English Dub Review: Attack on Titan “From One Hand to Another”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

While Falco helps out his new friend “Kruger” send some letters to his family and continues his efforts to surpass Gabi to protect her, Commander Magath meets with Willy Tybur, head of the illustrious Tyber Family who possess the scarcely seen War Hammer Titan. They plan to garner global support in the war on Paradis by gathering world leaders to a formal event, which Gabi and the Warrior candidates act as butlers for. The next day brings a festival in the internment zone, much to Gabi’s surprise, where she and the other Warriors get their fill of the stands and snacks, all leading to a big announcement put on by Willy. However, right before the festivities truly begin, Falco beckons Reiner to an underground room to meet with an “old friend”: Eren.

OUR TAKE

This week brought the last bit of establishing more or less normal life amongst our new Marlean cast, as the closing moments of this episode make clear that the tension is only going to get higher from here. We’ve had these past four episodes to get to know what life is like in this society, what the people around it believe, what their goals are, and who they are as human beings. That’s much more time than what we got compared to the very first episode, which established just enough for us before everything was torn down by the sudden appearance of the Colossal Titan. Heck, Reiner himself is getting a hell of a lot more warning before shit hits the fan than he ever gave Eren in the same position, though Eren will go into more than enough detail on that next time.

And let’s touch on Eren here, now that we finally have him back in his new long-haired self. One thing to note is that whatever brightness in his eyes that he may have had from previous seasons, even the fires of vengeful rage, are totally gone. It’s actually kind of sad that he’s been reduced to this, and yet we can gather plenty from his talk with Falco and…well, the previous three seasons as to why that is. He, like Reiner, has been completely burned from the inside out by this conflict that still has no sign of stopping, only getting worse. Though of worthy note has to be his surprise interaction with his grandfather, who he likely remembers from Grisha’s memories as to their compliance with Marley’s treatment of Eldians to the point that he didn’t even object to his own daughter, Grisha’s sister, being killed by one of the police. That guilt seems to have completely torn him apart if he’s in this institution with the battle damaged soldiers. Also, good thing that Eren takes more after his mother here.

Also worth bringing up is the shades of gray in the Marlean (Marleyan?) ideologies, as shown through Magath and Willy. Magath thinks that his people should be conscripted into wars to make the public see the toll of this combat, as opposed to just letting the Eldians fight and die for them and then celebrate when the papers say another territory has been claimed. Meanwhile, Willy and the Tyburs are Eldians who have managed to retain being in high society, as well as hold exclusive ownership of one of the remaining Titans, because they were supposedly linked to the defeat of the devil which gave the power of the Titans to Eldians in the first place. There’s also this newly revealed figure, Helos, who we see a statue of, though there’s more to cover on him next time. And really, next time is when we see things finally start to take off with a bang.