10 Second Anime - Attack on Titan - Episode 25 [END]

Attack on Titan - Episode 25 [END]

The Throwdown Downtown ends in a split decision. Eren takes down Annie, but she had time to encase herself in hard crystal so she can't be interrogated. Oh, FYI, the walls are made of titans.

Eren did much better in round two against Annie, for a few reasons. One, her objective was to escape, not capture him. Two, since Eren knew who he was fighting, and the titan was using Annie's martial arts moves, he remembered what to expect and how to counter them from his sparring with her. And three, Eren was much more conscious of himself and his surroundings than his previous transformations; he's actually getting used to being in a biological mecha suit. Plus, he still had the help of Mikasa and Levi while he was able to fight.

With the fight ending in Annie stuck inside a big crystal of that hardened material she liked to use on her titan body, the titan capture operation, which Commander Erwin never really considered over, just postponed, ends in mostly failure. They now have proof, besides Eren, that some people can transform into titans, and that there is an opposing group conspiring to bring down the walls. But without Annie to interrogate, specifics are lacking and not forthcoming.

Some irony to appreciate during the fight happened with Eren's first punch, which drove Annie to collapse a church with people in it. They belonged to the newly formed church which worshipped the walls as God's divine protection against the titans, so even trying to repair their gates was blasphemy. To be flattened by a titan inside the deepest part of the city can't have been good test for the faithful. Nor the reveal at the very end of the episode, when the cracks made by Annie in gouging out handholds caused part of the façade to fall away and reveal the face of a titan buried inside the wall. Yup, titans form the material of the inner structure of the walls. Great way to end this first installment of the anime adaptation of an ongoing manga.

Final Thoughts: Attack on Titan was brutal in its depiction of gory horror from the very first episode. People who were important died. And died terribly. This was a story of war against a relentless enemy, and people die in war. This anime never let you forget that. Some may complain about the pacing, but that was mainly because they have source material to compare against. There were obvious signs of stretching out the story to reach a complete number of episodes, like using the old Bleach tactic of editing down the last act of the previous episode into a three minute recap before the opening credits. I understand the frustration, but thankfully it was used sparingly until the last few episodes so they could reach 25. Aside from the adaptation process, the story and the world is interesting and mysterious. Even after 25 episodes, there are many questions to be answered, while still following a narrative arc of combatting these strange creatures and trying to discover their origins and purpose. This is good stuff to keep people interested. I am looking forward to what comes next, though it may be a couple years or more before an animated adaptation shows up again.