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^^^ There also seems to be a big difference between the titans with no muscle tone and pot-bellies and the ones with more muscle (which seem far less common and include the big one). For the record, the ones with pot-bellies scare the gently caress out of me. Zorak posted:They specifically said that there are both male and female-esque giants, even if they're sex-less, though female-like ones are much rarer. While it's of course silly to be sure it's true, there's a hell of a lot that indicates it. It's far more likely that it's true than it isn't, because it fully explains a couple mysteries without any contradictions. And they've also made *wink wink* suggestions that humans fighting each other is as bad as titans fighting humans, indicating the titans have some human "base." Not only that, but I hope it's the case, because I can't think of any other explanation that wouldn't be silly. Take the neck weakness: they hinted VERY strongly that titans die when you attack that area because that is where the human inside them is. It's far more likely that's the case than it's just some crazy coincidence and they have neural tissue there. Not to mention the whole titan disappearing thing being because it turned back into a person. The only alternatives would have to be silliness that they make up along the way, and I don't get that impression from this author/series so far. What strikes me the most about this series is that it's able to make me feel really scared for the characters. I got a cold sweat when his mom gets eaten, largely because it showed her freaking out after they left, rather than more typically "dying in peace," like most characters in media tend to do once they've saved their family/loved ones. Some of the death scenes are really hosed up, and the dull ambivalence of the titans is far scarier than if they were openly malevolent/angry. edit: Also want to agree with the people who explained why the up close 3d maneuvering is required to fight them. They use the shotgun cannon to slow them down and get occasional lucky hits, but like Zorak mentioned it's pretty much impossible to accurately aim a cannon to that extent. The only technology that I wonder about is explosives. They obviously have gunpowder, and it seems like a big explosion would take out their weak point in the process, making a "lure them all to a mass of people and set off a big bomb" strategy viable. The "they hadn't been attacked in 100 years" explanation makes some sense, though, since an explosive would only be useful on the offense (or offense as a defense). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Jun 18, 2011 |
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Jun 18, 2011 01:41
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Haven't seen anyone comment yet on (huge spoiler)the loving talking titan. I honestly don't really have any idea what's going on with that. I'm pretty sure that titans (probably all of them) have humans in their neck area, since Eren was there and that would fully explain it being their weak point. Regarding the age - modern perception of the mid-teen years is totally different than it was hundreds of years ago. You were an adult by the age of 15 back then. The biggest reason we see 15 year olds as children now is due to the way modern education is structured (well, that and knowledge that people's brains aren't nearly fully developed by then). I really like this manga. Something about the general tone/presentation really pulls me in. Like Zorak said, the back and forth time skips work really well; the past segments do a good job of being both interesting and relevant to whatever is going on in the present. I was very disappointed to find out that the vast majority of the latest addition was old material (not sure what was up with that). By the way, another manga with very different presentation/art but a similar sort of surreal/desperate feel to it is "I am a Hero." It takes a really long time to get going, I think it works better that way. I think it's by the same author that did that manga Ressentiment, though I like this a lot more.
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Sep 15, 2011 06:40
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I am really, really hoping that the whole motive for killing off humanity doesn't end up being some sort of philosophical thing along the lines of "humans will always do war and violence/destroy the environment, so it's better if there are no humans at all!" I think that I would almost prefer some sort of pure evil motive to that.
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Mar 22, 2013 00:16
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Thoren posted:I wouldn't mind a gray area. Having the human-titans blend into humanity so well almost makes you feel pity for them. Their perception of humanity is clearly hosed, too. At the same time though, the poo poo they did is unforgivable. The foreshadowing looks like this might apply to humanity as well. It's kind of like how even if a murderer does amazing things after the fact, he or she will always be a stain upon the earth. in AOTG the question really is: Who's the stain and who is the janitor? I don't really agree that someone doing something terrible makes them a permanent "stain upon the earth." Particularly in the case of Reiner and Bernholdt, committing some terrible crime at the age of 10 (I think?) doesn't mark someone as a bad person. That being said, killing/trying to kill their previous companions like they've done just recently is terrible and makes them pretty bad. Do they ever give any idea of the total area that the humans in this series have explored? Like, what is the radius of the total area that they're familiar with? I can't imagine they've gone more than 20-30 miles outside of the city. Oh, I also want to mention that I really liked the way they did the whole Reiner/Bernholdt as armored/colossal titan reveal. Eren's delayed reaction was pretty funny and mirrored my own pretty well. Related to that reveal, I do hope that they explain Reiner's whole monologue when they were under attack in the castle and before he was bitten.
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Mar 22, 2013 16:55
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I was just thinking about how you would die many times over during the process of training to use the 3DMG. Like, literally one mistake and you fall from 40 feet in the air while traveling really fast. To be fair, Eren did mention something about people dying during their years of training.
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May 23, 2013 01:47
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^^^ I don't think she really looks that similar. She looks like some sort of troll thing, whereas most "regular" titans resemble caricatures of humans much more. hackbunny posted:
My take on the warrior thing and what Reiner/Berthold say to each other is that Reiner used to be more devoted to what his duties are (as the armored titan, that is), but after living with the people inside the wall for a few years he no longer has the same conviction to carry out his mission. This would explain why Reiner says "If only I'd never learned about those fools' existence, I'd've never become the lovely pathetic bastard I am now"; he now has some emotional attachment to the people inside the wall and has become "soft" as a result. Berthold has noticed this, which is why he says that Reiner used to be a warrior (more of one, at least). I have a feeling that the reason Reiner/Berthold attacked the wall(s) is going to be something pretty legitimate/convincing. Reiner's confusion even after living with (and having a real emotional connection with; we're shown his actual thoughts on multiple occasions) the people inside the wall makes me think that his (and Berthold/Annie's*) reason for attacking is something important. If he was just evil, he probably wouldn't have felt that way. The next chapter, and their probable conversation with Eren, can't come soon enough. *Regarding Annie, she does come off as pretty bad. When trying to capture Eren for the first time she does some pretty hosed up things, like grabbing the cord of one of the soldiers and killing him by spinning it really fast. I don't think we ever see Reiner/Berthold killing people just for the hell of it, even if destroying the wall resulted in thousands of deaths.
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May 27, 2013 21:22
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RyuujinBlueZ posted:I would say she looks considerably more like a regular titan than any of the other four human-titans, though, by far. Yeah, I don't think she became a titan (if she wasn't one to begin with) in the same way that Eren/Reiner/etc did. I just think that she also doesn't look much like regular titans.
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May 27, 2013 21:39
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It seems reasonable to think that all the wall titans are really huge/tall titans, so I doubt Ymir was in the wall. The one they showed us is, and it would be kinda strange if the wall, which is of uniform height, was made up of a mish-mash of a bunch of different titans ranging from Ymir size to near-colossal size.
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May 28, 2013 18:12
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genericnick posted:Some unordered thoughts: I thought it was at the very least heavily implied that she attacked Reiner/Bertholm's village before Reiner/Bertholm attacked the wall. edit: One thing I wondered about is how Bertholm was able to eat Ymir without killing her (or at least how he was able to recover her after reverting). If I recall correctly, the stretcher she was on was also intact. I'm assuming that the other guy he ate (that he got the 3d gear from) died? Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 19:35 on May 28, 2013 |
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May 28, 2013 19:32
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Schwarzwald posted:Bertholm is huge. That means he has a huge mouth. He was tilting his head back though, so it seemed like he gulped them down. I guess I can understand Ymir being able to cope with the stomach acid for such a short time, if that's what happened.
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May 28, 2013 20:04
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Affi posted:What is more interesting is to ask How Berthold managed to gear up while in Titan form. My guess is that this is one of those things where you have to suspend disbelief and just assume that he was able to gear up really fast.
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May 28, 2013 20:24
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I was just reading over the recent chapters, and that beast titan has some pretty great aim. He manages to hit that tower and the house stable from like a kilometer away on top of the wall during nighttime. He should play titan baseball.
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May 30, 2013 03:27
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chami posted:Historia/Christa probably doesn't know anything. The priest is just using a loophole in their pledge of secrecy to divulge information. He's probably going to tell Historia the secrets, and then Historia can tell the rest of the Recon Corps. That way he doesn't break his oath because he did tell a blood relative, after all. I got the impression that the priest wasn't talking because, despite seeing the harm caused by titans, he still didn't think it was worth talking (and to the extent that he would be willing to die, so it has nothing to do with potential repercussions he might suffer). That is, I think he's a true believer. He obviously wants to help in some way, or else he wouldn't have mentioned Christa, but at the very least I doubt Christa knows as much as he does and I doubt he's going to tell her anything. edit: This sort of ties into what I said earlier about expecting there to be some pretty legit reason for the motivations of both the inner-wall sect and Reiner/Bertholm's people.
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Jun 1, 2013 00:04
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I'm wondering how they'll avoid a second battle with Eren against Reiner/Bertholt. I don't see how they'll be able to keep him calm enough to actually listen to them and not immediately flip out.
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Jun 1, 2013 03:49
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JosephWongKS posted:Bertholdt is literally the most unremarkable of the top 10 trainees. He's had less speaking lines so far than Marco, who died all the way back in Chapter 18. After your post prompted me to look back at that chapter (I remembered Marco died, but after watching the anime episodes and realizing he survived the Battle of Trost I forgot when), I noticed that page 24 has Annie looking at a dead soldier and saying "I'm sorry" while looking shocked. This seems kinda strange, since she seems to have no qualms with slaughtering folks as a titan.
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Jun 5, 2013 05:52
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Medieval Medic posted:Yeah, she definitly has a very distinctive nose, it always calls my attention when I see it in anime. Yeah, I've been checking this thread really frequently now that I know the next chapter has been released. The one good thing about (good) monthly series is that the chapters almost always contain a significant amount of content. I don't expect the conversation between Eren and Reiner/Bertholdt to be pushed to the chapter after this.
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Jun 6, 2013 04:47
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Well, this chapter confirmed what I was saying earlier with regard to Reiner and Bertholdt's comment about how Reiner used to be a warrior instead of a soldier. One new thing I learned from this chapter is that the sasquatch titan is what prompted Reiner/Bertholdt's sudden claim that they could return home and subsequent kidnapping of Eren/Ymir. I thought that it might have had something to do with it, but I didn't realize that it was apparently on the same side of Bertholdt/Reiner (which also seems to discredit the big theory that there's some third titan faction aside from Reiner/Bertholdt/Annie's faction). Also, the stuff about being promoted directly implies that there is some sort of greater organization (because I remember some people speculating that maybe Reiner/Bert/Annie were acting more or less independently, what with being children during the initial breaking of Wall Maria). This also seems to confirm that there's some significance to the human-titans being around the same age; if there's an actual military organization of sorts involved - which there seems to be - there must be a reason why they had to use kids to break the wall. I'm a little concerned that the next chapter will shift the focus back to Armin/Mikasa/the scouting legion, and that we won't get more info out of Reiner/Bertholdt/Ymir as a result. I'm still leaning towards there being a legitimate reason for Reiner/Bertholdt's attack. Or at least one that is morally ambiguous and doesn't make them objectively Bad Guys. On another note, I wonder why that one big titan wasn't attacking them? It was daytime and it seemed to be at the same height as them. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Jun 7, 2013 |
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Jun 7, 2013 17:13
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ZeeToo posted:Disagree. I think it showed us the exact opposite. They seemed very concerned by its appearance. I think that, even more than Eren, they want to get it 'home'. Reiner thinks the reason is compelling enough to get Eren to join them. He just screwed up the asking because he's a little crazy and tired/hungry/thirsty. Further, it doesn't share information with them; at the time of the attack on wall Maria, kid Bert apparently used 3dmg to escape after his kick, while Mister Hairy didn't even know what it was. Ymir knows something, though; beyond the 'family resemblance' to Hairy, she all but said as much and seemed confused when he appeared at Utgard. Also makes sense if she preyed on their third companion: we have two clearly demarcated groups of titan foes there now, who are also at odds with each other. Yeah, I misinterpreted that. The fact that Ymir said their eyes were "glowing" when they saw the hairy titan at least indicates that they probably have some idea who he is, though. The reaction wouldn't have been so strong if he was just some mysterious thing that they might possibly be able to use as an excuse to return home.
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Jun 7, 2013 22:49
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genericnick posted:Looking back at the last few pages a lot of posters seem to forget that Rainer explicitly stated that their goal was to erase all the humans. Not nudge them into action. All the humans inside the walls. I'm leaning towards the reasoning having something to do with whatever the motives/goals of the government/church are. We've been given next to no information about the king/top level government inside the walls, and there's probably a reason for that. My guess is that they're involved with, or have in the past been involved with, some level of evil that at least partially justifies Reiner/Bertholdt/Annie's actions.
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Jun 8, 2013 19:48
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3DMG makes me think of the way Spiderman gets around, only the "webbing" is fired out of the waist in order to free up the hands for using the swords. Probably the biggest aspect of the 3DMG that doesn't make much sense to me is how the grappling hook cables are aimed. If they're fired out of the waist, how exactly are they aimed with any sort of precision?
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Jun 16, 2013 00:40
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KittyEmpress posted:Because it seemed to be what was hinted at during the beginning of the manga? At least to my eyes it did, what with the talking about him doing it and thinking of a task, and having the form come to complete it. It seemed pretty clear to me that it was only a matter of how much of the whole body was formed; not sure where you got the idea that he could manifest different types of bodies. It would have been pretty dumb and reminiscent of a more battle-focused shounen series if he had the ability to turn into a speed form, strength form, defensive form, etc.
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Jun 18, 2013 00:37
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I managed to kill a couple. It seems like the only reliable way is to climb up their backs by repeatedly shooting them.
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Jun 22, 2013 07:54
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Just going to add to the posters who are not even remotely seeing this "eat a human to turn back into a human" stuff. I'm pretty confident that people are misreading that. The one thing in the chapter that stands out to me as notable new information is Ymir's comment of "Wait for my chance?! Like after I'm devoured by your warriors!?" It seems to imply that #1 there are more titan-humans like Reiner/Bertholdt back in their village and #2 for some reason they devour people (it's not clear whether it's as a punishment or because they somehow gain something from doing so; or something else entirely). As a side comment on the anime, it's been moving extremely slowly the past few episodes. I could really do with a lot less dramatic slow-motion inner monologues and the like. Even though most/all of this was also in the manga, it's different to read a paragraph of text than it is to watch someone thinking/talking for 2 minutes with dramatic music playing in the background. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jul 6, 2013 |
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Jul 6, 2013 17:38
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It's interesting when you look at some of the numbers involved with the soldier casualties. It mentioned in the anime (not sure if it also does in the manga, can't remember) that there were something like several hundred dead during the Battle of Trost. As horrifying as it seems with the Titans devouring folks and the like, any random battle from a "normal" human war would result in at least that many dead. And at least the Titans don't torture/rape people. Do they ever give any figures on the total population inside the walls? I think they said something like 20,000 were sent out in that operation to retake Wall Maria and that it culled 20% of the population, so it seems like that would imply there are something like 80,000 left. Regarding the people with titan powers were originally titans stuff: I can't think of any reason to think this and don't really see how you would take that from what we've seen so far. It seemed pretty clear to me that it's just difficult to control yourself the first time or two that you turn into a titan, and that you might do some bad things during this time period (like eat people). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Jul 8, 2013 |
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Jul 8, 2013 17:51
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Thumbtacks posted:I just started watching this and I'm surprised how good it is. I'm only on like episode 6 though. Go to the anime thread; this is the manga thread and you'll end up seeing a lot of spoilers if you read this. Hopefully you see this before reading too much of this thread!
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Jul 8, 2013 18:00
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:It was 200,000 soldiers and refugees, so there's something like 800,000 humans left. 200,000? Holy poo poo. That makes the "It's hard to feel happy after this battle that had massive casualties of ~300 dead" statement at the end of the Battle of Trost kind of strange.
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Jul 10, 2013 03:44
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I wonder how much of the "size of Germany" thing might be related to the author just having a really bad idea how comparatively huge Germany (and other non-Japan countries) are. Take for example the part where they rode horses along the edge of the wall while searching for a hole (only to not find one of course). That would have been a massive journey if it consisted of, say, 1/4 of the circumference of a Germany-sized area, but it seemed implied that it took no more than a day (also keep in mind that they were traveling really slowly during night IIRC).
Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 01:03
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Shadow0 posted:Connie's town spoiler maybe? We can be pretty confident that it's one person to each titan. Connie's mom was the only one in the village only because it formed with splindly legs that didn't allow it mobility. The others all went and showed up elsewhere, thus them thinking the wall had been breached.
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Jul 11, 2013 03:53
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Shadow0 posted:I figured it worked philosopher stone style. You need a lot of humans to make something small and dense, but capable of inflating. They specifically mentioned that titans are incredibly light. Recall the scene where what's-her-name kicks the arm of that one titan and it goes flying.
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Jul 11, 2013 23:31
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I've always just assumed they get the energy to smash stuff from THE SUN using some sort of hyper-effective solar energy panel skin.
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Jul 12, 2013 01:31
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AndroidHub posted:My take on the origin of the titans at this point is something along the lines of the bugs in blue gender for instance (I know other settings have done it but this is the first one that comes to mind) maybe just without the "earth resetting itself" thing. Basically experiments done on humans to make them better, stronger, faster, longer living, solar powered, etc. Then once tons of people had gotten the treatment, it all went horribly wrong, the treatment becomes infectious, causing it to mutate further and the world ends up the state it is in now. I could also see them having had some kind of specific post treatment that prevented the titan transformation, then the technology being stolen without it and it falling apart from there. Blue Gender probably isn't the best comparison, but it's all I can think of at the moment. Since we haven't been given reason to think otherwise, I don't think that humans in the world of Attack on Titan ever advanced much beyond where they are currently technologically. They specifically mentioned people using cannons against the initial titan onslaught, so I don't think that any scenario that imagines a significantly more modern past is accurate. Also, regarding the mass they've specifically mentioned that titan body parts are lighter than you would expect, so I imagine that implies some degree of conservation (though obviously it can't be full conservation since titans are still able to smash things).
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Jul 13, 2013 18:11
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After catching up with the anime I realized that the part where Eren plugs the hole in the wall with the boulder is literally the only Unequivocally Good Thing to have happened in the entire series up until this point. I can't really think of any other moments in the manga where they could pull off the whole "playing inspirational music" thing.
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Jul 28, 2013 02:02
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RatHat posted:When they captured Annie is a big one. But they didn't actually get anything useful out of her, so all it managed to accomplish was preventing the kidnapping of Eren. Granted, the fact that their first capture attempt worked as well as it did was a bit of a miracle (until she yelled and called a bunch of other titans to her location, at least). It was pretty upsetting to see such an elaborate plan completely fail in the end.
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Jul 28, 2013 17:50
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AdjectiveNoun posted:I only realized Annie was the female Titan literally the chapter where it was confirmed. Made me really embarrassed that I didn't realize it from her combat moves. I read through a bunch of chapters in one big stretch, so I never even guessed who the female titan might be. Now that I'm reading one chapter every month it gives me time to speculate, but I never took the time to actually think about who the armored/colossal/female titans might be; I just sort of went along for the ride. That being said, I wasn't really surprised when I found out about Annie. I just hadn't thought about it much. The armored/colossal titans, on the other hand, did surprise me. I was fortunate enough to have the reveal occur in its intended way; I basically did a double-take after reading over the panel where they make the big reveal in the background.
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Aug 2, 2013 17:27
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Lestaki posted:Colossal is actually a pretty rubbish Titan. It's stated to be slow and clumsy and even Eren of all people could reach its neck using 3d gear. It's just really goddamn big and has steam magic. It's worth keeping in mind that Eren is actually exceptionally skilled; we just get a distorted perspective since some of the other main characters are even more exceptional and also happen to be the only ones who did better than him in training. Wasn't he ranked 5th or something? (Not that the colossal Titan isn't really slow; the steam release sort of implies that he would have been hosed otherwise and lacked the mobility to defend in any other way.)
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Aug 3, 2013 15:59
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^^^ I don't think there's any reason to assume that this takes place in the same world we live in.Nelson Mandingo posted:I wonder if out in the wilds there are fewer titans. They're traveling pretty far outside the walls to rescue Eren at this point, I think the only way this isn't an utter disaster is if the quantity of titans decreases the further away from humanity they get. As it's been pointed out, Titans converge at points where there are more humans. They're just outside of Wall Rose and between Wall Rose and Wall Maria, right? I don't think they're outside of Wall Maria.
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Aug 5, 2013 20:19
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Insurrectionist posted:Just look at the list of prominent names; Eren is probably Turkish and Jaeger is pretty germanic; Ackermann is German (or Old English according to Wikipedia), Armin is a German name and Arlelt is apparently not a name at all, Annie is a common enough name in many languages, but Leonhard is Old German, Reiner comes from Old Norse or Old German, Braun is German, Berthold is German, Ilse is German, Kirstein isn't an actual name according to Google, but Kirsten is a German name, Petra is Greek...but common in Germany. It's pretty much all German names. Sure occasionally you get names that aren't obviously German like Jean or Ymir, but even then there are rarely any other characters with similar etymology to create a pattern, and they often have Germanic surnames (Eren and Jean do, Ymir doesn't have any so far). Naming-wise, all signs point to Germany. I think it's probably a mistake to try and tie things in with the real world in any way. It seems just as likely that the names are just the result of the Japanese author wanting a bunch of white European characters. I doubt that history in the world of Attack on Titan coincides with real world history in any way, and there's no reason to think that actual, real-world countries exist/existed in the story either.
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Aug 5, 2013 23:39
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Elotana posted:Reading various nationalities into the romanization of words when the author called his manga "Attack on Titan" is iffy at best. I'm pretty sure Eren is actually meant to be Aaron. Is Bertholdt "Fubar" the actual official romanization? Because why in the world would you choose "Fubar" instead of "Hubar/Hoover/Huber" or just about anything else that isn't an acronym for "hosed up beyond all recognition"?
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Aug 6, 2013 00:15
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Mio Bison posted:Just checked my copy of Vol. 5, it's Bertolt Hoover. No Problem. Ah, good. Wanted to quote this one guy from the anime thread, because I found his speculation pretty funny: Freakazoid_ posted:To that end, the only two people who could be colossal titan are Pixis and Conny, both whom have bald heads. Colossal titan is probably not Conny, because he was present when the colossal titan attacked. That leaves Pixis, which is such a shock without proper corroboration. I can sort of see how you might think Pixis is suspicious or something, but Conny being the colossal titan would have been even stranger/funnier than Bertholdt.
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Aug 6, 2013 00:31
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After reading this chapter I still think that Bertholdt/Reiner's reason for doing what they did will be something understandable (though not necessarily right; more that it'll be morally ambiguous). I don't believe the characters are evil, and their actions will probably come off as morally ambiguous in the end. Keep in mind that countless civilians die in actual wars, but those wars are still sometimes necessary. I'm hoping things go in a direction that somehow involves the main characters going with Reiner/Bertholdt to wherever they're from.
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Aug 7, 2013 17:40
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