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Attack on titan (Shingeki No Kyojin) season 3 - part 2
It's difficult for me to describe my impressions without spoilers, so they follow below.
In the first part of the third season, we were presented with a rather alarming picture. Yes, somehow Eren gained the ability to control titans (someday I'll get used to his stupid, annoying "chosen one" status and overcoming everything. Someday), but... that still didn't compensate for the trick pulled off by the presumably Beast Titan, who turned an entire village into titans. To be honest, I expected total chaos from the second part — imagine, the walls no longer protect, the enemy can appear at any time in any place in practically unlimited numbers. No matter how cool our Eren is, he can't be everywhere at once.
In fact, the Beast Titan is either not that serious an opponent or not that smart. At the start of the new part, we simply arrive at a wall-to-wall brawl. As a result, several hundred no-name soldiers and Erwin were thrown away, the latter of whom had been asking for it for a long time (I was quite surprised that he didn't perish in the previous part when he was snatched by the hand). This... is not impressive. After the previous part and compared to the possible alternative — it's just a walk in the park.
Once more about the Beast Titan. We had openings with a whole bunch of beast-like titans based on different animals. We had the smart look of a bearded man. We had meaningful speech from a titan. The scene at the end of the previous arc — we see this man and separately an ape-like titan (it's unclear if he's alive, but it seems so). Based on all this, I was sure that this fellow was some kind of top-tier boss (or mini-boss), capable of making titans out of any random junk and presumably not even sitting inside, but manipulating from the outside... Like Eren, but professionally, with total override of control. Just imagine an alternative to that scene where Levi reached the Beast Titan and shredded him — in such a version, he discovers that there is no one inside and it was all for nothing... Admit it, that would have been very much in the spirit of the previous arcs. What happened in the end? The Beast Titan is saved by a "deus ex machina," specifically by that strange crouching titan — and Levi is just like: "Oops, I somehow failed to react, sad face." Well okay, whatever...
Armored Titan. A powerful opponent whose only vulnerability is the joints in the armor... But we have our chosen one Eren; he simply made his fists harder and calmly beat the Armored Titan. Norm. Although okay, the armored one did show an interesting trick later.
In this regard, I was relatively pleased with the Colossal, who stopped being a useless rag and realized his full potential, which turned out to be very, very serious. The scene with Armin and how his friends then stood up for him was also very strong. If Erwin had survived in the end and Armin hadn't — that would have been very powerful, of course, but the authors didn't have the guts for that. Not that it's bad — at a moment like this, you can give people a bit of relaxation and hope. A cruel commander died, upon whom everyone relied too much, but whose time had passed, with his outdated methods of victory through sacrificing the maximum number of people. A guy lives who, although he's a pushover, thinks unconventionally and, in a critical situation, sacrifices himself first, not others. Justice prevailed.
The way the global conflict turned out didn't impress me that much either, to be honest. On one hand — perhaps interesting and unexpected. On the other — some kind of mysticism started, with all these General memories. And the titans previously seemed like the exclusive weapon of the enemy, whoever they were, but in fact — it's exactly the opposite. And a story where an oppressed nation for decades supplies its oppressors with titan warriors (which are the only alternative weapon in this world), and so far this scheme has worked quite smoothly... Well, I don't know, either it's really the mental influence of the Founding Titan, or it's just poor writing.
My hypothesis until now was completely different. Based on the fact that according to the lore, titans didn't touch animals and plants. The idea is that humans overpopulated and began to destroy the planet, so at some point some group invented a superweapon — titans. All the extra people were killed, and a reasonable but not very large number were put behind walls and told not to stick their heads out. Titans roam around and keep them from leaving. The group that knows the secret of the titans sits outside and controls everything.
At some point, the Survey Corps begins to make sorties beyond the walls, killing titans along the way, and then the controlling group realizes that the plan has failed. Even a limited number of people with limited resources found a way to fight titans and risk overpopulating the entire planet again, repeating old mistakes.
They send a small cleanup squad to break the wall and arrange an exterminatus. Seems like there are no serious logical holes, right?
In principle, Grisha's memories were a quite interesting moment of the arc — and despite the somewhat strange General picture, it still gets a plus.
Overall, the psychological aspect has decreased, the intrigue was realized not as interestingly as I expected, the quality is slipping, but there are still interesting moments. And I repeat, without the Titans, Titans could have been much better.
6/10
Нэйко
Ple-Sen
