Two things I enjoyed about this episode.  First, no Gabi, giving our eyes a blessed week of rest.  And second, it’s finally starting to tie the disparate wings of the story together.  Setting aside the squick factor with the whole Marley-Eldians allegory, the Marley setting isn’t doing it for me as a narrative draft horse.  It has its place as part of the fabric of the story but it can’t effectively carry it, at least for me.  The sooner the chasm between the pre and post-Final Season blocks is closed, the better.

Reiner continues to be the story’s whipping boy in both the literal and figurative sense.  This week we got to see everything from him getting savagely beaten by Annie (a rather grotesque scene that struck me as unintentionally comic) to him putting a rifle in his mouth (which immediately put me in mind of Hannah and her Sisters).  It’s clear now how much of himself he sees in Falco, who seems certain to face a similar narrative fate given the way Isayama treats characters who think more than scream.

The fact is, pretty much every major faction in this story is really unpleasant.  So are a lot of the individuals but there are decent ones scattered among them too – Falco, Reiner, and Armin just to name a few.  The way they’re grist for the mill of the powers that control everyone’s lives is certainly an important part of the story Shingeki no Kyoujin is telling, but the elephant in the room is getting harder to ignore.  Is Isayama going to choose sides in the end or is it just going to be a pox on everyone’s houses?  Certainly I don’t think you can look at any of the axes of power in this world and say they deserve to triumph.

I view that question with a certain amount of trepidation, but curiosity as well.  And that as much as anything is what keeps me vested in Attack on Titan.  Bringing Eren into the story in this fashion (I mean – presumably that can’t be considered a spoiler, because I don’t think it’s meant to be a secret) should progress things some, and it raises a bunch more questions that will need to be answered in upcoming weeks.  Perhaps most obviously, have he and Reiner crossed paths yet and if not, how are they going to react when they do?