Hello everyone and welcome to a special double sized edition of Attack on Titan catchup as we look at episodes 9 and 10 of season 2, Opening and Children. Starting with episode 9, the scouts were off to find Eran who along with Ymir (who turned out not to be dead) are with their kidnappers who have already stripped them of their weaponry. They apologise for the loss of limbs that Ymir and Eran had which was the first of a few peculiar instances which really developed Reiner in particular in an interesting and unexpected way. Reiner started to talk as if nothing had happened and thanked Ymir for saving him. I wasn’t initially sold on the whole “lost in the role” act but they did win me round by the end. If this is indeed to true and not a trick then it makes him very hard to deal and reason with. Could he change sides or be at least duped in to doing so?

It made me smile when Eran declared that he needs to keep his emotions in check. I doubted he could do it and his attempts didn’t last all that long. Soon enough he was screaming about Reiner and Bertolt being murderers and demanding to know answers. They threw the mystery of the “monkey” titan back out there too and the reaction of Reiner and Bertolt intrigued me. Do they actually know that much about him?

On to episode ten and we got a tiny little bit more on the sub-plot involving Connie’s village that is going to go ahead at some point. They found the injured Titan and realised that it looked just like Connie’s mum. It would be one thing if we found out that she had a power similar to Eran but that doesn’t seem to be what they are going for. She has no self-awareness as it is one of the “mindless” ones that she looks like. Also the others don’t look exactly the same facially once they transform. A very interesting plot thread which I hope they follow up with soon.

The group ran from the scouts with little action on their part this episode. We had Eran trying to fight even though he was hurt but at this point in the show you are more surprised if that doesn’t happen in an episode than if it does. The whole Ymir flashbacks were odd and didn’t really do much for me if I am being honest. I did however like her “no more falling for my own lies” line as it tied well to what Reiner was doing in the previous episode. In the end she got Christa after a lot of bickering and back and forth with the boys. The whole thing was rather dragged out and unnecessarily convoluted.

DD Rating: (9) 8.5/10 (10) 5.5/10