Parallel world Manga Artist

Chapter 341: God Tier

From six o’clock onward, Yuki Tanaka could no longer suppress her restlessness.

Much like the situation in Rei’s previous life, Attack on Titan had attracted more female fans than male fans in Japan. Female fans were not the primary merchandise buyers but they were the dominant force in online discussion and a significant contributor to viewership ratings.

For a veteran ACGN fan of over ten years like Yuki, finding a genuinely exceptional anime was not a common occurrence. Since last Thursday she had essentially been counting down the days.

She spent the afternoon in fan group chats with other Titan viewers, argued with the increasingly rare anti-fans and trolls on the forums, and posted an update on her social feed. At 7:50, the barbecue and drinks she had pre-ordered arrived at her door.

"I hope tonight’s plot will not be too heartbreaking again."

She unwrapped the foil. Eight o’clock.

The home shopping programme on Ion TV ended and the opening theme began with its integrated branded advertising. There was no helping it. Ad placements during the Attack on Titan broadcast slot commanded some of the highest rates in Japan’s television market. This was part of why the clean Blu-ray releases still had a significant market.

Then the screen transitioned.

The opening gave flashback close-ups of the charging soldiers. What they had wanted to write before they died. Their faces in their final moments.

Then the Beast Titan’s controller, revelling as he crushed rocks in his fists.

Yuki did not have positive feelings about this character. When Reiner and Bertholdt caused harm, the internal struggle was visible. The humanity underneath their actions was present even when the actions were indefensible. With this controller, none of that was visible.

The smoke from the signal flares drifted across the open field. The soldiers who had survived the first wave of impacts continued their charge with fear on their faces, firing green smoke signals continuously.

The controller looked down at them.

"How pitiful. To never learn from the mistakes of history. It’s a tragedy how King Reiss stole their memories of the world. That’s why they’re repeating the same mistakes.

In the end, they’ll send every last person in the walls, down to the children and elderly, on a suicide charge. Saying if they’re going to die, they may as well die proud."

A pause.

"It’s bullshit."

He crushed another boulder in his grip.

"I crushed it into dust? What’s gotten into me?"

Another voice from somewhere within the Beast Titan’s vicinity.

"Why are you getting worked up? You’re not like your father, right? You’ve gotta try to enjoy things. So let’s turn them all into proud little chunks of meat!"

"The second volley is coming! Fire!"

The debris rained down.

"Like I said... How is firing those things going to help you? All that screaming... What good is it going to do you?!"

The Survey Corps squad Erwin had led was eliminated.

"Aww, you poor things."

Yuki’s blood pressure was rising steadily.

Shirogane-sensei. Take him down. Right now.

At that exact moment the BGM shifted tempo.

The Beats titan controller’s internal monologue, transmitted to the audience through the animation:

"Hmm? What’s that? My Titans have fallen."

Then Levi was already inside his perimeter.

From inside the green smoke, a steel wire fired and pierced the Beast Titan’s skin.

Then Levi emerged.

Gritted teeth. Killing intent thick in his eyes. Moving directly toward the Beast Titan’s face at a speed the screen could barely contain.

Yuki heard her own heartbeat.

The production quality of this sequence was visible in every frame. Higher capital investment and a stronger production lineup had produced a visual experience in a different category from what had come before.

In one exchange, Levi attacked the arm until it lost mobility. Ultra-high-speed movement. Storyboarding of extreme difficulty. Combined with the perfectly timed BGM, Yuki was completely absorbed within thirty seconds.

She usually resisted associating anime with art. Anime was a commercial product, a form of entertainment. The conflation was a category error she found slightly precious.

Watching this sequence, she could not avoid the word.

"I need to watch out for a single soldier?"

His subordinate’s voice, confirming: "Yes. Captain Levi is dangerous."

"Is this Levi? My nape!

The Beast Titan attempted to cover the nape of its neck with its hand. Levi changed direction mid-air and drove both blades into its eyes instead.

What the...? I can’t see a thing! Did he take out my eyes?

Then shifted to its legs.

My legs!"

The controller inside had not finished processing what was happening when the creature lost balance entirely and crashed to the ground, its back fully exposed.

Levi’s voice, cold as always, cutting through the chaos:

"What happened to all that fun you were having?!"

"Tsk! I’ll harden! Shoot, I won’t make it!

"Come on, let’s try to enjoy this!"

The Colossal Titan crashed. Levi landed on its back, used both blades, and forcibly dragged the controller out from the nape: a blond middle-aged man, suddenly extracted from the creature that had been methodically destroying the Survey Corps from several kilometres away.

With a clack, the skewer in Yuki’s hand hit the tiled floor.

She did not notice.

Precisely because she had been watching anime for over ten years, she could understand the caliber and artistic value of what she had just witnessed. A battle sequence lasting less than thirty seconds. The specific achievement of it. What it had taken to produce animation at that standard.

Her heart was still thumping. Her mouth was dry. She had stood up without deciding to, and there was nobody in the room to say anything to. Her eyes did not leave the screen.

"This production is too incredible."

After thinking for a long time, those were the only words she could produce.

She had expected the Beast Titan to be defeated by Levi in this episode. She had held Shirogane-sensei’s pre-arc promise and counted on it. What she had not expected was the specific quality of the sequence. How satisfying it was. How far beyond the already exceptional standard the animation had reached.

She had a high emotional threshold. Ten years of watching anime had calibrated it significantly above average. And she was standing in her living room unable to control herself.

It was not that Shirogane-sensei’s work so completely outclassed everything else that no comparison was possible. It was that other Japan anime creators, even with a thousand Chapters of accumulated material behind them, could not build to a sequence that hit like this. This was not a matter of effort or dedication. It was a matter of creative talent.

The plot did not give her time to process this.

Levi crouched over the controller, who was damaged but still conscious.

"After transforming, if your body’s severely damaged, it’s too busy healing to let you transform. Isn’t that right?"

Silence from the controller.

"Hey, answer me. Learn some manners."

Levi looked around at the devastated field. The bodies. The horses.

’I can’t kill him yet. Isn’t anyone out there still alive? If they are, even on the brink of death, this injection will make them a Titan.

We can have them eat this guy and steal the Beast Titan’s power. Someone, just one... I can bring back to life.’

The controller, despite everything, was not finished.

From the side, moving at speed on all fours with a carrying apparatus strapped across its back, the Cart Titan appeared. Before Levi could fully react, the Cart Titan snatched the controller and moved away from the battlefield

"Hey... Where are you going?"

"Stop... All of you! Go kill him!"

The surrounding Titans responded to his voice command and moved toward Levi.

"It hurts! You’ve done it now, Levi! It hurts! But your weapons have to be all used up. With this, you’ll all be wiped out! That might’ve been a close one, but victory is ours!"

Yuki’s expression froze.

Huh.

The controller had escaped. After everything. After Erwin. After the charge. After Levi’s sequence. The controller was gone.

The scene shifted to the open ground where the charge survivors remained.

Floch, one of the few still breathing, looked around at what was left.

"Why... am I... alive? The others... Hey! Is anyone else alive?!"

His expression carried something that was not relief. It was the expression of someone who had survived something they had not expected to survive and did not yet know what to do with that fact.

The scene shifted to the other battlefield.

Eren, Armin, and the remaining Corps members were facing the Colossal Titan. The creature was still releasing superheated steam. Nobody could get close.

One of the Corps members looked at Armin.

"Hey, Armin... I think having Eren escape is the best we can do."

Armin did not respond immediately. He was watching the Colossal Titan carefully.

"He’s thinner."

"Huh?"

"The Colossal Titan has gotten a little skinnier. It’s just like Hange said. The Colossal Titan is weak in a battle of attrition.

Remember Eren’s experiments. He could only transform up to three times. If that’s the case for a 15-meter Titan, a 60-meter one might be less efficient. And there’s his steam attack, too. I bet it’s consuming everything except his skeleton to produce that steam."

"So what are you saying? Armin..."

"I have a plan. You all need to draw Reiner away. Eren and I will defeat Bertholdt ourselves. The two of us can win and I’m going to prove it."

"All right. Leave Reiner to the rest of us."

"Took long enough, dummy. I really thought we were goners."

How, Yuki thought. How do you defeat the Colossal Titan with two people when it can cook anyone who gets close.

Eren and Armin moved toward the Colossal Titan separately.

Eren said quietly: "I don’t know why, but when it comes to taking back freedom... strength flows through me."

Armin, almost to himself:

"If this plan goes well, I... I won’t get to look at the sea. For some reason, when I think of the outside world... courage flows through me."

There it is.

Yuki understood what the plan was before Armin said another word.

The scene cut briefly. Then Armin found Eren and spoke to him directly.

"I know it’s a plan I thought up myself, but its success mostly depends on how long I can hold out for."

Eren’s expression shifted.

"Armin, don’t tell me you’re..."

"Eren... Sorry, but I can’t die till I look at the sea. So I’ll have to call it quits before it gets out of hand. The rest is up to you."

He said it with a smile.

"Y-You know, because I’m just not a hero."

"No... You’re wrong... The Armin I know is..."

"Eren... You should know. We promised to go to the sea together, right? Have I ever lied to you in my life?"

A pause.

"So no matter what happens, stick to my plan till the end."

Yuki put down her barbecue skewer with deliberate care, making sure it landed on the table this time.

"Shirogane-sensei. Are you even human."

In an instant Yuki understood where the plot was going.

She had watched anime for over ten years. She knew the specific grammar of these moments. A character saying they would not die before a significant action. A character explaining they would retreat before taking a fatal injury. A character saying they were not brave, not a hero, not someone special.

These were not reassurances. Every single phrase Armin had just delivered was a death flag. Looking back across ten years of watching anime, saying these things before a major battle was the equivalent of a deathbed declaration dressed up as optimism.

I still have dreams to achieve.

I will act according to the situation and will not be reckless.

I am just not a hero.

Have I ever lied to you in my life.

Every one of them. The complete vocabulary of a character who had already made their decision and was saying goodbye without calling it that.

The most crucial phrase in Attack on Titan: See the ocean.

The promise between Eren and his best friend Armin that had spanned their entire upbringing. A simple wish that required a massive sacrifice to approach even one step closer.

Something like this, a view that Yuki, who lived in a coastal city, could see any day she chose, required the characters in this story to give their lives just for the chance of reaching it.

At some point Yuki’s eyes had turned red.

Eren looked at his best friend with a complex expression. He sensed what was coming. But he was not indecisive about it.

This was a battlefield. Others could sacrifice themselves. The commander could sacrifice himself. The fallen recruits could sacrifice themselves.

Why couldn’t Armin?

Yuki might pray for Shirogane-sensei to give Armin a good ending. But if Eren, out of personal selfishness, tried to dissuade Armin with even a single word at this moment, the characterisation of the protagonist would be completely destroyed.

If Armin had a viable battle plan and Eren talked him out of it because he could not bear to lose his friend, who would be the next person to use their body as a shield against the Colossal Titan’s attack?

Eren said nothing to stop him.

Then Eren slipped and fell from the wall. He dropped into the hole in Wall Maria that the Colossal Titan had kicked open five years ago, his body blocking the breach.

Is he out of stamina? Yuki frowned. Or is this part of the plan?

In the animation, Bertholdt read Eren’s fall as the result of exhaustion and concussion. A fighter who had nothing left. He dismissed it.

Armin roared and charged at the Colossal Titan.

His ODM Gear cables fired and anchored into the Colossal Titan’s muscle. He hung in the air connected to the creature’s body by steel wires.

Bertholdt looked down at this former comrade and best friend with something close to pity.

"Armin, you’ve done well."

He released everything. Massive waves of superheated steam erupted from the Colossal Titan’s body. The heat was not a temperature a human body could survive. Everything in the immediate vicinity was being evaporated and destroyed.

Armin did not let go.

Yuki’s mouth was hanging open.

A heat gale of hundreds or thousands of degrees. What kind of willpower was this. How was this physically possible to endure even for seconds.

But Armin had worked out the mechanism. While the Colossal Titan was releasing steam it could not move. As long as he did not release the wires, the Colossal Titan would not stop releasing heat. It would keep consuming itself. Keep exhausting its remaining mass and stamina.

As long as he held on.

Bertholdt watched, his expression carrying the specific pity of someone who had genuinely cared about this person.

"Armin, is this your stubbornness? Is this how you die after racking your brains for a way to resist? If it really ends like this, I’ll put you out of your misery."

Armin’s clothes began to burn.

"Endure it. I can’t let go yet."

His consciousness was still holding.

"My dreams, my life, everything... everything I can cast aside."

The wires were beginning to melt from the heat. Around the Colossal Titan, the air itself was becoming void. Everything was being evaporated and blown away.

"If it’s Eren, he can definitely..."

"He can definitely..."

"See the ocean for me!"

The steel wires melted completely. Around the Colossal Titan there was nothing left. A wide shot showed the absolute void surrounding the creature where everything had been consumed by the superheated steam.

Including Armin.

But Armin’s actions had exhausted an enormous portion of the Colossal Titan’s remaining stamina. The creature that had been untouchable was now at its weakest point. Immobile. Depleted. No steam remaining to protect it.

Yuki covered her mouth. Tears were falling and she was not trying to stop them.

Seeing the ocean. This had been Armin and Eren’s dream since the first episode of the first season. Not until the sixth episode of Season Three’s second half did the tens of millions of Attack on Titan viewers in Japan understand how much weight that phrase had been carrying all along.

Now came the second half of the plan.

Eren could harden his Titan shell and then exit the transformation, leaving the hardened shell behind as a physical structure.

The actual content of the plan was this: Eren had pretended to fall from the wall, feigning exhaustion and concussion. Then he had hardened the Titan shell around himself.

While the Colossal Titan was releasing steam and could not see the details of Eren’s Titan body clearly through the heat distortion, Eren put on his ODM Gear inside the hardened shell.

The moment the Colossal Titan stopped releasing steam, when its body was at its most depleted and most vulnerable but could finally be physically approached, Eren launched from inside the hardened shell in a surprise attack from the rear.

And dragged the controller out from within the nape.

The price of this plan was Armin’s life.

As Eren’s attack connected and the truth of the strategy became clear, Bertholdt understood what had happened. What Armin had actually done. What he had been doing the entire time.

The flashback arrived. A younger Eren. A younger Armin. The childhood that had built everything that followed.

Eren looked at what was left of his best friend, barely breathing on the rooftop.

"I’ve always known that you are braver than anyone."

Eren grabbed Bertholdt.

Then he looked at Armin.

What was lying on the rooftop nearby no longer looked like a person. The body was charred beyond recognition.

The ending theme began to play.

The same song that had closed every episode of this season. Yuki had heard it many times. Hearing it this week produced something different. Something considerably more miserable than any previous week had produced.

Her mind had gone blank. Her eyes were full of tears and she was not addressing that.

Commander Erwin’s sacrifice in the previous episode. Armin’s devotion in this one. Together they had elevated the Battle to Retake Wall Maria to a height the series had not previously reached. Everything she wanted to say about what she had just watched eventually converged into a single thought.

God-tier episode.

...

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