First Impressions / Shingeki no Kyojin

「偽り者」 (Itsuwari Mono)
“Deceiver”

Alright, be honest, you know exactly what’s coming next. It might not be immediate, it may not be next week, but one doesn’t throw around subterfuge and noticeable differences in approved strategy without hinting that a serious change of the gameboard is rapidly approaching. Fighting is coming (back) to the shores of Paradis, just not in the manner some are expecting.

As some probably guessed a few weeks before, Eren’s imprisonment and the crackdown on those who helped plan the Marley raid hasn’t been too well-received in certain quarters. Much like the (albeit less pronounced) split of opinion in pro-Marley Eldians between supporting their conquerors and overthrowing them—i.e. Zeke’s betrayal—Paradis has its own issues with those who seek to regulate their actions and those who consider the end justifies any and all means. It’s a debate born from fear; Marley is obviously going to go for the throat, but could surgical strikes and consideration of collateral damage contain the inevitable attack to just Marley? Or is Paradis assured that everyone will aim for total annihilation which leaves little room—or reason—to abide by certain codes of conduct? The point is ironically moot given Eren has assured the latter is what’s going to happen, but it’s good to remember this is the paradigm everyone with a hand on the levers of power is currently working through. Without any firm idea how the Rumbling will work in practice, everyone is desperately hoping it’s their strategy which will secure Paradis’ survival. Under these conditions, don’t expect Eren to remain lounging in prison for long.

On the other side of coin comes Gabi and Falco and the showcase of fear on the Marley side. While Gabi certainly comes across as an ugly and annoying zealot, I frankly pity the girl: she’s been raised solely to hate what she is, detest her cultural past, and work like a dog to get the barest of scraps before being discarded when her use has expired. You can see just how hard breaking that conditioning can be, how difficult it is for such belief to reconcile the fact that not everyone is guilty of past actions. No matter how “correct” or “right” it may feel to hold the figurative son liable for sins of the father, all it does is breed further and increasingly bloody violence. Kaya and her family after all did nothing wrong, all the Eldians responsible for the past are long dead; all Marley had to do was leave the island alone and quarantine it. Instead Marley settled on retribution, and the result is now the increasingly chaotic struggle where both sides see their very survival on the line.

There may be potential to realize peace and understanding (as the likes of Falco, Kaya, and Armin have shown), but it’s potential that will only now materialize after sufficient blood has been spilled. Lots of blood.

 

Preview

8 Comments

  1. The red-haired guy who leaked info on Eren surely looks a bit like Light Yagami. I wish them both well – no matter how ridiculous such a claim is wrt to anime characters one of which is known to have ended quite badly..

    One more picture which IMO deserved to be snapped from this episode is Gabi taking in a spoon of food cooked by/while seated alongside the “devils”.

    Honestly after she murdered Sasha I could have still considered her worth of redeeming. Now that she has murdered the guard with a brick.. No matter what she does she’s never going in my “good characters” book.

    Anton
    Reply

    1. She’s an interesting character for me because of the degree of her zealotry. While I dislike her given the actions she’s committed, she raises the question of just what counts as too far gone when it comes to rehabilitation. You can see the first tendrils of doubt worming their way into Gabi’s head thanks to Kaya, but can she get over the hump and realize the gross exaggerations she’s been fed like Falco more or less has? That’s the million dollar question.

      Pancakes
      Reply

    2. If you believe what Gabi believes, her actions makes sense even if her aggressiveness is over the top. She was captive and believed she was going to be killed. Wouldn’t you try to escape even if it meant killing someone? I agree she went over the top but this girl is never not on the battlefield, mentally.

      I find her annoying and terrible but my judgement of her is meaningless. Who cares if I find her redeemable or not? I think it’s more useful to try to see things from her perspective. She’s painfully insecure because of her unspoken awareness that she’s the same as the “Devils” and is putting everything she has into proving she isn’t (which, funnily enough, makes her one of the worst people in the story!).

      That said, it’s a bit refreshing to see a girl being so annoyingly stupid and hot-headed; typically it’s a young guy in this role and a submissive, nervous girl by his side trying to calm him down without bringing him down. Just as girls can be awesome strong heroes, they can be aggressive and dumb, too!

      Danny
      Reply

  4. I wonder how accurate the 13-years lifespan calculation is for a conscious titan-bearing Eldrian? Surely they hadn’t lost any titans for a long-long time. This can only mean the evidence is from a rather far-away past. All the evidence from relatively recent years could suggest is that at 13-year mark nobody had lost a titan for a long-long time. So 13 years must be a rather conservative estimate, a somewhat pessimistic one. What if it’s not 13 but 14? 15? 75?

    Another guess is that the lifespan is same between a mindless titan and a conscious one. LIfespan of mindless titans can be easily measured. But then the equivalence of lifespans must had also been established a long-long time ago and question again is if this information can be trusted.

    BTW when/where from did the islanders learn the number from? I’ve forgotten..

    Anton
    Reply

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