On the last Friday of April, the temperature had already begun to rise. The air felt heavy, filled with that dry, restless heat that seemed to announce the early arrival of summer.
The orange glow of sunset dyed all of Tokushima, spreading warm light over the streets as the evening crowd poured out of offices, filling sidewalks, stations, and train cars with the familiar exhaustion of the end of the workday.
On the train, it was easy to hear groups of friends discussing the topics of the moment. Among everything being talked about, three names appeared with almost unavoidable frequency: the drama AD, the anime Shingeki no Kyojin, and Seiun TV's variety show, The Cuckold Investigation Bureau.
Yuka Morikawa had her earphones in, listening to Guren no Yumiya, the opening theme of Shingeki no Kyojin.
Of course, the official soundtrack had not been released on any platform yet. What played in her ears was an instrumental fan version, painstakingly reconstructed, performed, and shared by obsessive fans of the series without any commercial purpose. Even getting her hands on that file had required her to practically beg inside a closed fan group.
Even so, as the fierce melody echoed in her ears, Yuka could not help looking forward to the day when the Blu-rays, the soundtrack CDs, and the paid digital downloads would finally be released. At the same time, she felt an almost absurd admiration for Sora's talent.
How could someone be so gifted at directing anime and still compose music that sounded this divine?
If Kantoku Sora ever decided to leave animation behind and become a musician, he would probably become a dominant figure in Japan's music industry as well.
After getting off the train and returning to her small rented apartment, Yuka fed her fat, lazy orange cat, ordered dinner on her phone, and sat down to wait for the delivery to arrive.
This week, she had learned from experience. First, she would eat. Only then would she watch the anime.
The minutes passed one by one. When the clock finally struck eight at night, the opening theme of Shingeki no Kyojin's fifth episode began to play. Almost at the exact same moment, as if fate itself were playing some cruel joke on her, the dinner that had been delayed by half an hour arrived at her door.
Yuka was speechless for a few seconds, but still gave the delivery rider a five-star rating.
It was not as if waiting an extra thirty minutes to eat was some unbearable torture.
The problem was something else.
She simply hoped that this week's episode would not include another bloody "gourmet" scene like the one from the first episode.
With a sigh, Yuka shook her head and opened her dinner while the opening was still playing on the television.
The fifth episode picked up exactly where the previous one had ended, with Eren suddenly encountering the Colossal Titan on top of the wall.
Under the attack of that enormous creature, Eren's companions scattered in every direction, trying to escape. Only Eren moved against the tide, charging forward as he ran and leapt across the enemy's arm, dozens of meters long, heading straight for its weak point: the nape of its neck.
The Colossal Titan released steam from every part of its body. Its massive, scorching limbs possessed enough power to destroy everything around them with a single movement.
Using the steel cables of his vertical maneuvering equipment, Eren propelled himself between the wall and the titan's body, shifting directions in midair with almost desperate speed. He looked like a tiny mosquito, fragile enough to be killed in a single blow, dancing recklessly on the edge of death.
The image spun. Sky and earth inverted. From Eren's perspective, the camera shifted between the sky, the titan, the ground, and the buildings, creating a violent, electrifying sense of vertigo.
When the boy, consumed by rage and the vow to avenge his mother, finally swung his blade toward the Colossal Titan's nape, a burst of steam exploded before his eyes, blurring everything.
And then, when the smoke dispersed, that fifty-meter-tall giant, whose weight was impossible to even imagine, had simply vanished.
"Huh?"
Yuka almost let the rice fall out of her mouth.
What kind of development was that?
A fifty-meter monster.
Disappearing into thin air.
Her mind, accustomed to consuming fiction, immediately began searching for absurd explanations. Alien spatial-jump technology? Some kind of teleportation magic, like in fantasy anime?
But Shingeki no Kyojin did not seem like the kind of work that would include elements like that.
She did not understand.
But it was so good.
Yuka took another spoonful of rice and kept staring at the screen. After the Colossal Titan vanished, the wall had once again been torn open by a huge hole, and a swarm of titans was beginning to rush through the breach.
Her scalp tingled.
In the first episode, the fall of Wall Maria at the hands of the Colossal Titan had already caused an absurd number of deaths. If this second wall was broken through as well…
Yuka looked down at the dinner in front of her and, almost instinctively, began eating faster.
The next sequence did not disappoint her.
The titans invaded the city, and the massacre began again.
Every available soldier was hastily summoned to hold back the invasion. The brutal scene of eating and being eaten returned before the audience's eyes, with no attempt to soften its cruelty.
And yet, the newly graduated soldiers from Eren's class, the same ones who had just fought titans, were still full of confidence.
They had spent four years in the Training Corps.
Four years sharpening a blade for this single moment.
The titans had broken in?
Then they just had to drive them all back out, one by one.
The music swelled, intense and grand. The animation took on a wild, almost arrogant energy. Around Eren, his classmates crossed the sky with confident expressions, flying over the rooftops as though they had finally found their battlefield.
Yuka felt her blood heat up as well.
That was it. Exactly. Now this felt like a real battle anime.
Attack.
Crush those titans.
Then, a massive titan, like a whale leaping out of the water, jumped nearly ten meters into the air and swallowed one of Eren's companions together with his sword.
Blood splashed. The scene was fast, direct, and brutal.
Yuka's mouth fell open.
Huh?
That was it?
No. Maybe that character had simply been too weak.
Now it would be the protagonist's turn to take off.
Yuka immediately understood what the production team was doing. They had to show a rookie getting crushed first so that, when Eren made his move and swept through the battlefield, the audience could truly feel the weight of the protagonist's strength.
She understood.
They dared to do that to Thomas…
As expected, Eren moved right away.
Yuka's eyes shone with anticipation.
The vertical maneuvering equipment at Eren's waist released jets of steam. Hooks shot out, steel cables fastened, and his entire body launched forward at a speed beyond human limits, flying straight toward the titan that had devoured his companion Thomas.
He wanted revenge.
The world spun. The hundred-meter distance seemed to vanish in the blink of an eye. The rapid cuts, the shifting angles, and the speed of the movement were so intense that Yuka, who did not even play games very often, felt slightly dizzy from the three-dimensional motion.
Even so, she could not take her eyes off the screen.
Then another titan suddenly leapt into the air.
One bite.
And Eren's leg was torn off.
His body lost balance and crashed violently onto the roof of a house, shattering tiles and scattering debris around him.
Yuka froze.
She rubbed her eyes, but the scene remained the same.
Eren, the male lead, in the fifth episode of the anime, during his first real battle, had lost his leg to a titan and was lying on a rooftop, gravely injured, like an abandoned animal waiting for death.
What kind of joke was this?
Was this the protagonist of a battle anime?
Armin, at that moment, was overwhelmed by terror.
Across the street, he saw Eren with his leg severed, sprawled across the roof, breathing with difficulty and unable to move. The horror and brutality of the species known as titans was transmitted to Armin with crushing force.
And it reached Yuka on the other side of the screen as well.
Suffocation. Terror. Fear.
This was the pressure of a superior creature.
Yuka barely dared to breathe loudly, as though afraid she might draw the attention of the titans inside the television.
In the anime, an old titan with a thick beard and a vacant expression slowly walked toward Armin, who was frozen in fear.
Armin only stared, unable to react, at the miserable state of his best friend. By the time he finally came back to his senses, the old titan's face was already far too close.
Before he could respond, Armin was grabbed by the leg. The titan held him the way a human might hold a chicken drumstick, lifting him toward its mouth with grotesque ease.
Yuka's eyes widened.
What was happening?
The protagonist had lost his leg, and now an important supporting character like Armin was going to be sacrificed too?
Kantoku Sora, what are you thinking?
If you give such important characters this kind of fate, how are you planning to continue the story afterward?
Where was the protagonist's protection?
Where was the hidden power?
There was nothing.
Nothing at all.
If Eren had none of that, why did he get to be the protagonist?
Without any trump card, even she could be in his place. Wasn't it just a matter of getting your leg bitten off by a titan and lying there waiting to die?
The instant that thought crossed her mind, the story itself slapped her across the face.
Because if it had been her, she really would not have been able to do it.
In the anime, Armin had already been dropped onto the old titan's tongue, but he had not yet been swallowed.
And then Eren, his consciousness blurred, remembered his childhood. He remembered when he and Armin, still children, had leafed through old books together and talked about what might exist beyond the walls: deserts, oases, the sea.
Since that time, their shared dream had been to leave the walls behind and see the ocean they only knew from the pages of a book.
The scene changed, and the memory ended.
At the very moment Armin was about to be swallowed, a hand grabbed his.
It was Eren.
Yuka's eyes burned, and tears began to spill before she even realized it.
With one leg gone, Eren braced one hand against the titan's teeth and gripped Armin's arm with the other. Roaring with all his strength, he pulled his friend free and threw him out of the monster's mouth.
And then he remained there in his place.
Inside the titan's mouth.
"Armin… it was because you told me about the sea that I…"
Eren struggled, looking at Armin.
Perhaps those were only sincere words escaping him in the moment before death.
If he had never known that there was a sea beyond the walls, perhaps he would never have joined the Training Corps. Perhaps he would never have reached this day. Perhaps he would not be about to die.
In that instant, was he blaming Armin?
Maybe.
Even so, he still risked his own life to save his friend.
As a protagonist, Eren's strength was insufficient. Almost shamefully so.
But as a protagonist, that willingness to throw himself into death without hesitation made Yuka cry and like him even more.
The titan closed its mouth.
Armin let out a desperate scream as he watched his best friend die to save him.
The voice actor's extreme emotional performance, the brutality of the image, the shot of Eren's hand reaching toward Armin before being severed by the titan's teeth and flung away…
Yuka looked down at the dinner she had forgotten to finish, still half untouched, and felt a wave of nausea rise in her stomach.
This plot was too outrageous.
What was AD killing its heroine compared to this?
In the fifth episode of Shingeki no Kyojin, the protagonist had been devoured directly by a titan.
Now this was a ridiculous plot in the best possible sense.
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