Chapter 223 222 - A New Titan?
- Sora, if you're going to keep creating anime, then make a lot of it! I love watching your work!
Chika smiled with almost maternal happiness, like one of those fans who complained nonstop but could never hide their pride whenever the series grew even bigger.
Then, little by little, the intricate plan that had been prepared in silence began to unfold.
Connie thanked Reiner for saving his life. Reiner simply answered that he was a soldier, and that doing that sort of thing was only natural. But Bertholdt, standing nearby, let slip a strange sentence.
- Reiner used to be a warrior... but everything has changed now.
Warrior. Soldier.
What exactly was the difference?
The ambiguity in Bertholdt and Reiner's words left Chika completely lost. Those details would only make sense to someone who had watched at least up to the third season of Attack on Titan and then gone back to rewatch everything carefully. At that moment, however, she and most anime fans across Japan were drowning in the same confusion.
Fortunately, the episode did not linger too long on those mysteries. The focus quickly returned to the desperate battle inside the tower.
The camera moved fast, cutting to the soldiers fighting the Titans trying to break into the structure. Blades sliced through the air, the cables of the omni-directional mobility gear shot into stone walls, and bodies launched themselves between broken beams, falling rubble, and open jaws.
But just as the resistance seemed to gain a little breathing room, the Beast Titan lurking outside the tower finally made its move.
Horses and rocks were hurled at the soldiers like projectiles. Anyone who dared expose themselves to attack the Titans was immediately targeted from long range. With a powerful roar, that enormous creature unleashed a brutal assault on the tower, and the veteran members of the Scout Regiment were devoured right before Reiner and the others' eyes.
The scene was too beautifully animated for a massacre, too cruel to look away from. The way the Titans chewed through their victims made fans joke, with dark humor, that this might be the most peculiar "gourmet anime" the Japanese industry had ever produced.
Once the veterans were dead, the next ones who would need to escape using omni-directional mobility gear were Ymir, Reiner, and the others. There was only one problem: without gas, escape was impossible.
The moment the tower collapsed, everyone there would be killed by the Titans.
But at the decisive instant, Ymir's strange behavior once again moved to the center of the scene.
She went to Christa and warned her to stop thinking only about sacrificing her life for others.
Kindness?
Chika blinked, looked at Christa's exhausted expression, and sighed.
Ymir truly cared about her.
Yet soon afterward, Ymir borrowed a knife from Connie.
Chika immediately felt that something was wrong.
A knife?
What use would that be?
Even the blades from the mobility gear seemed insufficient to carve a path through that many Titans. What did Ymir intend to do with a simple knife?
Ymir took the blade.
- Ymir, what are you going to do with that? - Connie asked, his voice caught somewhere between confusion and irritation.
Ymir smiled.
- With this? Isn't it obvious? I'm going to fight.
Her confident tone and steady expression made Chika understand something at once.
Ymir walked to the edge of the tower.
- Christa, you may have forgotten it already, but I want you to remember the promise we made on that snow-covered mountain. I don't have the right to interfere with your life. In the end, this is nothing more than my own selfish wish...
As the light of dawn began to stain the horizon, the glow reflected in the animation made Ymir and Christa's eyes shine with piercing intensity.
You have to hold your head high and keep living.
Chika did not understand. She still did not know what promise the two had made on that snowy mountain. Even so, in that instant, an inexplicable emotion rose inside her chest.
Ymir jumped from the tower.
Christa screamed her name in agony.
Chika's eyes widened as she stared at the scene, as though she were finally about to understand everything.
Why a knife?
The goal was not to kill a Titan.
It was to injure herself.
And who would need to wound themselves in order to fight?
Before Eren could transform into a Titan, he had to bleed.
It couldn't be.
Was Ymir also an intelligent Titan?
High in the air, Ymir cut her own hand with the blade. In the next instant, golden light exploded around her.
Chika held her breath.
That...
If she was not mistaken, that was Ymir's Titan form.
And it was exactly the same as the Titan that, in Reiner's flashback, had devoured his companion.
Far too similar.
Ymir had eaten Reiner's companion. And now, to protect Christa, she was revealing her identity as an intelligent Titan in front of everyone, throwing herself alone into battle against the creatures surrounding the tower.
This...
If that was not love, then what was?
But just as Chika was overwhelmed with excitement, the ending song began to play.
All of her exhilaration vanished at once.
What was this?
Sora, you demon. Had you lost your mind?
Would it have killed you to give them one more minute of story?
- Damn it, Sora, juskut you wait! I refuse to believe you can stay this calm forever! When I finish watching Attack on Titan, I'm going to stop being your fan and become your number one hater!
Inside her room, Chika's furious roar echoed off the walls.
But at that moment, she was far from the only person consumed by anger, unease, and anxiety. The episode had left everyone dangling on the edge.
On the NatsuYume forum, less than ten minutes after the fourth episode of Attack on Titan Season Two ended, three topics had already taken over the site's hottest searches: "Ymir is a Titan," "Ymir likes Christa," and "what is the difference between warrior and soldier."
The anime's comment section and Sora's account were flooded in an instant.
"Can someone tell me if I missed something? Why did another intelligent Titan suddenly appear?"
"Isn't the training corps Eren belonged to cursed? Eren is an intelligent Titan, Annie was one too, and now Ymir is as well. So that squad was full of Titan spies? Wait... was the instructor the real Titan all along?!"
"Fine, the plot has officially gone insane. If Kantoku Sora turns Mikasa, Levi, Erwin, and Reiner into intelligent Titans in the next episode, I won't even be surprised anymore."
"Stop throwing baseless accusations around. Levi could be a Titan, sure, but he'd be the Dwarf Titan. But if Reiner is a Titan, why didn't he transform when his arm got bitten? Is he insane? I could believe Erwin is a giant Titan, though. That man is way too calm to be normal."
"So how many spies are actually around the protagonist? Just reveal them all at once, please. Watching it like this hurts."
"I don't understand anything! But this episode moved me so much. Ymir may be a Titan, but she hasn't done anything truly evil so far. Her relationship with Christa... it made me cry."
"What do you mean she hasn't done anything evil? In the flashback, wasn't Reiner's friend eaten by a Titan? If your eyes weren't lying to you, then you know that Titan was Ymir. She isn't just some misunderstood good person. She actually ate someone!"
"The more I watch, the worse I feel. I can't take it anymore! Do you guys think the story will explain everything in the next episodes? The Colossal Titan, the Armored Titan, that Beast Titan, now Ymir, plus Eren as the protagonist... what the hell are they planning?"
"Sora, you bastard, why do you always cut the episode right there?! You've completely lost it."
"I hope next week gets here soon. I need to see Ymir and Christa's story."
"Eren, Mikasa, where are you? Hurry up and show yourselves! If this keeps going, who's even going to remember that you're the protagonists?"
"I can't take it anymore, everyone. This plot is driving me insane. I can't stop thinking about Ymir. I never imagined she was this important from the beginning. I always thought she was just a sarcastic side character!"
The major twist in the fourth episode of Attack on Titan Season Two turned the anime into the hottest topic on the internet that night.
The next day, analysis articles about the episode began appearing everywhere. The ratings also surged, breaking the record for the highest single-episode viewership in the entire series up to that point, driven by the revelation involving Ymir.
6.79%.
The release of that number sent a shock through the Japanese television animation industry.
The media, sensing the force of the phenomenon, quickly amplified the news.
"The viewership of Attack on Titan reaches a new record; anime may become the first televised animated series in nearly 27 years to surpass the 7% mark."
"The popularity of Attack on Titan is astonishing. Even after breaking past 6.7%, its ratings continue to rise week after week."
"The fourth episode of Attack on Titan Season Two breaks the highest single-episode ratings record of Kantoku Sora's career. How far can this anime go?"
"Attack on Titan has become a rare example of a Japanese television anime achieving explosive performance both domestically and overseas. Its international success can already be considered absolute. The work has become the highest-rated animated series in five markets during the same period, including Japan. With the global popularity of Attack on Titan, Yume Animation's annual financial report is expected to be even more impressive, and the company may even become one of the most profitable anime production studios in the country."
The anime had premiered first in Japan, but within less than a day, fans from four other countries had also watched the fourth episode of the second season.
In the following days, whether in Tokushima, at anime events, in online communities, or among animation critics, the main topic of conversation and analysis remained the latest episode of Attack on Titan.
Sora looked at the documents in his hands, took a deep breath, and smiled.
- What happened? Why are you smiling like that?
Sumire, who was reviewing the original artwork for War of the Two Cities, raised her eyes toward him and asked softly.
- The second season of Attack on Titan has reached the point where Ymir jumps from the tower. The next two episodes, the fifth and sixth, will be the Armored Titan's true stage. Just imagining the state fans will be in at the end of those episodes makes me want to laugh - Sora said.
- You can still laugh? You always cut your own episodes at the cruelest possible moments. Be careful not to get attacked by some crazed fan - Sumire said, brushing a strand of hair away from her face. - Still... it's true. When I think about the ending of the sixth episode, about how the story simply stops there, even I understand that the fans are going to suffer.
At first, Sumire had intended to persuade him to be a little kinder. But when she imagined Sora being buried under online insults, she set aside the drawings she had been checking, and a smile appeared on her face.
- I hope you can keep staying this calm.
Sora chuckled softly, but did not answer.
After all, that was one of the most classic, exciting, and shocking scenes in Attack on Titan.
"I am the Armored Titan."
In Sora's previous life, that line had already become a legendary meme among fans. No matter how many times he revisited the scene, the animation of that moment, combined with the betrayal-soaked soundtrack, could still send chills through him.
In this Japan, the animation quality of Attack on Titan was two or three levels above the version he had known in his previous life.
For the fans of this world, the experience of watching that revelation would be even more intense.
Besides, that episode of Attack on Titan could be considered one of the key points that had made the work explode in popularity in the past. It was like the nineteenth episode of Demon Slayer: a signature moment, a sequence capable of engraving the anime's name into collective memory and drawing in an army of new fans.
Naturally, Sora had extremely high expectations for that episode's performance and for the results it would bring.
Throughout the week, discussion surrounding the fourth episode of Attack on Titan Season Two continued to rise, both in Japan and in the four overseas markets where the series was airing.
The enthusiasm remained alive until Friday.
Sora's fans complained and cursed all the time. But in truth, they had all grown used to his habit of cutting episodes at the most suffocating moments.
Or rather: in the case of Attack on Titan, the pacing was too fast, the plot was too strong, and the progression of each episode was too effective. No matter where each chapter ended, there would always be dissatisfied fans, desperate for more.
One week, however, was enough time for them to calm down.
Soon, Friday afternoon arrived.
One hour before the broadcast of the fifth episode of Attack on Titan Season Two, Southern Alliance Television's viewership had already surpassed 4%.
The Attack on Titan fandom was ready to unleash all its strength.
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