Trapped in the ruins of Utgard, Conny, Reiner, Berthold, Ymir, Christa and the more experienced Scouts fight for their lives against Titans who apparently can operate at night. It’s not looking good…
What They Say:
Episode 29: “Soldier”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
If you have been waiting for some action to break out, then your wait is over as this episode gives us quite a bit of it, though that does not mean there isn’t further exposition and plenty of talking.
Before all of the major action starts, however, we get a rewind to a couple hours before the attack, a few quiet moments where everyone can catch their breath before the tension gets ratcheted up to eleven. They think they are safe since it is night time and they have a fairly good defensive place, so the experienced Scouts order the newbies to rest while they can. Conny, of course, is still deeply affected by what he saw back in his home village, the Titan sitting on top of his house who sadly reminds him of his mother.
Ymir, who has never been a particularly sympathetic character, at least not for me in the whole long run of this story to date, laughs at Conny, making fun of his thinking that the Titan on his house could in some way be connected to his mother. While Reiner later tries to put a positive spin on it, thanking Ymir for laughing off the idea as a means of distracting Conny from his pain at seeing his home village wrecked, Ymir reveals what the audience probably already figured out on its own during the event: that Ymir was doing no such thing. She’s mean-spirited in a way, caring only for Christa and no one and nothing else.
That’s not to say that all the humor in this episode was meant in a malicious way. There was some gallows humor (the sad cosmic irony of a dying Gelgar and his wish for one last drink before death) and there was some slightly trite “secretly I want her” humor (involving Reiner expressing an interest to marry someone among their party not too long after he and Ymir had traded expressions of non-interest in the other sex). It’s necessary to have some of this when the rest of this installment is filled with harrowing near escapes and several quite final deaths.
If there is one thing that slightly annoys me at this point, it is that the Beast Titan seems to play the role of game-breaking plot device. Just when it was seeming that the group trapped in the ruins of Utgard might just have a bare sliver of a chance of survival, he has to come along and take it all away. I understand quite well that the Titan attack has to have some kind of objective in the end. They are no longer aimless behemoths with only an instinct for eating humans. There is strategy and there is leadership. But it seems like there has been a sudden and jarring rise in their abilities and coordination. Had they had these kinds of abilities and leaders available before…why did they not unleash them against Humanity earlier?
There are others who might be displeased with what is happening slightly on the animation front. Sure, some of the action scenes are quite fluid and there is the deep and dense rendering of scenes that Studio Wit has made their trademark to some degree, but we also find some quite notable instances of shortcuts. In some of the scenes showing the Titans moving on to attack the towers of this ruined castle, we do not have animation at all but instead still frames that are panned over to create the illusion of movement, but which are clearly just pans over still frames. Of course, experienced fans are well aware of the limitations of time and budget for weekly televised anime, so this does not surprise me. But there will probably be others out there already wondering if we will only be seeing more of this over time.
Oh, you’re still wondering what is up with Christa, what was hinted at last week? You will find no answer this time. Instead, you will be teased largely about Ymir and some secret that she is hiding. In something as innocuous as a can of tinned herring, it is revealed that Ymir is hiding quite a lot about herself. And then the biggest surprise (or is it really all that much of a surprise at this point?) is kept for the end.
In Summary:
The group trapped in Utgard Castle are hoping to make it through the night and then make their way inside the safety of the Walls (if that’s safe anymore). But their plans are disrupted when a large number of Titans attack them out night. The Scouts fight bravely but are overwhelmed. The former Cadets are in an increasingly perilous situation as dawn approaches. Will anyone escape the encounter?
Grade: A-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll (also streaming on Funimation)
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 12GB RAM, Mac OS 10.11 El Capitan
