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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.
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