By Dustin Cabeal

Let me clear something up before we jump into this review. I’m not a diehard, all or nothing Titan fan. The characters aren’t deep; the main character is an insensitive dick that only cares about his revenge, and everyone cries a lot. Not that I can blame them on that last one since the idea of living in this world is enough of a reason to eat a gun. Hell, I didn’t even like this show until Eren turned into a fucking Titan.

All that aside, yes, I was fucking excited to see this show finally return and the reason is that goddamn ending of the first season. The wall breaking and revealing a titan inside was frankly amazing. What people don’t seem to understand about this show is that at least for myself, I’m here to see the mystery revealed. I don’t care if they ever get outside the walls or who lives or who bangs. Again, I don’t like the characters. None of them are deep, and they all get that sense of panic and fear when the Titans eventually come to their town.

It’s hard to deny how intense this story is, though. To place yourself in this world is truly terrifying because they’re so limited in the way they can fight and their survival is constantly in peril. That’s why I tune in. I want to see if they can survive. What the mystery behind the Titan’s is and why Eren is so damn special. Sure, there’s some cool character designs, the gear is cool, and the special Titans are awesome, but it’s the damn mystery that keeps me coming back. I can sit through anything just to get a taste of that mystery, which is the case with this first episode.

Thankfully, the story picks up right where it left off, and we see some of the soldiers staring up at the Titan. The officer in command is frantically thinking of what to do when a priest runs up to her and tells her that no matter what they need to cover the Titan before the sun hits it. The priest won’t give up the ghost on what’s going on, even when Zoe hangs him off the edge of the wall. He’d rather die than give up information and damn, that was great. I was worried we’d get some hint of a reveal, but instead, he doubled down and practically tried to kill himself. There’s no time to rest though as the Titans have breached Rose Wall, which pretty much means everything is fucked.

There’s a slight spoiler ahead. There’s a special Titan in this episode, hence the title. This one speaks which isn’t like “Oh my god” to me because I’ve seen way too much anime, but the dude he talks to… shits his pants and gives up fighting. It’s fucked up, amazing and again adds to that layer of mystery. This Beast Titan doesn’t know what the military use to fight them, so he’s interested in their system. It made me want to watch the second episode so damn bad.

It’s a tossup on whether I’ll review the rest of the series as they air. I will likely keep up with them to some degree, but much like when I watched the first series, I was behind the curve. I like to binge this series so that when there is something juicy, I’m not stuck waiting. That and I avoid the internet in general, so I’m not likely to see spoilers.

Overall, though, this was a solid first episode. It touched upon a little of everything, but most of all was just exciting to see. It was great that they brought some slight reveal to the mystery of the walls, i.g. the church knows what is going on and that they introduced another badass special Titan. It would have been a perfect episode if there weren’t CG horses that looked stupid and didn’t match the rest of the episode.

Score: 4/5

Attack on Titan E.026 - S.2 E.01 – “Beast Titan”
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