10 Second Anime - Shingeki no Kyojin S2 - Episode 29

The Scouts and Cadets at the ruined castle are under siege from attacking Titans.

Episode 29 - "Soldier"

Heh.

Some scenes just keep letting us know that these Titans are different. Not only are they attacking at night, but they're also attacking each other.

The downtime let the kids unpack the weirdness at Conny's village. Ymir made light of Conny thinking the trapped Titan was somehow connected to him mother. Interestingly, Reiner encouraged Ymir to do more of this, because his way of gruffly pushing the issue aside made him sound suspicious.

Other odd things: the castle is old and the stuff in it has things written in an ancient language. A language that Ymir can read!

Well, that's enough mystery and suspense building. Time for the monster movie!

Wait. I thought Ymir just got done joking that Reiner was gay and that Ymir was only interested in Christa, and then Reiner got a flash of Christa's legs, and he's on the breeder track? Yes, it was all very funny.

I like the attention to detail on the staircase as the Cadets dealt with the Titan intruder. It looked the rails on the steps were especially grooved for the cannon wheels.

The title of the episode is Soldier, which is supposed to make us look at the surface images of the Scouts battling the Titans and compare them to the Cadets who aspire to fight with the same skill honed by experience.

The undertone is that we know there are Titans among the Cadets who are also "soldiers" in another way, like Eren and Annie. We suspect Reiner and Bertholdt are, but after the revelations of the Order of the Wall to seek Christa, and with Ymir being able to read an ancient language, the audience might be forgiven into thinking that there are "soldiers" and Titans everywhere. So many different factions are using Titans.

Bertholdt hinted at a Reiner backstory I'm sure we'll see soon. Reiner used to be a "warrior," not a "soldier." Reiner isn't sure himself what Bertholdt means by that.

All the attacking Titans can be thought of as conscripted soldiers too. That Beast Titan was throwing big boulders at the castle in an apparent strategy to make the Scouts use up their fuel and blades before sending in another wave of Titans. He's still hanging around there, so we still don't know his purpose as he climbs over the wall.

This show is still not afraid at showing utter despair and gruesomeness. Gelgar wanted one last drink before he died, but the bottle he found was empty. So cruel!

And then Nanaba was ripped apart and we heard her incoherent pleas to her father over some long past bad behavior. It's quite a sad contrast from her confidence when she had fuel for her Omni Directional Maneuver gear and a supply of sharp blades to bargaining for her life in an irrational way. This show strips dignity away from its victims not just in the physical sense, but in the emotional and rational sense as well.

And then, Ymir did this.

So many people are so much better at this than Eren. It's laughable how pathetic our supposed hero is compared to all these other factions using Titan biotechnology.

By my count, we have five factions controlling Titans right now. First is the one controlling the Tall Titan which Annie belonged to, and presumably Reiner and Berholdt are apart of since they all came from the same village and they physically resemble the other Titans we've seen. Second is Eren from whatever his father was up to. Third is the Order of the Wall which used Titans to make the Walls themselves. Fourth is whoever this Beast Titan belongs to traveling around making other Titans. And Fifth is now whoever Ymir belongs to and how she is related to Christa.

This is all good world building and it's making me think that the answer to the Why Now question is because of the wildcard Eren and what his father was working on. There seemed to be a détente for a hundred years or so and then suddenly the Reiner-Bertholdt-Annie faction attacked the little bubble wall Eren's family lived in.

Well, in between all the bits of mystery and suspense, we'll still have the monster in the basement side of the story making us nervous and jump in our seats.

Next time, we'll get some back story on the monster jumping down from the tower and what Christa has to do with it.