For those of you who have noticed, the last episode of Attack on Titan I reviewed was episode 7. Since this episode is a clip show, I decided to why not review 2/3 of it since I basically reviewed 1/3 of the clip show already? So here it is my review of Attack on Titan Eps 8-13 in one single clip show review.
But before talking about the meat of the entire clip show, just like all clip shows, they cut some scenes just for the sake of running time but they were able to manage to tell Attack on Titan's first 13 episodes in under 30 minutes without the help of a background narrator. The only thing they cut in its entirely in this clip show is the scene wherein Eren is put on a trial after his commanding officers learned that he is a human with an ability to transform into a Titan. The only thing worth talking about this scene is that Eren is not aware of his powers and that he will do everything just to save his friends. Oh, and humans are afraid of something that they can't explain, which is quite natural.
Now about the clip show itself, the clip show feels like we are watching the show in Eren's perspective, which is a good thing since it put a lot of emphasis on things that is running in his head during the duration of the series. The scene wherein he struggles to fight for his life while inside the Titan's belly is one powerful scene. For the first time, Eren remembered the carnage of the Titan attacks a bit closer that he fights for his survival, which leads us to his first Titan transformation.
The first Titan transformation scene is really great. The smoke effects and how Eren reached his hand towards the sky just to get out inside the Titan's belly is really fantastic. It didn't help that even though he is smarter compared to other Titans, the only thing that's running in his head during that time is to destroy all Titans. His desire for destruction also reflected in the earlier minutes of their mission to block the gate with one giant boulder that Eren in his Titan form will carry.
This mission scene also gave us some great character development for Armin. For the past few episodes, I only see Armin as that kid with a girly voice and the one who sucks in battle. Even though he is someone that you can't consider a fighter, his wit and intelligence is his strongest points, giving him higher chances of survival. During the time that Eren is in his Titan form, it's Armin's initiative that saved him from his hallucination. Instead of just standing there and watch the Titans devour everything, what he did is applied his knowledge about Titan anatomy just to locate Eren's human body so that he can wake him up from his sleep.
This then lead us to Eren's hallucination of living in his old village with his family. That scene is probably the weakest scene in this entire story arc because it feels like they just throw all of Eren's motivation out of the way so that we can have some drama. To be honest, the drama is half bad even though it feels kinda forced sometimes. I get that Eren wants to have his normal life back but all of his character development about survival and him killing all the Titans were forgotten in this short scene, only for Armin to remind him about it.
The climax scene is really fantastic, it didn't help that this scene is accompanied by the fantastic music that compliments well with the beautiful animation sequences. Just seeing Eren carry that large boulder while the show's OST is playing is just one epic sight to see. To wrap this up, what's interesting in this episode is that they put a lot of emphasis with the scenes involving Eren's father asking his son to "master this skill" or something along those lines. The episode ends with Eren giving his response to Commander Erwin and Captain Levi about his decision if he will join the Survey Corps. At the end, he joins the group.
