Chapter 222 221 - Ymir
In late October, the fourth episode of the second season of Attack on Titan aired for the first time.
By then, the influence of the series had long since surpassed the narrow circle of its most devoted fans. Within Japan's animation industry, Attack on Titan was no longer just another seasonal anime; it had become a title no one could ignore, discussed by studio professionals, entertainment writers, regional broadcasters, and ordinary viewers who treated each new episode like a weekly event.
Whenever a new episode aired, the fan community moved almost as one. Forums like NatsuYume erupted with activity, private groups flooded with messages, analysis pages published theories minutes after broadcast, and even viewers who usually watched in silence found themselves dragged into the tide of discussion.
News about the overseas reception of Attack on Titan also reached Japan quickly. Many fans, curious to see how foreign audiences were reacting, crossed the language barrier with machine translators, entered international forums, and discussed the plot with viewers from other countries, comparing theories, suspicions, and interpretations.
Unlike Sora's previous works, Attack on Titan had reached a far broader level of attention. The reason was not merely the quality of the animation or the strength of the direction, but the very nature of the story itself. With every episode, the world seemed to open and close at the same time, offering just enough answers to keep the audience hooked and enough mysteries to leave them restless for another week.
Compared to the era of CL and Destiny Stone, the volume of online discussion had grown absurdly.
"I feel like the entire second season has been laying the groundwork for something huge from the very beginning. Could that gorilla titan be the final boss?"
"The final boss feels more like the Colossal Titan. Its presence is on another level. I'd even guess the Colossal Titan might be Captain Levi."
"So Levi sent the Female Titan to kill Petra, his own subordinate? What kind of theory is that?"
"Who said the Female Titan and the Colossal Titan are on the same side? They could easily be enemies."
"So far, the intelligent titans we've seen include the Female Titan, the Armored Titan, the Colossal Titan, that giant ape titan, and Eren, the protagonist, who still seems like the most unstable of them all. How many factions do you think are behind these titans?"
"Judging from the current situation, the ape titan at least doesn't seem to be someone from inside the walls. Otherwise, he wouldn't have captured that soldier in the first episode of the second season and questioned him about the situation inside the walls and the three-dimensional maneuver gear."
"True… so that means there's another power outside the walls? And the gorilla titan was sent by them?"
"But thinking back to earlier scenes, Eren was able to turn into a titan because his father injected him with something. I think it must be some kind of biological substance, maybe a genetic weapon. Now imagine this: millions of people living inside Wall Maria and the other walls, all being used as test subjects without knowing it."
"What do you mean?"
"If Eren transformed with a single injection, that means titans were created by humans. But something on that level feels like the work of a much more advanced civilization. Maybe there are extraterrestrials conducting a social experiment inside the walls."
"If the plot goes in that direction, it'll be way too crude. If every unexplained thing just becomes 'aliens did it,' then what's the point of building an entire world? That would just be lazy."
"With Sora's ability, he definitely wouldn't do that."
"Exactly. The world of titans and an alien explanation don't fit together at all. It would be completely out of tone."
"Instead of aliens, I think it's more plausible that there's another human territory beyond the three walls where the protagonist lives. Maybe another walled city, another artificial refuge similar to theirs. They might also use walls to protect their population, but they're facing resource shortages and the risk of extinction. That's why they want to destroy the humanity in the protagonist's city and take over the territory. As for the injection that lets someone turn into a titan, it could be a genetic product developed by a faction researching titans. Something strategic, extremely rare, and unbelievably valuable."
"When you put it like that, it does sound much more reasonable."
"Stop guessing. The chances of everyone being wrong are huge. No matter how many theories you make, who actually managed to predict Sora's plans in Steins;Gate, CL, or Re:Zero? Most likely, when the final truth behind the world of Attack on Titan is revealed, it'll go beyond anything we're imagining right now."
As eight o'clock drew near, discussion threads about the plot of Attack on Titan began appearing one after another across the forums.
After all, the latest episodes had focused heavily on characters like Christa, Ymir, Connie, and Reiner, while Eren, the protagonist, had taken a much smaller role. Because of that, most discussions still revolved around the ape titan and the secrets behind the structure of the world itself.
As for the scene in the third episode, where the group was trapped at the top of a tower surrounded by titans, only a small number of fans seemed genuinely concerned.
To many viewers, since they were not central characters, if they died there, then they died. It was cruel, but that was how much of the audience viewed supporting characters in a work of that scale.
Chika Nakano's fingers flew across the keyboard. Sitting in front of her laptop in her apartment in Tokushima, she typed with almost aggressive intensity, arguing with people criticizing Sora in one thread while appearing in another fan group for Attack on Titan, marking her presence and discussing theories with other viewers just as addicted as she was.
When the clock struck eight exactly, Chika finally pushed the laptop aside, tied her hair up carelessly, and turned her eyes toward the television.
The second season's opening theme, "Give Your Heart," began to play.
A little over a minute of music, images, and rhythm was enough to make the hairs on her arms rise. The melody was intense, almost solemn, carrying the feeling of a desperate march toward something inevitable.
No matter how many times Chika listened to the opening and ending themes of Attack on Titan, her heart always seemed to speed up in the same way.
The fourth episode began exactly where the previous one had ended.
A group of titans surrounded the base of the tower and began destroying the structure. Given the situation, it was only a matter of time before the entire building collapsed.
Inside, Ymir, Christa, Reiner, Connie, and the other cadets gathered to discuss emergency measures. Their ammunition was almost gone. So was their food. The gas for the three-dimensional maneuver gear was running low, and the horses could no longer be used. Escaping in that condition seemed nearly impossible.
Then Connie mentioned the destruction of his hometown. He said his village had been devastated by titans and that, inside one of the houses, he had found a creature collapsed and trapped among the ruins, with an appearance terrifyingly similar to his mother's.
Reiner reprimanded him firmly, saying he was letting himself be carried away by absurd thoughts and weakening everyone's morale.
Ymir, with that sharp, attractive, suspicious air of hers, also mocked him without the slightest gentleness.
Although Chika thought their reactions were somewhat excessive, she could still accept the scene. In an extreme situation, no one had room to handle another person's despair with perfect kindness. Fear, hunger, and the closeness of death dragged harsh responses out of people.
Later, however, the plot took on a different tone.
Reiner approached Ymir, who was searching through a storage room inside the abandoned tower, and revealed that he had understood the reason behind her provocations. He told her she should keep distracting Connie and mocking him, to stop the boy from sinking too deeply into that strange idea that his mother might have turned into a titan.
At that moment, Ymir found a food can with unfamiliar characters written on its label.
She picked it up, looked at it naturally, and said it was a can of herring.
Reiner's expression changed.
His face, previously relatively calm, turned serious. His eyes narrowed in an almost dangerous way.
"What kind of writing is this? Does it say herring on the can? Ah… so you can read it?"
That brief scene sent a chill up the back of Chika's neck.
The inscriptions on the objects inside that old structure were different from the language used inside the walls. So why could no one else read them, while Ymir could?
And then there was the canned herring.
If the can did not look absurdly ancient and could still be eaten, then its production date should not have been that distant.
Why did the people inside the walls not recognize the characters printed on it?
Who had produced that food?
And above all…
Canned herring?
Wasn't herring a sea fish?
Eren and Armin's dream was precisely to see the ocean. The existence of that can proved, almost casually, that the sea truly existed in that world - and that somewhere, someone was fishing, processing, canning, and distributing food that came from it.
The fact that Ymir recognized both the can of herring and the writing on it created a silent but profound shock in Chika and in the portion of viewers paying attention to the details.
Sora was digging another hole.
And judging by the size of the shovel, it was not going to be a small one.
In the following sequence, the titans attacked the tower with even greater violence. The structure began to tremble and lean dangerously, every crack of wood announcing that collapse was near.
With no alternative, they could only risk their lives. They would have to use the little gas left in their three-dimensional maneuver gear to leap from the tower and eliminate the titans.
But not even the inside of the building was safe.
A smaller titan, about five meters tall, managed to infiltrate the place.
Reiner was struck by surprise, and in that instant of shock, one of his memories surfaced.
When he was a child, he, Bertholdt, and another boy had been attacked by a medium-sized titan with a disproportionately large head. The boy died protecting Reiner, swallowed by the mouth of a hunchbacked female titan with a massive head and a grotesque expression.
Seeing that memory, Chika instinctively interpreted it as something that had happened four or five years earlier, when the wall of the city where Eren lived was destroyed, allowing titans to invade the interior and attack Reiner's hometown as well. In her mind, his friend had sacrificed himself to save him during that disaster.
At that moment, Reiner's survival instinct overcame everything. He dodged the blow from the five-meter titan and, with Bertholdt's help, finally managed to bring the creature down.
"It's all right, Bertholdt. We have to make it back alive. We have to return to our homeland…"
"Yeah. Let's go back together," Bertholdt replied, his expression heavy with emotion.
When Chika first saw that scene, she did not find anything strange about it.
On the contrary, she even thought Reiner was being developed extremely well as a character.
He hated titans and had joined the Survey Corps in order to return to his homeland. He had ambition, pain, and a powerful ideal, something similar to what drove Eren. The two of them seemed to belong to the same kind of person: young people shaped by tragedy, capable and brave, willing to face the world beyond the walls.
Bertholdt, who walked beside him, naturally fell into the same category.
The strangest point of the episode, therefore, remained Ymir.
The more Chika watched her, the more mysterious she seemed.
What secret was that girl hiding?
Later, Reiner tried to save Connie by using one hand to hold back the five-meter titan. The result was brutal: the titan bit down hard on his arm. Even consumed by pain, Reiner carried the creature to the edge of the tower and threw it outside.
Chika, still innocent to certain deeper layers of the story, immediately raised her fist to her chest.
"Reiner… this guy is a real man."
"He fits the role of protagonist even better than Eren! What an absurd presence!"
At the top of the tower, Christa tore a strip from her clothes and used it to bandage Reiner's wound.
At that moment, the animation revealed his inner monologue.
"Marry me!"
Chika burst out laughing.
Reiner was hilarious.
But nearby, Ymir watched as Christa gently and carefully wrapped Reiner's injury.
Then, in a strangely awkward way, Ymir raised her own hand, pointed to a tiny cut on her finger, and said:
"Christa… my finger is hurt too."
Ah.
Chika's eyes lit up at once.
Many male anime fans might not have noticed anything special about Ymir's line. After all, asking for help because of an injured finger was not exactly strange.
But Chika, who often read BL novels and was already used to catching emotional nuances hidden in gestures too small for inattentive viewers, immediately realized that Ymir's feelings for Christa seemed to go beyond the limits of simple friendship.
Ymir… liked Christa?
But they were both girls.
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