Attack on Titan Episode 49 Review: Night of the Battle to Retake the Wall

Attack on Titan might not be coming back for a while, but boy oh boy, they gave us the best possible episode to hype us even more for what is about to come. That ending scene gave me chills.

Japanese Original Episode Title: 奪還作戦の夜

Plot

The Heads of the Military are gathered together in order to discuss what to do with the Titan transformation serum, after Hange failed to analyse its advanced formula. Erwin entrusts it to Levi and tells him that eventually he might need to use it to turn someone into a Titan. After Erwin reveals his plan of action to retake Wall Maria to the rest of his lieutenants, Levi tries to convince him to stay behind and let Hange take over as the Commander of the Scouts, but Erwin insists that he must be there when they find out what is hidden in the basement. The night before the mission begins, the Scouts are treated with an extraordinary meal that leads Eren and the gang into fighting to get the most meat. Eren, Mikasa, and Armin reminisce their past, what will happen in the future after they learn what’s inside the Jaeger’s basement and see the outside world. As the final operation to retake Wall Maria begins, the people of Stohess cheer and wish success to the Scouts for the first time ever. At Wall Maria we see Bertholt and Reiner standing on guard and before the episode ends we see a flash forward of Levi fighting with Eren and Mikasa.

Episode Highlights

Levi has the serum: After witnessing that scene I felt uneasy throughout the whole episode. Who knows how will this thing be used in the future? I am even scared of thinking the possibilities, especially after seeing that horrifying ending scene.

The marvelous fiesta before the mission: When the lieutenants mentioned that there will be meat, I instantly thought of Sasha going crazy about it and well, I was not disappointed by her reaction. She bit Jean, punched Marlo in the face, hit Mikasa’s boob and had to be tied up by Connie and Eren in order to calm down. At this point no one can argue that she is an animal. Also, the scene of Eren and Jean fighting made me smile so hard. They were waiting for someone to stop them but everyone was just like: ‘You know what, just leave them be’, until Levi comes in and is all like: ‘Oi, shut up, go to sleep and clean up you shits’. I love him.

The send-off: Oh my God. Am I the only one that got kind of emotional during that scene? Seeing the citizens cheering them up almost made me tear up. Plus, Erwin getting pumped and screaming back at them being all badass and then yelling ‘SUSUME!’ to the Scouts. God damn those feels.

The ending scene: I have no words for it. It was done in such a good way, I almost thought that my computer crashed or something. I watched that scene more than three times to get a grasp of all the things that were shown and I just wondered to myself every time, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

Themes & Trivia

More information about this episode’s production: So this episode had 15 Animation Directors and 52 key animators. What does this mean? It means that if the series were to continue this season, an extended production schedule would’ve led to a full on crash of the show.

In the anime industry it is not unusual to see episodes getting finished on the very day they air, which is how situations like this happen. Just so you can understand how rushed they were to finish this: 1 animation director is usual the standard case, 15 directors mean that they literally have to rush through everything without consistency or time to do all the fixes. Good productions have usually 10-15 animators, 20 maximum. 52 is a ridiculous amount of people that are just rushing to complete the job rather than allowing one person to work on a cut or the majority of it and really put their all into it. But we have to give it to Wit Studio because they could not have done any of this and just rushed the job ending up with everything looking really bad. They took the decision to go on a hiatus and focus all the team into producing this episode in order to deliver a quality outcome. They should be seen as an example for all the animation studios out there.

Information Available for Public Disclosure

Meat: After the fall of Wall Maria, there was a dramatic decrease in food production. Livestock in particular suffered due to requiring plentiful land. As a result, meat became expensive and occasions to eat it were scarce.

Comments

I really loved the scene of Levi trying to make Erwin retire so he won’t die in the battlefield, but seeing Erwin so willing to go there makes me think that his motivations have not been made very clear in the anime. Also, the scene of Zackly and Pixis talking about his creations killed me. ‘We can’t show that repulsive display in the public’, ‘You don’t know art when you see it’.

And one last thing, Bertholdt and Reiner look like badass rappers ready to drop the sickest mixtape. Is it me or did Bertholdt got tanned?

Do you have the faintest damn clue what you are doing?!

Levi’s last line will haunt me until the spring season of 2019. I honestly can’t wait to see the insanity that is going to happen. Until then, be patient and SASAGEYO!

NEXT TIME: April 2019