Well, we’re three episodes into Season 3 and so far there hasn’t been a titan anywhere to be seen.  That’s not exactly truth in advertising for a show titled Shingeki no Kyoujin, but I’m not so sure it’s not a good thing on balance.  As I’ve noted in the past, the conspiracy episodes tend to be the best ones with this series, and the conspiracy is a human one.  It’s been obvious almost since the beginning that the old Walt Kelly “we have met the enemy, and he is us” adage applied to this series, but kyoujin are its meal ticket.  I just like them better when they’re doled out with some restraint.  More impact that way.

On balance, in fact, I would say this was one of the more restrained episodes of the series so far.  Oh, we had a woman’s throat slit in front of a child but apart from that, it was really mostly people sitting around talking.  What were they talking about?  The conspiracy, of course – though with this show you have to narrow that down a little, because the whole premise is built on a foundation of tangentially related conspiracies.  In this case we’re talking about the Reiss family – the true royals it seems, which makes the current king a usurper.

The whole business about titans who eat humans not turning back into humans except if they eat humans who can turn into titans in which case they can turn back into humans but they also gain the power of those they eat – that has a whiff of silliness to it, to be sure.  But it does mean Eren is the main course, I suppose (and without a side of Reiss), which makes the Team Levi rescue mission all the more urgent.  That’s a problem, because the pretender government is moving on the Survey Corps like King Philip IV on the Knights Templar.

One thing I know – when Erwin (WHY WON’T YOU DIE???) says he has a plan, FUBAR is going to break out all over and lots of people are going to die.  He does manage to sign the old drunk Pyxis up for this one – the idea being to overthrow the government of the phony king and install Historia Reiss as the new queen.  As it turns out this is all part of a personal vendetta for Erwin, for it was the writers of the false history that killed his father (thanks to Erwin’s loose lips) for getting too close to the truth.  Honestly, the line for grievances forms behind…  Well, pretty much everybody in the main cast.

In pure plot terms, all this is quite effective.  Erwin arrested, the remnants of the Survey Corps turned into a ragtag guerrilla outlaw band trying to avoid capture and rescue Eren and Historia at the same time.  This has the makings of an interesting turn of events, and one that might conceivably even move the story forward a bit – though with Shingeki no Kyoujin, that’s one chicken I’m most certainly not going to count before it hatches.