Not to belabor the point, but with a few exceptions, enjoying Attack on Titan really comes down to embracing it in all its glorious absurdity.  There are few series I can recall which so often have me unsure of whether I’m supposed to be laughing or not.  I know it shouldn’t theoretically matter, but somehow it kind of does, and the best answer I can come up with it that sometimes we are supposed to be, and sometimes we’re not.  How’s that for commitment?

A good example of this was when Levi tells Erwin – seemingly without a trace of irony – “Yet again, your strategy for the scouts boils down to another gamble.”  Is the the payoff of a running gag, or a dramatic moment?  I laughed, certainly, and on some level it’s nice to think Isayama is aware of just how dumb that line would be if intended to be taken seriously.  On the other hand, when Eren is shouting at the Reiss Titan and calls him a “tiny old man” in front of Levi, then freaks out when he realizes what he’s just done – surely, that was intended as a comic moment.  I sure hope so, because it worked…

What about Eren punching himself in the face – comedy?  Wish fulfilment?  Intense character drama?  Whatever it was, it was certainly as satisfying as it was preposterous.  As for the grand battle with the Reiss titan, it was staged well enough but I have to say, somehow I was expecting more out of it.  Is there at least an explanation of why Reiss licked the serum off the floor?  Is there nothing more to this than his turning into a pretty standard (if unusually huge) abnormal titan and killing as many people as possible?  I really don’t understand the point if that’s all it was, to be honest.

If anything, it seems as if this was all staged (by Isayama, not the characters) to give Historia a chance to do something heroic in battle and start a legend around herself.  She’s probably right in that most of the unwashed masses will be pretty skeptical of some girl they’ve never heard of becoming queen – at best, they’d consider here a puppet of the military (and not be entirely wrong).  Now the peasants can start talking about how their new queen saved Orvud through her bravery and skill, and those rumors can spread south like wildfire clearing the fields for her legend to be planted.

Lastly, we have Kenny (dammit, I still can’t use the line).  He seems to be on the verge of death when the tiny captain finds him, but Kenny has one more trick up his sleeve, it seems.  It looks as if next week is going to be a Kenny backstory episode, so it’s anybody’s guess how that’s going to turn out.  I confess I’ve grown rather fond of the guy’s hard-boiled snark, though, and anyone who gets under Levi’s skin the way he does can’t be all bad.