10 Second Anime - Shingeki no Kyojin S2 - Episode 27

Sasha returns to her village to warn of the rampaging Titans.

Episode 27 - "I'm Home"

Heh.

This episode was mainly character development for Potato Girl Sasha. There was some world building too, as they showed how the displaced people from the attack 5 years ago affected the economies of the outlying villages. Sasha's small forest town of game hunters and small horse ranchers adapted by giving up on hunting and converting to full time horse breeders.

Before we got to Sasha's story, we checked in with the aftermath of the two big revelations from last episode. Pastor Nick will be traveling with Eren because they're both big time related to mysterious new Titans. Hanji figured out something with the Wall material while Armin noticed that the Titans who attacked the Walls only attacked the gates, not the Walls themselves. He speculated that since there are no seams or cement in the Walls, they might be like the hardened skin of the Annie Titan.

Eren and his group with an injured Levi are traveling with Pastor Nick. Hanji pronounced that he knows something more important than the survival of the human race about the Walls. Well. Let that stew for a few episodes while we see what Sasha finds to gnaw on.

Sasha hasn't changed that much in the 3 years she's been gone...

Don't get in between her and those snacks!

This scene with her dad had some good nuggets of wisdom mixed in with the comedy.

"Spit it out!" Ha! I giggled. I noted how forward thinking Sasha's father was by his mention of how he wanted to smoke and cure that meat for the Winter. He was already adapting because of the scarcity of the game because of all the people who had moved in recently.

Sasha hid behind that tree like a wary animal while she ate that bit of meat.

Sasha was reluctant to give up their way of life, but her father responded with some practical backwoods diplomacy: "If you're not there for them, don't expect them to be there for you." Somehow, after this conversation, Sasha joined the Scouts.

During that time, she gave up her hick accent and only spoke in polite speech. She also spoke haltingly and quietly.

I like how lean this storytelling is. We flashed back to Ymir getting annoyed at Sasha not speaking in her home dialect as a sign of friendship or putting on airs or something. Ymir seems like the type that gets annoyed at everything except Crista.

Sasha's reasons for speaking politely all the time may be complicated, but the point of the flashback was to give emotional heft to the moment she yells at the little village girl she rescued in her own hick accent.

The scene where Sasha found a small Titan slowly eating a mother in front of her child was the kind of gruesomeness to be expected from this show. What I like especially is how it incorporated how much this show focuses on eyes.

The eyes of the Titans matter. The trauma on a character's face matters. Here, the little girl's eyes were blank and staring because of the depravity she had seen in front of her. It was only after Sasha had taken out the eyes of the small Titan to buy them time and when she was safe that the little girl began to get weepy. It was safe enough to cry.

Too bad that axe was not strong or sharp enough to take out that Titan. Scout weapons really are designed and crafted for Titan killing. Also too bad for Sasha her horse ran away, but it was Sasha's fault, really. That wasn't the time to explain why they had to leave the poor mother behind. Life and death triage calculations, especially ones done by a game hunter, take a bit too long to explain, and they sound really cruel. Cruel like the other villagers abandoning a lame woman to her fate because she would slow them down during the evacuation.

Sasha has good fighting instincts. Choosing to stab the remaining Titan eye with her last arrow made for a sure hit.

Sasha's move to get out of the clutches of the blinded Titan was the same one she pulled on her dad.

The emotional payoff for Sasha's little side story was her reunion with her dad. His great praise with small words about her being everything he could have hoped for pushed away all the arguments they ever had. It was a sweet moment after all the gory suspense of escaping the Titan.

We're done with Sasha and the little bit of world building it gave us in terms of how the spread out villages changed during the mass refugee crisis. It looks like the story of Conny's village is going to give us some insight into the nature of the Titans.

This one Titan crashed out on Conny's house is still alive, but immobile because of what appears to be malnutrition. We know that Titans don't even digest people, so it's not like they need to eat their victims to sustain themselves. It's a new mystery and it landed almost literally on Conny's head.

Next time, we deal with Conny's weird starving Titan and rejoin Eren's group. Too bad Levi is still injured, so we'll have to wait for more of his amazing acrobatics.