Differences between the Anime and the Manga - Episode 37

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The episode was written by Yasuko Kobayashi (Ep1, Ep2, Ep4, Ep9, Ep14, Ep16, Ep20, Ep24, Ep26, Ep27, Ep30, Ep33, Ep34). There were 4 directors for this episode: Tetsurō Araki (Ep1, Ep25), Yoshihide Ibata (Ep27, Ep34), Takayuki Hirao (Ep32) and Satonobu Kikuchi (Ep8).

The episode covered ch50 and it overwrote ch51 from page 1-45.

Even in my nightmares, I never thought they’d change things so much. As someone who has read the entire manga more than 10 times, and who is a hardcore manga fan who just wants a faithful adaptation, this was by far the worst episode of this season for me.

I think that you’ll only find salt in the “thoughts” section, they’ll be under the green line, and I’m not forcing anyone to read it.

Changed:

They only kept the last part of this flashback.



Thoughts:

This entire scene was shown in the first episode of s2 for some reason, so it’s not removed. I still think it was much better to show it now. They only showed the part they thought was important, while disregarding the rest.

Changed:

Erwin falling from his horse, after Ymir saved him.

Thoughts:

In the manga, he stayed on his horse, and later on we can see him on the ground, looking exhausted. We don’t know what happened prior to that, but he didn’t fell because of Ymir.

Added:

Historia: Ymir! Connie, that way!

Connie: I know!

Changed:

Eren and Mikasa all alone.

Thoughts:

This doesn’t make sense whatsoever. Why would they show them alone on the battlefield like this when they’re not?

Changed:

Eren yells Hannes’s name, instead of Mikasa

Thoughts:

In the manga Mikasa yells his name first, than a moment later, Eren yells it too. In the anime Eren yells his name both times, cause Mikasa was only allowed to mention Eren’s name in this episode.

Deleted:

Changed:

Instead of this line:

We got–

Historia: Why was it you were trying to take me away?

Thoughts:

Of course, they ruined Connie’s moment in the last episode where he deducted what Ymir’s doing, so they had to replace this line here.

Added:

Historia fan-service.

Thoughts:

Only girls in SnK fly with those poses, and the camera zooms in on their but, or on their boobs.

Added:

Mikasa: Eren! Wait! We’re trying to get you out of here!

Eren: It’s time to settle the score! Just watch!

*bites hand*

Eren: Huh?!

Added:

Armin saving Jean.

Armin: Jean, are you okay?! Hold it together!

Thoughts:

We knew that he saved him in the manga, just didn’t see how the scene began.

Added:

*Eren keeps biting his hand*

Eren: Shit! Shit! What’s wrong?!

*Moe-waifu reaching out for him*

Eren: Right now…I’ve gotta become a Titan…or it’s all for nothing!

Thoughts:

I don’t know who that waifu is, but I thought Mikasa was supposed to be in this scene. Too bad she’s left out.

Added:

Hannes-san’s fight with the Smiling titan.

Thoughts:

I’m glad they added more of his fight.

Changed:

Mikasa was looking into Hannes-san for two panels in the manga while Eren had his breakdown, than one panel of looking into Eren, and than two panels of noticing what’s happening with Armin. In the anime, she was looking into Eren the entire time.

Mikasa: Eren…

Thoughts:

She wasn’t allowed to look into anyone except Eren in this episode.

Changed:

The eye contact

Thoughts:

They removed the scene when Eren and Armin have eye contact in the previous episode, and now they glazed over this eye contact so fast, you can barely notice it.

Ships aside, this scene is very important from the story’s perspective, because of what Eren said about Armin’s eyes in ch73 and how his entire life changed after that.



In the manga, the scene is drown from their own view-point. The upper panel is what Eren is seeing, and the lower panel is what Armin is seeing. Eren didn’t even focus on Jean, only on Armin. And Armin didn’t even focus on the smiling titan or Mikasa, only on Eren.

It’s a powerful moment that the anime glazed over like it’s nothing.

I’ll quote @raevell‘s post about this, cause he/she explains it very well :

source) You don’t actually realize that this panel set is important when you first see it. There were a lot of jokes about how ‘ahaha there goes Eren focusing on Armin again while Mikasa is trying to confess’ but at the time there really wasn’t any obvious significance to it. It shows that Eren is aware that Armin is in danger, and Armin is aware that Eren is in danger, and that’s about all. Then we get chapter 73 and suddenly you realize these panels actually have a purpose as Eren talks about Armin’s eyes inspiring him and causing him to dream and that whenever he thinks about that dream he feels strength welling up inside of him… So, at this point, you’d think the anime writers would have some idea of why those panels were there. They did at least include Armin looking at Eren, but it’s obvious they didn’t want to imply anything by it. They don’t want you thinking that Armin might have at least contributed to motivating Eren to fight, over Mikasa’s words. We don’t really realize that Eren is looking specifically into his eyes. They made the moment so brief it might as well not be there. Obviously, they didn’t care about whatever foreshadowing there was to it. So, even if we get the whole speak about Armin’s eyes in season 3 without them cutting it short and messing it up, no one is going to look back and go ‘oh, so that’s why that scene was there’ like they did in the manga.

Deleted:

Eren glaring into Armin again.

Thoughts:

Eren kept looking into Mikasa in the anime. In the manga there are 4-5 panels of Eren looking into Armin, and 6-7 panels of him looking into Mikasa, but the anime decided that 99% of Eren’s attention goes to Mikasa.

Added:

Flowers during the scene with Mikasa.

Thoughts:

I assume there’s some hidden romantic meaning behind those flowers…

Changed:

Eren’s expressions.

Thoughts:

He was shown grinding his teeth in the manga which can be easily interpreted in an anti-Eremika way, because you don’t grind your teeth when someone tries to kiss you.



In the manga he turned around very fast, which is why there’s a “Zakk” sound effect, but in the anime he just slowly stands up.

In the manga, Eren looked angry, and while anime likes to exaggerate Eren’s anger, in this situation they made him look more tender to Mikasa…

In other words, the anime team changed the scene to fit with their headcanon.



Deleted:

The shine on smiling titan’s hand when Eren hit it.

Thoughts:

It shined in the manga when Eren made a contact with the smiling titan’s hand. How did they miss that?!

Added:

Armin giving a horse to Eren and Mikasa.

Eren: What? The Titans?

Armin: Eren! Get on!

Eren: Armin!

Armin: Hurry!

Thoughts:

They kept him out of the screen during the canon scene, so they added a filler where he gives Eren and Mikasa a horse. At least they made him tear up because they’re safe. But this doesn’t bring my salt level down that much.

Changed:

Eren and Armin’s eye contacts upon returning.

Thoughts:

In the anime, Eren is angrily starring in the sky or something. In the manga there are two panels of Eren and Armin making eye contacts when they’re on horses. But eye contacts between Eren and Armin are obviously not important. It’s not like Eren found freedom in Armin’s shiny, dreamy eyes, and started dreaming afterwards…Oh, wait.

Seriously how are they even gonna animate that scene, they can’t even show an eye contact between them.

Added:

Historia: Ymir! Where are you going?!

Connie: Leave her!

Historia: But Ymir is–

Deleted:

Deleted & Changed:

The wall scene (pages 1-25 of ch51). About 5% of what they said on the wall shows up later in a filler scene.

Thoughts:

Jesus Christ…there are very important moments here for character development of EMA, Jean, Connie, Historia…

Examples:

- How badly Mikasa was injured.

- Eren apologizing to Mikasa.

- Eren freaking out because of Erwin’s condition.

- Eren seeing the condition of other soldiers and his friends.

- Jean saying to Eren without hesitation how the situation really is.

- Connie saying to Eren that they’d all be dead if they had to fight.

- There was a LOT for Jean’s character development, even Connie and Armin mentioning how he changed.

- Eren thanking Jean!

- Historia freaking out over Ymir, and talking about how she got her name from a book.

And much more.

Added:

EMA + Jean scene instead of the wall scene.

*Mikasa holding her scarf*

Thoughts:

What about her broken ribs, wasn’t she badly injured after the fight? There was no reason to include her in this scene, as she wasn’t there when Eren, Armin, Jean and Connie were talking about this on the wall.

She didn’t even say anything, she was just there sitting in a rose shirt, waifu-ing her scarf. It’s unbelievable what they’re doing to her.



Added:

Armin: About that, Jean and I sat down to try and figure it out. We have an idea what made the Titans act that way. It was you.

Jean: Of course, that’s just our theory. But without assuming that, there’s just no explaining what happened.

Thoughts:

In the manga, Armin deducted that for himself, and Jean was surprised to hear that cause he was UNCONSCIOUS and didn’t even see what the hell happened there. But putting a Jean x Armin filler is one of the ways to separate Armin from Eren and Mikasa.

Added:

Jean: If you’re worth the price they paid, you better show it. We don’t have time to waste.

Deleted & Changed:

The scene with Pixis, Erwin, Levi, Hange and Connie (pages 28-45). Around 15% of those scenes are kept, and the vast majority is missing.

Thoughts:

Another huge scene skipped, even though it shows some character development for Connie, Hange, Levi, Erwin and Pixis.

Examples:

- Levi apologizing to Erwin.

- Erwin talking about paying back the debt in hell.

- Pixis saying he’ll come visit him when they both make it there.

- Levi praising Connie (my favorite).

- Hange explaining the situation with the Ragako village.

- Connie talking in tears about how Reiner and Ymir tricked him.

- Hange showing a lot of compassion towards Connie, ordering the soldiers to remove the stakes from the titan (his Mom), and being very sad for Connie in general (my favourite all-time Hange moment).

And much more.

Added:

Erwin: It’s just…with this, we’ve taken one more step towards the truth.

Levi: Just one step, huh? We’ll run out of people before we learn the truth. It’s not worth the cost.

Erwin: But it’s a step towards the truth. One day, we’ll break it down. This wall hiding the truth…will fall.

Added:

Zeke: Not yet, eh?

Overall thoughts:



I didn’t mention the exaggerate Mikasa’s moe-waifu expressions, cause that’s something we’ve probably all been expecting to see. I mentioned her lipstick and changes in expressions many times so far, that I’m tired of mentioning it again.

Season 1 flattened Mikasa’s character a lot, and I assumed they’ll work on fixing that in this season. For s1, they didn’t know that much about the characters, cause the preparation for s1 took place not long after the FT arc was finished in the manga.

But now we have 94ch to clearly see the character development for EMA. Even so, anime flattened her character even more in s2 to the point where it’s pretty much impossible to fix her.

They skipped more than half a chapter, and instead included a bunch of small fillers which weren’t needed.

I can praise the SnK anime for the fascinating soundtrack, incredible voice actors, gorgeous animation, epic battle scenes, etc. But when it comes to characterization, it’s hard to be worse than this.

I think the main problem of the SnK anime is that the staff (Araki) simply don’t understand Isayama’s way of telling the story, and developing his characters. The scenes in the manga aren’t straightforward, they can be interpreted in many ways. Isayama puts small clues and hints and sometimes it takes years before a certain panel finally makes sense, but the anime staff sees every scene superficially and instead of showing the scene exactly like in the manga, they show it how they themselves understood that scene.

The scene from ch50 can be interpreted in several ways, but the anime clearly want the fans to see it in only one way. If Isayama wanted the fans to see it like the anime showed it…he would have drawn it that way. It’s that simple.

For the end, I’ll just quote my friend @peachymess: