Concerning.. Yes. Quite concerning.. In the midst Eren’s rumbling, we find ourselves putting together fragmented parts of the show through the eyes of side characters. This episode’s good moments is cut short by awkward pacing and transitions. Although, the ending scenes may have made up for the fist 3/4’s of the episode.

Let’s just forget about the Conny situation..

When it comes to Connie wanting to feed Falco to his pure titan mother, the show does a really good job presenting the lead up to Armin’s sacrifice. Armin has once again, made a really good calculated risk in trying to sacrifice himself, in order to snap Conny out of his making a really huge mistake. There is no guarantee that his mother would be living in any kind of peace. Tact on the fact that Gabi, Reiner and many other Marleyan soldiers would forever resent Connie and his mother.

The first half of the episode was really wonky..

Just writing down on paper, this seems like a really great subplot, but the execution of was kind of meh.. At the beginning of the episode, we got a summary of what Hange and Levi have been doing all this time. Then, we suddenly got the intro. I just thought, this was an awkward part of the episode to insert it in.. It would have been better to just start off with the intro song.. Next thing you know, Connie is sitting down with Armin like “I almost screwed up. I want my mother to be proud.” Then, we get the Annie pie situation out of nowhere. It really felt like we were getting an abridged version of the show. Although, I do like that the Hange and Levi scene with Commander Magath and Pieck setting up the ending of the episode.

Oh, what a convenient coincidence

After, Connie tries to throw Falco in his mother’s mouth, the four: Armin, Conny, Gabi and Falco, decide to eat some food in a festival? Guess what? They sit down right next to Annie and have a somewhat awkward, funny moment about Annie trying to stuff herself with pie. As Hitch comes back with some pie for Annie, she leaves a message for Hitch, that she went ahead with them.

What a weird way for these characters to coincidentally meet up out of nowhere. Also, Falco and Connie are just cool like nothing happened.. I guess I can understand. Falco is just a kid and really has no choice anyways. Gabi, did just go through a whole character development of forgiving and understanding that she was radicalized. Honestly, Conny has always been trustworthy. Armin is the brains and the glue to make this all work. The characters make a lot of sense within the actions they take, but the storytelling process has been extremely lazy.

Was the big payoff at the episode’s end worth it?

Sometimes, the best way to move along a plot and turn the perception of the viewer, is to skip important events and handshake deals that happened in the past—by showing the future. By the episode’s end, the new cast of heroes is revealed after Hange, Levi, Commander Magath and Pieck make a deal to unite with Armin, Mikasa, Jean, Conny, Gabi, Falco, Annie, Onyankapon and Yelena.

Regardless of what people think about these in-between episodes of “Eren’s start of the rumbling” to “the assembly of Marleyan and Paradis Island soldiers”; from this point on, people are going judge the show more heavily on from this point. I can give a pass to the writer for conveniently making the characters meet up.

Last Thoughts

There were clearly 2 great moments in the show, Armin jumping into the Conny’s mom’s mouth and Jean getting swallowed up by the Cart Titan. These are 2 times, you can feel a gut-wrenching tone shift, that snaps the viewer outside of the “viewing expectation.” Other than that, getting all of these characters to conveniently meet up, isn’t all that surprising. Ultimately, the show will be judged by what happens with Eren’s rumbling and not these little side events that no one is going to remember. Still, I wish the show’s creators could have made the transition seem more natural and smoother.

What do you guys think?