Recap: Eren moves the boulder. Humanity must now truly decide what to do with their new secret weapon.

Gee’s Thoughts: Titan brought out all the stops for this episode, after the middling pacing issues that plagued that past couple of episodes. It helps that the show’s absolutely amazing soundtrack shines this episode, featuring more than just a couple great tracks, with special note to Eren’s legitimately epic march to the wall, ending the tense battle of Trost with a climactic finish, sealing it.

Of course, this wouldn’t be Attack on Titan if we weren’t constantly reminded of the grave costs at which humanity’s first victory came at. Friends are lost, comrades are permanently shaken by the events they witnessed, and on the whole, while Trost may have been successfully taken back, there really isn’t much left to claim.

I’d like to especially point out the culmination of Jean’s character arc with the death of Marco. Quite possibly the only person who Jean could really call a friend, it’s a stark display of Jean’s character development since his introduction. Originally concerned with only survival, now we see a hardened young man ready to take leadership and a greater role in the fight against the Titans, whether he likes it or not. It should be interesting to see if he still decides to join the Military Police after everything he’s witnessed.

With the enigmatic Levi, whom we’ve seen in action a few times showing us that he’s basically an even more hypercompetent version of Mikasa, finally accepting Eren into the Recon Corps, it’ll be interesting to see where Titan goes now that humanity is equipped with a weapon capable of fighting back on the Titans’ playing field. That said, when we’ve seen the likes of the Colossal and Armored Titan, one can only imagine what other kind of special Titans are out and about.

Overall, while the episode suffered from some clear animation and budget issues at times (somewhat similar to the other Production IG led anime this season, Gargantia), it’s a climactic finale to the first half. While the anime has certainly struggled at times to translate its source material into a perfect adaptation, its glorious soundtrack, top-notch animation (when they have the budget), and excellent portrayal of the Titan universe has me excited for the adventures to come in our heroes’ struggle for survival.

Here’s hoping next week’s flashback/recap episode doesn’t completely kill the momentum though.

Marlin’s Thoughts: This has to be by far the best episode of titan yet. After growing accustomed to everything going wrong, we finally get an episode where.  I am absolutely loving the optimism in this episode. Now, for how long this will actually last I’m still highly skeptic, but It helps that this show’s absolutely stellar soundtrack kicks in with the perfect music for Eren’s slow march to sealing the Wall. Ever the show to depress us, instead of leaving the success as an uplifting conclusion, we are shown the terrible cost of humanity’s victory. Still, for once things are looking up, and while it seems next episode is going to be a lame flashback, hopefully we have some big things to come.

Gee: In addition, for everyone watching this, I’ve created a character guide for those having trouble remembering the loads and loads of characters this anime is going to introduce. While the anime doesn’t suffer from the sameface and rather poor early artwork that the manga did, I have a feeling it’ll still come in handy. I’ll continue to update it every week as new characters are introduced.