plot summary

[eigensinnig]

Hey, kids. There are MASSIVE CANON SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT. If you don't want to have all the surprises of this canon ruined, don't read the history section. We good?

We good.

Welcome to the world of Shingeki no Kyojin: everyone is traumatized and nothing gets better. Around the year 740, massive human-esque beings appeared and began devouring all of humanity. They didn't care about other forms of life or substance. Dogs? Fuck 'em. Deer? Who gives a shit. Horses? Yeah, whatever. These huge humanoid monsters, Titans, are to humans as I am to Oreos. Except they actually don't digest anything they consume-- once their bellies are full, they throw all the mangled remains of humans up. It's not a pretty sight-- however, at the brink of extinction, humanity built a three-walled city. It looks something like this:




The little nodes are mini-cities. Titans are attracted to large groups of people, so in order to reduce the man-power used to protect the walls, these little node cities were made to draw the titans' attention. Not surprisingly, it actually works. But we'll get to that in a bit.

So, in the great and awful year of 844, we meet wee babby Eren Yeager. His father is taking him to meet a friend-- Mikasa Ackerman. Despite the ridiculously Western last name, she and her mother are super unique. They are the last of the clans from the "Orient." Eren's father is a doctor and has been taking care of Mikasa since she was much younger, but today's the first day Eren gets to meet her!!!!!!!!!!!!

Except, when they knock on the Ackerman's door, no one answers. And when they open it, they find her mother and father stabbed/hacked to death on the floor. Mikasa's no where to be found; she's been kidnapped by people who want to sell her to creeps. Eren's father does what any law abiding citizen does-- he calls the police. Unfortunately, due to the Ackermans living in the boonies, it takes a while for them to show up. While waiting, Eren comes up with his own plan.

At dumb o'clock at night, the kidnappers get a knock on their door. It's a wee babbs Eren, crying and afraid, lost in the woods. The kidnappers, thinking their payday has increased significantly, decide to take Eren in too-- sucks to be them, though, because Eren shanks the shit out of them. As he unties Mikasa, she informs him that plot twist: there were three kidnappers.

Cue the third kidnapper attempting to murder the shit out of wee babby Eren. He almost suceeds, too; however, at the last second, after a brief conversation of "YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT FIGHTING. IF YOU WIN, YOU LIVE. IF YOU LOSE, YOU DIE." This caused Mikasa to tap into her inner anime superstar powers and to stab the shit out of the third and final kidnapper. They did it; they are the champions.

Nine year old murderers, go team psychopath.

After this, they grew up relatively happy... for a year. The Yeager family adopted Mikasa, and Mikasa, Eren, and his best friend, Armin, frolicked about their little shitty city, dreaming about the world outside the walls. Eren decides that he wants to join the Scouting Legion-- the only group of the military that goes beyond the walls, despite the ridiculous causalities they suffer with every mission. Their lives were super adorable, super precious, and weren't going to last long.

845 - the fall of Shiganshina and Wall Maria. On a lovely day where Eren's dad leaves Shiganshina to go doctoring elsewhere, a massiveass Colossal Titan appears (awkwardly peeking over the 50 meter high walls) and kicks in the gates to Shiganshina, allowing a ridiculous sum of titans past the walls.


BAM.

The result: a massacre. Rocks and debris crush people, titans eat everyone, shit goes down. Unfortunately for Mikasa and Eren, Eren's mom is one of the victims. They find her crushed under the remains of their home, legs mangled, with a titan approaching. Hannes, one of the military's Stationary Guard, shows up, grabs the kids, and runs. The disadvantage of hauling kids over and under your shoulders is that they get front row seats to watch their mother/mother figure suffer the fate of all anime moms.

Ridiculously traumatized, they meet up with Armin, get on boats to go inside Wall Maria, and watch as a brand new type of titan appears out of air-- the Armored Titan. This titan proceeds to lay a massive smackdown on Wall Maria's gate, which opens the whole area to titan attack.



Welp, there goes a third of humanity's land. What's worse is that during the next few years, as Armin, Mikasa, and Eren work as child laborers for food, humanity begins to starve. The government, as a last ditch effort, sends out ridiculous sums of refugees to "reclaim Wall Maria." The government knew this wouldn't work. The people knew this wouldn't work. The titans probably knew this wouldn't work. But that didn't stop a fifth of mankind dying, which included Armin's entire family.

So we have a group of three orphans-- one of which, aka Eren, has been completely consumed with hatred for titankind. In the first six episodes of Attack on Titan, they flashback to Eren's mom being eaten over twenty times. This is probably not an exact number, but I don't really care. All I know is that Lulu would freak out every time it happened, and it happened a lot. So basically, Eren is driven to get revenge for his mom. He's haunted by seeing her head and torso chomped off, and he's haunted by seeing her blood scatter, and by the titan's smile as it snapped her spine, and by a lot of fucking things in general.

Keep in mind-- this kid, when he was nine years old, decided to massacre some kidnappers to save a girl he had never met. Make it personal by killing his mom? This shit's for real. Obviously, the only way to exterminate every titan ever is to join the military. Mikasa and Armin, forever loyal to their shounen hero, enlist as well.

Military training happens. Eren sucks and then he sucks a little less. Military training takes, like, three years in the anime, five years in the manga, and according to the Wiki, four years. So.

Uh.

Yeah.

So, the year's 850, and Eren's 15. Him, Mikasa, and Armin have all graduated, and things are looking up. There are plans in place to retake Wall Maria (legitimate plans, this time), and maybe, just maybe, there's hope that humanity can strike back.

That is until shit happened.

Welcome to a total repeat of what happened at Shiganshina. The Colossal Titan kicks in the gate to Trost, and titans pour in.



Since we all know that Eren is basically a one-man, all-murder titan killing machine, he goes straight for the Colossal Titan. He is unsuccessful. There's some drama about how everyone has to report back to base and then get distributed throughout Trost to defend the shit out of it-- there is a lot of optimism and good hope all around. After giving a rousing speech, Eren leads his team to start kicking titan ass.

He is unsuccessful.

In fact, after sweet babbs Thomas dies, Eren's the next causality-- while trying to avenge his dead friend, he gets his leg chomped off and bleeds all over a roof top. As he bleeds, the rest of his team gets obliterated brutally. Armin's the last one, too crippled by fear and "wow 15 year olds are watching people die in a horrible manner instead of watching Mean Girls." A titan that looks suspiciously like Santa is about to swallow Armin, but in a last ditch effort, Eren saves him, taking Armin's place in the mouth of the titan.

Now, this is pretty important here-- it shows some really key Eren-personality traits. 1) He loves Armin and Mikasa just as much as they love him. They might be always trailing behind him while he trailblazes ahead, but he's loyal through and through and will do anything for them. 2) Right before the titan chomps down on him (severing his arm in the process), Eren mentions the outside world: there's no way he can die here, of course. He has to see the world outside the walls with Armin and Mikasa. They have to see the seas of fire and snowfields of sand and the vast, salty water. This shows how, despite the fact that Eren is fueled by rage, fury, PTSD, and everything negative ever, he's still a 15 year old boy who clings to this childish dream with all his might.

So, yeah. Titans eating everyone time. Things look pretty goddamn hopeless, until... Just as Mikasa's given up and about to be eaten, a titan appears and kicks the shit out of another titan. Up to this point, no titan has ever acknowledged the existence of another, let alone kick the shit out of another. We also know this titan is special because it has anime hair and an anime 6-pac.

This anime titan proceeds to dish out ridiculous sums of furious murder on every titan it sees. Armin, being the miniature He-Man genius he is, realizes they can use this murdertitan to kill off all the titans invading their HQ. They proceed to do so; however, in the process, the murdertitan stops regenerating and begins to lose limbs and get devoured by other titans. When it looks like all hope is lost, the titan that ate Thomas from much earlier shows up, causing the murdertitan to flip its shit, lose its arms, and destroy the fuck out of the Thomas-meal titan. After this, it collapses, evaporates away, and 'lo and behold! Eren's inside it.

In his quest to kill every titan, he has become the titan.

How?????????????!!?!?!!!?!?!?! We get some creepy flashbacks of his dad doing some really suspicious doctoring shit, but that's about it. its a mystery~*~*~*

Eren wakes up in Armin's arms with Mikasa defending them against about fifty bajillion guns and a whole lot of military. Not surprisingly, the military and most everyone in general is like "holy shit that kid turned into a titan. titans are bad. that kid is bad." That logical structure would earn them more than the C+ I got in my intro to Logic class.

Military decides to open fire because they're scared babies. Eren, in a fit of panic, partially transforms into a titan to save himself and his friends. So, basically it's established from this point on that Eren can turn into a titan if he 1) injures himself, and 2) has a clear, distinct purpose in mind.

After a riveting speech by Armin that would have won him semifinals at the world debating championship (approved by Eren because he trusts the shit out of his friends), the military decides to open fire again because they're scared babies. At the last minute, though, a super duper impt military guy named DOT PIXISISISISSSUUUUUU shows up and is like "nah, man. don't kill 'em."

So they aren't killed.

The main thing here is that there is the possibility of titans disguised as humans-- especially titans that can vanish in an instant (like the Armored Titan or the Colossal Titan).

Now Eren and Friends have a new task--- block the hole in Trost's gate with a bigass rock. There are about nine million chapters and 12teen hundred episodes in the anime about titan!Eren trying to carry this big rock. It's dramatic: he can't control his titan form at first and attacks Mikasa. It's heart wrenching: people die. It's friendship inspiring: Armin breaks through the cloud in Eren's mind and helps him gain conscious power over his titan form.

go team

After moving the rock and blocking the gate....



Humanity has begun its counterattack at the titans, for the first time ever. It's incredibly impressive, and obviously the only solution is to try Eren at a military tribunal. Before it, though, while chillin' in a dungeon, he meets the powerful Scouting Legion kids, they say he can join up with them, and Eren is a happy camper.

At the military tribunal, everyone debates about killing Eren or not, he gets fed up with their shit, shouts a lot about how they should put their trust in him, despite the political instability he's causing, and for his efforts, Lance Corporal Levi of the Scouting Legion kicks the shit out of him. Like, hardcore. Like, we're talking losing teeth level of shit-kicking. Levi's explanation for this is that the Scouting Legion can see if Eren will be useful to humanity, and if he isn't, then Levi's the only one with mad skillz enough to kill titan!Eren. The judge agrees, and Eren lives another day.

oh my god im so done with typing koji isnt even going to read this
kristen are you reading
mouette?? you were always the more studious one. are you there?
are any of you with me.....?
(i know otter's here. she's always here. in my heart)

So, thus begins all the chapters of Team Eren and Friends and the WINGS OF FREEDOM-- aka the Scouting Legion. See, Eren's badassery and ridiculous sums of spirit encouraged all his military classmates to join the Scouting Legion, despite the ridiculously high death toll. Even characters like Jean, who originally only wanted to have the cushiest military job, far far away from titans, joins up. It's impressive.

After some badass training with the Scouting Legion, Eren makes nice with Levi and starts to idolize him a little bit. By a little bit, I mean a lotta bit. They, and the rest of the Scouting Legion, take off to spend a few hours in titan territory in order to 1) test Eren and his titan transforming abilities, and 2) test Eren and make sure he isn't actually a bad guy.

Unfortunately for everyone fivever, during their very typical and decidingly nondangerous mission, a new, intelligent titan shows up: the female type titan. She pretty much fucks up everyone. She eventually finds out Eren's position in the bigass Scouting Legion formation and heads right after him. Tons of soldiers sacrifice their lives as Eren, Levi, and the gang abscond as fast as their horses can carry them, and unsurprisingly, Eren is Not Okay with this. He wants to hulk out and take out the lady titan, but Levi's gang tell Eren to trust them and to trust the chain of command-- keep in mind, they're running deeper and deeper into titan territory and none of them really know why.

After much huffpuffwhatdoidooooo'ing, Eren decides to trust his new found Levi-team friends and keeps absconding. It ends up, the Scouting Legion was using Eren as bait to lure out any potential human-titans that might want him. They attempt to capture the lady titan, and everyone thinks they're going to succeed. But Shit Goes Down because nothing good is allowed to happen in this anime, Team-Levi minus Levi tell Eren to trust in them as they try to protect him from the lady titan, he trusts in them, and then they all die.

Yeah.

The only option for Eren at this point is to hulk the fuck out and take the lady titan down in hand-to-hand combat, because somehow this lady is damn good at hand-to-hand combat.

Eren loses despite his teary-eye'd shounen fury and realization that it's his fault all those people died in vain. The lady titan tears him out of his titan form and tries to abscond with him, but Mikasa and Levi are not down with that shit. They steal Eren back and fuckin' book it; not even bothering with trying to kill the female titan.

The incredibly brutalized and nearly dead Scouting Legion makes it back to the walls for protection forever scarred and with the full knowledge that the lady titan is still out there, waiting.

Unfortunately for the lady titan, Armin and his encounter with her gave him enough time to figure out her identity. I figured it out before him, because Annie's nose is my most favorite character in this whole series AND HOW WAS I NOT SUPPOSED TO NOTICE THAT CUTIE NOSE ON THAT BIGASS TITAN FACE HUH1?!!?!!?

The big plot twist is that Annie, one of the kids who had been training with Eren, Armin, and Mikasa all along was a titan. She's been their friend-- as much as a super anti social chick who doesn't talk much can be their friend. Needless to say, the betrayal felt is huge. Especially when considering how hardcore Eren trusts his friends. When Armin comes out with a plan for the military to capture her, Eren almost fucks it up and almost loses Mikasa and Armin, because he can't get over the fact that Annie, who taught him out to fight, is the female titan. Eventually, though, when he realized Mikasa and Armin would have to die for his inaction, he gets his shit together, and fights her. It's hardcore, super baller, and for once, Eren isn't losing.

Annie absconds. Thanks to Mikasa, she doesn't make it far-- but she does do some damage to the walls. While Annie encases herself in crystal and is captured, everyone else realizes what's inside the walls.

Since, you know, please please tell me you have been questioning how they got their in the first place. I mean, come on, it's like middle ages Europe but cleaner. There is no way they could build a 50 meter tall wall while titans were coming up all over their asses, let alone three of them. I mean, I know Germans are good at building walls, but not that good.

It's titans. The wall is harden-over, old old old titans. Everything is titans.

Not much of a conclusion is drawn from this horrible, crazyass realization, so we plow right into our next big plot points. Titans have been seen within wall Maria, despite all of the node towns remaining safe from attack.



A bunch of Scouting Leigon teams are sent out to investigate-- Eren's with Hanji, Levi's bestie partner compadre, and then he's not around much for a while.

Tons of drama happens, and a bunch of Eren's military trainee friends almost die-- Ymir, Christa, Connie, Reiner, and Bertoldt; but at the last minute, Eren + his squad show up at the last minute to save the day. All the teams meet back together and realize that, hey, there are actually no breeches in the wall at all?????????



How did the titans get there!?!??!?!? It is more mysteries. Mysteries that won't be solved because while the teams are recoperating on the wall ramparts, the Armored Titan and the Colossal Titan out themselves in the least dramatic manner imaginable. Well, the Armored Titan outs them-- the Colossal Titan just stands there awkwardly and sweats a lot, just like he's been doing in pretty much every conversation since the series began, because plot twist they're Reiner and Bertholdt respectively.

Reiner asks Eren to come with them to their home village, and understandably, Eren's like "what the fuck."

Well, he's a bit more cautious than that, because Reiner explains that if Eren comes with them, they'll never attack the walls again, despite the fact that it was their quest to wipe out humanity. Eren thinks about it for, like, three seconds, hmms hawwsss, and Reiner and Bertholdt promptly try to backpedal on Eren's prompting. It is wildly unsuccessful, because plot twist, Armin had already worked out that Bertholdt and Reiner were the Colossal and Armored titans.

Reiner, like Koji's mom, changes his mood as rapidly as the weather, so after trying to backpedal for, like, two seconds, decides that he's going to kidnap the shit out of Eren. Mikasa is a champ, senses what's up, and tries to kill the two before they can become titans and take Eren, but finds herself holding back, because dude they're alll like 15 and friends. This shit is hard.

Reiner and Bertholdt transform-- Bertholdt kidnapping Ymir (another one of their trainee friends who turned out to be a titan), and Reiner grabbing Eren and running. I know I keep mentioning Eren's loyalty to his friends, but it's a huge point. Like, his sense of betrayal here is what fuels his rage-- hell, he had once spoken to the two about his mom dying and how traumatic it was. He was talking to the two guys who killed her and thousands of others. Eren's completely riddled with disguise-- since he has a habit of dehumanizing people that he views as enemies, it's tough to do with someone he's viewed as a hero (Reiner) for all these years.

Reiner and Eren fight in titan form, and since nothing ever goes right in this series, Reiner wins. Him and Bertholdt make a quick get-away, and abscond past the wall into titan territory. Hannes meets up with depressed Mikasa and Armin, and sums up Eren's entire character: "While I've never seen him win, I've also never seen him give up when losing." Basically, he makes enough trouble as he can until someone comes to save him.

When Eren wakes up, he's limbless, weakened, and in a forest with Ymir, Bertholdt, and Reiner. He instantly tries to transform into a titan, but since his body is trying to heal him, he doesn't have the power to do it. It doesn't mean he doesn't try, though. Because this is Eren-- of course he's going to try. He's going to try and try and think about it and try some more. However, for once in his life, he makes a mature decision-- he'll try to gather as much information as possible before getting the fuck out.

Unfortunately, Eren fails miserably at getting information, and also loses Ymir as a potential ally-- she sides with Reiner and Bertholdt, and Eren gets pissy because Reiner is going insane from guilt. They realize they're being pursued, so Reiner and Bertholdt decide to move it move it-- Eren makes an attempt to take out Reiner with his nub arms, fails miserably, gets put in a choke hold, and passes out. Reiner puts him in a little papoose and they abscond-- that's where I'm taking Eren from.