How would you rate episode 29 of

Attack on Titan (TV 2/2017) ?

There's a moment that comes near the end of this episode, where all Gelgar wants to do is have a sip of booze. He's injured, bleeding badly from a wound to the head, and the rest of his squad is being slaughtered by the mob of Titans storming the castle. The eternally pompadoured Scout finds a bottle, pops the cork, raises it just above his parched lips, and tastes nothing but air.

“How cruel,” he says, just before being taken by the Titans and torn to pieces.

I would be inclined to agree myself, because this episode was dark. Gelgar's final moments can be pitch black comedy, but whatever levity it served was only there to highlight just how doomed Connie and Reiner's team really are. Surrounded by a seemingly endless horde of Titans, our heroes spend this episode constantly escaping death by the skin of their teeth, until they're huddled together on the quickly crumbling roof of the castle tower, with no possibility of escape in sight.

This isn't just the peak of this second season's commitment to doubling down on the horror, it's easily one the direst moments in the entire Attack on Titan franchise series thus far. If the first season was about the rush of adrenaline that accompanies the beginning of a war, this season is about the despair that sets in when it becomes clear that the war isn't ending any time soon. As this episode wound down to a close, it was easy to empathize with the suffocating sense of defeat that has been smothering our protagonists from the beginning of the season. As they prepare to meet their fate in the ruins of a strange and bygone world, Connie, Reiner, Bertholdt, and Christa realize that there isn't any hope for them.

And then Ymir grabs a knife.

I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but the final reveal of this episode was such a perfectly paced masterstroke that I almost forgot how strong the rest of this episode was without it. Eschewing Eren's storyline completely, this week spends all its time telling a single story, following Connie, Reiner, and the others as they desperately defend the ruined castle they've found themselves trapped in. It's presented in such a tense and claustrophobic manner that the battle almost feels like it's playing out in real time ,as we watch each of the soldiers fall, violently and cruelly, to the Titan horde. I talked a lot last week about how the series is metamorphosing into something much more like Gothic horror than it was before, and this episode takes that idea and runs with it.

I feel like the first season would have presented a story like this as a wartime analogue, the desperate defense of an emboldened few against impossible odds. There would be just as much death and destruction, but it would be in the context of battling for the greater good. This isn't a valiant story set to go down in the history books, though. These soldiers aren't defending the walls of a city or rescuing scores of innocent civilians. As the Scouts get picked off one by one, and the new recruits struggle to take down just one solitary Titan in the bowels of the castle, it's abundantly clear that the humans have never been the Titans' enemy. They're just the Titans prey. This is a dirty and debasing fight for survival, and the humans are losing.

Through it all, we get little morsels of backstory, small teases of developments to come, in keeping with this season's surprisingly measured pace. For such a short 12-episode run, not much progress has been made in any of the storylines the season has introduced so far. Ymir's ability to read the castle's foreign script helps set up the episode's ending twist, and little bits of dialogue exchanged between Reiner and Bertholdt hint at even further reveals to come down the line, but this is by and large an episode about mood and theme, rather than advancing the plot.

That is, until Ymir grabs that knife. I'll admit that I knew a little bit about the secrets Ymir is hiding thanks to some spoilers I encountered a while ago, but I had no idea how they would be revealed or when. The reveal of Ymir's Titan form exceeded all of my expectations, standing as one of the single best scenes the show has ever produced. It was cool when we found out that Eren was a Titan, but his “death” and return always rang a little false to me, because it never made sense that AoT would kill off its lead character five episodes into a 25-episode series. Ymir's twist plays up the drama and suspense of the past few episodes exquisitely, taking all of the recent screentime Ymir and Christa have gotten and reframing it into a context that makes me desperate to know what happens next week.

I've said it once already this season, but the show just keeps topping itself. This is the best episode of Attack on Titan yet. As a 22-minute story, it was told nearly perfectly, as the show's tone, themes, action, and characterization came together in a ridiculously exciting and satisfying manner. If I have any concerns about this season of AoT, it's that it simply won't be able to keep up this level of quality for the rest of the season. Still, whatever the rest of this run has in store, I eagerly await it all. This is top tier entertainment.

Rating: A+

Attack on Titan is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.