Recap: Eren meets the eccentric and unique members of the Recon Corps.

Gee’s Thoughts: Basically more setup this week again. It’s moments like this that remind me how slow Titan can be at times. The surprisingly interesting info dump helps alleviate things somewhat, but overall, this was a very talky episode. Eren meets the Recon Corps, from the crude yet competent Auruo to the objectively nutty Hanji. It’s a helpful reminder that since most recruits join either the Military Police or the Garrison, only the most brave and/or insane would join the Recon Corps.

This episode does give us some more insight into the Titans, and Hanji’s character is a fresh take on the Titan universe, being probably the only legitimate Titan researcher in the world. With the reveal that Titans are in fact super light for their volume, it helpfully circumvents the pesky square-cube law while also adding to the mystery of what exactly are the Titans. If we were to assume other Titans could also form shift like Eren, are they super light because they’re generating mass from their own body? If that’s the case, does that imply all the Titans are transformed humans? Certainly a disturbing implication to say the least.

Finally, with Hanji’s Titan test subjects being killed by a human assailant, we add in yet another form of tension, that being the threats from within. The court case from the last episode already showed us that humanity is clearly not getting along, even in the face of an overwhelming enemy. With someone explicitly trying to hamper Hanji’s experiments, we can deduce that somebody doesn’t want the Recon Corps to find out too much. Who that might be, remains a mystery…

Marlin’s Thoughts: I actually quite enjoyed this infodump. I feel there hasn’t been nearly enough told to us about the titans so far, so I relished the opportunity for them to sick the crazy chick on us for a crash course. The most interesting thing I took out of it was how the Titans are solar powered. In most every monster tale, the night is used to hide or empower a monster. The Titans show us they are terrifying enough that they don’t even need to be functional in daylight to be effective monstrosities. This is also one of those episodes where the preview said too much. I get that something is up in the Recon Corps., but I wouldn’t have immediately jumped to the commander being a revolutionary except for the fact that they outright stated that in the preview. As much as I enjoy meeting these new characters, I feel I’m ready to see some old faces come back. The one thing I do dread is the next episode all being some weird whodunnit about the death of the Titans.