Recap: Armin hatches a plan to save Eren from a Military Police tribunal, and needs Annie’s help to pull it off.

Gee’s Thoughts: Bombs are dropped and ruses are revealed in this episode of Titan. We first start off by showing how Annie’s been doing in the Military Police. Like usual, Annie continues to aloofly navigate her way through whatever situation she’s in. We get to see a little bit of the Military Police and it becomes apparently rather quickly that as an organization, they’re apathetic at best, and straight up corrupt at worst. Those who join the Military Police for lofty ambitions and pure intentions are quickly ground into the dirt. If you thought the Military Police were simply well-intentioned extremists, dash that thought from your mind, because for the most part, they’re little more than uniformed thugs ruled by cowardice and corruption.

So after some stone cold verbal smacking from Armin, Annie decides to help out our heroes escape to beyond the walls (while Jean is forced to masquerade as Eren). Hoping to stall until the Recon Corps can find some evidence of the identity of the Female Titan. However, it looks like Armin and the Corps have already dawned onto the Female Titan’s true identity, who is none other than Annie herself. Now to be fair, compared to the manga, the anime has the benefits of color and good artwork, but in the end, I don’t think anyone can honestly say they were surprised. Aloof, trained in CQC, and sporting blonde hair, it really could have been only her.

In the end, they fail to restrain Annie and she transforms, leaving our trio to fend for themselves against the Female Titan. Now that they’re within the deepest part of the city, it’ll be interesting to see how things play out. Annie’s tough, but she’s right in the heart of humanity’s stronghold, escaping will be difficult. Conversely, she might not even try to escape. After all, she’s already tried to kidnap Eren once, who’s to say she won’t try again? And now that Armin’s revealed his hand, it might be convenient to kill him too…

Marlin’s Thoughts:

One might think the Military Police almost seems cartoonishly corrupt, with every facet involved in some malpractice, but its not. It’s actually kind of depressing how close to real life this kind of behavior is, and because of it those scenes actually made me uncomfortable. The righteous get trampled down and the powerful get their way regardless of the supposed rule of the land. That is the world we live in, and Titan is not afraid to show us their world is not too far off.

As for Annie, it definitely is a certain type of brilliance to make something so obvious that you can’t believe it’s true. With the Female Titan all but having a badge on it saying “Hi, my name is Annie.” I was sure it was some kind of feint or trick to lead us off the true culprit. However, as Gee said, Annie really was the best candidate for the mark. Strong, indifferent, and most importantly, the only top-ten recruit not there. Now that they know they have to battle their own friend, will this bring any fatal reservations to our heroes, or can they see her for the monster she is and take her down?