English Dub Review: Attack on Titan “The World the Girl Saw: The Struggle for Trost Part 2”
Eren is currently in the belly of a Titan, and Armin is losing his mind. How much worse can it get for the Scouts?
Spoilers Below
We get a clean up episode this week, guys. Armin is reeling from seeing Eren sacrifice himself for Armin to live, and later on, this becomes a very heavy Mikasa episode. I was very curious to see how they would counter last week’s almost non-stop action sequences. Well, here’s “The World She Saw.”
Armin is still in shock from seeing Eren getting munched on by a Titan, as well as the total annihilation of his squad. Conny is trying to literally shake Armin out of it, but to no avail. That is, until Armin goes off on himself. Things aren’t exactly looking too bright for him. Ymir shows up, trying to get Conny to move on, because there’s no point in saving Armin if he won’t move. She also puts Armin down by saying that it’s pitiful that everyone in Armin’s squad busted their ass and died, and he’s the one left. This almost starts a fight between the two, except Christa settles things down. Conny gets Armin to his feet, but Armin walks off to the rear guard. We get a very weak monologue set over that lazy animation from earlier in the series, ending with Armin face planting into a wall. After he comes to, he sees Hanna trying to give Franz CPR, but he’s pretty dead. Armin tries to tell Hanna Franz is dead, but he can’t bring himself to do it.
At the gate, the people are trying to get through, but the president of the merchant guild has his oversized cart jammed into the small gate. Unfortunately, an Abnormal Titan makes a bee-line for the gate, with Mikasa in close pursuit. Mikasa saves the people by killing the Titan, with the merchant guild president looking on. He tries to propose to Mikasa to get the citizens to work for a hefty reward, but to no avail. Mikasa becomes a certain type of badass, and takes out two of the president’s people, and threatens the merchant president. This causes the cart to come out, to much applause from the people. After the cart moves, she is cheered by a girl, causing Mikasa to think of Eren. Ian congratulates Mikasa on a job well done, then asks how she can be so nonchalant, and that triggers a full on flashback.
We flashback to when Mikasa actually had parents. She seems happy. She doesn’t know to the birds and bees question, so they tell her to ask Dr. Yaeger when he comes in. Dr. Yaeger and Eren are at the door, and they try to get in. The doctor opens the door, and finds a bloodbath.It turns out that Mikasa was kidnapped to be sold, and her parents were murdered. In a moment of infinite stupidity, he tells Eren to go wait at the base of the mountain. You have at least a murderer and kidnapper running around, and you’re going to send your kid out into the mountains to hide? For a doctor, this man is pretty stupid. Anyway, we go back to the knock, and it was the kidnappers, not Dr. Yaeger. Mikasa’s father gets a knife to the gut, while her mom fights off the attackers. For her trouble, however, Mikasa’s mom gets an axe to the base of her neck.
Eren found the shack that the kidnappers were hiding in, and he plays the innocent lost victim with a knife behind his back. He kills one, then kills the other with a knife tied to a broom. Eren unties Mikasa, but didn’t know about the third guy. Eren is getting choked out, which gets Mikasa to grab the knife. She realizes that everything dies, that it’s kill or be killed and the world is a cruel place. Two MP show up, and they can’t believe that two kids killed the kidnappers. Outside, Dr. Yaeger is reading Eren the riot act for not staying at the mountain, but Eren tells his father not to feel bad. They were animals disguised as humans and needed to be put down. Dr. Yaeger turns to Mikasa, who just wants to go home. Surprisingly, we get the story of that ever-present scarf that Mikasa keeps on her. Eren hands her his scarf so she can stay warm, keeping it as a keepsake. Dr. Yaeger offers to let Mikasa live with them, and she takes him up on it. Back in the present, she slays more Titans. Ian tells her to go to the inner wall, but she flies off to help the vanguard.
I am very surprised here. We have a second episode of AoT that was very good, except this was for very different reasons than last week. Where last week’s episode was almost pure action, showing how destructive the Titans are, this week we get a lot of back story concerning Mikasa. I loved how they showed the actual deaths, and show the depths that people in fear would go to try and make life better for themselves. We see where the scarf comes in, as well as her lack of emotion.
What I can tell you, is that I was very surprised at Eren’s murderous streak, and shows how dangerous he could be to anyone who crosses him. That second half of the episode put a lot of things into perspective for the early episodes, but it doesn’t really change my opinion of them overall. This episode did have one gripe though. They used that same lazy, zooming frame animation garbage with a voice over. I cannot begin to tell you how annoying it is to me. This time, however, it lasted for about a half of a minute instead of five.
It was great to see this show give us plot that is useful for driving the story forward. The first five episodes just gave us useless shit when it came to story, but always managed to kill it when the Titans showed up. I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for that. I am curious to see Mikasa’s response to Armin being a wreck, and Eren presumably being Titan food.
