Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan (Manga Discussion)

I always kinda wished that if they made a sequel we'd get to see that continent.

Caught up with things, and dived into the spoilers for this month's chapter. Oh my.

• Grisha's story/INFO DUMP TIME. A huge number of reveals.
• A woman named Ymir Fritz made a "deal with a demon", and her people became the Titans. They conquered the land and formed the nation of Elodia, ruling with an iron fist with 9 main Titans including the First King. I'm guessing those are the special bloodlines, like the Braun Armor and likely the Hoovers.
• The other races were oppressed, but rose up as a resistance and stole 7 of the Titans for themselves. The Elodian people were backed into a corner by this revolution, and fled to the island of "Paradi", where the King created the Walls to protect them.
• The revolution founded the nation of Mare, where the remaining Elodians were an oppressed minority. There's some enormous, heavy-handed parallels to Nazi Germany and the Jews, with the Elodians being forced to wear armbands with a star-like symbol. Grisha was one of the Elodians, and as a child his sister was taken by the authorities. He joined a resistance group and swore revenge.
• He eventually married a woman named Donna Fritz, that carried the blood of the old royal family. They had a son, Zeke, and were the family in the photograph Eren found. Grisha intended to raise Zeke as a spy that would infiltrate Mare's military, but little Zeke instead turned his parents in to the secret police.
• As punishment, the Mare sent the captured resistance to Paradise (Paradi), turning them into mindless Titans that would forever hunt their own people. The group of resistance members captured with Grisha all resemble Titans we saw during previous battles — including Donna, who looks like the Titan that ate Carla.

So the Warriors are the people of Mare, raised to hate the Elodians (the people from the Walls and Ymir's people). Zeke/Beast Titan is Eren's half-brother, that betrayed his father and the resistance. The technology level from Grisha's backstory looks to be 1920s/1930s, with photography and Zeppelins. And the Mare/Warriors have all but 2 of the 9 "main" Titan bloodlines(?).

edited 6th Oct '16 12:53:39 AM by harostar

Yes, it's an island, but the island is not Japan, it's Madagascar!

... but that mean the king is... King Julien???

Mare = Nazi Germany...

Wait.

Reiner has a lot of self hatred and a notion he has a duty to kill the Elodians. A Nazi stand in with self hatred issues, who has a reputation as a genius, cast out of a military in disgrace, and now most likely having a strong hatred toward the Elodians, already at a level where he felt he "had to" commit genocide.

Reinhard Heydrich was reported to have a lot of self hatred issues that led to him turning into a particularly horrific sociopath with no attachment to his own life, let alone the lives of others.

Wait so The Smiling Titan was Donna Fritz? That is pretty screwed up now that I think about it. Grisha's first wife ended up eating his second wife, nearly got his kids, and also ate Hannes and who knows whom else before Eren killed her....

edited 6th Oct '16 6:11:24 PM by Ecrivan

That is pretty screwed up.

The chapter was pretty hard to read, what with Mangafox having the pages in the wrong order, for some reason. >.>

Anyway, yeah… massive Info Dump here, and I wish Isayama would learn to handle these in a way that doesn't feel like we're reading a novel summary rather than a manga. :x Rod's reveal chapter had the same issue. So yeah, my assumption about the walls being surrounded by civilisation was bullshit. Sort of.

It's a really strange chapter to read though. Really feels like we were suddenly air-dropped into a completely different universe − although the last page ties in pretty well with the universe we know.

What's interesting is that there's probably a lot of bullshit in both versions of their history. At no point did I feel like the Elodians were noble freedom fighters − rather people who wanted to become the oppressors instead of the oppressed. The thing is, I'm not sure if it's deliberate or just Isayama doing a poor job at making me sympathise…

"Victory"… I wondered why the French edition wrote Zeke's name as "Sieg", but it suddenly makes a lot more sense, in an ironic way. Yeah, you screwed up a little there, Grisha and Donna.

Well. Huh.

We're getting more political than before. So I guess The Nine are Shifters, so that makes Rogue, Colossal, Armored, Female, Dancing, Beast and... three more?

We finally have an answer about Titans In Walls; they're a deterrent from Mare's invasion. Mare want to invade anyway, but they'd rather do it covertly with Ymir's Warriors. Zeke proves to be a little shit and gets all of the resistance turned into Titans.

...you know, I can't imagine this manga ending on a positive note. There will be an inevitable conflict of Mare's tech vs. Titans, and it's been said that this tech is just about approaching the point where it can easily outdo the latter. Also, does that mean it's both Eren and Historia who have the powers of the First Titan (seeing as everybody is a potential Titan within the walls)?

The nine would make the colossal titan(now Armin), plot armor titan, female titan, Ymir(originally Berik/Marcel), Eren who has Reiss, Fritz(the coordinate) and Grisha's titan power and we have Zeke so 8 out of 9 are accounted for.

edited 7th Oct '16 5:34:51 PM by higurashimerlin

....

Holy shit.

Armin has Bertholdt's memories.

Needless to say, that's gonna provide some important info later on. Maybe even better than what they just learned.

Why do you think Armin has Bertolt's memories. I thought that was unique to the coordinate.

Also, thinking about this, there must be some connection between Ymir of Old and today's Ymir. Or they even might be the same person.

[1]

Well there is one way to solve this

Eren You must bed your Queen!

Speaking of Ymir, remember there was that Titan who mistook Ilse Langnar, who wrote down stuff on her journal, for Ymir and bowed in front of her? I kind of wonder which Ymir he was referring to?

edited 7th Oct '16 6:43:44 PM by KZN02

Yeah, that was the Talking Titan. Something worth noting about him as he is one of the rare few Titans we have ever seen that had a facial expression of terror rather then bliss or anger like the others.

He also seemed to be somewhat sapient which is really rare, even for an abnormal titan. The fact that he kept Illse's body after he killed her makes me wonder if he realized what he did and decided to use her body as a shrine more as an act out of respect and guilt rather then just crazy sanity slippage (or both)....

I haven't read the chapter yet, but from the summaries I've read, the Elodian version of history sounds suspiciously close to Isayama's "Imperial Japan brought prosperity."

I just remember cargo titan. so with the others, all 9 are accounted for

I like to call him the "Pack Mule Titan".

Anyway, just looking at the chapte ron Crunchyroll now and seeing Grisha's reaction of pure hate my first thought was "So that's where Eren gets it from.

So which are the nine Titans? I can't remember all of them. We have Eren as the Rogue/Founding Titan. Reiner, Bertholdt, Annie, and their fourth companion were the Armored, Colossal, Female, and Dancing Titans. We have Zeke the Beastial Titan and the Pack Mule Titan. That's only seven Titan Shifters and I can't think of anyone else offhand.

Random Thought: now that the Attack on Titan-verse has been properly Claymored and is only a tiny part of a larger whole, could this mean Mikasa and Levi aren't the last "orientals" like was originally presented early in the story for Mikasa?

edited 7th Oct '16 10:08:27 PM by sgamer82

Eren have two Titan powers. That makes it eight, with one unaccounted for.

Powers are hard to define...

I mean Annie's crystallization and Bert's heat/steam powers Stick out like sore thumbs

But Eren's Armoring seems no different then Annie's powers 'even if its compared to Reiner's, So really it just Control/Command since the Rouge titan didn't seem to have anything special before hand... same with the Mule and dancing titan.

Reiner's is just permanent body armor which kinda muddles into Annie's skill

Zeke's isn't his beast form its his ability to turn people into Titans ' as hinted at when a swarm of titans appear out of nowhere just a Zeke makes his entrance and Connie's village up and vanishes

I don't think the armoring counts as a second power, since that seems to be a semi-generic Titan thing and Reiner's still alive with his. Unless you mean something from Grisha, I saw someone suggest elsewhere that Grisha was a shifter, also, but I hadn't really thought about it myself.

Isayama has made quotes on Imperial Japan? .-.

I thought Grisha was a shifter, since he looks younger than Zeke, wasn't a mindless Titan like all of his other comrades, and his memories didn't suggest an injection before his transformation at the Reiss like Eren did.

I'd always taken it as Grisha was not a shifter until the day he ate Frieda. That is to say he took the Titan serum that day for the express purpose of eating Frieda, then having Eren at him. That actully takes on a whole new meaning with recent revelations, since it shows Grisha did to Eren the exact same thing he tried with Zeke: Create a Laser Guided Tyke Bomb.