Attack on Titan - Episode 58 Discussion / Poll
 

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"Eren, you really are the Attack on Titan"

Nope, doesn't work with the english title.

This episode provided its share of answers, once again. Too many to list them all. The episode ended exactly where I hoped it would, the biggest mindfuck in the manga. Paths apparently can allow you to access the memories of not only the people who preceded you but also the ones who will come after you. I assume it's easier for people with Royal Blood as demonstrated by Historia who isn't even a titan (I had actually forgotten about this), so King Fritz most likely saw the future.

Wasn't it that "Shingeki no Kyojin" and "Attack on Titan" are not the same phrase translated?

"Attack on Titan" is just your usual Engrish nonsense. I remember it's the first question I asked in the AoT Q&A forum here :heh:

Even in the manga, that attempt at a title drop came off pretty weird.

Worked better on spanish, as you can translated it as Titan de Ataque(Offensive/Attack Titan) and closer to japanese...but yeah that was an akward title drop, there far better one in other series

Rather than seeing the future, I'd say they are seeing fragments of the future. The King of the Walls, and everyone who succeeded him have likely seen a fragment of the future that have led them to conclude there is no way to win a war should it come, and that its better tp just let themselves get killed to the last Eldian. Eren Kruger may have seen a fragment of the future that makes him believe there is sill a way to save them and claim freedom.

I'm getting chills with all these revelations about the world and what happened before Grisha entered the walls.

I don't know if the author deliberately chose the engrish "attack on titan" title since it made sense before all these, that these people inside the walls are attacking the titans who have come and tried to eat them.

Then you get this another meaning which translates to "attack titan" which is the name of eren's titan.

I'll keep quiet now, I'm still reeling from this infodump.

To be fair, you can at least still make the connection to the title in English. You just need to drop the "on". However, the name used for the title of the manga in French ("Attack of the titans") and the name used for Eren's titan ("the assaulting titan") are different, so a person reading the manga would have no clue there was a title drop.

Maybe the translators could have gone with Attacking Titan I guess?

Good episode though, puts a lot of what has happened so far in prospective and ultimately shows that core of story is breaking past the cycle of violence and oppression that had dominated much of that. Grisha and Owl acting as starting point achieve freedom form Eldians without being founded on revenge. I also like that Owl implies that history of Eldian Empire being entirely benevolent isn't necessarily true either with his comment about "truth".

Oof about the short life-spans tho. :(

And then there is that WTF bit at the end.

By the way

Wow, that was even more to take in.

The fact that even if one of the nine titans don’t pass on their powers before the death, it will still get transferred to a random Eldian had me a little intrigued. As Eren describes it’s as if the originator of these powers can control everything to a rather extraordinary degree. Back in the previous cour, I didn’t originally like the sudden reveal that the Founding Titan was capable of wiping everyone’s memories: That just seemed so out of nowhere and overpowered but now the Founding Titan’s powers feel a lot more established. Now we know that the Founding Titan’s powers only reach as far as one race of people and that there’s more mechanics hinted to this power helps ground it (although at the same time the new powers added like controlling the transfer of Titan power and even seeing future memories can feel a bit much). I get the feeling that everything is heading towards exploring this power and may be even getting rid of it as the final mission of the story. After all, given that the ultimate core of this story is about gaining freedom from oppression the question will inevitably need asking whether Eldians are really free under the subject to such power (as if being targeted by Marleyans wasn’t bad enough).

The “Attack Titan” moment was rather amusing though. Naturally I recognised the original Japanese “Shingeki no Kyojin” so I could tell that it was meant to be a title drop but it only makes me further question why the official English title is “Attack On Titan” which doesn’t even make sense grammatically. I wonder why that particular Titan is called Attack Titan though: I guess because the core message is about fighting oppressors, it’s meant to be some kind of symbolic “Rage Against The Machine” kind of thing? I guess that would explain the “Rockstar” hairstyle…

The episode also made me wonder if my original interpretation of that King Reiss/Fritz was accurate. I original thought the story portrayed him as admirable but now it seems to be dead set on portraying him cowardly. When I remember that king I distinctly remembered that shot of him bowing down to Kenny asking for his forgiveness with Kenny’s knife in his forearm: His humble and forgiving nature made a huge impression on me though I never realised at the time how much of a foreshadow it was to what he represented. Maybe I simply mistook a portrayal of nuance for author favourability. It’s possible that seeing so many cliché villains that I wasn’t able to recognise a villain portrayed as so human. After all, he may have been a merciful person to Kenny and cried for his sins but his rule was ultimately very oppressive to a lot of people. Of course there could still be a twist to all this and it turned out the King could see the future, so it's really hard to say for sure.

That’s the other thing I’ve been consistently impressed with though: Everybody in this flashback arc has been amazingly fleshed out, both the characters in the flashback and those discovering it. Grisha’s moment of hopelessness and his talk with Kruger was really well done, but I’m glad to see it’s made an impact on Eren who’s taken it all in with such measure and maturity (and cautiousness). I complained about his rather pointless regression in the previous cour but he’s been way better since. Ymir’s letter to Historia was also quite something. I totally forgot about her but background story takes on a whole new different meaning now that we finally know the context behind it. I wonder what will happen to her now: She seems to imply that she’s going to die soon (and possibly already has considering we didn’t see her with Reiner and Berthold as well as that shot of her in chains) but I’d be surprised if that was the last we saw of her.

The memories of the future also explain, in part, the title of the very first chapter: "To you, 2000 years from now".

I'm still trying to wrap my head around that beginning in episode 1. Who is talking and who is the receiver?

You could think it's a message directed to Eren, but then the one who talks is someone who lived 2000 years before?

There's also the fact that Eren wakes up with memories of the future in his subconscious, shown as rapid still shots, and he asks Mikasa why she's there, plus he then cries without even realizing it, which suggests he remembered (and forgot) some tragedy that had yet to come.

He didn't have the power of a titan back then so the only way he could remember those things is if the founding titan sent them to him, and that's probably his future self that did so somehow, or maybe it's a side effect of sort.

That however doesn't really match with the title of the episode. So maybe it's Ymir herself that saw the future and sent a message to Eren who was going to live 2000 years after? I find it hard to believe that she could only rely on him for whatever she had in mind.

Yeah, but it confuses me who might be saying that. The original Ymir who created the Titans? Also, the idea of Titans reducing your lifespan confuses about how the Ymir we know how has been aging considering I made a recheck in volume 12 (basically when Ymir leaves in season 2 to join Reiner) and she talks about being outside the walls for over 16 years.

When she was outside the walls she was a wild titan, not one of the 9 founding titans. I don't think the clock started until she gained consciousness.

All the mindless titans are eating all the humans they sees on the off-chance they get to eat one of the Nine. Ymir was no different. The pal of Reiner, Annie and Bert was just unlucky.

As far as we know, mindless titans are virtually immortal. Those inside the walls have been there for 100 years already so they have all exceeded a human's natural lifespan.

It would be interesting to know if time stopped for Annie though. Is she still aging inside the crystal? Is she not aging but the titan age limit curse is still ticking?

Something random that just occurred to me: I remembered that the Ackerman family were once targeted by the royal family because they were immune to the memory wipe. I wonder if the Ackerman are Marleyan?

The Ackermans aren't the only ones to be immune. All the nobles are.