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I've been totally crazy about this series for the last couple weeks, devoured the manga and loving the animu. So, here's a theory...thing I have regarding stuff in the latest chapters, mostly coming from discussions with friends. Just throwing it out there. Starting off with the situation in Conny's village. So we come to this village, it's clearly been destroyed by titans, yet there's no blood anywhere and the horses are all tied up in the stables still. A titan that resembles Conny's mother is stranded atop one of the ruined houses. The Wall surrounding the area is found to have no breaks in it, yet Titans are still appearing. We've seen that it is possible for humans to become Titans. So, a reasonable assumption to make is that somehow, ordinary humans are being turned into titans. Next, concerning titan shifters. Reiner and Bert saw a titan that looked just like Ymir's titan form eat a childhood friend. However, the humans within the walls have lived in peace for 100 years prior to the Colossal Titan's attack. Data regarding their origins, as well as Annie's, is incredibly disorganized. And a Titan outside the walls knew Ymir's name. So that leads me to think that the other titan shifters could all have come from a place beyond the walls? My thought is that there may be another settlement beyond the walls, or at the very least there was. People there were turned into titans (maybe by the beast titan?), including Bert, Reiner, Annie and Ymir. But they have the power to change back to human, which makes me think that either some people are just special, or there is some kind of catalyst that allows transformed people to go back to human. That may be why Ymir started out as a feral titan (at least I assume this due to the eating), later coming into contact with said catalyst, and it may have had to do with whatever Eren's dad injected him with. Because the themes of the series need to be kept intact (it would be bullshit if a magical titan "cure" was discovered), I'd assume that said catalyst only works under certain circumstances, with a small amount of people possessing some quality that activates it, or only within a certain time limit after becoming a Titan.
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Jun 2, 2013 21:38
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doyle-san posted:Finally caught up to current on the manga! I have been studiously avoiding this thread until I did so but now I'm done. Man... This comic is really good. The artist periodically has godawful linework and perspective on small details (the fists when they salute... EVERY TIME) but his broad strokes and lines of action are some of the best I've seen. Absolutely loving this poo poo. Yeah, to me the art definitely has a rudimentary feel to it at points. Proportions and perspective on things get a bit wonky. But honestly, I feel like that's part of the charm. Attack on Titan wouldn't be the same if it had a super polished or "pretty" art style. I think the rough looks lend themselves to the gritty story, especially where Titans are concerned. They look so wrong, it's right.
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Jun 3, 2013 10:40
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KittenofDoom posted:Terrible anatomy, bad facial expressions, boring perspective shots and backgrounds, uninteresting character designs, and confusing action sequences, to name a few. I hate to say it, but you're... kinda right, yeah. I have to say I like the facial expressions, though. They're just exaggerated enough to work without being dull surprise or stupidly melodramatic looking. I... could excuse the character designs seeing as how most characters are in the same uniform and have similar body types and realistic hairstyles, but then other series have dealt with those problems without suffering from them. Fullmetal Alchemist's many military characters come to mind as an example of how to do that right. Unfortunately the artist isn't great at differentiating facial designs, so I tend to get any characters with similar hairstyles confused in the manga. The anime gets an easy pass because it further defines characters' features and it can rely on stuff like hair color, eye color and voice to make characters identifiable. So yeah... the story is definitely the manga's strong point, art not so much. If the anime stays faithful to the plot, then this could end up being one of those cases where the anime surpasses the manga. Hopefully they keep doing like they're doing and continue to make slight tweaks to make everything more logical and coherent pacing-wise (like putting all the flashbacks in the middle of the manga at the beginning where they make sense). LightningKnight fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Jun 6, 2013 |
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Jun 6, 2013 13:09
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genericnick posted:Looking back at the last few pages a lot of posters seem to forget that Rainer explicitly stated that their goal was to erase all the humans. Not nudge them into action. This just begs the question, though-- if they really wanted to kill off all the humans, why not just do it in one go? It's not like they lacked the capability. The Colossal and Armored Titans seem to be the toughest bastards around. So why did they stop destroying stuff when they did after their initial attack? Why just disappear off the face of the earth, rather than start smashing buildings, stepping on puny humans, and striding to the next wall to kick that one down too right off the bat? That's what gets me. Why the wait?
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Jun 8, 2013 15:32
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Giant Enemy Cliche posted:I'm going to place my money right now that the key is not just a key to the basement, but a key to something important in the basement. "They" don't want eren, they want the key. But all Bert and Reiner know is that Eren is important, hence taking him hostage rather than just getting the key and scarpering. I can see that being a thing. It makes sense that Eren's dad would install some sort of failsafe so that whatever information is down there wouldn't fall into the wrong hands. Considering that he "made" Eren, having he himself be the key to unlocking that information is pretty plausible. However, I think him being a Titan merits importance in and of itself. Even if it is access to whatever's in the basement they want, he himself is still a threat any way you look at it. Affi posted:There is a fourth wall, manned by human titans like Bert and Reiner, holding back the countless hordes of Titans. The only titans the Wall Humans ever see are the dregs that get through the first line of defense. Bert and Reiner believed that if the human settlement is allowed to fall then their people no longer have to sacrifice their lives to defend it. If Titans have made it past this fortification, does that mean they broke the fourth wall? 
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Jun 8, 2013 22:24
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Raenir Salazar posted:This is a good question as I don't remember it either, to me it sounded like Armin was wondering where the flowers came from, as if they weren't there before but I may be misremembering. I think it would have helped the effect had they put more emphasis on the flowers' state prior to Eren breaking out the Titan skeleton. I don't remember it being in the manga, but something like that wouldn't have stuck out to me anyways, I guess. It's probably just as stated above, a visual device to show that Eren's skeletal Titan transformation was for protection only. It left everything within the ribcage unscathed, even a delicate flower. Also, I found this image on the SnK wikia. I have no idea why it exists, but I do know that it's a flawless diamond and I love it.  
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Jun 10, 2013 09:37
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AnonSpore posted:Pizza Hut JP routinely uses various anime in ad campaigns. Dear lord, that just makes it all the more glorious.
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Jun 10, 2013 10:12
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I think the creators are intentionally loving with manga readers, showing a fuckton of images that are extremely heavy foreshadowing to those who know what's going to happen but are innocuous to viewers without that knowledge, and images that would be blatantly spoilerific if they weren't completely out of context. Kinda like the "firing squad in a box" scene in OP1. They're taunting those who know what's happening. Cheeky bastards.
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Jul 14, 2013 08:49
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Darth Walrus posted:Are you perhaps forgetting this? Up to and including parts of the manga, I think. I would totally love to see an Isayama comedy manga, though, no doubt. Maybe he can do it with that MMA fighter Mikasa AU he seems so enamored with.
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Aug 8, 2013 23:05
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ArchangeI posted:RAMPANT SPECULATION: **also speculation** The Titans are... the Heartless? That seems like a pretty big stretch to me. People don't become Titans after being attacked by them (usually. I'm looking at you, Eren). Titans are light, but they don't just poof into thin air-- they still rot, just quickly. There are ways to convert people into Titans, so I don't think them being spontaneously generated fits either. I also doubt the Titans as a whole are intelligent enough to actually do something like that, seeing as how they're more akin to a force of nature than an organized faction. That goes for all theories, really-- I do think the walls are meant to be a prison for humans rather than a defense, but I can't see the dumb-as-a-rock normal Titans doing that. My guess is that it was a faction that has control over Titan power, but not actually the Titans as a whole group. I wouldn't mind a "magical" origin for the Titans, though, as long as it fits within the context of the series. You gotta admit they're pretty scientifically bizarre, so having them be at least somewhat supernatural in nature wouldn't be too rulebreaking. Could also have some interesting implications about what the Titan Formula Eren's dad used on him actually is. For instance, if you consider that maybe the Titans' existence is due to someone trying to synthesize something supernatural without a full understanding of what it is. (The ape titan, perhaps?) I dunno. The details don't all mesh for me yet, so my guessing is just as much guessing as anyone else's. Lessee... as for Bert and Ernie, they're going to have to give one hell of a good reason for doing what they did if they want any sympathy. Being sad about it isn't good enough, neither is "just following orders".  Also those false preview images are the best thing. I kind of... half want Titan Mikasa to be an actual thing just to be able to see exactly how muscly she is in comparison to Titan Eren.
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Aug 10, 2013 08:30
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What this discussion is really making me wonder is if all titans come from turned humans, or if there are different subdivisions of titan. So far, we have the vanilla titans, the abnormal/aberrant titans, titan shifters, people-turned-titans-that-aren't-shifters, and ape titan. There's definitely some overlap between some of those categories, but trouble is I'm not sure which goes where. One theory that came to me was that maybe Titans that can move at night can do so because they still have a human component? The titan shifters seem to be able to move at night, otherwise Bert and Ernie's plan to wait til sunset to keep moving wouldn't work. Likewise, the ones that attacked Castle Utgard came from within the unbreached wall, where we saw Connie's village apparent titan-ification happen. Normal Titans aren't found to have people bits flying out of them when you cut out their nape, and they also don't move at night. Perhaps they're solar-powered because they ran out of person fuel? I do wonder about the stylization of the more recent Titans. Knowing the author it could very well be intentional. (And would be creepy as gently caress if Ao Oni titan turned out to be a converted baby  ) Kinda makes me wonder why we've only ever seen a handful of skinless titans, too-- just the shifters and what looked to be the one in the wall. Skin manipulation is a trait we've only ever seen Shifters use, so could it be surmised the wall titans are people?
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Aug 10, 2013 21:45
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MustelaFuro posted:I'm mildly suspicious that Armin is a titan, or has some deeper knowledge. I don't actually believe he is, but if he were it wouldn't shock me. He seemed to know how to get Eren out of his titan dream when he transformed the second time, he's reluctant to kill titans despite not being too scared to hop on titan-Eren's back while he was trying to smash Mikasa, and, I forgot the other suspicious thing... I think it's safe to say that anyone who appeared in the "everyone is titans" false preview image is most definitely not a titan. On the flip side, if Armin was actually a Titan, it would be great if his titan form looked exactly like the one in that picture. Bobblehead and all.
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Aug 12, 2013 22:33
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Captain Invictus posted:I wouldn't say it's safe to say that at all considering this author. ...You have a point there. I suppose I should say it seems really unlikely that they would end up legitimately being Titans after being the butt of a joke like that. Though I suppose if Isayama had gone and made a joke image about how Bert and Ernie sort of resemble the Armored and Colossal titans, we would have all laughed it off as being in good fun and forgot about it until it turned out to be horribly true. drat it, I can't trust anything with this series now.
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Aug 13, 2013 07:06
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Autumncomet posted:Levi is back in Stohess, I thought, with a broken arm? Of course, murder wonder Mikasa is here so they're still sunk. At any rate, they're nearly at the basement and if Eren could hold in his rage for five drat minutes, they could work out a plan to get there, as it's looking like Bert at least wants to try to make amends and I doubt Ymir gives a poo poo as long as Christa is safe. Colossus Titan being the official translation is... really more perfect than I could have ever asked for. 
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Sep 5, 2013 00:39
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Ymir's name hasn't even been mentioned in the anime yet, and she's still pretty much background noise at this point. She's probably been namedropped a couple times somewhere, but she hasn't done anything particularly memorable yet to so I wouldn't worry much. Besides, her significance doesn't even come into play until that bit with the titan mistaking random journal keeping soldier girl for her, so I'd hardly worry. Even if someone went right out and blabbed "Ymir is a titan" in the anime thread, half the users would probably just go, "who?" At this point there's as much reason to suspect Ymir of being a titan in the anime as there is reason to suspect, like... Hannes or Connie. I think Bertholdt kind of occupies the same status. They're all just background flavor characters at this point. Reiner has had a handful of meaningful interactions with the main crew, so I suppose he could be figured out by shrewd watchers, but the other shifters? Not so much. Colossus Titan (I still love that name ) bears no resemblance to Bertholdt at all save for the extremely subtle sweating and tallness.Ape Titan is going to be a big  moment too, considering that there is absolutely no precedence for it whatsoever. (Well, if the anime makes it that far.)
LightningKnight fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Sep 5, 2013 |
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Sep 5, 2013 09:25
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I finally had my first Attack on Titan-related dream last night! It was wonderful... there was a movie, which was set in a sort of modern AU where Titans were rampaging through a city full of office buildings and cars and skyscrapers and the like. The 3D Gear in this version had gotten a "modern" upgrade-- it was a bit more... Metal Gear-looking, had a combat vest in lieu of the normal chest straps, and had a matte black finish all over. I might draw it. The plotline is unfortunately lost to the haze of memory, but I recall that the general gist was that a large amount of Titans had suddenly appeared in an urban area and the humans were attempting to eliminate them. It was pretty wicked. Well, at least that was the first 2/3 of the movie. The last /3 inexplicably switched genres to become a family comedy, centered around a family of Titans, which was as bizarre and hilarious as it sounds. There was a Titan papa and a Titan mama and a chubby little Titan daughter, and they lived in these big huge caverns (which were somehow situated on an even larger Titan's head). Most of it was pretty par for the course for wacky lighthearted family comedies, barring the fact that it was, y'know, Titans. For instance there were a lot of scenes with food-related mishaps, except with screaming people as the food. Also they went to a theme park for Titans.All of that was probably triggered by me reading the latest chapter yesterday, which was incredible. How could you not love Armin? He is a gloriously talented bullshitter. I sort of wonder if this is what's gonna cause Bertholdt to crack and make a big mistake, or if he's gonna go on a rage rampage and REALLY try to kill everybody. LightningKnight fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Sep 7, 2013 |
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Sep 7, 2013 18:28
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I wonder about Eren's fate myself post-series resolution. I don't see Eren going homicidal rage at the Titan threat being resolved in a way that doesn't involve killing 'em all, seeing as how the whole basis for his rage is that the Titans kill everybody. If the Titans aren't trying to kill everybody anymore, why would he go rage monster? A need for catharsis I can see, but I have a feeling that may come in the form of the People In Charge sitting within the innermost walls. I would be totally happy with a "Eren and friends travel the world" ending, it'd be a nice bookend. Bonus points if Eren gets to keep his Titan form and just has buddies sitting on his shoulders while he saunters around dangerous terrain or something. Also, for no reason other than to throw out another random hypothetical: I've always sort of fancied the idea of Eren getting himself stuck, lucid, in Titan form. How is anyone's wager, but I'll go with "tried doing that skin hardening thing and accidentally sealed himself in" since this is all imaginary anyway. Sort of like Ymir's whole "mindless titan days", but without the mindless? I don't know, haha. It would certainly make for an odd conflict, or at least a very frustrated Eren.
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Sep 10, 2013 04:02
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Devour or Fire posted:The artist posted on his blog about how he had to redraw Armin's good idea face for some reason. Holy loving poo poo, Armin.  I swear to god I take back everything I ever said about him looking cute, that face is going to haunt me in my restless dreams.
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Sep 10, 2013 10:24
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Reiterating what has been said a million times by now: Considering how we see the people inside Shifters covered in fleshy bits of tissue connecting them to the Titan, it's possible normal Titans just have that taken to the logical extreme, having completely absorbed the original person into a big snarl of muscle and nerve tissue. With that theory in mind, it could be that the "serum" or "titan power" or what have you A.) prevents the person inside from getting turned into a giant ball of nerve tissue in the first place (Eren) B.) allows normal, mindless titans to regrow the original human from said ball of nerve tissue (Ymir?) Along with other nifty potentials like skin hardening and Colossal-ism and what have you, possibly on a case by case basis. Given that Ymir summarized her 60-year Titan stint as essentially "I have no mouth yet I must scream", and how Connie's Mom Titan is at least cognizant that Connie is in fact Connie, it seems as though Titans all have at least some base humanity somewhere inside of them despite acting mostly on instinct. Aberrants might just have more of the intellect or shades of personality while still retaining the same basic people eating tendencies.
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Sep 11, 2013 22:43
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