Huh. I just got up to date with Before the Fall. Not many thoughts to share... pretty decent.
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Huh. I just got up to date with Before the Fall. Not many thoughts to share... pretty decent.
Oh, is that still ongoing? I think I dropped it after the first three chapters or so... ahem.Quote:
Originally Posted by danzibr
Good point. But I'm going to guess Eren will somehow be safe then (?)Quote:
Originally Posted by noparlpf
Spoiler: Chapter 87Oh ****. The Smiling Titan was Grisha's first wife.
Edit: Oh ****. Well, it doesn't answer how Grisha ended up getting the Shifter power yet, but it must have come from that guy. And it's also still not clear whether it's one of the Mare Shifters or the other Wall Shifter.
He's huge though. That looks like over 20m, judging by the two humans right next to him (they're a similar size, say a human is roughly ~2m tall even though that's a pretty tall human). I count ~14-15m from his knees to his head.
Ugh, I hate stupid, pointless coincidences...Quote:
Originally Posted by noparlpf
Spoiler
Same with the guy from thrity years ago being the same guy to bring Grisha there.
The Owl thing I'm okay with, I guess. I mean, it's a bit weird but fine. But that other guy just being there... er... why? Dina being the titan? WHY? Because yh'e secretly attracted to Eren who is her.... nothing? Well, her husband's son but that doesn't mean anything...
Now I want to know what kruger did to Grisha to hand the titan power over...
And what happens to a "normal" human if they get injected? Does that mean the Ackermann's would be immune since they're not... Eldian?
If this were another manga, by another author with another art style all of this might actually have been a decent reveal. Unfortunately Attack on Titan is just Claymore: The Yaoi Addition and it's a pile of steaming hot garbage. For the life of me I cannot understand how it got so popular and has maintained that popularity. On the bright side, it gave us The Promised Neverland so I guess I can't be too unhappy.
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Originally Posted by Kato
SpoilerActually it's probably not a coincidence. The killing of the sister by the dogs was something that made that guy realize that he was on the wrong side. As for what happens to a normal human, they transform. The Ackermann's are something different and not normal humans. We really don't know what would happen if they were injected.
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Originally Posted by noparlpf
SpoilerThat was my first thought, that the dude was huge. Then again, Grisha looked really big in Titan form, way bigger than Eren, at least.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kato
SpoilerEh, I liked it. And, as HandofShadows points out below, it may not be pointless. Well, not the guy that died.
So you're saying I should read Claymore, too?Quote:
Originally Posted by Razade
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Originally Posted by HandofShadows
SpoilerI got the feeling they're just different bloodlines. Not not normal humans.
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Originally Posted by danzibr
SpoilerMy suspicion is that Isayama just isn't very good at scale. According to his official guidebook, Frieda's Titan is 13m and Grisha's is 15m. I'm going to go over the pages from ch63 and see how well their Titan forms scale up relative to the rest of the Reiss family.
Edit: Yeah, I don't know.
-For example, the page 10-11 spread with the Reiss family lined up and Grisha opposite them; assuming Grisha is supposed to be at the same scale as the Reisses, everybody's a little bit off. I'm measuring from a scan, so it'll be [cm of character height]/[inch on this page as measured using photoshop]. Based on their official heights, Frieda (171cm) is at a scale of about 15.3cm/in, Rod (158cm) is at a scale of ~17.4cm/in, and Grisha is at a scale of ~13.2cm/in. That's accounting for the bent posture - I measured Grisha from head to pelvis, hip to knee, and knee to heel, then added them.
-On page 16, I'm assuming the Reisses running away are closer to us than Titan Grisha and Titan Frieda, so I'm skipping the humans on that page. Neither of the Titans is standing straight, so I did my best to measure in straight lines from joint to joint again. It's a bit hard because Isayama's rendering of limbs doesn't always seem to obey human anatomical constraints, especially on titans. Anyway, the scale seems pretty good here - Grisha (15m) is ~123cm/in and Frieda (13m) is ~125cm/in. That's close enough that I'll call it measuring error from trying to accommodate the posture.
-Then on page 21, looking at the panel where Grisha is holding the older Reiss brother, it's a little hard to measure because of the angle, but the Reiss brother seems to be roughly 4x as tall as Grisha's hand is across the knuckles. Back on page 16, based on a scale of 123cm/in, Grisha's weird disproportionate Titan fist is only ~86cm across the knuckles. That would make the Reiss brother on page 21 ~350cm tall. I give up.
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Originally Posted by HandofShadows
Eh... I know I have no proof but I'm pretty sure he was "good" all along and just punished Grisha to teach him to be more careful. Obviously, I could be totally wrong, but the story doesn't mind it's good guys doing bad things, so that seems like it makes more sense than him switching alingments because of what happened.Quote:
Originally Posted by danzibr
Yeah, I'm quite confident if you try to do the math on the titan sizes you'll often run into problems...Quote:
Originally Posted by noparlpf
SpoilerNight Owl couldn't save the Restoration movement without tipping his hand and revealing his identity. This is just a guess, but I doubt his superiors knew that he was a shifter. If anything, I'd guess that he was the second fragment of Ymir's power that was thought to be with the rest of the Elodians on Paradi Island.
Diana didn't seem to have been tortured, so at a guess, Night Owl did intervene to keep her from revealing any information.
Danzib, Claymore is worth reading. And it's all done!
Hey, cool about Claymore. I'll get on that. Thanks!
New Chapter
SpoilerFinished off the history leason. And we learn that the Titians power will kill you after 13 years. :smalleek:
Eff you Isayama and your pun...
Spoiler
Titans die after 13 years! That explains why the king doesn't want the ultimate power. Also, it doesn't quite explain the line of succession, though.
Even worse... titan power goes to random babies?! REALLY? I know you need an excuse for why they didn't just disappear but that's just... okay.
Grisha doesn't want to fight but he owes it to his comrades or something... what exactly is the plan again? Getting the titan power, waging war against the normal humans and kill a bunch more? Seems like that will make many happy. And why didn't Eren use the power earlier? Grisha kept pushing for that but he never really gave an answer. Yeah, you didn't want Dina to be a baby machine, good reasoning but what the hell has it to do with the question asked?!
Anyway, I guess decent chapter overall. We're done with the backstory and now we need a few more real-canon(?) names for the titans... though I guess Colossal, Armored, Female, Beast, Founding, Attack... work well enough.
Most recent chapter, Attack on Titan Chapter 88 (Dec 2016)
Spoiler: So on the subjects of timeline, and doing some thinking
So Eren in modern times is 15 and it has been less than a year since he learned he has titan powers (probably closer to a period of 4 to6 months, but I would have to do lots of counting). He learned of his titan powers after the 2nd wall was breached and also repaired at the battle of trost. This happened in the year 850 in the wall calendar. In this manga chapter 88 he states he probably has 8 years left.
The First Wall was breached in the year 845, and it was at this time that Eren inherited his father's titan powers and thus has the abilities of the Attack / Rogue and Progenitor / Coordinate Titan.
In the Year 842, Frieda Reiss inherits the power of the Progenitor / Coordinate Titan. She had it for 3 years before Grisha Yeager stole the power at the Reiss Chapel and killed much of the royal family. She was supposedly unpracticed in how to use it to its full potential.
Ymir the character who has the power of the dancing Titan probably ate Marcel in the Year 845 right before the "Warriors" attacked the wall. (The Warriors being the Marleyans sent out the Colossal / Reiner Braun, Armored / Bertolt Hoover, Annie Leonhart / Female titan and Marcel to try to obtain the Progenitor / Coordinate Titan.) So she probably has 8 or so years left but less time than Eren does since Ymir acquired her titan power prior to the 1st wall being attacked while Eren acquired his power after the 1st wall was attacked.
We do not know how much time Reiner, Annie, or Zeke have left. I wonder if Annie being in a coma / crystal counts against this time and if so talk about a productive use of your last few years.
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So what is making me question the 13 year number is chapter 71 of the manga. Former Survey Corps Commander Keith Shadis stated that he found Grisha Yeager 20 years ago (so 15 years prior to the first wall being attacked). Is this a mistranslation of Chapter 71 or is the timeline messed up?
Lets ignore this
If instead we take the fact Eren was 10 years old when the first wall was attacked and he ate his dad and acquired the titan power, combined with a 9 month pregnancy, and the time it took for Grisha to meet Eren's mom Carla, Grisha learning about the walls, Grisha curing the plague, etc then Grisha did not have much time left.
Grisha was getting close to his 13 year limit since we know he had a 10 year old child and all the other stuff. If Grisha Yeager was running out of time, was he relying passing the coordinate onto his son instead of using the Titan Power of the King himself with the goal of hoping that Eren would be better at using the power and further away from the First King's goal due to the fact there was an intermediary (Grisha) in between Frieda Reiss and Eren Yeager blood since Eren did not eat anyone of royal blood?
So is the timeline accurate, is there a mistake in the timeline, or are we getting more unreliable narrator? Is Former Survey Corps Commander Keith Shadis giving us unreliable narrator with him finding Grisha Yeager 20 years ago or is Owl / Eren Krueger giving us unreliable narration with the 13 year Titan Shifter Ymir Curse, or are both of them unreliable narrators? Why did Grisha decide to pass the Coordinate onto Eren was it the 13 years or some other reason (we were given other reasons prior to this chapter)?
SpoilerRE: The Rogue Titan's real name...
Is there a different translation? I think Assault would sound cooler.
Holy cow, how do people remember these things? But yes, something doesn't add up there...
Frankly I think lowly enough of Isayama he didn't think of tha back then... rather than Keith being a poor narrator or a translation issue. OR he's going to pull another trick, like Grisha is such a good doctor he fixed this somehow...
I remembered the 5 year gap first wall and second wall / battle of trosh for it was important in the story. I had to look up Eren's age and the specific year 850.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kato
I remembered Frieda and the predecessor to Frieda for it was an important plot point due to the people in Freida's life such as Historia.
I had to look up chapter 71 which was the backstory explanation of events that occurred prior to the titan attack on the first wall. Knowing it was chapter 71 was found via google and the wiki.
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Believe it or not you can fake an awesome memory by having enough rudimentary facts, a framework, and then the ability to use that framework to "build upwards" using information sources such as the internet.
While it was not the first person who argue this, but I loved how the character Abbe Faria, the monk / priest who befriends Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo. He made the point in his education of Dante's that once you have read the right 100 or so books (the exact number escapes me) that you have learned almost all of human knowledge for you now have the framework to digest the rest of human knowledge. An educated man he explains to Dante is a person who has enough of the basics to incorporate the more advanced stuff later. I am not doing this scene justice rigt now.
Well a person who has awesome memory, or is smart, is not a person who remembers everything, but instead remembers enough that if he knows where to look he can use tools to fill in the blanks.
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I am going to stop for I am now sounding like a pompous jerk. I am not a person who is that full of himself, I deal with my shortcomings day to day (I have a HORRIBLE memory, ADHD, and other issues) and figuring out ways to adapt and merely keep up is sometime exhausting.
But it makes me really good at Attack on Titan trivia and analysis :smalltongue:
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Originally Posted by Ramza00
Spoiler: Chapter 88 - TimelineYeah, I was going to bring up the timeline too. I've spent the last half hour working on it (instead of studying for my biochem final tomorrow, ugh) and I think it just barely works out. It also explains why Grisha gave the Titan power to Eren instead of using it himself.
We previously thought that Grisha showed up in 830 based on what Shadis says in chapter 71: "I met Grisha what...twenty years ago now?" That's pretty vague and could be a bit off. The current year is 850. Grisha transferred the Titan power to Eren in 845 when the walls fell. If we assume that he did that instead of using it himself because he was near the end of his thirteen years (or at least thought he was, regardless of whether it turns out to be true later), that would mean that he actually showed up in 832, not 830. And that he didn't waste much time getting to the walls, despite apparently having amnesia when he first turned up.
(That also means Zeke is a lot younger than we thought. A few chapters back when he revealed his name, I had guessed 30+ and the wikia editors had guessed 34. But they've already updated a bunch of stuff, and now they're saying he's 25. He doesn't really look 25, but I guess it's impossible to tell with Isayama's art style.)
Edit:
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Originally Posted by Lurkmoar
Spoiler: Rogue TitanHere's the original page in Japanese. It says "na wa shingeki no kyojin" (thank goodness for furigana) which means "[its] name is attack titan." Other translations are "advance," "charge," or "assault," but Isayama decided it's "attack" so that's what we're stuck with.
Also explains why the official English name of the manga is "Attack on Titan" when that's a lousy translation of "Shingeki no Kyojin." Don't try to make bilingual puns, dude. Though to be fair, it doesn't really work in English due to the way English handles plurals ("the Attack Titan" vs "Attack of the Titans") and the way it handles words that can be both a noun and a verb (making attack a noun, "Attack of the Titans," or making attack a verb, "Attacking Titans").
All this time I was wondering about the title. Like, slapping "no" after a noun can turn it into an adjective, so it'd be attack titan(s).Quote:
Originally Posted by noparlpf
Many translations fall victim to this, especially if they are ments as puns or as a double meaning... even more so when the translater has no idea it's meant to be like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by noparlpf
I guess we should consider what it sounds like to Japanese... after all it's kind of misleading/confusing in the original, too, or at least not entirely clear.
That's... not really what "no" does. It's more literally your English possessive "s". Like... "danzibr no xyz" is literally danzibr's xyz. Of course this sounds sometimes more awkward, like when they use it with pronouns "watashi no" is I's instead of my.Quote:
Originally Posted by danzibr
(sidenote: this is from my limited knowledge. Of course feel free to correct me)
That was mostly the part I was wondering about... I kind of remember Keith reminiscing but twenty years totally slipped my mind.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramza00
I guess as you say, it just barely works out... if we allow for him to be generous on the time and if he did pass it on quite late.
The particle "no" has multiple uses. One use is the possessive. It can also be used to make a noun act as an adjective. For example, "kemono no kyojin" is meant as "beast titan," not "the beast's titan." Another use is kind of like the English preposition "of." Japanese grammar is weird.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kato
Just a sec...Quote:
Originally Posted by Kato
There we go.Quote:
Originally Posted by noparlpf
The example that came to mind for me is this: "renga" means brick, like as a noun, but if you want to talk a brick house or something, to adjective-ify it, you'd use "renga no."
The best way to think of "no" (at least in my mind... I took 8 semesters of Japanese but I'm far from a pro) is as a backwards of. Like "A no B" would be "B of A" in English. It handles both possessive *and* the adjective business!
SpoilerSo... did Eren Kruger have the titan power already when he first encountered kid Grisha?! Geez, the 13 year thing really eats up a lot... might have been better to pad it out to 25 or something... man.
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Originally Posted by Lurkmoar
Spoiler: Timeline, then random art style rantHm... It does work out, but again, it's tight. And leads to the question, who recruited Kruger and when? Isayama really doesn't give his characters much downtime between major events.
Here's all we know for sure of Grisha's timeline:
-age 18 c. 824 when he joined the Eldian Restorationists (basing the ages off of this - explicitly stated in ch86)
-> age 19 c. 825 when Zeke was born (I mean, I guess it was pre-birth control...)
-> age 26 c. 832 when Kruger died (basing the years off of this - estimate based on the new info from ch88)
-> age 29 in 835 when Eren was born
-> age 39 in 845 when the walls fell
We saw Grisha as a kid in chapter 86, plus two panels where he's probably in his mid-teens (his sideburns were shorter than on the page when we're told he's 18), which were probably meant to indicate that he was a younger tween at the beginning of the chapter. His younger sister wasn't much shorter and she was clearly pre-pubescent, so it's reasonable to assume Grisha wasn't any older than 12-13. But it's hard to say how old anybody's supposed to be with Isayama's art style.
Assuming Kruger had only recently become a Shifter when he met kid-Grisha, that would have happened c. 819 when Grisha was about 13. That's a plausible age for a kid to do dumb things their parents told them not to...
...But dang, Isayama's art style is so sketchy and disproportionate.
Chapter 86 page 4 shows Grisha, Fay, and an adult male Eldian standing next to each other. Grisha comes up to this guy's chest. (It looks like he only comes up to the waist of some of the Marleyan men.) Based on a couple sources, the average height of adult German men in the mid-1800s was around 165cm (5'5"), so let's assume that guy is about 165cm. He's about 6.75 heads tall, whereas the average person in figure drawing is about 7.5 heads tall. Anyway, assuming that guy is about 165cm tall, kid-Grisha is very roughly 112cm tall (3'8"). That's absurdly small for a 13-year-old boy, regardless of likely malnutrition. That's like, 0.1 percentile. A modern 50th-percentile 13-year-old boy is ~88-89% of a modern 50th-percentile adult man's height. And we know Grisha grew up to be a pretty tall guy at 182cm. I give up, man. I'm not doing any more of these. I can't believe I just spent over half an hour working this out.
Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot. We knew that he was bad at drawing kids' proportions from the beginning. 10-year-old Eren and Mikasa were waist-height too. Keep in mind that a modern 50th-percentile 10-year-old boy is ~139cm (4'6").
Nice analysis!Quote:
Originally Posted by noparlpf
And haha, that reminds me... I didn't really have any clue how tall kids were until I had my own. My son's 5 (getting on 6), and is right around waist high on me (I'm 6'0").
Spoiler: Eren's nameI've been thinking more and it seems a bit weird to me that Grisha would name his kid after Kruger. Like, he barely knew Kruger, and when he did it was just to find out Kruger had manipulated him his whole life, was indirectly a party to his sister's murder, and was directly responsible for his wife's murder. Even if he did inherit some of Kruger's memories it seems weird to me. Unless it was supposed to be symbolic, like, this child will inherit Kruger's name and will, therefore I don't have to do it myself? I'm also curious about Grisha's amnesia (he obviously remembered everything later, so maybe that was just disorientation from a prolonged first Shift) or whether there was any subconscious influence from Kruger's personality.
Bloody hell, I need to stop getting distracted... I have to study for my five-hour anatomy final tomorrow. :smalleek:
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Originally Posted by noparlpf
SpoilerI'd imagine having dreams that were someones memories could be pretty trippy. Though given how Eren Yeager's life has some parallels to Eren Kruger's... it does seem fitting. Strange, but fitting.
All possible speed along with luck, pluck and hard work mang!Quote:
Bloody hell, I need to stop getting distracted... I have to study for my five-hour anatomy final tomorrow. :smalleek:
Oh, wow...
Spoiler
Now we're discussing Eren's puberty. And Mikasa is troubled because...?
Also, they actually made that horrible coincidence or whatever a plot point... Like, what the hell? And now we're getting way, WAY more magical than ever.
Almost forgot Ymir's letter. Kind of cute, I'll admit. And hell, is this world full of coincidences.
Finally: Way to be subtle with the armband with a star on it... I mean, I guess some people didn't catch on before?
Not sure ifQuote:
Originally Posted by Kato
Spoiler: Manga spoilerthe armband people can turn into giant beast, albeit more monstrous than their ancestors, counts. Not to mention, the titan serum can get some military power as herds of war beasts. Depends which versions of Titan history are true.
And i still have not caught on about the armband with a stars. What is it suposed to say?