Shingeki no Kyojin 88

Shingeki no Kyojin 88 is out… and:

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I think I said that I was giving up on this story before, but I really, really mean it this time.  Really.

I probably won’t stick to this resolution any more than I did the last time I made it. I’ll probably read the next one and think, “Why? Why did I do that to myself?”

Because, okay, now we have MAGIC??!!  Or, maybe we don’t, because, as usual, Isayama-sensei hedges, like he thinks maybe if he says “…or not! MAY-be everything is a lie…?” he’s being clever or something.

No.  Actually, NO.

A friend of mine pointed out, too, that this sudden veer into “maybe there’s a magical thread that binds all the Shifters together” (or whatever the f*ck it was about) feels like a betrayal of the ONE REMAINING COOL PART OF SnK, which is to say its science fictional feel.

Seriously, I was legitimately kind of excited to see that the picture found in Eren’s basement looked like it had come from our past, making their now into a distant future of our world.  I love that kind of sh*t.  I seriously do.

But, now, the science edge has been blunted by a handwave-y explanation of “I dunno: MAGIC??” and has kind of wrecked what little faith I had left in Isayama-sensei’s storytelling abilities.

But, you know, I guess SnK is still relevant and edgy because this sh*t is still happening:

Thanks, that’s just LOVELY.  I needed that.

Actually, no.  No, I didn’t at ALL.

I read the whole chapter and I had a sense that something we learned here was important, but the mental energy that it would take for me to connect the dots has gone the way of the f*cks I had to give.  Thing is, I no longer care what happens to Eren and crew. I really DON’T.

BY FAR, I found Berholdt and Reiner and Annie and the Shifters much, much more interesting, even as Isayama-sensei hacked them down into cardboard villains. Even THEN, I still cared more about their storyline than I did Eren’s.

I still don’t really understand why this is even Eren’s story at this point.  He’s clearly the one who inherited the 9-Titan power, but what the f*ck is even up with the Shifters then?  How did they get their power? Are they just the random descendants of the people tossed over the wall? And, if so, why do they want to destroy humanity? Is it just boring revenge for the centuries of mistreatment (which is WIERD, if only because no one has even discussed the idea of another ethnic group being discriminated against currently in anything we’ve read up to this point. I mean, maybe I’d buy that motive, IF THEY WERE STILL BEING MISTREATED.)

So, I dunno.

If I keep reading?  It’s because: MAGIC.

Shingeki no Kyojin #86 “The Day”

Finally, the secret of Eren’s basement is being revealed.

So, if you’ve been following Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin up to this point, you’re going to want to read this chapter for sure: http://mangastream.com/r/attack_on_titan/086/3727/1

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When I first saw this opening set of panels I thought: what, wait…. seriously?

The kids’ mother admonishes them further not to ever go outside the walls.  Given that this was Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin, I was thinking, okay, maybe we’ll see the wall of Maria.  But, no the wall looked like this:

The dirigibles, the people on the streets of the town calling the kids “filthy-blooded brats,” the officers at the air ship landing site who ask for “papers’ and then mete out cruel punishment/murder… yeah, if I wasn’t SUPPOSED to think Jews in World War II, Isayama-sensei really kind of screwed up.

But it turns out the Grisha and Fay are not Jews, they’re something called an “Elden.”

Of course the kids go over the wall and of course they’re found and punished.  It seems, at first like maybe Grisha has taken the brunt of it, but no.  Just to underscore how evil these guys are, we discover Fay was never returned home, but brutally killed.

When Fay is found dead by the riverside and the police come to Grisha’s house we get the whole backstory from Grisha’s dad in the form of “re-education.” Turns out, Eldens are Shifters or are in some other way related to the first Titan, Ymir.  (Presumably, not the Ymir we know, as in the “Dancing Titan,” but some previous Ymir.)

There’s some very mystical stuff about how the Titans came to be. Apparently, the first Titan “made a deal with the devil,” like, literally.

What’s with the apple, lady? Why always with the apples??

Apparently, the Elden used the power of the Titan to take over the continent and generally wreck havoc–genocide, land grabs, the usual power-hungry greed stuff.

There was some way in which Ymir split her soul into nine parts after she died, and then things get a bit murkier.  There’s some kind of civil war that happens. The motivations, beyond greed, aren’t clear, but somehow, someone manages to “gain control” of seven out of the nine Titans.  King Fritz (same surname as Ymir) escapes to the island of Paradis and builds “three layers of walls around them for protection.”

With that one line we now know both where we are (on the island) and how it is that the Titans got inside the walls in the first place.  This also explains Connie’s mom and the overabundance of Titans in the “now;” everyone there is an Elden/descendant of a Shifter.

But Grisha’s family was part of group of Eldens that got left behind on the Marleyan mainland.  They’re unprotected by their king and so have to live in fear, inside a ghetto, etc.

The story progresses and our hero grows up, becomes a doctor like his father, and then meets a guy in the resistance movement.  This part of the story is all pretty sympathetic because who in their right minds would root for the Nazis Marlyans? Especially after Grisha finds “ancient” documents (provided by their insider informant named ‘Owl’) that appear to imply that the Eldens weren’t entirely motivated by greed, but may also have helped bring technology to all the people, Marlyans and Eldens alike. Of course, Grisha can’t actually read Hebrew the ancient texts, but he figures the pictures make it obvious.

The mysterious ‘Owl,’ then sends them a magic princess, in the form of a woman named Dina Fritz–yep, as in King Fritz.  Instantly Eren, er… Grisha falls in love with her and they  have a plot coupon, er… a kid.

More years pass and we find out that King Fritz is not just a coward, but apparently a narc, because somehow the Marlyians figure out that the Eldens are up to something and now are demanding tribute in the form of child soldiers from each of the ghettos.  Grisha apparently thinks this is a perfect time to cash in his plot coupon, only he comes up a dollar short when the little bumpkin has a bad case of Stockholm syndrome and turns in his own parents.

Dun-dun-DAH cliffhanger!

What do I think about this?  I’m not sure. I mean, I’m glad we’re getting some answers, but so far they’re uninteresting. I rather adore that the first Titan appears to be a random woman (Norse?), but the critical thing that’s missing for me is motivation.  I get the apple imagery.  This is the Titan’s “Eve.” But, even the mythical Eve was motivated by something. She wanted the fruit of knowledge which God had forbidden humans to eat.  It was called the fruit of knowledge because it was clearly sentience, the thing that separated us from our fellow animals, the revelation that we were “naked,” causing Eve to invent clothing, which is the same as tool-making, in my personal opinion. No other animal wears clothes.

So, okay, my personal take on the Biblical Eve aside, there’s not even some obscure line like “the fruit of knowledge” to give us any reason why Ymir wanted ‘The Power of the Titan.’ Her descendants use it for boring reasons–to kill people and take their stuff–but why did she go to the trouble to seek out ‘the Devil’?

And the imagery is flipped. She’s giving the Devil an apple, the fruit of knowledge and in exchange becomes naked… and, more bestial (?)  I mean, yeah, that works, but I’m still left with the question of why? How did Ymir come in possession of the “apple” that she could give it away, and, even if it’s all just a giant metaphor, it still seems to be a big thing (pardon the pun) to have given away for the ability to become some hybrid cross between The Hulk and Giant Man.

There are armed soldiers around her when she’s first depicted in her Titan form, but it’s not clear what they do, only that after she dies and splits her power, things go to the sh*tter.

They have spears… and what? Are they Romans?

I don’t know.  I’m glad to be getting some of this information to puzzle out, but the story, itself, is continuing to disappoint me.  I don’t feel any closer to understanding the WHY of any of this.

Maybe Isayama-sensei isn’t going to give it to me, either.  I mean, I suspect this is all were going to get in terms of a history lesson of the origin of Titans and that’s hugely disappointing because it kind of literally tells us nothing: a woman got the power, people used it badly, the end.

Okay, I guess there are a lot of things in the world that are just this stupid.  “Some guys over there wanted the stuff people had in another place and so atrocities were committed and people are still angry about it,” pretty much sums up a lot of the conflicts in the real world.  But, I kind of feel like the point of fiction is to make sense of it all.  To plumb the depths of WHY people do what they do.

And we’re still getting none of that.  Nothing I find terribly interesting, at any rate.  Weirdly, it wouldn’t have taken much. If Isayama-sensei had added just even a hint of a personal story to Ymir, even something cliche, like, “In revenge for a son lost at war….” or something, I would been less annoyed by this whole backstory, I think.  Maybe we’re just supposed to assume something interesting motivated her.  Maybe Isayama-sensei left it blank intentionally to avoid the cliche, but in doing so, it has left me hollow.  Why should I care for the Eldens other than the extremely obvious and broadly painted connection to the horrific discrimination against the Jews?

That’s probably the other part of this. It’s not that I’m some kind of freak and I wouldn’t sympathize with the holocaust, it’s that I sympathize AUTOMATICALLY.  It’s an easy ‘A’ when you play the Nazi card.  You make someone look or act like Nazis in an obvious way–oh, yeah, I get it, I’m for whatever they’re against, no matter what. Nazis are never good guys.  You put someone in a Nazi uniform and you push them off a cliff in a movie and I cheer. I never have to know anything more about that character, ever, because killing Nazis is always something to celebrate, full stop.

But that’s super lazy in terms of writing, unless you’re writing about actual Nazis.  It’s like reaching for the lowest hanging fruit.  No effort has to be made to show motivations when there are Nazis on screen (just push ’em off the cliff!)  Isayama-sensei took a giant brush of black and painted everything black or white and destroyed any potential shades of gray as soon as he went there in terms of imagery and language.

So, having Ymir’s original motivation might have helped. If I knew what she wanted, what STARTED all this, what forced the Marleyians into the role of complete evil, it might have added a little depth to this.

But so far, nope.

We’ll see what the next chapter gives us next month.

Your thoughts?

Shigeki no Kyojin #85 – Eren’s F*cking Basement

Shingeki no Kyojin is a perfect example of how reading something weekly let’s you smooth over the faults in the story.  I shouldn’t still be reading this, but I am. Thing is, this was a pretty good chapter, honestly. Go check it out: http://www.mangapanda.com/shingeki-no-kyojin/85

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THEY’RE GOING INTO EREN’S BASEMENT!!!!

Okay, some other sh*t happened, but no one cares about that (even though I spent five minutes being alternately grossed out and horrified by the whole ‘punishment’ discussion about everyone’s insubordination in the last chapter, given how non-functioning this military actually is), because OMG THE BASEMENT.

There’s some fake out about the key, but luckily Levi’s like ‘DOORS ARE FOR PUNKS’ and we discover something I’ve been suspecting all along:

This is the future of our past.

There’s a photograph found in a journal left by Eren’s dad that is proof that this is our Earth, and that something happened to force everyone behind the walls and regress to this semi-pre-industrial state.

Okay, yep.

That was satisfying.

Thing is, and, since I was called into work, I don’t have time for a huge exploration of this, but this is where Kubo-sensei failed me.  Ultimately, I can forgive all sorts of stupid character moments or random fan service or even dumb-a$$ writing (especially when reading weekly like this), if the plot pays off.

This, as delayed and hackneyed as it has been, is actually the pay-off I’ve been freaking WAITING for.

Works for me.  You?

Shingeki no Kyojin 84 – WTF EVEN

I’m super confident that Isayama-sensei intended “WTF EVEN” to be the actual title for this chapter.  He left it blank, so I’m pretty sure that must have been his intention, right?  Because WHAT THE F*CK EVEN was this chapter.

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Okay, so we ended the last ridiculously bleak chapter with this supposedly difficult moral choice between using the super-Titan injection to save the life of either the burnt-to-a-hairless-crisp Armin or killed-by-his-own-stupidity Erwin.  It didn’t seem like much of a choice to me.  Erwin has not had a successful plan since, like, forever, and most of Erwin’s so-called “genius” ones go like this most recent “plan,” which is to say it’s kind of a success on PAPER and not so much in reality, what with a 99% casualty rate.

But, I mean, frankly, if were Levi, I would have looked at my choices and said, “Screw you guys, I’m giving the Titan power to myself because even though I’m not a big thinker at least I have balls of steel and I hit where I’m aiming 10/10.”

Whatever.

The majority of the chapter was various people making cases for who to save and in the end, as usual, Levi makes the best choice possible in a sh*tty situation and let’s his boyfriend die/saves Armin.

It’s been a bad week for my various OTPs.

Over in Bleach, I have to deal with the fact that, if the current time-skip reality is real, then somehow Captain Kyouraku has to survive without his life partner, Captain Ukitake.  That’s… that’s not okay with me. That breaks my heart into tiny, little pieces, forever and ever, particularly as the two of them, with their thousand year old relationship, has been, in my mind, my anime/manga analog to my own LOOOOONG term relationship with my wife.

So that hurts.

Now, well… if I shipped Levi with anyone it was Erwin. They were the same age, there was some chemistry… I dunno, I liked the idea of them, even if I didn’t read a whole lot of SnK fics, the few I did read were often Erwin/Levi.

But the couple I really loved?  The ones I would have called my precious cinnamon buns?  Bertholdt and Reiner.

So, just to poke ourselves in the eye some more, let’s just relive the horror that is Bertholdt’s death, shall we?:

Not that losing his head bothered Reiner much, but I guess this is goodbye?

Everything that’s currently wrong with SnK, for me, can be summed up by the above scene and this tiny, unremarked moment that follows:

Is this Titan sick or is she just continuing her rampage?

Uh, guys?  Eating Bertholdt killed this Titan…. anyone want to even wonder WHY????

So… apparently eating Bertholdt was a bad idea.  When Hange showed up with Berholdt, she thought it was a good idea for Erwin to eat Bertholdt.

Or maybe that’s Levi… I guess that’s Levi.

The point is, someone’s brilliant plan had been to shoot Erwin up with the Titan syringe an then feed him Bertholdt.

Which is a weird plan, but is at least based on the idea that had been floating around that Titans can gain other Titan’s powers by consuming them.  Was that wrong?  Or is there something about Bertholt’s Titan-ness–maybe the fact that he’s a Shifter? Or maybe something about the way he became a Shifter?–that makes him poisonous to Titans?  Could his poisonous nature be a clue as to the ways in which the shifters are different from the ‘normal’ Titan population?

The problem with this manga is that I don’t know if anyone cares.  I don’t mean the readers (some of whom are probably as burned out as I am, but), I mean the characters living in this world. They characters themselves don’t seem to be at all curious about the major questions in their world.

No one took the opportunity to talk to Bertholdt when they had him prisoner.  Unlike Annie, Bertholdt wasn’t encased in crystal. This was a huge opportunity to appeal to his human nature. He clearly still thought of these people as his comrades.  As misguided as it clearly was, he called out to them for help in his final moment.  They all stared at him and watched him die, but some part of him had hoped to appeal to their higher selves, to their sense of justice.

A BIG PART OF ME HAD THAT SAME MISGUIDED HOPE, but that’s because a big part of me still expected the Survey Corps to actually be the good guys, even though they have proven time and time again that they are clearly the villains of this story.

They’re finally starting to talk more obviously like villains, referring to Erwin as a demon and talking about how death is freedom from the Hell of this place.

Only villains would go through their world this unexamined.  They had an opportunity with Bertholdt.  They could have tried to ask some of the important questions, they could have tried to reason with him, tried to win him back over with kindness–he’d always seemed, previously, to be a little on the fence about the Shifter’s plans.  But, no.  They tortured him by cutting off his limbs and then watched him be eaten by a Titan without even lifting a finger to stop it–even when they still thought that having one of their own people devour Bertholdt might be useful.

And when the Titan that did eat Bertholdt seems to have been poisoned by him, they all just seemed either unaware or only vaguely interested (I think Hange actually looks) and then went back to their stupid pity party.

They’re villains.

They’re extremely STUPID villains.

What’s frustrating about this is that Isayama-sensei took the time to draw all of this and didn’t make anything more out of it.  I presume, maybe?, the poisoned Titan will become important to the next chapter, but I don’t know that I trust that it will given the fact that Isayama was clearly OK with wasting the opportunity to have Berholdt become a double-agent or just even tell us more of the Shifter’s agenda before our heroes villains slaughtered him.

I think this WASTE is underscored by Commander Eyebrow’s big reveal.  That secret that he’s been carrying since his schoolboy days? The one that apparently got his father killed for talking about?

Seems to be the scientific method.

This is the secret? Demanding proof?

I…

I don’t even know what to make of this.  Yay for Isayama-sensei actually giving us this moment so Erwin didn’t die with us all wondering what that big question was that got him in SO MUCH TROUBLE FOR in school.

But what the f*ck? A two year old could have asked this.  How do we know for sure something doesn’t exist, if we’re not allowed to look for it?

Um, wow.

Yeah, get in the corner, young man, and THINK ABOUT what you just said!

WHAT?

I mean, I guess we know now why Erwin is so stupid.  He was literally not allowed to learn the basics of scientific thinking.  Apparently, introducing the idea of scientific thinking to the classroom is punishable by the mysterious disappearance and death of your parent.

Okay, this could be a really amazing moment, right?  Like, this is the moment in the manga where our jaws drop and we all turn to each other in the fandom and start freaking out, “OMG this really is a crazy-a$$ dystopia!”

But I feel like we already knew that.

I feel like all this backwards thinking about the divine right of kings and Hange’s take over of the free press (presented as a good idea, no less,) and Levi’s ruthless torture of prisoners with no real information gained, and the fact that certain members of the previous ruling class are being force-fed their own sh*t AND paraded through the streets once a year BY OUR TEAM to show the populace what happens when you step out of line…

WAS A PRETTY F*CKING HUGE CLUE.

So… I don’t know what to make of this?  I mean, maybe I’m suppose to imagine myself as Levi and, with syringe in hand, thinking, “F*ck me, this was your big secret, Erwin? That you got in trouble for demanding proof? …”

“….”

“Yeah, I’m going to go ahead an shoot-up the other guy, k, big guy? ‘Cuz that’s just DUMB.”

Kind of like this whole manga, if you ask me.

And damn it.  I liked Bertholdt.

Shingeki no Kyojin – 82 and 83

I… might officially be all out of evens….. but, yeah, so, if you’re still following this train wreck of a manga, the newest chapters are out: 82 and 83.

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Dear gods, where to even start?

I’m not even sure I’m going to recap the action of these two chapters because a lot of what seems to happen in 82 gets reversed in 83.  Instead, I’ll just take the time to air some of my complaints.

First of all, Reiner/the Armored Titan used to be one of my favorite characters, way back when.  I guess I’m glad he’s still alive, but… my suspenders of disbelief have utterly snapped.

How did this:

Regenerate to this:

Yeah, I can see his jawline there and how the rest is Titan, but we’re talking about a WHOLE BRAIN, people– complete with all that braining stuff, like, memories, personality, and, presumably, THINKING.

This is it.  Titans are no longer products of any kind of science; they’re magical.  And, even most magical systems have rules THAT MAKE MORE SENSE THAN THIS BULLSH*T.

Plus, I swear sensei keeps reviving Reiner just so we can kill him again and again.

It was hard to even read much after this, even though Armin had a fairly clever distraction ploy to fool Berholdt/the Colossal Titan.

Erin finally got hard!  Sexual metaphor achievement unlocked!

Meanwhile, Jean is the true shounen hero of Attack on Titan, I’ve decided.  He really proved himself that in chapter 83. He’s the only one of them with any kind of decency.  When Hange wants to just kill the captured Reiner, Jean says, “Uh, aren’t we forgetting the plan with the syringe and stealing Titan powers?” and when Hange is like, oh, that, I don’t think it will work anyway, he says:

…which I think is just a badly translated: “If  you give up on all the things we don’t know, then how can we defeat the Titans?”

 This is the most heroic thing Jean has ever said.  Kind of maybe the most heroic moment ever in SnK.  Here’s Jean taking on authority saying, “F*ck, man, at least give a toss about SCIENCE and finding answers.”

Though it reminds me how we really know all the jack shit about the Shifters and their motivations.  I’m grateful that Reiner managed to pass on the letter from Ymir.  I’m hopeful that maybe we’ll get a full confession of some sort from her to Christiana/Historia that will explain at least some of the WHYs of what the Shifters are up to.

There’s also a weird interaction between Eren and the Ape Titan’s human form, who I’d long thought was Eren’s father, and the superimposed picture still made me sure of it, except that he says he’s been brainwashed by Eren’s dad, they all have.

And so I don’t know how to take that message.  Is the Ape Titan NOT Eren’s dad?  Is Eren’s dad the uber-villain, who has snookered both the Shifters and the humans? Or is this some kind of metaphor akin to “Darth Vader killed your father”?

So confusing.

Then, Ape Titan then seems to make off with Reiner, but is forced to leave Bertholdt behind.  Worse, Reiner’s escape makes Jean doubt his decency and his wisdom and he says he’s done the unforgivable by allowing Reiner to live.  At least Hange is all, “Nah, dude, that’s on me.”  EXCEPT IT WAS THE RIGHT AND DECENT CHOICE SO SCREW EVERYTHING I QUIT SO HARD.

…

*takes breath*

At last we come to the final scene where Makisa has arrived with the syringe and Eren decides that Armin, who it turns out is still barely breathing, would make an adorable Titan… only Levi swoops in and is all “No! Save my boyfriend!” And the chapter ends with the question of whether or not Eren will make a man’s decision and sacrifice his childhood friend’s life!!

Yeah, except saving Eyebrows is such a stupid plan.

For one, he’s an idiot.  Both of Erwin and Armin are cowards, but Armin has legit flashes of brilliance that seem far more effective than anything Eyebrows has considered in the history of ever.

Frankly, it looks like Levi is in pretty bad shape. I think they should stick to the original plan and stick Levi with the needle and give him Titan powers.  He’d be the tiniest, angriest Titan! Tots adorbs!

I don’t even… I mean, the last of my feels were beaten out of me by Reiner getting killed DEAD at least three times before the Ape Titan saved his sorry ass.  So, like all these months of mourning him are wasted and now I don’t even care.

My entire feeling towards this manga can be summed up thusly:

Attack on Titan – Before the Fall 11-24

I got a notification from MangaPanda that the Attack on Titan spin-off, Before the Fall, had updated.  It looks like an entire tankōban worth went up, but it starts here, at chapter 11.

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I’m not sure why I continue to keep up with Attack on Titan and its various spin-offs (except Attack on Titan: Junior High, which I own the first volume of, but bounced out hard somewhere in the very first chapter.)

I’m burned out.  Reiner’s beheading pretty much did me in, but I was disappointed long before that. Moreover, I’ve kind of given up on ever finding out really important plot bits like what’s in Eren’s basement or what the Shifters want (or even how the f*ck they got in the wall).

At this point, I’m hanging on to the train wreck for the scenery, as it were.

Kind of literally.

For instance, while reading Attack on Titan: Before the Fall, I found myself pondering a question that has always intrigued me, which is: where/when the heck does this story even take place?

I mean, it looks likes Europe, right? But, is it just some alternate fantasy Europe, or is it one of those stories where it’s the past of our future, if you will–where the fall of our civilization is their ancient past and their pastoral society is actually built up over the ruins of some future natural/economic/plague disaster of ours.  I’ll admit I’d been rooting for the latter.

So, I got kind excited that we might be getting hints of that option in the latest chapters of Before the Fall.  Our heroes, Kulko (“The Titan Child”) and Cardina Baumeister (random yaoi extra–seriously look at the guy) are taken by “The Living Legend” Jorge Pikale to “Industrial City” which looks like this:

And, I thought, oh, okay, THIS IS INTERESTING.

This is well beyond the technology level we’ve seen so far. It looks, in point of fact, fairly modern. It’s supposed to be a metal refinery–in charge of smelting and refining something called “iron bamboo”–the material that the 3-D maneuver gear and blades used by the Survey Corps is made of.

And I thought, okay, “iron bamboo” sign me up, this sounds like science fiction.  This sounds like a kind of metallurgy of the future–where you get some cool new alloy that’s somehow got the qualities of both bamboo and iron.

Then we see the workshop that belongs to the Foreman and there’s stuff that looks like automatons and other robotic stuff, right?

Except I misread those panels, those aren’t little robots, they’re “the device” the proto-3D gear…

I’m starting to think, oh, okay, maybe this is supposed to be some alternate steam age Europe and that’s fine.  I’m a little disappointed, but still liking all these gears and gewgaws, because the plot is really a whole lot of nothing new.

In fact, part of my mind is searching panels for clues as to other anachronisms, while the other part is trying not to roll its eyes over that fact that I can’t even believe HOW MANY TIMES we have to sit through the ‘oh, crap, Titans are immortal except for that one weak point’ “discoveries.”

I mean, I get it. This isn’t official property so the mangaka can’t really show us anything NEW new.  We just get re-tread of the old familiar ground with new characters.  But, I was still hoping that maybe we’d gets some subtle world-building with this industrial town thing, when we finally get to this:

Turns out, iron bamboo is not metaphorical.  It’s a thing.  Bamboo made of iron, with some  kind of Bad Science ™ explanation that involves the bamboo sucking iron ore up from the ground.

I kind of almost quit right there.  But, then I decided I’d hold out hope that our heroes are actually on some terraformed version of Titan (yeah, no, I know its an icy moon.  I KNOW they should see Saturn in the sky. Just give me this, okay? I HAVE SO LITTLE ELSE).

But, so yeah, I read all the way through.  What can I tell you about the plot?  It’s, um, it’s a pretty decent shoujo story, I guess.  Sharle and Kuklo’s romance is fairly adorable and clearly the main plot.  We’ve even got a villain, Xavi Inocenio, who is plotting to tear his sister from the arms of her erstwhile lover.  That’s really the tension in the story.

I mean, there’s some other bits about the inventor of the 3-D maneuver gear, who looks so much like a grown-up Armin…

Hiya, Armin clone!

…to the point that I suspect we will somehow learn that Armin comes from a long line of geniuses, and that Angel (pictured above)  is his forefather. (Which is also boring, by the way. I hate this whole hereditary thing they’ve got going in this universe.  No one gets to be anything on their own, they all have to have some kind of fated heredity/royal blood/specialness.)  But, other than that, the only other potentially interesting thing for SnK fans is that there may be some milage in the riding-crop wielding head of the Military Police (will someone PLEASE explain why their logo involves a unicorn??!), in that we may get a little history of why that particular division is so corrupt (though so far that just seems to be a given more than anything else).

So, I don’t know.  I mean, I read it.  I read the whole thing.  But I kind of don’t know why I did.

Promise – Attack on Titan #81

Okay, apparently, I just didn’t want to cope with reviewing this when it first came out, but, so you’ve probably read it and forgotten it already, but MangaStream still has it up: http://readms.com/r/attack_on_titan/081/3395/1

SPOILERS

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When last we left our intrepid heroes, they were making a suicide run toward the wall of Titans who were bombarding the wall of Maria with rocks. The very first thing Commander Eyebrows does, is die.

OMFG, Erwin, can you do NOTHING right?

Worse, that’s one less horse for the survivors.

The brave fools rush on and more people die stupidly, while the Ape Titan reminds us that they are, in fact, all idiots.  The second wave manages to fire off smoke signals, which is actually helpful because it means Levi gets through undetected.  And, gets to be really, really f*cking bada$$.

F*cking kill him, Levi.  I mean, at least do something awesome.

Except, uncharacteristically, Levi hesitates.  He’s a little shocked to discover absolutely none of his comrades seem to have made it, and he considers giving anyone still breathing “the injection” (is this from the church fight?) and turn them into Titans and let them eat the Ape Titan to gain his powers.

Um… could you look more phallic?

But then he thinks, “But I can bring back, only one man”…

Really?  Eyebrows?  I mean, I know he’s your lover in al the fics, Levi, but I had more sympathy for random solider #8 who wondered what dying felt like, just before his head was blown off

..And, Levi hesitates just long enough for the weird beast-of-burden Titan thing to bound up and take Papa Ape Titan away with him.  That leaves Levi facing down the other side of the Titan line, alone.

Frankly, I’m not all that worried about him. I mean, yes, this is the manga known for killing EVERYONE, but Levi is pretty determined to survive. Also, if he has the injection on him? We could get Levi! Titan, and I would actually pay money to see that.

We get a very typical Isayama-sensei panel in which one lone guy picks himself up out of the scattered corpses and starts limping back to the wall, hopelessly.

The scene cuts to inside the wall where we discover that, even though Reiner’s head was literally blown in two,

Just a friendly visual reminder!

…somehow the Armored Titan is back.  At least, Armin wakes up and has a Plan ™. He figures out that the Colossal Titan is leaking energy, getting thinner, and Armin decides that means that they can wear him down.  So, he leaves Jean and Mikasa to deal with the Armored Golem, and runs off to wake up Erin with the battle cry of “Let’s see the ocean!”

At least the chapter ends on a positive note, and all I can say is that I agree with Jean when he says:

The Cute and the Baffling: Ao no Exorcist 74 & SnK 76

Wow, it’s hard to believe these two manga have approximately the same number of chapters.  Though, of course, Shingeki no Kyojin’s tend to be a little longer, I think (maybe they just feel that way).

So, go get ’em.

http://www.mangapanda.com/shingeki-no-kyojin/76

http://www.mangapanda.com/ao-no-exorcist/74

SPOILERS

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Shingeki no Kyojin‘s chapter opens with all of the survey corps freaking out over the horses.  Some of the corpsmen have never seen a Titan before and  Levi is so super done with everyone’s crap.

I find the placement of this set of images really puzzling… or maybe, telling?  Levi hates weaklings and, as he says that, he stares right at his commander, Erwin Smith (aka Eyebrows).

Now, for myself, I would categorize Erwin as a moron, not a weakling.  His plans have been stupid from the start, and I can’t think of a mission he’s implemented that’s successfully gone to plan (with the possible exception of the coup).

But weak?  Eh, I suppose. I mean, he’s lost an arm.  Levi was, in previous chapters, pretty dead set again the idea of Erwin coming out on this mission since he could end up as Titan bait.  But, then, we also saw that Erwin seems to have some kind of fully functional prosthetic arm, so…?

To add to my confusion, we get this truly baffling flashback to young!Erwin, in which Erwin apparently laments his idealistic youth.

He tells us that he spent much of his early days as a recruit telling people about the ‘theory’ he and his dad had (which we still have no idea what it was, and which was pretty strongly implied was the reason his dad disappeared/died), but he “stopped talking about it for some reason.”  And, then, he’s like, no, not for “some reason” but “because I realized I was only fighting for my sake.”

Apparently, ‘for his own sake’ means a moment of weakness, of cowardice.  He apparently chose to save his own life rather than throw it away trying to save a comrade who was already mostly dead.

Now… I think my problem understanding this critical moment of Erwin’s youth is that, in this universe, that was A GOOD CALL.  It’s not like going out in a blaze of glory really helps anyone. Especially someone half eaten.

It’s also behavior we see in Armin all the time, who I’m fairly certain we’re supposed to like. Cowardice has been explored in the anime in a way I really liked, that felt real, through Jean’s character.

Okay, but I guess that the point is that he was someone who had had a dream, a purpose, and at that moment of weakness, he lost it. He now just wants to stay alive at any cost.  He learns to preach the line to everyone, lie to them.  That’s how, he says:

And himself, and how he built a carer/stayed alive on a pile of corpses….

 This is a big reveal, I think.

I think it’s going to have major repercussions, ramifications… ripples…

Especially since it links back to this conversation, and this guy:

I remember reading this several chapters back and being very confused–if concerned–about what was being hinted at.

I still kind of don’t know, but at least Erwin is thinking he’s going to get to Erin’s basement before he dies.  I would like to see that. I would like to know what his ‘theory’ is about, how it relates to the Shifters, and the mystery of this whole world.

Especially since Reiner/the Armored Titan might be dead.

At least, before Reiner died, he got to do this to Eren:

Possibly the coolest Titan move since Annie used that one poor guy as a lasso.

The rest of the chapter is a lot of cool Titan-on-Titan fighting which I’m not going to complain about because, frankly, that’s part of what I signed on for.  Their battle ends with some of Survey Corps folks sweeping in with a weapon Hange developed, the Thunder Spear, and breaking the Armored Titan’s armored nape…. and, it seems, exploding his head off.

I think he could be dead.

And now… now I’m not sure why I should keep reading.  Except Bertholdt is still out there.

MY PRECIOUS CINNAMON BUNS NOOOOOooooOOOooooOOOOO

Okay, deep breath.

And… on to something much, much lighter and yet full of shounen HEART, Ao no Exorcist.

Ao no Exorcist continues to satisfy me on a deep and profound level.  The chapter starts with Sword-Boob Lady (Shura Kirigakure) stomping through a snowy woods. We cut back to Mephisto’s office where Yukio and Rin get orders to follow-up on Sword-Boob Lady’s disappearance. The boys bicker about it because, of course, Yukio wants to go on his own.  Mephisto tells him no, this is an ORDER, and f*cking try to relax because I know how you’ve been training and it’s dangerous, you moron.

 So the boys go.

Rin is so wonderful.  I love his character SO MUCH.  I love that he is super into seeing all the sights while Yukio is so very…serious and glum.

They get to the town of Aomori where they play detective trying to find  traces of where Boob-Lady went.  There’s a running gag around Yukio’s name, where everyone keeps mispronouncing it Yucky-Oh.  (It’s funny, but I imagine it’s funnier in Japanese.)  Anyway, they get a lead, but it’s running late so they end up checking in at inn.  At first the inn seems haunted, but it’s just run by a rickety old lady who TOTALLY SHIPS THEM AS A COUPLE.

I’m sure the Yukio/Rin fandom must be in seventh heaven.

She tries to be very accommodating, telling them they can book a private bath, you know, so they don’t have to worry about what other people might say, and she lays out their futon all nice and close.

I love that Rin returns her thumbs up, like ALRIGHTY!

The bath scene continues the fan service with much naked Yukio and Rin… including adorable demon tail:

I love the tail poking up from the water.  It cracks me up.

Then, as Ao no Exorcist does, things get personal, serious… real.  Rin finally tries to talk to Yukio about the strain in their relationship, about how Yukio has stopped talking to him, and how Rin wants to respect his space, his silences, but, damn it, if Yukio ever needs him he’ll be so there.

Yukio acts like he’s been asleep through the whole speech, but we see that he’s really affected by it.

My heart strings tugged a little.  For real.

I have to say one of the things I adore about this manga is that it can be silly as f*ck one minute and then have moments like this–like, real emotion.  And, I care about these two.  Profoundly.  I want things to work out between them.

Plus, in between all the silly and heartwarming and fan service and ‘curtain fic’ scenes, we end up with a really strong PLOT.  Because, we go back to Sword-Boob Lady and see that she’s been called to the forest by… a snake god, and she’s being asked to fulfill a mysterious promise.

And that’s the cliffhanger.

OMG, I can’t WAIT for the next one!

Clash of the Titans – Shingeki no Kyojin #75

MangaPanda released Shingeki no Kyojin #75, “Two War Forces,” go read it.

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SPOILERS

The Titans have our heroes surrounded.  The Ape Titan is able to command his army of Titans/shifters by banging his fist on the ground. One presumes this means they’ve had this all figured out from the start.

Erwin watches this and considers.  …And considers.  He considers the weird pack-animal like Titan and decides (for some reason known only to the eyebrows) that it is intelligent.  He considers not fighting and whether or not they’d be starved out.  He considers… the horses.  He considers the horses a lot, and for several long panels.

Shhhh… the eyebrows are considering all the things…. but especially horses

In fact, Erwin spends so much time trying to figure out what he should do that Levi jokes that he should have made breakfast in the meantime.

Eventually, a plan is hatched and you have no idea how grateful I am that it involves this:

Miss me? Why, yes, yes I did! Hello, Eren!Titan, you are as hot as I remember you being.

Personally, this all I need from a shounen manga:  Eren!Titan v. Armored Titan.

Pow! Crash! Bang!

There is a lot of punching and steaming wounds and promises to avenge Maria.  And, guess what?  I think that’s perfect.  It makes me miss what I loved about watching the anime.  Plus, despite the fact that it still bothers me that no one is really addressing the fact that these people are our friends (except a little bit in a flashback where Eren wonders if Reiner is smart enough to figure out their plan), I love the tragedy of this moment.

I still wish I knew what the shifters wanted (besides to capture Eren), but, you know, this is closer to what I enjoyed the most about Shingeki no Kyojin way back when this was THE thing to be watching/reading.

“The Mission’s Conditions of Victory” — SnK 74

It’s hoodie season again, so I’ve been wearing my Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan Survey Corps sweatshirt around town.  At the doughnut shop yesterday, I got the usual little nod at the insignia and a, “I like your shirt.” I replied, “Oh, are you a fan?” When he says he is, I ask, “Anime or manga?”  He looks bashful and says, “Oh, I just watch it.”

“No,” I tell him in utter sincerity.  “Smart move.”

Yet, I continue on reading.  Chapter 74 is out. If you’ve stuck with the manga thus far, this chapter is a must-read.

SPOILERS

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The chapter starts dramatically, sort of.  That is, Eren swings into action.  If you recall, one of the reasons our heroes have arrived back where they started was to plug the hole in the wall of Maria.  Eren has been practicing the much snicker-worthy Titan power of “getting hard.”

Good news, ladies and gentlemen.  Eren has achieved hardness.

…And quite literally stuck his a$$ through the hole.  I haven’t checked in yet, but I’m sure what remains of the Titan fandom is cracking very wise about this whole giant, awkward innuendo.

In other extremely important news, Eren’s “hard” hair seems to be a lot longer. I wonder if that will be true of his regular fighting Titan form?  Because what matters to me?  That’s right: Anime hair.  (I have, after all, already confessed to finding Eren’s Titan form weirdly attractive.)

Our stalwart crew waste several panels being fairly amazed that they managed a thing.  Did we do the thing?  Yeah, I think we actually did the thing! Whoa, are you sure we did it?

In fact, it’s actually so strange to them to have pulled off a mission that they immediately start looking for trouble.  The dumbest part to me is that they already know there’s an ambush planned because Armin discovered signs of an abandoned camp.  He even goes to Commander Eyebrows (a.k.a. Erwin Smith) and says, “Dude, they’re hiding somewhere around here.  We should bail.”  Actually, that might be a paraphrase and maybe he wasn’t quite smart enough to suggesting retreat, but I would have.  I would have said, “Okay, for some reason they know we’re here and are not attacking.  Let’s hit Eren’s basement and make a break for it.  In fact, let’s get the majority of the fighting force out, and have a small elite party investigate the basement. Pronto. Go. Stat. Run. No more panels of discussion. Go to the basement now.”

Because in my mind, the basement should be the next priority.

But, for reasons known only to the eyebrows, our heroes decide that the smartest thing is to poke around until they drive the hornets from their nests. And guess what? It works. They get stung.

But, what drives me crazy is that there are dozens of pages of this search.  There’s the whole debate about whether or not it’s a good idea, there’s a weird little speech from Eyebrows about how a solider’s only job is to secure victory (presumably at whatever cost), and some back and forth in which Armin attempts to be a commander with a lot of ‘please’s and ‘thank you’s. (We also find out that the Commander is sporting a prosthetic arm which is capable of firing a gun, which makes me wonder, if they had this kind of technology available why Levi was in such a snit that Erwin not go on this mission?)  But, mostly there is a lot of Armin thinking really hard about where Reiner and Berholdt could be hiding.

Finally, they flush Reiner from his bolt hole in the wall.

And… Levi runs him through.

I stared at this panel for several long sad moments and seriously debated whether or not it was worthwhile for me to turn the page… or any pages after that.

Reiner is my favorite character.  Full stop.

As was pointed out to me by a friend, what is equally sad about this moment is the change it represents.  When the Survey Corps last faced a Titan on a wall, it was Annie.  What they wanted then, at all costs, was NOT to kill her.  They wanted the information they felt she had about who the shifters were and what their agenda is.  Now, there’s no attempt to capture alive or even parlay.  Now the mission is, simply:

Kill them, kill them all.

The only good news that, despite Levi stabbing him in the throat, releasing that blade, and stabbing him in the stomach for good measure, Reiner doesn’t die.  Apparently, when you’re the Armored Titan, you can recover from what should be two mortal wounds.

I’m not complaining, honestly.  I want the Shifters to live.  The truth is, I want the Shifters to WIN.

A face that says: I’m coming for you, Levi, you little sh*t.

And, then, because these morons have wasted so much time searching for and fighting Reiner, when they finally think it might be a good idea to prepare for an attack the Ape Titan thunders over the horizon with a huge army of regular Titans.  He picks up a giant boulder and flings it at the city.  It falls in such a way as to cut off the major avenue of escape.

Now you’ve got the Armored Titan on the inside (presumably also the Colossal  Titan hiding somewhere inside, as well) and a whole bloated army of Titans surrounding the city.

Good luck, kids.

I mean, I’d feel more sympathy for you all, if you hadn’t brought it on yourselves with your murderous insistence that victory could only mean finding and killing people you once called colleagues.

Not a single one of you horrible people objected, either.  No one said, “Gee, sir, I once shared a potato with Bertholdt and he taught me how to make the corners of my bedsheets nice and neat so I could pass inspection, so I’m kind of uncomfortable with the idea that we don’t even try talking to the guy first, sir. You know, maybe, find out what the Shifters want?”

Probably none of you say that, because you know that Levi is perfectly capable of ripping your fingernails out one-by-one if you step out of line, and he’s already bullied the wonderfully cowardly Jean who once dared to ask if it was, in fact, NOT okay that we’re killing people, into becoming a bully himself. Also maybe you don’t say anything because you know that even just being a little selfish at a party can end with you gagged and hogtied to a pillar. Ha ha.  Good times.

Yeah, I kind of want all of you to die in fire.

It would help, too, if I felt like the new regime these folks were fighting for was worth a hill of beans.  Instead, they’re being rooted onward by the likes of that piggy tradesman’s son.  They seized the free press.  They’ve locked the former ruling class away into concentration camps.  Let us never forget there’s a guy being fed his own sh*t who they intend to parade in public once a year to remind people what happens when you f*ck with Commander Eyebrows.

Go team….?

Yeah, no, fire is too good for you people.

I hope the Shifters eat you all.

Even Jean, who I once loved for the fact that he said that he was scared to die unnoticed.  Back when I loved Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin, Jean was another one of those characters I held close to my heart because I adored the kind of desperate sadness of his desire to train and fight not to win, but so that he didn’t have an inglorious death in some back alley that no one saw. He was kind of ‘I will be good at this so I die in a blaze of NOTICEABLE glory.’  That’s kind of pathetic, but in the world of SnK, also weirdly admirable.

Constantly, Jean had been the voice of heart.  He was the one who wondered, when they had become rogue and Levi and Hange were torturing people, if it was cool that their enemies were now human beings. (And we knew, even then, that even your average Titan was/is a person.)

Then, Levi pushed Jean’s coward buttons one too many times, and then all of a sudden Jean was beating the crap out of an escapee and saying sh*t like, “We could just kill you now, no one would know.” The act of which shifted him (pardon the pun) from being tragic to just sad.

I mean, everyone breaks.  Maybe that’s part of Isayama’s message.  SnK has always been bleak, but I used to hold out hope that it would be a kind of war-is-hell-but-people-still-have-moments-of-good story. It seems to have mostly devolved into war-is-hell-and-hell-is-other-people-who-are-also-stupid-and-make-dumb-choices.

I think it’s that last bit that really gets me.  If Eyebrows would actually make the smart call ONE TIME, I might be less willing to throw them all into the fire.

If pages weren’t wasted poking the hornets nest and then being surprised when you’re stung, I might be less willing to throw them into the fire.

If even one person asked, ‘why don’t we ask the Shifters what they want before we kill them all and take their stuff?’ I would be less willing to throw them all into the fire.

As it is: fire.

SO. MUCH. FIRE.