SnK 71 Thoughts

To be fair, that’s probably closer to “exposition chapters.” I love this series, and I love its story, but wow Isayama could really stand smooth out his infodumps.



So, on a scale of Keith Shadis to Erwin Smith, how well did you handle your friend getting together with a woman you were interested in?

Like. Dude.

Duuuuude.

Despite my dislike of the way it was told, there’s a lot of interesting things going on around here. All of which can probably be spoken of using very few words, so bonus points for me!

Hoo boy. Grisha. Grisha, Grisha, Grisha.

I should stop writing meta the week before a chapter comes out. I swear that was a rule I adhered to at one point, but I seem to have forgotten it somewhere along the way.



A few days ago I responded to an ask about the parallels between Grisha and Rod, and I think I should just nab that Anon and convince them to write all of my posts from now on.

‘Cause yikes, Grisha’s handling of Eren is a lot more manipulative than I had originally given him credit for.

(Yes, I am getting this out of the way first because I’m sulking about my poor timing in answering things, shut up.)

From the looks of it, since going to the Reisses, Grisha was expecting to have Eren inherit the Coordinate. When he and Keith enter the shelter, Grisha only retrieves Eren, and leaves before even wondering about the fate of his wife.

Once he hears that she’s dead, he’s clearly affected, but his original priority is grabbing his son and taking him away.

Then Carla’s death comes up, and he starts talking to Eren about getting revenge. He very plainly knows what’s going to happen to him and Eren well before then, but Carla’s death turns into a tangible reason to push Eren towards his fate.

Geez, dude.

My point a few days ago about him trusting his son to live out his legacy instead of pounding it into him stands, but considering everything else going on in this chapter, Grisha’s faith in Eren the person feels nearly as bad as Rod’s faith in the First King.

Eren is his son, so of course he can do it. He’ll manage the abilities Grisha gives him.

Still on the Grisha/Rod thing, because everything is about the Reisses even when they’re not in the chapter, the tactic is similar to the one employed by Rod when Historia gets her memories of Frieda back.

It isn’t something Rod expected, but the second Historia mentions Frieda, Frieda turns into a way for him to convince Historia to go along with his plans.

Carla is used in the exact same manner here.



I have never been very good at keeping track of the timeline–actually, I’m terrible at having solid ideas for most of the plot things unless I write them down–but before this chapter, my assumption had been that upon the discovery of the death of his wife, something in Grisha snapped, and so he went after the Reisses. There may have been solid reasons for the action without his grief, but that was the final push that led to the massacre.

That assumption was mainly grounded in this panel.

His assault on the Reisses seems to be rooted in severe emotional distress. Collapsed wall and dead wife fit the bill.

Except, going by this chapter, he only finds out about Carla’s death after killing the Reisses.

Making the above panel his reaction to the collapse of Wall Maria only.

When Grisha and Keith run into each other outside the walls, one of the first thing Grisha asks is if the Survey Corps is fighting. From the look on his face, a positive answer would be distressing to him.

Later, once Keith has filled him in on human society within the walls, Grisha has this to say:

“While there may be economic disparity, there’s peace inside these walls… At the very least… it’s not as if you’re living in fear of the Titans.”

He goes on to laud the Survey Corps for its purpose of looking beyond the walls, but it seems like the first thing that stands out to him is whether or not the people within the walls are peaceful.

The idea of the Survey Corps fighting seems to distress him, but at the same time, he deeply values humanity continuing to look outside the walls.

I am really, really not a plot person, but the initial sense I got of Grisha’s comment on fighting was that there were these people who got to be safe inside the walls, and still they were willing to bring the fear of Titans into their world when they didn’t have to.

Humanity maintaining its curiosity is a good thing. Humanity maintaining its curiosity to the point that it comes into conflict with the world on the outside… that might be quite so okay.

And then Wall Maria falls, and the humans at peace within the walls are forced back into combat with the Titans.

Grisha hears about this, and his immediate reaction is to run to the bloodline gifted with the First King’s legacy and slaughter them all–while stealing their ability for himself to pass on to his son.

Passing it on being part of the whole plan probably has a lot to do with whatever Grisha’s particular bloodline is. Eren is probably the first human to be a product of someone inside the walls and someone outside the walls in a century.

…No clue what that means yet, but Grisha steals the Coordinate knowing that it will go to Eren; he never intends to use it himself.

Er, okay, I accidentally changed the topic for a moment.

Grisha has an immediate, intensely violent reaction to Wall Maria’s collapse. Everything shown about the man–from Keith’s memories to Eren’s–have this whole sequence as an anomaly.

By all accounts, he appears to be a decent man who respects humanity and wishes for its prosperity as fervently as his son does, and despite what he does to Eren, up until then he’s a caring parent.

Then there’s whatever motivates him to slaughter an entire family of people just to pass on a power to his child that will make Eren’s life torturously difficult.

And I’d guess that the answer to that incredible shift in behavior lies outside the walls.

He’s in hysterics before he transforms and murders the Reiss family. He’s in tears when he forces the injection on Eren. When he begs Keith not to get involved, he doesn’t exactly look sane, but he’s still keeping his friend away from all of the monstrosities he commits in this one time period, along with everything Eren will be involved with afterward.

That would seem to indicate that the horrible actions he takes are brought on by what he views as necessity, rather than a simple indifference to everything other than his cause.

Soooo… what power outside the walls is there that Grisha is so afraid of?

As someone has pointed out, his Titan form, Eren’s, Ymir’s, and the Beast Titan all share some pointy ears.

With bloodlines very much established as a thing between the Ackermans and Reisses, I’d guess that Eren and his father belong to a line connected to the Beast Titan.

Not getting into Ymir at the moment, but for the sake of saying something now that I’ve brought up her name, she’s a person who (presumably) was born much earlier than any of the other Shifters. She also has marks as some kind of nobility. So go Team Pointy Ears for positions of great power.

If that’s the case, then given that the Beast Titan has his own substantial importance, my current not-really-a-concrete-belief theory is that Grisha was part of the Beast Titan’s line, but lived in fear of him (or whatever other power exists out there) and made no attempt to resist–except maybe running away. When he finds the walls, isolated from the terror he’s known, he rejoices in their existence.



And… geez, I don’t really know. Emotional cues are one thing, but pondering those emotional cues’ importance to the story isn’t something I’m particularly gifted at.

He doesn’t think that humanity should fight outside, he’s glad of peace inside, he’s glad of humanity not stifling its curiosity, then Wall Maria falls and he rains down unholy horrors on everyone he meets.

Also there’s a thing in the basement. Involving things he’s been working on for some time, and is willing to include Eren in. The work is relevant to the abilities he steals for Eren.

If he’s always planned on stealing the Coordinate, he’s much more cold-hearted than his overall character feels like to me. My current read of things is that his terror of the things outside the walls pushes him to steal the Coordinate, and before things become desperate, he was involved in slightly saner methods of handling the things outside the walls.

Then “outside the walls” came to them, and murder and causing deep psychological trauma seemed the way to go to protect people.

Yep. I don’t know.

…I’m not entirely convinced Grisha knows, either. Does that make it better?



Meanwhile, in areas of the chapter’s content that I can claim to have some skill in making sense of, Keith.

Dude.

Not cool, bro. In so many ways.

He blames Carla for him having a doomed crush. He blames Grisha for making him think he’s special when he’s only ordinary.

While believing himself to be special, he takes that as a reason to look down on people who are ordinary. He focuses on his own perspective to the point of losing all perspective.

Some days it’s hard to remember that Erwin’s strategies were meant for saving lives. The first time we see them, Annie turns up and annihilates everything.

But under Shadis, combat–winning the battle–was put above human lives.

Erwin has blood on his hands, but not out of pride. Erwin sacrifices people in pursuit of humanity’s benefit. Shadis, trapped in looking at only his own benefit, gets loads of soldiers killed.

He learns that all of those bad qualities make him ordinary, but even so, he’s the one who looks after Eren’s well-being before Grisha injects him.

It’s born from his own experiences, and he’s still blaming Grisha for his own shortcomings, but he raises a very good point: What if Eren isn’t strong enough? What if Eren isn’t special? What if Eren’s just an ordinary human whose father is about to put him through hell?

It isn’t a question Grisha, as special as Keith sees him, considers for a second.

I don’t really know how to feel about Shadis being the one to sabotage Eren’s equipment.

I am delighted that there’s finally an answer to that (as well as his thought about Grisha’s son being a soldier), but Keith spends so much of the damn chapter pushing his viewpoint on other people. Because Carla says that Eren doesn’t need to be special, Keith makes a point of proving to Eren that he doesn’t belong.

Eren proves him wrong.

Considering some of the other things done to trainees, striking a huge blow to a young one’s confidence is hardly the worst tactic used, but Keith does it entirely because of what Carla wants for Eren.

Well, not entirely.

He also does it because if Eren’s allowed to be ordinary, so is he, and ordinary people should accept that.

Eren is an average student as a trainee.

Outside his hand-to-hand skills, he’s nothing special. He makes it to fifth in the class entirely through hard work and determination.

He’s ordinary, but what he does with it makes him extraordinary, and Shadis could never be that.

Grisha’s faith in his son is creepy, but Shadis’ determination to force Eren to keep his head down low for the rest of his life is also pretty unnerving.

Ah, that’s the problem put simply:

Shadis doesn’t sabotage Eren to give Eren a chance to prove he can make it. He sabotages Eren because he doesn’t believe in Eren, and he thinks Eren should be made to agree with that.

And that type of thinking is exactly why he’s nothing special.

…Geez, I have a newfound love for Carla. She’s the only person concerned with Eren’s future who thinks that he’s wonderful just as he is, and doesn’t try to force him into a box of what she thinks he should be.

So of course she’s the opening traumatic death of the series.

And of course she’s Eren’s mother. She loves the world just as much as he does.

This stupid chapter.

It is interesting that Shadis voices a few very sensible concepts despite his crippling self-interest, though.

“Live according to who you truly are,” is a theme that was most notably covered between Ymir and Historia, with the eventual culmination of that arc leading to Queen Historia raising orphans. Keith is a mouthpiece for it when he’s trying to beat down Eren, but the thing is, Ymir knows exactly who she’s dealing with when she confronts Historia. Shadis knows Eren as Carla’s son, and doesn’t actually know who Eren is.

Also, through Shadis, we have the reintroduction of Annie’s philosophies about ordinary men vs. special people.

…I gotta be honest, even after it being part of canon for so long, I’m not sure what to make of Annie’s speech on the topic. I appreciate that it exists, and what it says about Annie, but I don’t know how to respond to it as something that the content of chapters are going to approach.

I guess one way to look at it is that Annie considers Eren special. Eren considers himself ordinary. Eren finds Historia impressive while she admires him.



Keith takes “ordinary” as harshly as he might a death sentence, but his ordinary nature allows him to show Eren compassion when he’s very young.

Reeves is worse than ordinary when he’s first introduced in Trost; Mikasa nearly kills him so his greed doesn’t kill a bunch of other people. Then he turns around and does what he can to keep Trost alive.

I have no idea where I’m going with this, but I think maybe the point is that “ordinary” and “special” don’t really mean much. Annie thinks of regular people as worthless and evil because getting caught up in the flow of life has huge potential for evil (I… guess? I haven’t written Annie meta in ages I have no idea what I’m doing don’t hurt me). Carla and Eren don’t see anything wrong with being ordinary. Throw Frieda in there, too.



…Really, all “special” seems to mean when people in the manga use it is that they want to be better than what they really are, and truthfully, that is how most people feel.

They don’t always have the right measure of how good they are without being “special,” though.

Is that it? I think that might be it.

Go Hange for being upset with Shadis. Someone had to be.

Yay, breathing Hannes?

