Anime Thoughts: But if You Seal the Gates, Won't the Titans Just Bring in Some Devious New Trick?

Attack on Titan [ep. 14 - Still Can't See: Night Before the Counterattack, Part 1]
Well, it looks like everyone in the Survey Corps is weird at best and batshit insane (he sniffs people!?) at worst. But given their line of work, I guess you do have to be a little off to agree to that kind of job. And I never said I was complaining. Because I’m not – that promises to be mighty interesting, or at least entertaining, and sure enough we’ll see more of them next time. I’m looking forward to it.

I didn’t expect it to happen, but this episode actually brought up some of the things I’ve wondered about before. It turns out the priest we saw in the first episode was part of the sect called the Wallists, who were only a fringe faith until the fall of Zhisanga (I’d assumed the priest was part of the mainstream religion of the setting, and that it had one). What’s important to here is that they apparently consider the walls the work of God. Which is interesting, because I’ve mentioned it before, but how exactly would you build walls this extensive, let alone in time to save a decent portion of humanity from the giant nudist cannibals, who’d presumably be a serious barrier to getting it done uninterrupted? Especially if their appearance was as sudden as we’ve been told. And where would you get enough stone? Not to mention the sheer logistics of the whole thing. That their origin may be something not human definitely makes a lot of sense. And it’s making me reconsider discarding the idea that something other than humans are responsible for the Titans. You know, because I didn’t flip-flop enough with my speculations while watching From the New World. I’d initially written the walls off as ‘suspension of disbelief’ and not that important to the central focus of the story, but it’s nice to see that it’s something that will be addressed at some point. The same thing with Eren killing the slavers as a kid. I ended up not commenting on it for the relevant episode the way I wanted to, but yeah, a nine-year-old (didn’t the episode say he was eleven? Eh, still way too young) rushing in and killing people is abnormal. Well…I write something like that, but then I think of how much shit goes down in the Third World, or even just the really crappy neighborhoods in western cities, and I start to doubt it. So I suppose it’s better to say that it’s abnormal for a kid raised in well-off circumstances like Eren to do something like that. Then again, we are talking about the guy whose father seems to be basing his parenting on Using Your Child to Further Your Own Ambition by Gendo Ikari, so again, maybe not so weird after all.

And like I said last time, this is definitely more like it. They had the trial, introduced the kinds of positions people would take when faced with something, or someone, who’s either their best chance of fighting the enemy yet, or the one that will doom them all, and are moving on. The story works better when it’s moving at a brisk, efficient pace, rather than dwelling on the same thing for too long. I’ve heard that it’s a new studio animating this and they were struggling, hence the need for a recap episode, and that probably explains the sluggish pacing of the Trost arc too. Regardless, things seem to be moving along now and hopefully they’ll continue that way.