The Colossal Titan reappears and another gate is destroyed. This time however Eren and friends are full class soldiers, but will that be enough to save them from second invasion of Titans and another massacre?  You gotta hit the link to find out!

The episodes starts right off with action and Eren goes right for an attack on the Colossal Titan that appeared. However the Titan makes a giant sweeping motion that immediately destroys the wall’s cannon defense which Eren himself barely dodges the massive sweeping arm. Eren then makes the observation that it wasn’t just coincidence that the Colossal destroyed not only the gate, but he’s second act was to destroy the walls cannons proving that he’s intelligent. Eren then proceeds with his attack guessing correctly that due to the Colossal’s size he’s slow, and maneuvering around him goes in for the kill by running and vaulting off the Titan’s very body. The Colossal defends himself with a blast of heated smoke which delays the death blow, but Eren is determined to kill the beast and pushes on. Just as Eren makes the kill shot the entire beast is swallowed in smoke and vanishes without a trace.

With Eren returning to the top of the wall meeting Springer, and one of the other defense soldiers asking if he got it. Eren says he doesn’t apologizing, but Connie says they need to shut up, because the wall has been breached and they need to find a way to fix it less the titans find their way in. A superior officer zips in telling the three soldiers to return to HQ  and make a full report and that protocol for the Colossal’s appearance has been activated. This of course means that the town has started evacuation procedures.

The gate is netted, trenched, and tower defensed with portable tower cannons in anticipation for the en-pending invasion. More troops are stationed on top of the wall and as if on cue a slew of titan’s come stomping forward in search of their next feast. The defense force make a valiant effort with their remaining cannons scoring several head and body shots on the incoming titans. However their victory is fleeting as to their horror the titan’s regenerate the damage at an aggressive rate despite whole sections of their body including whole heads grow back.

Back at HQ all the newly graduated recruits are rushing to make battle preparations and get themselves combat ready. We see a couple promise to stay alive for eachother and Armin shaking so bad he can’t fill gas tanks….we’ll get to this stuff in the review section.  Armin gives us a brief explanation of how bad it is, the Colossal made an 8 meter whole in the front wall and the only rock capable of plugging it is a rock that is not possible to move by human methods. If they can’t the wall plugged the town will be abandoned and it’ll be only a matter of time before the titan’s make their way inside. We are giving the image of titans being blown apart by the wall’s cannons, only to regenerate and press on reinforcing Armin’s horror that they will be annihliated at any moment.

Meanwhile we cut to a pristine castle surrounded by a lake were an elderly soldier is seen playing a game of chess with the castle’s lord, a fat man named Balto and losing.  It is here we are introduced to Commander Prixis, the entire southern defense force Commanding officer. Lord Balto mocks Prixis for losing and never improving despite them playing regularly once a month. Their game however is cut short as a soldier rushes informing both Prixis and Balto of the Colossal’s attack and the breach of the gate. Prixis immediately gets up and departs despite the plea’s of Balto. A soldier then informs Balto that Prixis was merely being polite and allowing him to win every time and with the current situation Prixis does not have the luxury anymore and must not be held back by any means. Even still Balto cries and pleads for prixis to stay and protect him, but those pleas only fall on deaf ears and prixis leaves for Trost.

We cut back to HQ were a commanding officer is issuing troop placement in a three line defense stage. The first line will be the wall troops naturally, supported by the second line which is the new recruits. The final line is made up of only elite class soldiers defending the evacuation route for both themselves and residents. It is immediately established that the vanguard unit is already obliterated and all troops dead. It is also a foregone conclusion that do to the city of wall marina’s events that this will foreshadow the arrival of the Armored Titan to break the evacuation line and they must all be prepared for that. They are then reminded by the officer of two things the mission objective is the complete evacuation and that desertion of any kind is a capital offense. This mostly like means desertion is punishable by death. We cut to Jean cursing his luck that this of course to happen the day before he ships out to the inner city. Eren naturally takes offense, but looks around seeing soldiers old and new vomiting, shaking, crying, and other things realize that Jean is simply scared and doing everything he can not to become a crying mess. With troop deployments handed out we see Mikasa is moved back to the rear lines while Eren is second line. This causes Mikasa to give pause and have Eren promise he won’t die.  Eren promises saying he won’t die because he can’t.

Eren along with his group consisting of Armin and a couple of others that we saw in the previous episode stand atop a build waiting for a sign they are needed. We cut to Eren remembering a lecture in military school about Titans and their weaknesses. Despite their regenerative powers a deep cut to the nape of their neck with stop their regeneration and will eventually die. Also that the titans do not feed on anything other than humans as the recon troops have seen titans walk past forest creatures completely ignoring them despite their being and easier catch and kill than humans. Not only that but they have no reason to eat for survival, having survived for centuries in areas devoid of humans. It seems like the titans are bent on  pure annihilation rather than predation.  Eren in some twisted view sees this as an opportunity to get promoted up the later once they enter the recon troops by proving themselves in combat today. Naturally this line of logic is nuts, but everyone else agrees with him for some reason and say they are all going for recon troop placement. One of the troops Thomas makes the comment of they should make slaying a contest to which Eren agrees so long as no one fudges their numbers.

Eren’s squad is called up to assist the front line finally and they take off in awesome roof top run sequence.  As they approach they see the Titan horde moving about the city, surprising them that the front guard has already been crushed and that titans have already moved that far in. One the way Eren warns everyone of an abnormal Titan these will later be called Deviants due to their erratic behavior. Anyways the Titan springs forward launching itself at Eren’s group everyone dodges out of the way and seems to be okay. That is not the case however as Thomas caught legs first in the titan’s mouth.

Eren driven mad by anger goes after the titan in blinding dash as the titan simply runs off to seek it’s next meal after eating Thomas in a single bite. Eren zooms toward the beast at a break neck pace, but gets to close to a building were another titan leaps at Eren mid flight and bits off his leg. The causes Eren to lose his balance and goes blowing and bouncing off roof top after roof top leaving him bloodied and unconscious.

Meanwhile Armin looks on frozen by the events transpiring around him. H e can only watch in horror as the other members of his group are besieged by other titans and eaten in front of him. Armin himself is now included as he simply sits there stunned as one just plucks him up and eats him whole. As Eren regains consciousness we cut to Armin and Eren both younger boys sitting there talking about a forbidden book Armin got his hands on. The book describes the world long forgotten and unknown to the boys which in it describes the oceans, snow, and mountains. This is what gives Eren his motivation as a child to become a recon troop member so that he can see this lost wonders himself. We snap back to reality as we see Eren holding open the jaws of the titan that ate Armin pulling his friend to safety  from the titans throat.  He manages to shove Armin out of it’s mouth stating that he wont die and he’ll see the outside world with him. That was until the Titan decides to bite down cutting Eren’s arm clean off eating and swallowing him and eating him infront of Armin. Armin who looks on in horror as his friends arm flies past him and is killed. The episode ends with Armin’s scream on the wind as a gust of wind blows through Mikasa causing her to look in the direction were Eren has died.

Well, uh were to begin. First off yeah, main character for the series was eaten and killed, so  I’m throwing all out all the notes of preconceived anime troupes.  While it was a forgone conclusion that we are gonna lose people this episode, the fact that it was Eren is a completely left field move. The episode was an action paced right from the get go to the end.  The character interactions are pretty good for their first battle. Jean is Jean of course and just wants to get out of dodge, but he wasn’t going to. We are introduced to Prixis, the Recon troops’ Commander Erwin and Levy who I’m sure will be in the show more later on. The troops with Eren and Armin were of course expendable seeing as we only knew one of their names and only saw them in one other episode or as background characters. Armin was good this episode and represents a real aspect of soldiering,  no matter how much training you get some times you just freeze. I mean he’s obviously a tactical soldier not meant for the front line combat. And his actions in the HQ and out on the field are totally with in character. Soldiers get nervous and soldiers do freeze. This was an amazing episode for the 3D gear again with the roof top running and the Colossal battle at the beginning. Though honestly, with Eren gone I don’t quite know were this is gonna go, but we’ll see in a week.