Gather around and hear the horrors of Potato Girl.
What They Say:
“Midnight Train”
Though glad the war is over, both the Eldian Warriors and Marley brass realize that neither have a future unless they finish the job of retaking the Founding Titan.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As Reiner bolts awake in a cold sweat from nightmares replaying his traumatic experiences on Paradis, I can’t help but chuckle at the excess of filters applied over the archival Wit Studio footage, ostensibly for the purpose of depicting the warped perspective of a dreamlike haze in Reiner’s psychological state but also effectively masking what Attack on Titan used to look like while in the context of this brave new world. As good as it looks now, even the most distorted memory of those rich colors, bold outlines, and, most importantly, thrillingly kinetic midair maneuvering with virtually no visible CG evokes a twinge of longing. Remember when your Titan was 2D, Reiner? Good times.
After a season premiere full of action-packed warfare from start to finish, we spend the entirety of this episode on very personal, human moments. This means the animation has a lot less to prove, but it ends up displaying inordinately dynamic camera movements on several occasions, and even some character acting with comparable enough dynamism to almost certainly be rotoscoped at times. Even if the aesthetic of the Wit seasons had a bit more impact in general, there’s little room to argue against the notion that this is still a meticulously realized piece of art, and there have been enough examples to the contrary that it’s more than worth acknowledging and celebrating that this managed to avoid being another casualty.
A key strength of Attack on Titan since the beginning, one that set it apart from others of its ilk immediately, has been the palpably visceral depiction of fear, despair, and trauma, from hardened veterans to hopeless civilians and of course our own protagonists. Until now, there has been a clear source of this endless anguish, an “other” epitomizing unmitigated evil. Now, with the mysteries solved, revealing the tragedy of these monsters, we find ourselves on the “other side of the ocean” for an extended period of time, and with no sign of our protagonists anytime soon, the only way for this narrative to carry itself is to find some degree of empathy for a group whose most unfortunate victims have committed the most heinous atrocities against those we’ve cared about for 59 episodes.
Whether the story will attempt to make any pureblooded Marleyans, Aryans by any other name, truly sympathetic remains to be seen, but it’s startlingly apparent how we can feel for these Eldians as they spew vitriolic rhetoric about those of their own kind living in fear of being eaten alive by the monsters other fellow Eldians were forced to become by the very powers they fight for despite still being treated like garbage. Generations of propaganda has led to Stockholm syndrome, internalized oppression, and any number of other psychological phenomena. We’ve been party to Marleyan-inflicted tragedy the likes of which these people can’t comprehend throughout the entire series, but the most profound tragedy within these walls is the Eldians who think they have better lives than they deserve as they curse their filthy blood and only pray that they can do their oppressor’s bidding to eradicate their own people well enough to atone for their own births. You can find metaphors for Titans, but these concepts are plucked straight out of the real world, and that’s what makes them especially chilling.
As the current Warriors with the powers of the Nine Titans and their potential successors extol the honor of such a role, only a quickly berated Falco worried for Gabi begins to acknowledge the horrific fact that it means accepting a limited term that ends by being literally devoured by the next in line. Everyone else simply accepts it as reality and vies for it nonetheless, with prospective future Warriors like the bubbly Gabi just as enamored with the idea as the ever-loyal Zeke is nonplussed by the fact that he’ll face his own gruesome demise in a year as a matter of course. Ymir’s letter to Historia was always likely to be the last we ever heard from her, but for her to have been eaten off-screen with no fanfare is, well, pretty on brand for Attack on Titan. Marco can tell you that much.
While Zeke, easily the most despicable Eldian to date, has an intriguing hint of an independent streak while the Marleyans listen in on the Eldians’ meeting, the emotional core of the episode is undoubtedly Reiner. As can be inferred from Reiner’s vision of the current group of young Eldian Warrior candidates as himself and his now dead or captured comrades from nine years ago, he was almost certainly exactly like them when Marley was all he knew. But in invading Paradis and infiltrating their military, Reiner’s eyes were opened to the reality that these were just fellow humans fighting for their life, a conflict that he could only cope with by manifesting it as the unique psychological condition that he struggled with while still living that life.
There’s no indication that Reiner finds himself questioning whether he’s a Soldier or a Warrior these days, but that’s presumably only because he hasn’t had to play the role of the former or interact with any others in that role for four years. Instead, we see him haunted by the life he’s led. Even back at home base where he’s respected as the second greatest Warrior in the land, we see possibly a more vulnerable Reiner than we ever had before, most likely because he needed to carry the empathy of the characters we know and love through a world where his closest peers are helplessly indoctrinated.
In a distinctively Attack on Titan fashion, the most unsettling scene of the episode is also the most hilarious, as a deadly serious Reiner describes the horrors of Paradis by recounting in excruciating detail such moments as Sasha’s infamous Potato Girl introduction and other similarly comical scenes. The camera and the tonal and literal darkness of the scene set in deeper as Reiner’s terrors stray further and further from resembling anything of the sort, only to cut to utter shock on the faces of Reiner’s family, appalled by his implications that these supposed monsters were akin to humans. The childlike innocence of Gabi’s confusion cements the theme that carries the episode, particularly acute due to her often humorous characterization painting her as the Sasha of her own group.
I neglected to mention the OP and ED for a number of reasons last week. I had an awful lot of more important points to go over to set the stage before delving into the season itself, the first episode’s content bled into the ED a bit, and I tend not to have formed a solid opinion on an OP or ED immediately after seeing it for the first time. Now that we have some more time, we get both uninterrupted, and I’ve had a bit more experience with each, it’s a good time to acknowledge them.
The first OP of the third season already broke from the tradition of Linked Horizon opening themes with very consistent visual motifs to accompany them, but that doesn’t make this any less painful. For the first time, Revo’s Linked Horizon has no representation in the theme songs of this season. The opening theme song artist isn’t new to Attack on Titan; the group was responsible for the second season’s ending theme. That was a bizarre song that only worked as an eerie background to the horrific storybook-like visuals, the context of which wouldn’t become known until later. It couldn’t be less equipped to serve as an opening theme, except this new track by the same band is somehow less equipped. That would be the case if this was any old show. This is Attack on Titan. This has four Linked Horizon openings (and one ending) to compete with. Even if the sequence, especially the visual component, is overall less serene than Yoshiki and Hyde’s “Red Swan,” it manages to have no impact, following up on a series of some of the most impactful opening sequences in anime.
The ED is nothing remarkable either, but that’s more forgivable for an ED, even if “Red Swan” did have a quieter but still powerful Linked Horizon ED paired with it to keep the balance intact. As in that situation, the ED is almost certainly the stronger of the two; it’s just the lesser of two evils this time.
At the end of the day, these are relatively trivial matters in the grand scheme of the season’s quality, but with so much changing, holding on to that bit of welcome familiarity would’ve been a nice consolation. The case can be made that the setting and (so far) characters and story are so different that it makes more sense to go a completely direction for these pieces that are meant to represent the series, but ironically, several of the Linked Horizon themes and their accompanying visuals have evoked images of propaganda, so it would be more appropriate now than ever. There’s a small chance that the OP and ED change within these 16 episodes, but since the “final season” is almost guaranteed to return for at least one more cour at some later date, it’s highly unlikely that these will be the final sequences of the series. Hopefully the actual final ones are more like what we’ve gotten in the past.
In Summary:
To be Attack on Titan is to deftly depict despair. As we shift focus to the fellow Eldians happily serving the Marleyans who unleashed Titans upon Paradis, we find a similar sense of empathy from the obvious brainwashing that these well-meaning citizens have been subjected to for so long that nobody can tell. Nobody, perhaps, except for Reiner, a complicated but largely reprehensible character now seen in such an achingly tortured light that he’s able to singlehandedly carry genuine moral complexity that he tries so hard to hide. Lacking in any of the spectacle of the season premiere, this much quieter follow-up begins to scratch at the surface of what makes these characters tick.
Grade: A-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll, Funimation, VRV, Hulu
