The Battle of Shiganshina has started. On to the next part, which will involve an explosive battle, at least for one character on here.
As the Beast Titan and friends square off with the Scouts, Reiner is about ready to climb the gate to get to said scouts. Hardening his fingers and toes, he takes off, and starts to climb the wall. Rather than face him, Erwin tells his team to avoid facing the Armored Titan. He knows the enemy has something bigger planned. Looking at the Beast Titan’s comrades, Erwin sees one particular Titan on all fours and carrying some luggage.
Cute, isn’t he? What’s odd is that this wasn’t one of Titans that transformed. It’s most likely the enemy’s scout who saw them coming, also meaning it’s an “Intelligent Titan”, and there could be more of them. That package it has is also concerning to the team.
The Beast Titan pounds the ground, and all the smaller Titans start to advance like they did in the Utgard Castle fight, and we get that always great Titan running action.
Since the larger Titans are staying beyond, they know they’re going after the horses to cut off their escape and supply line. They know without the horses, the enemy can wait for however long until Eren and co. are too weak to fight and run away, so the plan is to protect the ponies. Erwin has the Dirk and Marlene Squads protect the horses with Squad Klaus, as Hange and Levi’s squads will fight Reiner with the Thunder Spears. The squads take off, but Erwin has Levi and Armin stay behind. He wants Levi to not only protect the horses, but be the one to take out the Beast Titan when they have the chance to do so. He only trusts Levi for this, and Levi will do it since he couldn’t kill Reiner earlier. As for Armin? He has a 2-half plan for the battle against Reiner, and one half rest on his and Hange’s skills.
Reiner makes it to the top of the wall with no one to welcome him, and he is going to follow his plan to kill the horses. He knows Levi is going to go after his “War Chief,” but he knows he isn’t as strong as him. Reiner still has Levi’s blade in his neck and uses his Titan muscles to pull it out. If he was a bit slower transferring his consciousness through his body, he would surely be dead right now. He believes Armin also found his spot, but he doesn’t care for that as this long journey he’s been on is nearly done. Reiner then sees Erwin staring at him as he can’t be distracted, but something does distract him: Eren transforms in the middle of town. Reiner knows that Eren knows he is their objective, but why do this? Eren takes off in the opposite direction. In a kind of cute chibi drawing (not the last time it will be used), it shows what Eren could do by climbing the other wall and circling around to escape the city himself, but Eren escaping would be bad for Reiner and co. even if they killed Erwin and the others. He knows they can’t have someone who can learn to control the Coordinates to use it at full power if given the time. Reiner knows full well how that went the last time, but even then, Eren could have used his ODM gear to climb the wall. Reiner knows it’s to get him away from the horses.
Having no time to think, Reiner goes after Eren. This was Erwin’s plan all along: to use Eren as bait. Even if Reiner didn’t fall for it, they could’ve had Eren do the same thing in the chibi drawings, but this time attack the Beast Titan with Levi and everyone fighting it. This was all to confuse Reiner and make him fall for the bait. It worked out well, but even so, Armin still worries about where Bertholdt is. Eren won his last fight with Reiner, but Bertholdt interrupted it with his Colossal Titan form before Eren could finish Reiner off. Eren knows he can face Reiner 1-on-1 and knows Annie was a tougher opponent than him. Eren hardens his fists as Reiner takes off at him.
Reiner hardens his hands as well and punches at Eren, but Eren dodges it. He tries to get Eren from a lower angle, but Eren dodges that too. After another missed punch, Eren counters with his own punch right to Reiner’s face. It smashes his armored face up good.
They’re standing in Eren’s town he wants to take back from them, so he’s going at it with all he has, along with his friends who are ready to go with their new weapons.
Meanwhile, Marlo and co. are struggling with leading the horses away from the Titans. Seeing a Titan for the first time is scaring him, but Levi is there to help out. He wants the small Titans dead quickly with no one dying, but it’s of no use. The group is struggling facing them since the Scouts aren’t as strong as they used to be. It causes Erwin to flash back to his time as a Cadet, telling others about his dad’s theory. He would want to prove it as a Scout, but when he became one, he stopped talking about it because he fought for his own survival against the Titans as he watched his countless friends get eaten. After chasing his dreams, he then became someone who gives out commands and speeches, fooling not only his comrades but himself, making him stand on top of all the sacrifices that were made. Even so, Erwin still wants to find out what is in that basement Grisha left behind before he dies.
Back to the fight, Eren punches Reiner into the houses as his experiments he did are paying off in this ass-kicking. Focusing his hardening on one spot (his fists) + Reiner’s armor being his whole body equates to Eren breaking said armor easily, but Reiner isn’t done. He grabs Eren’s leg, picks him up, and body slams him into a house, with all the CGI shingles coming off it.
Reiner then throws a devastating punch at Eren’s face, causing the ground around to break apart big time, but Eren barely dodges it as Hange is waiting for him to make an opening for them to attack. It then flashes back to when they were getting introduce to the new weapons they got that were kept secret from even the Interior Police. It’s a metal spear to face the Armored and Colossal Titans with, since their regular blades were useless fighting against them. Showing off the spears outside, Hange tests how powerful they are, shocking everyone as one of them destroys a tree. It’s like a bolt of lighting, so it’s called the “Thunder Spear.” The spears work on normal Titans, but the Armored Titan is another story. Back to the fight again, Eren can’t lock Reiner down, and Reiner knows he isn’t beating Eren that easily, so he’ll have to use “that.” Hange and Mikasa start their attack as Reiner thinks they’re attacking him with their usual blades, but Hange and Mikasa get close and fire the spears right into Reiner’s eyes, piercing them.
The spears are connected to a line, and they release the line. The spears light up, and explode.
It works, but Hange knows it’s not over. The Thunder Spears are very destructive, espscially to those using them. If they anchor themselves to a Titan as they used it, they would be caught in the explosion, as seen with another chibi illustration of Hange going BOOM! They can only use the spears when the target is surrounded by multiple standing objects like houses. Since Reiner is in said predicament, this is the best time to strike as Connie, Sasha and co. come out with their own spears. They fire their spears into Reiner’s nape, and they explode, destroying his armor around his nape, but Hange wants them to finish him off. Connie and the others hesitate, since they know this means killing their old comrade off, but Jean snaps them back into it to finish this mission off. They all shoot multiple spears into Reiner, and he tries to plea as the spears pierce his Titan and land right next to his actual body. They cut the lines, and all the spears explode above him.
Well, there you go, people who complained about the limited action from the last cour. You got the big Titan fight you wanted in Eren/Reiner. You got multiple explosions happening with the new spears, and you even got the weird looking Titans running once more, as those are always enjoyable because of how stupid they look. Sure, the animation at times was weird, like with the CGI shingles (I don’t know why some anime have to use CGI on small things like this or snow or fire, but whatever to save money to not pay the animators, I guess), and the flashbacks are still there. It’s still not as bad as in stuff like Naruto, as most of these are new flashbacks. Other than that, it was a pretty good episode for the first battle of this arc. There’s more to come as the arc heats up.
Attack on Titan Season 3 is licensed by Funimation. Episodes can be seen on both Crunchyroll and Funimation on Sunday at 1:35 PM ET. The dub version is coming to Toonami and Funimation later in May.