Attack on Titan Volume 2

This review contains spoilers from the first part. 

“If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.” – Betty Reese. 

The first collection of Attack on Titan episodes had some problems: the dodgy translation from Funimation, for one thing, and the rather unsatisfactory scene selection. It has to be said that there are still some similar issues.

This second collection begins with the aftermath of the Battle of Trost, in which we discover that Eren Jaeger, the most fearsome hater of the man-eating race of Titans, actually has the ability to transform into a Titan. However, he has some difficulty controlling his ability, even lashing out at his best friend Mikasa Ackermann. Following the battle, Eren is offered – and gladly accepts – a post in the Survey Corps (or “Scouts” as it is called in this translation, for some reason). But first he must undergo a trial to decide whether it is best for humanity that he should be kept alive or killed.

When the court decides to keep Eren alive, he is trained by the Survey Corps/Scouts under the commander Erwin Smith, Captain Levi, and Hange. Together they experiment with Eren’s abilities, while Erwin creates the plan for the 57th Expedition. However, during the expedition several soldiers, including Eren’s intelligent friend Armin, come across another seemingly intelligent Titan of female appearance. Now they have another deadly opponent to deal with.

As in the last collection, the story is good, the action and horror is gripping, and the animation is great. If you are new to Attack on Titan then this whole collection is great. However, if you are already familiar with the story from Crunchyroll or with the original manga, you cannot help but get annoyed with all the things that the Funimation writers have translated differently. For example, there is a section where Hange tells Eren about her experiments on two Titans that she calls Sonny and Beane, but in this anime “Beane” is spelt “Bean”, which is not that big a deal, but “Sonny” becomes “Sawney” for no reason I can fathom.

There is also an error on the front cover, if you want to get pedantic. If you look in the top-right corner you will see it says: “Part Two Episodes 14-26″. That makes it 13 episodes. However, in this collection there are only 12. Now admittedly the missing episode is Episode 13.5, which is a clip show summarising the story up to the events in the Battle of Trost, but if you do not include that episode then that doesn’t make this collection the full 13 episodes. Even then, if you look at the title screens of each episode, it shows you the number of the episode, and the last episode is No. 25, so there isn’t even an “Episode 26” – at least not yet. The series ends with a bit of a cliff-hanger. Given that the manga is still being written and how popular Attack on Titan is, it would be insane not to make more episodes.

As in the first collection, there are lots of extras, similar to those in the first collection: clean opening and closing sequences; audio commentary on two of the episodes; the Fly, Cadets, Fly! OVA anime; an “Eyecatch Gallery” showing the stills between the two parts of each episode with translations of the text in them; the American trailer; and a documentary about the series recorded at the Anime Expo in the USA. 

I do personally prefer the Crunchyroll translation of Attack on Titan over this one, but if you are new to the series, then this version is still a decent collection.