English Dub Review: Attack on Titan “Small Blade: The Struggle for Trost Part 3”

What could possibly be worse than the Titans flooding in? How about a brand new type of Titan?

 Spoilers Below

Man, that paints a pretty picture, doesn’t it? This kind of reminds me of the curb stomp at the beginning of American History X.

So, the scouts inside the barracks are at odds, with the captain trying to get to the inner wall. His subordinates tell him he’s practically a coward. He threatens the soldiers with his sword. Meanwhile, Mikasa is looking at the soldiers still in the city, and is wondering why no one is going back over the wall. The retreat whistle blew, but not everyone is going. We then see the Titans coming down on a mansion, which has four soldiers waiting out the attack. The desperation in the mansion is so thick, one of the soldiers pulls a Kurt Cobain and blows the back of his head off.

Conny and Jean are outside, trying to figure out what they can do. Jean says they can’t do anything, because everyone is out of gas. The soldiers are left out, because the supply depot abandoned them and lost their will to fight. Conny sees the futility in all of this, and tries to get a way to pull this suicide mission to get their gas. Sasha is trying to motivate her crew, including Armin, to do something. But she has having as much luck as Jean and Conny.

Mikasa makes it to Annie and Reiner, trying to find Eren. Armin is breaking down again, because he doesn’t know how to break the news that Eren is dead because he saved Armin. He tells the names of all who died in his squad, and everyone sees that as their fate. Mikasa gets Armin to buck up a bit, but turns that around, yelling at everyone for being cowardly worms. I think I laughed entirely way too much at Mikasa’s alpha Amazoness status there.

Jean blames all of this on Eren, then gets everyone to fight. And again, that stupid frozen frame shit comes back for a second. Armin sees Mikasa ahead, but realizes she is using too much gas, and is letting her adrenaline run her. She runs out, and falls. Armin goes after her, and Conny goes after Armin. Mikasa is just chilling on a cart, until a Titan comes, and ruins her moment of reflection.

A cadet is stuck on the ground, with no gas, and the other soldiers are just watching as he gets eaten. Jean is watching this, and he thinks he is not worthy to lead. Back with Mikasa, the Titan is moving in, but Mikasa slices his hand off just as she is going to get grabbed by the Titan. Because Eren is gone, Mikasa lost all will to live. She is caught  between two Titans, and she is about to go up on the first Titan, when the second one knocks the living shit out of the second. The second Titan stomps the shit out of the first Titan’s head.

Armin comes in and grabs Mikasa, with Conny right behind. Armin and Conny bear witness to the two Titans fighting one another, with the friendly Titan fighting the not friendly. Armin gives Mikasa his tanks so Mikasa can make it to HQ. He also restocks her blades, but takes a broken one so he can kill himself. Mikasa promptly takes that away, saying she will never leave her behind.

This episode saw Mikasa almost hit her breaking point twice, once out of rage, and the other out of despair. You know shit hit the fan when the person with the strongest will is about to break. Also, you get a dose of the despair in Trost just with the one guy who blew his brains out at the beginning of the episode. This episode is definitely fucked up from the beginning, and there wasn’t much to go on. When there weren’t suicides, there were people wanting to do it, because the whole city is fucked. Not to mention, they were fucked themselves because they couldn’t get back to HQ. This may sound odd, but you really feel for the people in this episode, and how screwed their reality is with these Titans just roaming inside and outside of the walls.

Seeing this new Titan was pretty cool, because it takes as much shit from the Titans as the Titans do the humans. I’m glad to see the show find the balance between story and action, again. I’ve said it before, but the show is great when it comes to the action, but it falters hard when the story needs to progress. This episode should be the framework to show how the story needs to move forward from here on out.

The episodes are coming together, which is good that I can finally say.  I can safely tell you, that if you can deal with the stretch of terrible episodes at the beginning, this show seems to be a show that will be another blockbuster when it’s over with. Now that I said that, I think I guaranteed I will shoot myself in the foot. We’ll definitely see, though!