

Dina wasn't kidding about finding Grisha. Wonder if her having royal blood meant she had some innate link to the coordinate.

I hope that the action shifts back to the Survey Corp soon.

[HandofShadows]

Totally agree. I actually rather like most of the people in the Survey Corp. They are at least trying to do the right thing.

[Kato]

The longer this goes on the more I hate the DinaTitan with all it implies...

I kind of like the focus on the Shifters with all it implies, it just really drags if you devote 80 pages of a monthly manga to something you can tell in 20.
Anyone has an idea how Long the manga is planned to last?

[HandofShadows]

Well, new chapter. Still following the shifters :smallfrown:, but there is something else going on back in Marley. :smallconfused:

[Cozzer]

Well, well... I really like what this implies for the future of this arc.

I'm eager to see how well post-timeskip Smart!Eren is going to deal with such a delicate job. Go main character! Don't be kidnapped or otherwise turned into a liability! :smallbiggrin:

[Ramza00]

Wow a lot of stuff happened in this month's manga. I need to reread it for I did not notice several key events until the last few pages where a "hidden" thing I suddenly realized is a very important thing, almost a hidden macguffin.

It is Eren who is the person who is pretending to have injuries and PTSD induced amnesia for he has infiltrated Marley. And for some reason he is mailing a letter to his half brother.

Most likely everything is now in reverse situations. Just like the 4 Warriors were trying to capture the Founding Titan and the King Behind the Walls it is now Eren and possibly the Survey corps infiltrating Marley and doing ______WHAT_______?

Most likely something involving the Tybur family those Eladians who are honorary marleyian aristocrats and the Warhammer Titan.

[Kato]

Okay... can somebody explain to me why people are buying into this?


Okay, we get some more decent flashbacks and then it is finally over and has a decent pay off with Reiner. Then some backstory about the politics in marley and... well, guess what, another country run by a shadow government? That's what they're hinting at, right? One might think someone likes conspiracy theories :smalltongue:

But finally... what's with the crazy internet theories about "Eren"? I mean, I',m not saying it's impossible that it's him or it doesn't make sense. But we have zero proof yet people seem to take it as fact? :smallconfused: And even guesses about the letter seem to be accepted as "yeah, that must be it"?

[LaZodiac]

Okay... can somebody explain to me why people are buying into this?


Okay, we get some more decent flashbacks and then it is finally over and has a decent pay off with Reiner. Then some backstory about the politics in marley and... well, guess what, another country run by a shadow government? That's what they're hinting at, right? One might think someone likes conspiracy theories :smalltongue:

But finally... what's with the crazy internet theories about "Eren"? I mean, I',m not saying it's impossible that it's him or it doesn't make sense. But we have zero proof yet people seem to take it as fact? :smallconfused: And even guesses about the letter seem to be accepted as "yeah, that must be it"?


I think people are assuming the legless dude is Eren. It's just a theory.

[Kato]

I think people are assuming the legless dude is Eren. It's just a theory.

Yes, I get that. I wonder on what basis except... both have black hair? And are male?

[Ramza00]

Okay... can somebody explain to me why people are buying into this?


Okay, we get some more decent flashbacks and then it is finally over and has a decent pay off with Reiner. Then some backstory about the politics in marley and... well, guess what, another country run by a shadow government? That's what they're hinting at, right? One might think someone likes conspiracy theories :smalltongue:

But finally... what's with the crazy internet theories about "Eren"? I mean, I',m not saying it's impossible that it's him or it doesn't make sense. But we have zero proof yet people seem to take it as fact? :smallconfused: And even guesses about the letter seem to be accepted as "yeah, that must be it"?



So spoilers but the person who I think is Eren is first seen in Chapter 93 page 36, page 35 is the page where Reiner has a PTSD / Deja Vu flashbaack where he sees himself and the 3 other warrior titan potentials as kids and then he sees them again with the next generation of warrior titan potentials and he has a look of horror on his face.

Reiner then in 36 flashbacks to reality and we see Armband guy following Reiner and the 4 titan potentials in their walk around town.

http://images.mangafreak.net/mangas/shingeki_no_kyojin/shingeki_no_kyojin_93/shingeki_no_kyojin_93_36.jpg

Armband guy is not shown whether he has any combat injuries like a missing leg but it is obvious he is not using crutches.

Then in the next chapter 94 which I will not link to the images for there are several we see armband guy again in pages 12 to 14. Falco the Warrior Potential the armband guy will later talk to in chapter 97 mentions to armband guy that his armband is on the wrong arm.

Then in the most recent chapter 97 we see armband guy for 8 or so pages, 6 of them in the middle of the chapter and 2 of them at the very end.

Oh another piece of evidence of Armband guy is most likely being Eren Yeager is that he told Falco (the warrior potential) his name is Mr. Kruger as in the same last name as Eren Krueger also known as Owl the former Advancement / Attack Titan who infiltrated Malyean and later gave Eren Yeager's father the attack titan ability and Eren's dad then later acquired the founder titan before passing both titan powers onto Eren Yeager.

So to borrow something from the Incredibles

http://i.imgur.com/ttu21FN.jpg

And I just realized I can make another Incredibles reference =D

Helen: E, it's great to see you, but I gotta tell you, I've got no idea what you're talking about.
Edna: Yes, words are useless! Gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble! Too much of it, darling, too much! That is why I show you my work! That is why you are here!

[HandofShadows]

New Chapter
Yep, it is Eris playing spy. Seems like there is a set up for a lot of things going on at the same time and I wonder how badly things are going to go when the pile up happens.

[Frozen_Feet]

Anyone else thinking that Reiner's feeling more of a protagonist than Eren ever did?

[HandofShadows]

Let's see how Eren has changed. Think a moment about what Eren did here. He allowed someone to chop off his leg so he could infiltrate the enemy and deliberatly summoned Reiner to TALK to him. That is a very far cry from what old Eren would have done.

[Ramza00]

Lots of stuff is happening in this chapter and I feel we are about to transition to the action parts of the manga once again.

(talking out loud on how to write a story).

One thing about time skips and also the similar trope of splitting the party is that so much slowness occurs for you are doing infodumps in a way that is more exciting than narration but at the expense you waste precious panel time, comic strips, movie time, book time etc with Show not Tell, and sometimes you have the opposite extreme where you spend so much time showing how the world has change (Time Skip), or showing how the world is changing (Split the Party so you get more point of views with different locations) that the action and thus the agency of the readers and the point of view characters just stops.

Hopefully the info dump has stopped for I have a feeling the story is about to move again, but we got a lot of info dump in the most recent manga chapter, and considering I said the same thing last time, maybe I am just wrong, or maybe this is a sign the story is about to move again.

[Ramza00]

New Chapter, Attack on Titan Chapter 99 A Shadow of Guilt.

And what is for lunch? More myth making!


So in the tale / myth the Warhammer Titan Shifter Willy Tybur is telling. Where do the 4 kids they sent 9 years ago for a fight that was 5 years long takes place in the story? Is he going to say that the Yeager family is trying to destroy the world so they sent 4 out of the 6 titans to break down the walls 9 years ago?

For a reminder.

Year 845- The attack on Wall Rose, the night after the attack the Yeager family acquires the power of the founding Titan by stealing it with the Attack Titan
Year 850- The Battle of Trost and Eren discovers his power of titan shifting
Year 850- One month later the Female Titan Saga, the Female Titan Saga lasts 10 days
Year 850- Twelve Days after the Female Titan Saga Historia Reiss is now queen of the walls
Year 850- Two months after that the battle of Shiganshina District and to retake Wall Ross is performed (so roughly 4 months after the Battle of Tross)
Year 854- aka 9 years after the attack on Wall Rose, and 4 years after the battle of Shiganshina District is the current saga and Tybur is planning an attack on Paradise Island, the Land of the Walls to be finished and completed in less than 1 year.

[Lurkmoar]

Ramza00, seems to be the case.

I find it deeply amusing that he singles out Eren Yeager... when he was way too flippin' young to have done it.

[Ramza00]

Ramza00, seems to be the case.

I find it deeply amusing that he singles out Eren Yeager... when he was way too flippin' young to have done it.

So Lurkmoar what is your opinion of an event that happened in Chapter 99



Maybe I been reading too much Hajime Isayama and I just notice things are off for I am hypersensitive to things that may be telegraphing.

But Pieck / Cart Titan seemed to remember her Guard (which is probably a Survey Corps member) and soon after she jumped at Panzer Squad. I am guessing this is her squad mates that man the guns when she is in titan form and they seem to be familiar with her. Did she whisper in the guy's ear telling him something is off and alert the authorities or have his squad mates follow her or something?

Aka I am trying to see if I can plan out the attack / counter / pivot attack / counter again that Isayama always seem to do.

[Frozen_Feet]

It seems likelier Mr. Warhammer has come to know what Grisha tried to do, and knows the powerd Grisha stole from the Royal family have been passed to Eren.

[Lurkmoar]

So Lurkmoar what is your opinion of an event that happened in Chapter 99



Maybe I been reading too much Hajime Isayama and I just notice things are off for I am hypersensitive to things that may be telegraphing.

But Pieck / Cart Titan seemed to remember her Guard (which is probably a Survey Corps member) and soon after she jumped at Panzer Squad. I am guessing this is her squad mates that man the guns when she is in titan form and they seem to be familiar with her. Did she whisper in the guy's ear telling him something is off and alert the authorities or have his squad mates follow her or something?

Aka I am trying to see if I can plan out the attack / counter / pivot attack / counter again that Isayama always seem to do.



Seems like a safe bet to me. I'm gonna reread the previous few chapters and see if there are any familiar figures in the background.

[HandofShadows]

New Chapter
Well, it's all hitting the fan. Eren seems to have grown up quite a bit. He actually forgives Reiner. And then he turns into his titian form and starts killing. Of course he did that just as Marley (and the world?) declared war on Paradise Island.

[Lurkmoar]

I do hope that Lord Tieber or however you spell it didn't survive that... interested in seeing how this plays out... and when Armin shows himself.

[Ramza00]

God Titan its been an entire month, where has all the time gone that its been a month. It hasn't seen like a month, just a few short days and some dreams in between.

[Ramza00]

Some thematic parallels / foreshadowing in previous Attack on Titan Chapters to the most recent chapter 100

https://imgur.com/a/viWL9

[Kato]

I do hope that Lord Tieber or however you spell it didn't survive that... interested in seeing how this plays out... and when Armin shows himself.

In all likelihood he's the Warhammer so.. Poor luck.

I wonder what exactly the tech-timeline in this world is.. As in what level were people on during the reign of the eldians. And how much progress was there since then.

[Cozzer]

The parallels between Eren and Reiner really give a lot of depth to both characters, IMO. Love this chapter.

So sad that now that Eren has understood that war and vengeance are pointless, the rest of the world will force him to keep waging them. Now I'm expecting a series of "that was all part of my plan!" reversals from both factions.

[HandofShadows]

I do hope that Lord Tieber or however you spell it didn't survive that... interested in seeing how this plays out... and when Armin shows himself.

I think that was a kill. While shifters are hard to kill, that kind of damage you need Deadpool or old Wolverine level healing to survive. Most of the bones are broken, most of the digestive track shredded, neck and jaw shattered then add in massive blood loss. And he hasn't even hit the ground yet, assuming he will. Right now he is still in the air and might end up being lunch. :smalleek: Massive trauma has show to prevent a shifter from being able to become a titian (When Aren had to regenerate this legs). This is karma coming back to hit him in the face in a HUGE way for declaring war. And really this whole mess is the Marley's fault. It was their attempt to steal the First Titian's power for their own use that started all this and now it's come back to bite them big time.

[noparlpf]

I think that was a kill. While shifters are hard to kill, that kind of damage you need Deadpool or old Wolverine level healing to survive. Most of the bones are broken, most of the digestive track shredded, neck and jaw shattered then add in massive blood loss. And he hasn't even hit the ground yet, assuming he will. Right now he is still in the air and might end up being lunch. :smalleek: Massive trauma has show to prevent a shifter from being able to become a titan (When Aren had to regenerate this legs). This is karma coming back to hit him in the face in a HUGE way for declaring war. And really this whole mess is the Marley's fault. It was their attempt to steal the First Titan's power for their own use that started all this and now it's come back to bite them big time.

Eren had better eat him; it would be irresponsible not to just in case he is the warhammer titan.

[Spacewolf]

I think that was a kill. While shifters are hard to kill, that kind of damage you need Deadpool or old Wolverine level healing to survive. Most of the bones are broken, most of the digestive track shredded, neck and jaw shattered then add in massive blood loss. And he hasn't even hit the ground yet, assuming he will. Right now he is still in the air and might end up being lunch. :smalleek: Massive trauma has show to prevent a shifter from being able to become a titian (When Aren had to regenerate this legs). This is karma coming back to hit him in the face in a HUGE way for declaring war. And really this whole mess is the Marley's fault. It was their attempt to steal the First Titian's power for their own use that started all this and now it's come back to bite them big time.

Except going by this chapter this is completely what he expected and wanted.

[Lurkmoar]

Also, how the frick did the Marley know or suspect that the soldiers from Paradis made it over?

[HandofShadows]

Except going by this chapter this is completely what he expected and wanted.

He was expecting an assassination attempt, yeah. And he wants an attack to happen to clear out the &%$&* in the Marley military. However, I don't think he expected that a Eren would show up in Titian form. I also wonder if Eren is going to cause as much damage as expected. Tieber put a lot of officials from other nations right in the line of fire expecting them to be killed. But what if Eren doesn't do it? Pre time jump Eren might well have done it, but now?


Also, how the frick did the Marley know or suspect that the soldiers from Paradis made it over?

That is a very good question. Maybe someone has the answer because I'm not seeing it. But I missed a lot in earlier chapters.

[Kato]

Eren had better eat him; it would be irresponsible not to [...]

That's one of those sentences that needs to be read in context..

[noparlpf]

That's one of those sentences that needs to be read in context..

Haha, yeah. I promise I'm not a cannibal, I just grew up playing a lot of kirby games so it seems totally reasonable to eat your enemies to gain their powers.

[Frozen_Feet]

Marley was sending warships to Paradise for a while, and Eren was implied to sink them. The top brass figuring out that spies might have made it across is not a huge leap when they know several ships have gone missing.

[Spacewolf]

Considering Paradis knows nothing about the out side world while Marley is a military nation I wouldn't be surprised if they captured afew of the spies or where able to identify some of them, trail them and eventually realise who they actually worked for.

[Kato]

And then there is the fact that Paradis decides to send Eren and if I know the storz probablz a bunch of other shifters over because it~s not like losig them would be a big blow to their war efforts and sending, zou know, actuallz qualified spies, would be a better idea...

[HandofShadows]

And then there is the fact that Paradis decides to send Eren and if I know the storz probablz a bunch of other shifters over because it~s not like losig them would be a big blow to their war efforts and sending, zou know, actuallz qualified spies, would be a better idea...

Eren and company aren't really there as spies. They are there as a commando force. There are probably some dedicated spies around but also remember Paradise Island has no history of Spycraft to work with. In other words they don't have any qualified spies.

[Fri]

New chapter is up.

What a time skip. Previous chapter was honestly such a big dramatic reveal/cliffhanger for me. I honestly think the story was really good and at its high point just right before we change pov, then I thought it went quite weird, but now at least I can say I'm really curious on where this is going.

That final page, though

[Ramza00]

The art this chapter (101) is superb.

[HandofShadows]

Looks like this round goes to Eren and company. The Warhammer Titian is dead. New tech for the Survey Corps as well.

[Kato]

The Warhammer Titian is dead.

Someone's juming to conclusions faster than a supervillain... down? sure. Dead? I'll believe it when I see it.
But anyway, decent chapter, even though I guess there is no word for "security" in Marleyan. Or our heroes are just super capable. At least they wonder as much as me what the big plan here is.

Also, I was obviously wrong on the identity of the Warhammer. My bad.

[HandofShadows]

In this case it's a very certain thing. As for security, they had it all over the place. On The Ground. They could do little to stop what they faced.

[HandofShadows]

New Chapter
Well, I was wrong. The Warammer Titian builts a false body with her power and so she wasn't killed. :smallmad: And the gang is all here, except one. I have a feeling that when Armin arrives he's going to make a huge impact. :smallwink:

[Lurkmoar]

The Warhammer made ridiculous use of its hardening ability....

[Ramza00]

Feb Attack of Titan (102), next comic will be April (103)


So this comic is proof why this attack is ill conceived for the survey corps. Seriously they had a bad plan with the Jaw and Cart titan as well as the Warhammer titan.

1) If the goal was to neutralize these titans and not kill them as future allies they definitely failed that plan. They could have kill those titans just by dropping a bomb / grenade into the shaft. Instead they gave the Jaw and Cart titan, food, water, and toiletries.
2) If the goal was neutralization for later recruitment than this plan obviously failed and now you are paying the price for your arrogance with an ill thought out plan and the Jaw and Cart Titan returning to the battle.
3) If the goal was to acquire the titan powers by Eren or Armin eating the titans then why didn't they do this?

A) Something went wrong with the plan, or B) this is bad storytelling.

Seriously why would Armin agree to this plan that is so "badly-thought-out" without contingencies and with a well thought out decision tree if things do not go according to plan?

[HandofShadows]

I think that is part of the point Ramza00. What is going does not make a whole lot of sense. But there are clues to thinkgs going on that we don't know about. Such as the lights and who arranged to put the two shifters into the pit and others.

[HandofShadows]

Just a note here. I noticed the rifle on page 20 and it looked very familiar to me. Took a little time to find it but it looks like a Carcano Modello 1891 infantry rifle from Italy. Given the designs of the ships and such I think I'm going to push my estimation of the tech level from World War I to around 1900 or so. Not that anyone probably cares. :smallbiggrin:

[Spacewolf]

So who's going to get shot by the girl in the next few chapters? I'm guessing it's going to be a mainish character so I'd go for Jean.

[danzibr]

Oh man, been a while, read like 12 chapters. I was mega confused with all the backstory and whatnot.

I... pretty much like what's happening. But yeah, their plan seems pretty poor. Wonder when Armin as a titan's going to show up.

[Kato]

Just a note here. I noticed the rifle on page 20 and it looked very familiar to me. Took a little time to find it but it looks like a Carcano Modello 1891 infantry rifle from Italy. Given the designs of the ships and such I think I'm going to push my estimation of the tech level from World War I to around 1900 or so. Not that anyone probably cares. :smallbiggrin:

I know very little about guns but looking at the rest of the tech I'd say it can't really be pre 1910, but then again I don't think the author is sticking that close to reality.

As for the actual plot... Pretty good chapter, I'll agree.
I wonder if Warhammer's technique is inherent to the titan or something the user came up with. And depending on how good it's defense is... That seems pretty fool proof.

Also, with our islanders, I'd say either poor writing or one hand actually doesn't know what the other does. Which just means they are pretty poor as an army (although not that different from a real one)

[Ramza00]

Also, with our islanders, I'd say either poor writing or one hand actually doesn't know what the other does. Which just means they are pretty poor as an army (although not that different from a real one)

But the survey corps is not an army, you can make the argument the other military branches are armies, but not the survey corps. Let me explain how I am personally using the terms even though the terms I use are relatively standard and I think most people would agree with them.

The survey corps at its height only had 300 people. In most military in history we have a name for a group of people that is 300 to 800 people and that is battalion. The whole purpose of the battalion is the smallest group of people that is self sufficient and can thus be truly independent, yet still operate things like a headquarters and so on. Something smaller than a battalion would be a company. We usually use the term captain for the leader of the company. Smaller groups than a company would be a platoon (30 or less people), smaller still would be a squad, smaller than that would be a team (3 or 4 people).

Due to limits of human cognition with splitting our attention, corporation and team work, you usually have these "rough" ratios of people and these ratios will then form a hierarchy in a coordinated fashion. Aka a "tree" data structure.


And the survey corps is often less than 300 people, during numerous missions there is only 100 people in the survey corps, and even less after Shiganshina District (looks at wiki only 9 survivors for this battle)

-----

(I will get to why seeing Survey Corps as an Battalion and not an army)

And from the data books we know there are 3 layers of command / hierarchy.

Commander

up to 4 Squad Leaders that answer to the commander

up to 10 Teams that answer to the Squad leader. Some of these teams are organized around more for logistics support, and some of the teams are more for their offensive / survey capacity.

Individuals that belong to said Teams

So 4 layers of entropy with 3 levels of hierarchy that control the 4 layers of entropy.

-----

When you are dealing with only 3 levels of bosses it is very easy to run a tight chain of command and to know what the other people are doing. A Battalion is a better term than an army. Hell I would argue company is a more accurate term for Battalions are often 4 layers of bosses.

Running a battalion in enemy territory requires having a singular purpose and clear goals and objectives. Yes you will be considering multiple directives during this time away from home but the group is too small to support itself for extended periods in enemy territory that it must be agile and think very tactically for you will not be able to hold land but you will be able to hold locations such as chocke points and so on.

-----

(I feel like I am rambling) ... my point is that it is normal for some army parts to not know what the other army parts are doing when we are talking armies, aka things that are 1,000 people or m ore, but especially 10,000 people or more. But when you are running a much smaller operation that is 300 people or less, you are having a failure of command structure if you can't have your various captains (aka squad leader which controls the teams) know what the objectives and contingencies are before hand, when you are literally choosing the time and place of the battle.

Someone is screwing up (we do not know who yet and let alone why) but something is not right here (or we have bad writting.) Perhaps Hangae Zoe sucks at her job, perhaps not saving Commander Erwin Smith (allowing Armin to live) was the wrong call, perhaps there is a problem with the intermediary structure with individual squad or team leaders. Something is not happening right.


----

Put another way from a narrative standpoint. If we are talking 300 people or less, and especially if its 100 people or less in the modern survey corps we should be seeing this "attack" as more of a "heist movie" and not something we would use the term "army" with.

[Kato]

Uhm, thanks, I know. It's just that a country that is little more than one huge city but has some kind of military it is hard not to call it an army. And considering the rebellion kind of took over the government, it's not far fetched to assume the somewhat restructured their forces, considering their Goals are not mainly defending against titans but waging war on the world.

But as you say, a unit that small should not have a problem getting all their soldiers to follow the same orders. Maybe there is some excuse why they wanted to capture the shifters alive but didn't have anyone actually guarding them. In fact, I'm willing to accept it was a poor timing to try to eat them if that was their long time goal. But you have to decide if you either are on a revenge rampage attempting to kill as many as possible or on a strategic strike to take out the enemies shifters. And if you have effing soldiers who apparently openly talk about revenge then you don't bring them along for the mission. Especially if they decide to waste ressources on their revenge and ignore possible actual threats. That's just terrible and if it wasn't for their surprise bonus they'd probably all be dead already.
(sidenote: I guess I should give credit to the author for discussing the fleet being destroyed or I'd have to argue how they managed to even leave the island and infiltrate Marley unnoticed.)

[Cozzer]

I think it's implied that Eren is forcing everybody's hand, not just the enemies. That's an important factor, especially considering he can basically ignore the hierarchy if he really wants, since they can't afford to lose him.

Something like "oh, so you guys are undecided about what to do? Well, I'll just put myself in danger and in need of being saved, and if I die we all lose, no pressure though".

[danzibr]

I think it's implied that Eren is forcing everybody's hand, not just the enemies. That's an important factor, especially considering he can basically ignore the hierarchy if he really wants, since they can't afford to lose him.

Something like "oh, so you guys are undecided about what to do? Well, I'll just put myself in danger and in need of being saved, and if I die we all lose, no pressure though".
Agreed.

Also, we don't know what Eren knows/doesn't know. He's been away from the rest of the islanders for a long time, and all he did recently was send letters. No grand coordination or plan making. Well, at least a little plan making.

And the lights. We'll see what's up with that.

Oh, and a thought occurred to me. So Gabi could inherit/become the Armored Titan. Doesn't seem limited to sex. Interesting how Annie was the Female Titan. I wonder... could a male become the Female Titan? :P

[HandofShadows]

When Eren sent the letters they had to go to a location known to him. That means the Survey Corps has to have some kind of base of operations in Marley and it probably not a small operation.

[Ramza00]

Uhm, thanks, I know. It's just that a country that is little more than one huge city but has some kind of military it is hard not to call it an army. And considering the rebellion kind of took over the government, it's not far fetched to assume the somewhat restructured their forces, considering their Goals are not mainly defending against titans but waging war on the world.

I apologize if my language was too long winded, but I wanted to highlight the insight you had. I was long winded for I wanted everyone to be clear and on the same page and I perhaps definitely over did it. So I apologize, for I probably could have done it better in a more concise manner.


But as you say, a unit that small should not have a problem getting all their soldiers to follow the same orders. Maybe there is some excuse why they wanted to capture the shifters alive but didn't have anyone actually guarding them. In fact, I'm willing to accept it was a poor timing to try to eat them if that was their long time goal. But you have to decide if you either are on a revenge rampage attempting to kill as many as possible or on a strategic strike to take out the enemies shifters. And if you have effing soldiers who apparently openly talk about revenge then you don't bring them along for the mission. Especially if they decide to waste ressources on their revenge and ignore possible actual threats. That's just terrible and if it wasn't for their surprise bonus they'd probably all be dead already.
(sidenote: I guess I should give credit to the author for discussing the fleet being destroyed or I'd have to argue how they managed to even leave the island and infiltrate Marley unnoticed.)

Your speculations / "forecasting" of what went wrong are probably likely on how this could have occured. I agree and can add to the forecasting of how this could have gone wrong.

My point I want to highlight and underscore again is something went wrong for this is a bad plan if it is so easy to fall apart. This is unlike what we have seen in the Survey Corps in the past. The reason why the survey corps is still alive is do to good planing and contingency type thinking causing the survey corps to take risks but to prevent this risk from being catastrophic and wipe out the whole survey corps.

This theme is really beaten into the readers during "The Female Titan" arc, and when you read it you are in awe. At the same time the female titan points out how the "unknown information" can sabotage the best laid plans. But here in the modern arc not completely taking out titan shifters for they can return to battle is such an elementary obvious weakness in the plan. It is obvious both from an intuitional standpoint but also an experiential standpoint for the survivors of the survey corps must know how dangerous shifters are and how quickly they can return to battle with numerous examples.



I think it's implied that Eren is forcing everybody's hand, not just the enemies. That's an important factor, especially considering he can basically ignore the hierarchy if he really wants, since they can't afford to lose him.


And that is definitely a breakdown of command if a solider feels he can just adapt on his own and the whole battalion will react to him and be his backup.

[Cozzer]

And that is definitely a breakdown of command if a solider feels he can just adapt on his own and the whole battalion will react to him and be his backup.

Well yes, but in the real world you don't have a person who is the single point of failure for the entire war. If Eren (or, more importantly, the Original Titan) is caught or killed, it's gg for the islanders. At the same time, they need his power to have a chance so they can't just toss him in prison or something. It's a situation that's completely non-comparable to any problem a real army would have, so I think it makes no sense to judge how the chain of command is adapting to it basing on real-world parameters.

It's like you were playing chess, but another guy was moving your king and the king was the only piece that can capture the opponent's king. If the guy who's playing your king decides to be an ******* and puts himself in danger, you still have to do your best to keep up with him and protect him because otherwise you lose. You can't really judge such a situation by comparing it to a regular game of chess.

[Weimann]

I thought I was finally gonna watch Attack on Titan, but I can’t seem to find a place to do it? It’s not on Netflix, and Crunchyroll only has the second season. Where can I watch the first season?

[Ramza00]

Well yes, but in the real world you don't have a person who is the single point of failure for the entire war. If Eren (or, more importantly, the Original Titan) is caught or killed, it's gg for the islanders. At the same time, they need his power to have a chance so they can't just toss him in prison or something. It's a situation that's completely non-comparable to any problem a real army would have, so I think it makes no sense to judge how the chain of command is adapting to it basing on real-world parameters.

It's like you were playing chess, but another guy was moving your king and the king was the only piece that can capture the opponent's king. If the guy who's playing your king decides to be an ******* and puts himself in danger, you still have to do your best to keep up with him and protect him because otherwise you lose. You can't really judge such a situation by comparing it to a regular game of chess.

I get what you are saying, but Eren would be stupid to do that based off his life history. He knows that just "winging" a plan will lead to failure and him being captured. How many times has this happened in Attack on Titan where he has actual life experience.

This "folly" is what you expect from an inexperienced 15 year old hero at the start of a shounen manga, not the 19 year old hero who has 4 years of experience telling him not to do that thing.

[Cozzer]

This "folly" is what you expect from an inexperienced 15 year old hero at the start of a shounen manga, not the 19 year old hero who has 4 years of experience telling him not to do that thing.

I don't know... remember there's still the Checkov's gun of the baseball glove waiting to be fired. I think neither party has shown all the cards in their hands yet.

I mean, if Eren does have a good plan, forcing the others to go along with it by using himself as an hostage of sorts is not a bad move. He's become a cold mot******er, but he's still I'll-just-punch-the-Titan Eren. It would be a calculated huge risk, because not taking huge risks in their situation is even more risky in the long term.