English Dub Review: Attack on Titan “Charge”

Wow, Erwin is kinda awesome.

Spoilers Below

The Armored Titan and its four passengers are on the move, running from the Scouts, who are mounted on horseback. Ymir takes this moment to pull Christa from her mouth and explain her actions. She’s been in trouble with the organization that sent these Titan Shifters after the city. Ever since she ate Bertholdt and Reiner’s friend, they’ve had it in for her. If she turns Christa over to them, however, they will give her amnesty. Christa agrees to go with them, primarily because she wants to be there for the person who taught her to accept herself. This touching reunion is cut short, however, as the Scouts have caught up, and go on the offensive. The battle is difficult. Not only because of the Armored Titan’s tough hide, but because of the Jaws Titan supporting it. Mikasa has enough, and heads in for the kill on Ymir, only to be stopped by Christa. She makes her case that Ymir was being forced, and convinces the girl titan to stop fighting the scouts.

This doesn’t end the fight, however, as Eren is being held, strapped to Bertholdt’s back. Bertholdt runs around to the Armored Titan’s clavicle, as the giant man puts his hands in front of them to protect them from the scouts. The 104th trainees surround the hands and talk directly to Bertholdt. They try to reason with him, and learn that these two shifters aren’t even fully doing this of their wills. Erwin arrives, a horde of Titans running in behind him. The heroes scatter. The Armored Titan gets caught by the attacking crowd, slowing his progress, and forcing him to release his hands from protecting Bertholdt and Eren in order to protect himself. This was the entire purpose behind the gambit Erwin led, and calls the scouts to charge in to end this. A titan catches his arm in its mouth, and he is carried away while still reassuring his coleagues. Mikasa leads off in the front, but is also caught by a titan and wounded. That’s when Armin arrives on the titan’s shoulder, and begins to taunt them about Annie’s capture, and the “torture she is enduring”. The ploy works, and Erwin arrives (missing one arm) to cut Eren free from Bertholdt. Objective complete, the scouts take Eren and Christa, and start heading back, but their path is blocked as the Armored Titan begins throwing titans at them. After Mikasa and Erwin are knocked from their horse, and look up at an approaching titan. It’s the one that ate Eren’s Mother!

More and more gets revealed by this gang, and I’m interested to see what more they can stuff in this season’s final episode next week! Now we know that these Titan Shifters aren’t just behaving on their own to tear down the walls, but are forced to do so by another group. What are these people, and what are their goals from outside the walls? Christa’s knowledge of the true nature of the walls seems to be an subject of interest for the enemy, as does Eren. This suggests that between the two of them, there may be a method of either destroying or replicating the wall. Special props to commander Erwin, who not only gives an amazing speech, but also survived getting his arm bit off, and still manages to return for a rescue. He’s like “’tis but a flesh wound”, even though the blood loss alone should have already killed him. He’s just so baller all episode-long.

Technically, this episode was solid. The animation was good, with characters zipping all over the place. There was a bit of an error with how the horses ran in a scene fairly early in. They were CG horses, and just moved so stiffly. Vocally, this is the strongest episode I’ve seen yet from this show. Stellar performances from each of the Scouts. Trina Nishimura (Mikasa) and Josh Grelle (Armin) really brought the rage and hurt out into their performances. Amped up with the drastic look given to them by the art style, they looked very intimidating. J. Michael Tatum (Erwin) did an amazing job performing the stirring speech the military man gave. All in all, I felt that this was a very strong episode and, barring some minor animation errors, is intriguing, well drawn, and exciting. I give it eight missing Erwin arms out of ten.