Hanji Zoe, the Titan otaku.
What They Say:
Many years ago, the last remnants of humanity were forced to retreat behind the towering walls of a fortified city to escape the massive, man-eating Titans that roamed the land outside their fortress. Only the heroic members of the Scouting Legion dared to stray beyond the safety of the walls – but even those brave warriors seldom returned alive. Those within the city clung to the illusion of a peaceful existence until the day that dream was shattered, and their slim chance at survival was reduced to one horrifying choice: kill – or be devoured!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The survey corps. take Eren to their old headquarters (a remote, abandoned castle) so that they can train and evaluate him discreetly. Casual conversation between members of Squad Levi gives us a brief introduction to the group of colourful personalities. We’re also told each person’s Titan kill and assist counts, with the exception of Levi, the one whose stats I wanted to hear the most. The whole scenario is reminiscent of Eren’s original training days: again, he’s somewhat of an outcast among a group of strange people who are all committed to fighting the Titans. There are differences, of course, but in an important way it feels as though he’s come full circle.
To complete the illusion, Hanji Zoe is basically a bossier version of Sasha Blouse. Just replace her lust for food with a lust for morbid scientific data. Late one night, Eren asks about her Titan-related experiments, at which point everyone else wisely leaves the room. She enters into an excessively long monologue about the things she’s learned from the two Titans that were captured after the Battle of Trost. I’m impressed that Attack on Titan remembered to tie up this loose end; it would have been forgivable never to mention these two again, but instead they got half of an entire episode.
The purpose of the research was for the military to learn more about the Titans. They found that Titans don’t need to eat, drink, or even breathe: they’re entirely solar-powered. Cutting them off from sunlight makes them fall asleep within a few hours, depending on the subject. And their bodies are unusually lightweight, considering their size and power.
Eren refers to Squad Levi as a “den of madmen,” but Hanji is probably the most eccentric one of all. When she met the two captured Titans, the first thing she did was try to talk with them. All they did in response was try to bite her head off, but she seemed to find that cute. She also told them a story about cannibalistic humans (to…make them feel at home?) and named them Sonny and Bean.
When Eren asks why she treats them so differently from everyone else, Hanji answers that she thinks there might be more to the Titans than meets the eye. People automatically feel hatred toward them, but no one really knows that much about the creatures. Hanji wants to at least give them a chance before writing them off as monsters that exist only to destroy.
The next morning, everyone is shocked to find that Sonny and Bean have been killed, apparently by a group of rogue soldiers. All that remains is a pair of smoking skeletons—what did they even do to them? Could the bodies have deteriorated that quickly just by cutting into their necks? Hanji’s screams of despair make it sound as though they had been her own children.
The cool thing about this episode is that it more or less succeeds in generating sympathy for two Titans even after 14 straight episodes of watching the rest of them terrorize humanity. There’s this weird sense that I’m supposed to care about Sonny and Bean, and since everything I’ve learned about them is from Hanji’s perspective, I kind of do. Attack on Titan is deliberately trying to reverse its own characterization of its primary antagonists. It’s a strange feeling, but I like it. Just to drive the point home, Erwin finishes off the episode with an enigmatic question posed to Eren: “What do you think the enemy is?”
In Summary: The elite survey corps. take Eren to an isolated castle to start his training. We meet several new members of the prestigious Squad Levi, and most of them are pretty weird. Hanji Zoe has a long talk with Eren about what she’s learned from her experiments on the two captured Titans, which she’s named Sonny and Bean. Apparently, they’re lightweight, uncommunicative, and 100% solar-powered. After a long night of droning on about Titans, Hanji is devastated to find that Sonny and Bean have been killed. Her bewildering compassion for the Titans highlights the overall theme of episode 15: maybe they aren’t just evil monsters after all.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Insignia 1080p TV, PS3 with Crunchyroll App; Occasionally 17” Toshiba Satellite Laptop, 2.13 GHz Core i3, 4GB RAM, Windows 7
I love how the anime made Hanji a bit wackier than she was portrayed in the manga.
Any other characters they’ve changed from the manga so far?
Everyone’s the same, though some characters got more depth. Pixis, Erwin and especially Jean got more character development in the anime than in the manga so far.
Haha, cool, and those are all turning out to be pretty interesting characters. Guess they know what they’re doing.