SnK 105 Thoughts

I find myself thinking, at this stage of my life, that it is a tragedy that I never was one of the chosen school children who learned something about potato guns. I am aware that they shoot potatoes. That is where my knowledge ends.

I feel like I have missed an opportunity, here.

I can only hope that the gaps between the stars of insight make pretty enough pictures in and of themselves that my horrid intentions in bringing this up are clear.

This is probably where I ponder about where to even start. Usually when I do that, it’s a stall tactic that ends with me belligerently going in chronological order, since at least that way I don’t have to jump around pages. However, this chapter begins with Levi kicking Eren in the face.

I feel like that deserves more of my concentration than I generally enjoy putting into the opening paragraphs of these posts.

So, now that we are roaming free among the 40-some pages that the world revolves around this month, I think I’m going to start with Gabi and Falco. The Two Little Children Who Shouldn’t’ve.

Gabi’s blossomed more than I would have thought possible in such a short arc, but given how strongly she parallels Eren, maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Instead of the little brat who commits war crimes, she’s the little girl fighting desperately for her family and loved ones to be recognized as good. She loves her home enough to want better for it.

She’s an innocent child, permanently tarnished by war and abuse. She’s also angry, and has been well trained so that she’s capable of wielding that anger dangerously. The balance of her character comes across beautifully. She’s too young for these trials, but the world has forged her into something that will respond to them anyway.



Standing next to her is Falco, who, despite being written as a way more reasonable human being than anyone should ever write a child of that age, will continue to bear the title of Best Boy.

Eren’s betrayed him, and that betrayal–Falco’s trust–has caused the world to unravel. His, and the girl he loves’. It would be easy to fall into despair. It would be easy to write off everything he’s seen from Eren as the words of some island devil.

But Falco remembers Eren’s perspective, even though it’s the one that’s caused more damage than their little minds can wrap themselves around. He sees what’s happening, and he draws the link between the tragedy he’s going through and the one Eren describes.

Falco has a tragic amount of compassion in him. The girl he’s willing to die for is crying, his friends are dead, and he still wants to drive things towards peace. The fight is over for now, so that means he and Gabi can stop, right? They don’t have to keep running after. They don’t have to make it worse.

Gabi presses hard against the only thing she really can rely on; the people who did this are monsters. She’s been taught that all her life, and here, she finally has proof. Falco only has words about what these people might have gone through. He hasn’t seen anything firsthand, and neither has she, so why bother sympathizing with the devil?

Because Falco has the same problem that befalls several characters in this series, with varying results; if he sees someone crying out, he wants to help. He wants the birds in the sky to fly away. He wants enemies who have just been captured to know that they’re safe. He wants soldiers twice his size to have a helping hand.

Gabi says the people from the island are nothing like them. Eren says they’re all the same.

Despite everything Marley encourages, Falco is not a boy who thinks about humans as if they come in different classes. What Eren says is something he has always believed in enough to act on, even if he’s never had the thought for himself. Falco sees every pain Eren describes reflected in Gabi, and that’s not something he thinks anyone deserves. Even his worst enemies.

He’s started to understand the big picture, and he’s young enough that his only answer to it is to be kind and follow his friend. Gabi’s ready to fly off and die, and just like every other time Falco’s had the chance to interfere with someone dying, he chases after her. His big brother is right there, looking for him, and the people who’ve caused so much destruction are up in the sky, and if Gabi’s going up there, he’s going too.

The best of these kids shines through in this chapter. Gabi’s not so angry that she’s going to make her last words to one of her last friends cruel ones. Falco is the last thing on her mind, and the way he’s dealing with this is not at all in line with how she plans to, and he’s the kid who keeps working himself down to the bone to take away her cousin’s Titan–

But he’s Falco. She’s spent a lot more time with him than we have. She knows he’s a good person. He’s one of the good people who deserves the better life they’re all working for.

There are more panels in this chapter than I really want to consider. Many of them give me feelings, and there is no way I’m going to adequately describe why for even half of them.

However, the light coming back to Gabi’s eyes when Falco follows her into certain death, shouting about the rivalry that Gabi’s thought to be the reason Falco’s trying to sabotage her life’s plans… I can’t put into words how much I love that.

Gabi doesn’t think in Falco’s language. She doesn’t look at death and wonder what could have happened to lead to it. She doesn’t hear him when he says he’s working so hard for her.

Falco doesn’t think in Gabi’s language, either. But he knows Gabi well enough to speak it in a moment that matters. No huge “I love you, stupid,” or promises to follow wherever she goes.

He’s the one who’s going to chase down military glory. So she’d better not get the idea that she’s doing this alone.

And you can see that reach her. Most of the chapter, her eyes are dead or lit up with fury. In that panel, though, they’re lit up because this friend isn’t going anywhere.

Then she shoots Sasha. So that’s great.

That’s what happens when you traumatize children into being weapons.



Major points to Jean for being the adult. One of his best friends is dying on the floor, and he steps up to keep the person who shot her from being thrown out the ship, and hears her when she starts shouting about Zeke. He takes these kids to the one person who has any hope of clearing things up for these children, and doesn’t spend a single second blaming the tiny child for murdering someone he loves.

Every time Gabi and Falco are in a shot where they’re standing next to the adults, they look so damn tiny. They’re really small. No one had any business handing them guns.

I mentioned Gabi’s eyes, and you know, they do light up when she sees Zeke’s alive.

That goes away the second the guy opens his mouth. Surprise !! One of your greatest heroes is working with monsters! …Yay!!!



Falco’s eternal benevolence is incredibly not normal, but I think it’s leaving him with fewer emotional scars than everyone in his immediate vicinity. It’s still stressful as hell, but he is in a place where he is capable of comprehending that Zeke can be working with the enemy and still be Zeke.

Gabi is so not. Zeke’s a traitor. She was just mourning him, and all along, he’s been the cause of her greatest nightmare.

The good news, though they might not understand why yet, is that they won’t be in Marley anymore. The bad news is literally everything else, and I don’t think looking after these kids is something anyone foresaw.

Good luck, kidlets. These monsters aren’t going to eat you, and I hope you realize that sooner than later.

Now, about that girl you killed.

A long time ago, in 2013, I binge-read the manga. It was a nauseating one or two days of doing nothing but staring at my computer, trying to cram in as much content as I could before the internet could further spoil me for the Attack on Titan anime, which was airing its first season. Emotional investment came second to knowing what was going on, and I could barely pick Reiner and Bertolt out of a crowd when they revealed themselves. I sort of knew I was supposed to know who they were, and they’d been at Utgard.



But there were brief moments of cognizance. One of those was when Sasha faces down a titan on her own. I realized, with great horror, that I cared if she died.

Then she didn’t, and I went back to not caring.

Sasha has always been a delight to read. She’s bright, energetic, creative with her skills, and in the beginning, terrified out of her wits. She saves Samuel from falling to death by stabbing him through the leg with her gear, but she spends most of Trost scared, or guilty over being scared.

She goes back to the fight anyway. She keeps moving forward. She goes into a building with a titan in it, no practical weapons on hand, and saves a child. She joins the army after running away from home, but she finds it again, and learns that there’s more to the world than just her needs.

She’s a good hunter. A good friend.

She dies because she doesn’t shoot a child.

Sasha shoots the gate guards. They’re in uniform. They’re enemies. She doesn’t shoot the little girl with them. She lets the little girl go, because she is someone to be protected, not attacked.

She dies for it.

Sasha’s character hasn’t had much of an arc since her escaped brush with death. That’s okay, though. You don’t need an arc to be a person with a presence. Connie and Sasha, joined occasionally by Jean when he isn’t out having larger moments, are the everyday people you see in the background, doing their best even when they don’t know how. Crying when they think they’ve killed Reiner, even when that’s what they were trying to do.

Sasha is a fixture of the series. For its duration, she’s been breathing. Maybe not driving the plot new places, but she’s always been there. In-universe, she’s a veteran of the Survey Corps, and it’s been four years since her original squad has lost a member.





These people have a place with each other. They carved spots out early and didn’t take them for granted.

Now one of those spaces is empty.

That goes for the audience and the Scouts both.

As deaths go, I find it hard not to appreciate this one, if only because it brings back all the strong ties these people have to each other. Months of Marley has taken its toll on me, and I desperately missed the 104th. Pain is not the preferred way of seeing them love each other, but Mikasa and Armin running the second they hear the news, then bawling over their friend; Jean in too much pain to even look at her properly; Connie’s stunned silence followed by tears just… falling.

Eren finally cracking, when even dead children don’t touch him.



These people love each other so much.

The world is cruel. Someone so loved shouldn’t die because they let a child live. People who feel so much love shouldn’t feel it hardest when they’re shaking with tears.

But it’s still beautiful. Because Sasha was the one who shot those guards, and not someone like Floch, Gabi is still alive. Sasha never lost herself. Sasha is the brave, scared girl who joins the Survey Corps and saves children.

That’s why it’s sad she’s gone, but it means so much that she got to be here at all, at her glorious best, and doesn’t betray that or her friends before she goes.

I don’t know how bad things are on Paradis, but Sasha lives long enough to see them reclaim their walls. There have to be more farms. There has to be more room to hunt. There won’t be so many starving children, just dreaming of a next meal.

Sasha’s done good.

Now back to the ugly side of the world.

Floch using the words, “new Eldian empire,” in a sentence, in that order, is terrifying, and this is why Jean, Sasha, and Connie sit alone on the airship. Things are bad, guys. You all just made the entire world an active enemy as opposed to a passive one. Escaping with six deaths is sheer luck, and this is only the beginning.

Because Yeager Bros.

Oy vey.

Did anyone else find Yelena’s (btw, hiiiiiiii there) reveal really awkward? I realized why the second time through; the manga’s written as if Zeke being alive and working with the Scouts is a reveal of some sort, and my brain finds the very concept confusing.

Zeke having people who follow him more loyally than their Marleyan overseers is fascinating, and fits, what with his Boy Wonder status. He is royalty, after all, and if Eren can start a cult based on his abilities, big brother can top him.

That missing ship must be a heck of a story; maybe that’s the flashback we’re getting next month instead of linear progression.

Anyway. Superpowers. And the idiots who have them.

It looks like the assessment that Eren went off on his own and the Scouts covered for him is brutally accurate. Levi’s pissed, Hange’s pissed, Jean’s trying very hard not to be pissed, Armin might not be pissed exactly but he knows how bad this is, and Mikasa is heartbroken because she knows it too.

Then there’s the boys Yeager. Jaeger. Jäger.

Who have decided to solve the world’s problems by nominating themselves for godhood. Yes, everyone hates us and fears us and it’s very awkward. Let us mayhaps make use of the biggest reason they fear us so we can meet any threat with overpowering might they can’t answer.

You boys better hope all that power you’ve amassed is worth as much as you think.

Speaking of love… I am not the greatest at remembering every single panel of interactions characters have if their names don’t start with H (and even that isn’t a hard rule), but Armin reaching out his hand to Eren is something that has happened more than a few times. The most memorable would probably go to that time Eren’s arm gets bitten off when he tries to reach back, but the gesture this chapter opens with reminds me most strongly of chapter 67.

For anyone still reading this who has little interest in looking up screencaps and is wondering why I’m not being useful and copying them here, 67 covers the aftermath of the Reiss cavern’s destruction. You know, that whole thing where Eren wants to die, but then his best friends show up, and he decides to trust in his own ability, and somehow they all make it out alive.

Eren and Mikasa are climbing out of the hole, and Armin, bright smile on his face, reaches down to gives Eren a hand.

Not so much with the smiles these days, huh kids?

Anyway, here, I changed my mind about being useful.





…Props on the art improvement, dude.

That was in the aftermath of Eren’s worst moment to date. He got to come out of the hole with his best friend smiling, eager to help in any way he could.

Armin isn’t nearly so chipper about pulling Eren from this hole.

Eren living up to his original name and going rogue obviously isn’t something that anyone is thrilled about. I don’t think going over it now is going to be all that enlightening, since it’s mostly a bunch of people going “wtf Eren.” However things are currently, they’ve built to this point over four years, and I want to see some more of that.

That said, let’s not go away just yet. It’s funny, and something I know everyone loves me bringing up all the time always, but hey, remember Serum Bowl?

I think that event is going to count as a turning point for the Shiganshina Trio. They were all pushed to their extremes, and what they found there was something to absorb and ponder.



Mikasa’s learned that she can’t be the person threatening her superior with a sword, even if she wants to be. Armin’s learned a little more about the implications of his friends loving him so much, and that isn’t a worldview he’s eager to follow.

Meanwhile, in Eren’s case, sticking to the realm of dramatic assertions that might turn out to be bunk, I think what he learned from that experience was that there’s no way in hell he’s giving up his friends for anything, and continuing to speculate wildly about his dreary emotional state, I am guessing that that’s part of how he ends up in Marley with only his brother for company.

Once you’ve decided that you’re willing to sacrifice yourself, and absolutely, never any of your loved ones, it makes life pretty simple. It is now your job to take on all the risky, suicidal plans. If you do them, no one else has to. Simple.

Except that’s not how a team works, kid. That is why your captain is kicking you in the face.

“Choose… believe in yourself… or believe in me and them… the Survey Corps.”

–Levi, 25

“You put your trust in us… and we’ve lost our trust in you.”

–Hange, 105

In the woods, with Levi’s first squad, Eren is told to make a choice. He chooses to trust his comrades. The first time, the threat is neutralized. The second time, Annie slaughters them.

Levi tells Eren, and repeats it, that he never knows what the right choice is. Do you trust your own ability, or do you trust your team? Go with whatever helps you sleep at night.

What Eren appears to have done with his plan here is… well, in standard shounen protagonist flair, he’s taken a third option. He trusts in his own plan, and his own abilities to see that plan through, but relies completely on his team to save him from the backlash of a strategy they don’t approve of.

He trusts them to save him from the mess he creates. That’s why he’s willing to go through with it. They’ll cover for him.

Having faith in your squad is almost always presented as a good thing. Yay camaraderie. Yay friendship. Yay respecting your friends’ abilities.

The thing is, Eren’s faith in the Survey Corps leads to him taking advantage of them. Levi and Hange, also known as those people who are in charge, are actively not happy with the consequences of this strategy. This isn’t something they signed off on.

Eren knew, though, if he went ahead with it, they would back him up. They would have to.

You don’t do that to your allies. You don’t take stock of your value, then throw yourself to the wolves so that your friends will participate in a battle they don’t want. Forget whether or not the intelligence of the strategy warrants it; you don’t do that to people you recognize as equals.

Eren’s plan puts trust in his allies’ abilities while aggressively disrespecting their judgment, and that is why Levi kicks him in the fucking face.

(On a related note, see how Zeke is still breathing even though Levi has no interest in Zeke continuing to breathe? That is called being a team player. Also, Zeke, as much as I appreciate the defection from Marley, sir, you are an asshole.

Yelena… have I mentioned hi? Because hi. Please be as fun as your taste in disguises suggests. You’ve probably been the one paving the road that got Eren to Zeke to start with, right? Please be fun. You have nice eyes. )

The sad thing about this chapter is that I now want Eren to be okay. He is very clearly not, and I’m not a huge fan of protagonists who just start drowning themselves in the sludge at the end of the slippery slope of their poor coping skills. Whatever he thinks he’s doing, he’s being negligent about limiting the very foreseeable damage of his choices. He is not taking care of himself, and based on how his friends are acting, he’s not taking care of his relationships with them, either.





Eren, find some damn help. These two panels should not be in the same hemisphere.

Hell, even the guy who just kicked you thinks that. The kid he first met who was frothing at the mouth for revenge and justice and freedom has been broken down into a dead man. When Eren first learns of his powers, he’s put on a pedestal as humanity’s hope.

He doesn’t have any left.

As bad as things are with Eren and everyone else, there are some places you don’t want to see your comrades falling. Even when they’re being stupid and disobedient. For Levi, Eren hits that point here.

Nice.

Not to, you know, label this whole mission a disaster without getting a full chapter of infodump explaining in minute detail the choices involved, but I can’t help but feel that there were simpler routes to faking Zeke’s death and kidnapping him.



Heck, why even bother with the fake death if his shiny powers are so uber haxors that you think it’s a fair trade for making the whole rest of the world want your blood? Walk in and grab the guy. Maybe kill less children in the process, who knows.

Any bets on what we get next month? Marley, Paradis, the appalled rest of the world, or (drum roll please) ~*flashbacks*~?

In a surprising twist, I would actually be okay with any of those.

