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Zenzirouj posted:I don't think they're made of anything unique Straight from the manga--"Then again, ultra-hardened steel required the addition, in small quantities, of several rare metals, although what materials and in what proportions remains top secret, industrial town-only information." If that doesn't scream 'some secret Titan bullshit' to you we may not be reading the same story.
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May 14, 2013 06:05
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Zenzirouj posted:They seem really thin, brittle, and shatter easily. They're pretty much big boxcutters, down to having those hatch lines that they seem to break along. I'm fairly sure they are made like this to ensure that the blade will snap rather than just jamming in bone, thus helping to preserve the user's momentum on a bad cut. Otherwise, they'd be left a sitting duck or without a blade at all.
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May 14, 2013 06:36
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Mio Bison posted:Straight from the manga--"Then again, ultra-hardened steel required the addition, in small quantities, of several rare metals, although what materials and in what proportions remains top secret, industrial town-only information." If that doesn't scream 'some secret Titan bullshit' to you we may not be reading the same story. So basically, you're implying titan crystal could be in the mix somewhere? Titan walls, titan blades, complicit church, and intelligent titans. So...titan royalty maybe?
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May 14, 2013 06:42
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chami posted:I'm pretty sure regular bladed weapons can cut them like with the lumber axe here, but in that situation it was healing faster than she could cut with a single axe. That's why all the soldiers dual wield. Not because it's cool, but because they don't just have to cut the titan's neck, they have to cut a chunk out. She probably could have killed that titan with two axes and a lot of precision. Mio Bison posted:Straight from the manga--"Then again, ultra-hardened steel required the addition, in small quantities, of several rare metals, although what materials and in what proportions remains top secret, industrial town-only information." If that doesn't scream 'some secret Titan bullshit' to you we may not be reading the same story.
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May 14, 2013 06:47
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Mio Bison posted:Straight from the manga--"Then again, ultra-hardened steel required the addition, in small quantities, of several rare metals, although what materials and in what proportions remains top secret, industrial town-only information." If that doesn't scream 'some secret Titan bullshit' to you we may not be reading the same story. Plus, on top of that you have the increased complexity of a plot that involves adding a mysterious component to the mass-produced blades that everybody knows about, meaning a hugely important secret (wall titans/tame titans being harvested for materials) is being further spread out to an unknown degree. Any number of people from the tippy-top of the forging process down to the peasant shoveling titan dust into the vats could up and start tracking this mysterious unidentified powder to its source. No normal person is going to keep quiet about something like that. Of course, all this isn't to say that I'm arguing against the theory. Such a plot would be entirely at home in this comic and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out that all blades are manufactured by shell companies owned by high-ranking members of the Wall Church.
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May 14, 2013 07:26
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Eiba posted:Yeah really, once we found out the walls themselves were made of rare super hard titan gunk, I was pretty sure the secret ingredient in ultra-hardened steel was like powdered titan gunk or whatever. It's pretty much a given at this point.
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May 14, 2013 08:44
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Zenzirouj posted:
I suspect that it's just normal metal too. The small addition of certain trace elements is a perfectly normal part of alloy production, and the blades don't seem to be anything special anyway. They break, are dulled quickly, and regular metal tools can cut titans as well. The 3D gear on the other hand... clearly made of Titans.
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May 14, 2013 08:56
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Serious Frolicking posted:The point of that scene wasn't to show how badass Eren and Mikasa were. It demonstrated the fundamental nature of Eren and Mikasa's relationship. Eren went and did insane, suicidal poo poo and Mikasa became emotionally dependent on him while saving his rear end. That dynamic has held true for their relationship for the entire manga. I'm aware of all that. The problem is that independent of that stuff the scene is silly as heck and a pretty clunky way of expressing those character beats. I'm not sure how much the blades being Titan-tech would add to the story at this point. The walls already demonstrate how deeply ingrained in their society the Titans are.
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May 14, 2013 09:23
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Having the blades be based on titans would be no more meaningful than the 3d gear using titan vapor as its propellant gas. What difference could it make?
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May 14, 2013 09:33
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Re-reading the manga with the benefit of hindsight is pretty drat interesting. Scenes like Annie being upset that everyone else is joining the Scouting Legion (Because it means she'll have to fight them) and Reyner/Bertholdt's utter shock at the reports of a breach in Wall Rose (Since it wasn't their doing) show everything in a new light. It makes me wonder how far ahead the author has planned everything out.
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May 14, 2013 14:01
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I really don't think that the Legion swords are made from Titan material. Hanji looked at wall material and Annie-crystal and said "these are the same thing". She notably didn't say "these are the same thing, and so are our swords". It could be an oversight on her part, but to me it means that the swords' construction is the author saying "yeah, these are necessary and not just to be cool, shut up". The exact metallurgy just isn't meaningful. It's like how the 3dmg is almost weightless. It couldn't be in reality, but that's just part of equipping the protagonists so they're able to do what he wants them to do.JosephWongKS posted:At this point in the story, is there anyone you think has plot immunity? I'm pretty sure that Mikasa, Armin, Rivaille, and Annie at the least are guaranteed a noble and delayed death. I'd expect all of them to live, though. Mikasa and Armin are also protagonists with the protection that confers. Rivaille is popular with the fans, and you don't gently caress your revenue stream if you aren't especially ballsy. Annie is the harder one to justify, but even after her reveal she wasn't given a purely negative outlook, she's got a few more secrets unique to her that need to be spilled, she's basically waiting to be a deus ex machina of some sort with the crystal, and she was described as "kind" by Armin. I really expect her to come back and get a good ending. Flipside: who's your favorite character to die so far? For me, it was Mike, the guy who could smell Titans and was the first to hear Mister Hairy speak.
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May 14, 2013 17:38
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 Speaking of re-reading, does that chunk cut out of the Titan in the lower right panel look like the upper half of a person to anybody else or am I just seeing things? 
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May 14, 2013 18:04
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It does look like something was cut out along with the neck flesh.
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May 14, 2013 18:21
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You'd think in the 100 or so years these things have been around there'd be a giant jar collection of various titan parts, or some kind of biopsy done. "The only weakness we know that stops them is damaging the nape of the neck" isn't a very scientific answer, perhaps just even a notable mention of the first scout to have slain a titan. On another note: Pixis looks too weird to be human.
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May 14, 2013 19:10
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Titans decay very rapidly after dying and nobody ever found a way to preserve them, if I recall correctly.
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May 14, 2013 19:12
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What about operating while they are still alive? You'd think more than just those two murdered titans have been captured before, the small 3m class Titans don't seem very hard to catch if you have a few people.
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May 14, 2013 19:22
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I don't think the problem is catching titans. Annie proved that. The problem is moving them somewhere you can take the time to study them. Most titans who where captured in the past (if any) likely had to be left out in the wild after a limited time, and studying them under pressure at that. The stuff they used to restrict those two titans didn't seem to be too mobile. Pensive fucked around with this message at 19:47 on May 14, 2013 |
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May 14, 2013 19:36
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There would also be the public outcry of having a Titan inside the walls which would cause undo panic and unrest if someone were to find out. The irony of the situation is not lost on me.
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May 14, 2013 20:30
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ZeeToo posted:Annie is the harder one to justify, but even after her reveal she wasn't given a purely negative outlook, she's got a few more secrets unique to her that need to be spilled, she's basically waiting to be a deus ex machina of some sort with the crystal, and she was described as "kind" by Armin. I really expect her to come back and get a good ending. I dunno, she would need a pretty serious redemption to make up for all the people she casually killed in horrific ways. Some of the stuff she did to the scouting legion was super hosed up, like when she grabbed that guy's 3d gear grapple and spun him until he was ripped to shreds. She could have easily swatted them away, tossed them, quickly crushed them, or just kept running, but she chose to kill them painfully. It was one of those things that really illustrates how little regard the human-titans have for the lives of pure humans, like a kid killing bugs.
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May 15, 2013 00:22
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Zenzirouj posted:I dunno, she would need a pretty serious redemption to make up for all the people she casually killed in horrific ways. Some of the stuff she did to the scouting legion was super hosed up, like when she grabbed that guy's 3d gear grapple and spun him until he was ripped to shreds. She could have easily swatted them away, tossed them, quickly crushed them, or just kept running, but she chose to kill them painfully. It was one of those things that really illustrates how little regard the human-titans have for the lives of pure humans, like a kid killing bugs. I don't know about that - look at how poleaxed Annie looks when she crashes through the church and sees the splattered remains of the worshipers under her fingers. She also doesn't kill any of her pursuers when she's running away, instead opting to destroy buildings and force them to retreat due to the rubble flying everywhere. Annie also spared Armin during the scouting mission despite knowing that he was the smartest of the bunch and that he was most likely to figure out that she was the female titan. I get the impression that her first attack ending in failure broke Annie's nerve. Before transforming in the capital she laments that she's failed as a warrior, and combined with her titan-form crying after failing to capture Eren it seems to me that killing so many people for ultimately no gain at all really got to her.
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May 15, 2013 13:01
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Scintilla posted:I don't know about that - look at how poleaxed Annie looks when she crashes through the church and sees the splattered remains of the worshipers under her fingers. She also doesn't kill any of her pursuers when she's running away, instead opting to destroy buildings and force them to retreat due to the rubble flying everywhere. Annie also spared Armin during the scouting mission despite knowing that he was the smartest of the bunch and that he was most likely to figure out that she was the female titan. Eh, remember that she got to the center of the scout legion formation because she wiped out the entire side of it 1st and no one was able to report her in time because they were all killed. She rampaged through the entire group and didn't hesitate to kill anyone except Armin. She might have looked upset about killing church people because there's a potential plot point there. Maybe if she had accidentally killed a priest it would be a big deal to her or her group? Anyway, I don't see any good end for Annie nor any reason for redemption just because she let one person go.
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May 15, 2013 13:37
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Shifting into a Titan also seems to affect your mentality. Eren has always been aggressive but he really loses his poo poo when he transforms. It must be something else to feel that powerful, probably like being on super potent cocaine. The others probably go through something similar. It wouldn't justify the sadism Annie displayed but it could explain such nasty acts. I don't see much chance of redemption for her though (maybe "Poor kids being manipulated by a higher power") but I (and probably most others) expect the titan groups motivations and actions to be more complex than just "Kill all humans."
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May 15, 2013 13:52
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Oh, I agree - this manga has been pretty good at avoiding a lot of tiresome shonen tropes, so I don't see any easy forgiveness for Annie here. On the other hand I don't see her as some sort of heartless monster either. A lot hinges on her motivations, particularly since Eren himself ponders what cause could drive her to such violence during his fight with her.
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May 15, 2013 14:09
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There was an interesting speculation in the Anime thread. What if the priesthood's secret is that the Titans--or whoever controls them--have already won? The walls keep humanity in as a farm/zoo/reality TV show/whatever, but it would be trivially easy for the Titans to break the walls and kill everything. Two kids could do it. The elites are basically the head prisoners, and try to maintain the status quo. The discovery that Eren's dad is secretly experimenting with Titan/Human transformation breaks the agreement and the Titan group destroys the first wall in retaliation. This would explain some of the Titan motivations, but there's not much evidence except that it provides for another future, even more hope-crushing, reveal.
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May 16, 2013 05:42
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Cthulhuchan posted:I'm fairly sure they are made like this to ensure that the blade will snap rather than just jamming in bone, thus helping to preserve the user's momentum on a bad cut. Otherwise, they'd be left a sitting duck or without a blade at all. I always felt that the blades were supposed to be based on the katana--not the anime katana, the real-life one. That is: ridiculously sharp, but prone to shattering at the worst possible times, and easily dulled from repeated use, so you need to carry at least two to be on the safe side. Also because the blurb about the blades mentions how they're folded onto themselves, which is also the process used for making katanas. I just figured it was "writing what you know". j4on posted:There was an interesting speculation in the Anime thread. What if the priesthood's secret is that the Titans--or whoever controls them--have already won? The walls keep humanity in as a farm/zoo/reality TV show/whatever, but it would be trivially easy for the Titans to break the walls and kill everything. Two kids could do it. The elites are basically the head prisoners, and try to maintain the status quo. The discovery that Eren's dad is secretly experimenting with Titan/Human transformation breaks the agreement and the Titan group destroys the first wall in retaliation. The King delegates everything about the walls to the church, the church knows all of the secrets, and yet they treat the walls as divine guardians of humanity. Clearly they don't see themselves as prisoners in a cage. The theory I'm most intrigued by is the idea that the walls may indeed be a prison--for a Titan, maybe THE Titan--the original monster. That would explain why the best Titan-busters are assigned to the inner walls, why Pastor Nick would think the secret was more important than the extinction of humanity, why knowledge of the outside is forbidden, why the walls are made of Titans...clearly the intelligent ones are divided into factions (as we've seen with Ymir/Bert and Ernie/Monkey Trouble), and perhaps one faction cut a deal to preserve humanity if they imprisoned their enemy. The humans within the walls are jailors, not prisoners.
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May 16, 2013 09:19
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What I want to know is why the sasquatch titan decided to recon the kingdom when he did. There was peace for a long time within the kingdom before Reiner's crew first attacked. And it looks like the sasquatch titan is from a different faction than Reiner Annie and Berthold since the sasquatch didnt have prior knowledge about the 3d maneuver gear. So why the sudden interest from the sasquatch titan, who came out of nowhere, after 100 years of peace? What is his motive? And why didnt he care about the kingdom prior to all the poo poo going down with Reiner's crew.
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May 16, 2013 14:21
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Simstim posted:What I want to know is why the sasquatch titan decided to recon the kingdom when he did. There was peace for a long time within the kingdom before Reiner's crew first attacked. And it looks like the sasquatch titan is from a different faction than Reiner Annie and Berthold since the sasquatch didnt have prior knowledge about the 3d maneuver gear. What if sasquatch titan IS the ultimate titan, but nobody realizes it yet?
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May 16, 2013 20:52
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He is the Primal Titan
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May 17, 2013 22:09
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Vengarr posted:I always felt that the blades were supposed to be based on the katana--not the anime katana, the real-life one. That is: ridiculously sharp, but prone to shattering at the worst possible times, and easily dulled from repeated use, so you need to carry at least two to be on the safe side. You've got a point about fragility and spare blades, but the reason everyone dual-wields is because it takes two simultaneous cuts to pop off the nape of a titan's neck.
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May 17, 2013 22:44
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Dr_Amazing posted:Reiner is drawn like a giant and I'm taller than he is.  I had to resist the urge to post "Reiner is a tank and Bertholdt is a giant compared to everyone else" because that would probably be probation-worthy, but I guess this is subtle enough to pass.
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May 17, 2013 23:08
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To be honest I expected a taller Reiner
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May 17, 2013 23:10
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Sindai posted:
I am glad I'm not the only one to have that idea, or something like, "Annie's height seems about right, but sometime I think she looks taller".
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May 18, 2013 02:35
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Is the English translation of the latest chapter(s) out yet?
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May 18, 2013 04:17
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It's been out for a while.
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May 18, 2013 05:06
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Sindai posted:
poo poo I didn't even mean to do this. I just meant in the scene where he's helping Armin during the training hike, he's like a foot and a half taller than everyone else and the other guy is narrating how big and strong he is. So it's funny that he's actually of fairly average size.
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May 18, 2013 06:02
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As mentioned in the anime thread, people aren't benefiting from modern medicine and first-world diets so it's a fair bet that in the setting of the world people like Reiner are much taller than average.
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May 18, 2013 06:11
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What countries are you guys from that over six feet is "fairly average size," honest question?
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May 18, 2013 07:03
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Autumncomet posted:What countries are you guys from that over six feet is "fairly average size," honest question?
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May 18, 2013 07:09
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Autumncomet posted:What countries are you guys from that over six feet is "fairly average size," honest question? Depending on where you live in the US, 6+ feet can be fairly average. In every group of friends I've ever had, the five-nine guy was the short man while everyone else had several inches on them.
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May 18, 2013 07:23
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In Canada I'm 6'3 and tower over most of my friends. They range from 5'10 to 6. Not quite sure where your herds of giants come from.
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May 18, 2013 07:49
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