Whether forced into it or accepting it willingly, what kind of world would emerge once human beings became livestock raised in captivity?
At first, Attack on Titan still carried a strange calm. There was an almost deceptive ease to its opening, as though the horror implied by the premise could still be observed from a distance. After all, it was only people being eaten, wasn't it? Ancient records were full of stories about cannibalism. What was so terrifying about that?
But that false sense of calm vanished quickly.
When the Survey Corps returned in defeat from their first expedition beyond the walls, an old woman stared in utter terror at what her son's comrades had brought back: a single severed arm, drenched in blood.
The moment Aoi saw it, her stomach tightened.
So this was what it meant to be eaten.
It was not an abstract word. It was not some distant horror. It meant being chewed alive, crushed between enormous teeth, swallowed piece by piece, until all that remained of a person was one arm.
Even then, Aoi felt disturbed, but not yet heartbroken. The scene was brutal, yes, but it had not reached the point of crushing her chest.
"My son… even if he didn't achieve anything directly, he still contributed to humanity's counterattack, didn't he?"
On the verge of collapse, the old woman clutched her son's severed arm and cried.
The answer she received was the commander's roar, a shout filled with guilt, frustration, and helplessness.
"No. This expedition… still produced no results at all!"
If the expedition had achieved nothing, then naturally, that woman's son had died for nothing as well.
That sequence opened a narrow crack into the cruelty of the Titans' world. And the remark from a resident inside the walls - "We pay taxes just to fatten the Titans outside" - cut even deeper.
Yet even in the face of such danger, Eren still wanted to join the Survey Corps.
Because he longed for freedom.
He wanted to free humanity from those walls that penned them in like livestock. He wanted to see with his own eyes what he had only read about in books: somewhere far beyond everything they knew, there was said to be a blue sea, vast and endless.
His conflict with his mother over that dream, followed by his father's strangely meaningful praise of his resolve, added more layers of tension to the story.
"When I come back from this house call, I'll tell you the secret of the basement."
That was what his father said as he held the key to that place.
By that point, the first episode had already planted an astonishing number of clues. Aoi did not fully understand the plot yet, but she could vaguely sense that many of those details had been placed there deliberately.
Then Armin appeared.
Mikasa, Eren, and Armin formed a childhood trio that carried an unease far too heavy for their age whenever they spoke of the Titans.
"I can't agree with people who believe that living inside these massive walls means we'll be safe forever," Armin said in a low voice. "Even if they haven't been destroyed for a hundred years, that doesn't prove they won't be destroyed today."
Another seed had been planted.
Outside the wall, a flash of golden light blazed.
Then the scene from the beginning of the episode returned: that enormous red Titan, its muscles exposed, bracing its hands against the top of the wall.
Only now, the feeling was completely different.
After all the buildup, after gaining even a faint understanding of this world and the relationship between humans and Titans, Aoi found that single shot terrifying. Especially when the red Titan kicked open the wall and the Titans outside poured in like a deranged tide.
Despair.
Aoi was completely pulled into the anime.
In that moment, she felt as if she were one of those fragile people running in panic through the streets inside the wall, trying to escape the Titans chasing after them to devour them.
The atmosphere of that world had reached her completely. The fear existed. The horror existed. The sense of powerlessness existed.
Then Aoi looked at the takeout on her desk.
A pork donburi glazed in rich, sweet sauce.
Roasted chicken wings.
The reddish shine of the sauce blended in her mind with the image on the screen: a Titan biting a human body in half, swallowing the upper torso while the legs still hung from its hand.
Suddenly, Aoi lost all appetite.
She thought that, after showing a little of the brutal relationship between humans and Titans, the story might offer a warmer scene, some kind of emotional breathing space.
What came next, however, was something she would never forget for the rest of her life.
The Colossal Titan's kick sent a massive chunk of the wall flying straight into Eren's house.
His mother was trapped beneath the wreckage, her leg crushed under a fallen beam.
Eren and Mikasa were still only children. Even together, they could not move the beam pinning Carla's leg.
But through the breach in the wall, a fifteen-meter female Titan slowly advanced toward Eren's mother.
"Hey… what kind of plot is this?"
Aoi clenched her fist.
Who said Kantoku Sora's new anime would continue the healing, warm style of Your Name and C?
Healing, my ass.
The protagonist's mother was about to be eaten.
Was this show really this hardcore?
"Eren, take Mikasa and run. Hurry!"
From beneath the rubble, his mother shouted angrily at the two children trying to save her.
"I want to run too! So hurry up and get out of there!" Eren roared back, desperate, but still unable to lift the beam from his mother's leg.
"Mommy's legs are already broken. Even if I get out, I won't be able to run. Do you understand?"
"I'll carry you!"
"Why won't you listen to your mother? At least this one last time, listen to me! If you stay here, all three of us will…"
The exchange between mother and son made Aoi's eyes widen.
The story was too suffocating. The images of Titans licking, biting, and swallowing people were so disturbing that she not only lost the desire to eat her pork donburi, she even felt the urge to throw up what she had already eaten.
Kantoku Sora, are you serious?
If this anime had scenes like this, why didn't the trailer show even a hint of them?
All the fans thought Attack on Titan was going to be an action anime, a battle story filled with cathartic excitement.
But where was the catharsis in this?
At the critical moment, Hannes of the Garrison descended from the sky. A cable at his waist shot into the ground, cutting into the scene like salvation.
Aoi immediately grew excited.
She still remembered the opening of the episode, when members of the Survey Corps surrounded a Titan outside the wall. Could Hannes actually be strong? Was he perhaps on the same level as those soldiers who flew through the air, twisted and turned with impossible agility, and slaughtered Titans with terrifying skill?
Aoi picked up a piece of pork and put it in her mouth.
Mm.
Delicious.
Go, Uncle Hannes.
Cut down that disgusting grinning Titan in a few clean moves.
That was what Aoi screamed inwardly.
"Mr. Hannes, take the children and run."
Carla begged her old friend to take Eren and Mikasa away, since they stubbornly refused to abandon her.
"Don't underestimate me, Carla. I'm going to kill that Titan. Then all three of you can be saved."
Hannes's face hardened with resolve. He looked at the female Titan drawing closer and drew the blades at his waist.
That soldier who spent his days drinking inside the walls, boasting idly, and slacking off during work hours was, after all, still a man with blood in his veins.
The scene made Aoi's gaze waver.
So cool.
Kantoku Sora really knew how to handle a sequence. In the end, middle-aged men were incredibly stylish.
Compared to that, Eren, with his reckless, hotheaded boyishness, was honestly exhausting to watch. He acted on emotion, shouted, struggled, and solved nothing.
Aoi picked up a chicken wing and began gnawing on it.
Hannes charged toward the Titan approaching Carla. In his mind, he was still thinking about how to kill it and repay the debt he owed to the woman who had once saved him.
But when he reached the Titan, the animation emphasized the difference between a man of one meter seventy and a creature fifteen meters tall.
The crushing pressure of that enormous body.
The glint of appetite in the Titan's eyes.
The strands of human flesh stuck between its teeth.
Hannes froze.
For just one second.
Then he sheathed his blades, turned around, and ran. With one child in each arm, he seized Mikasa and Eren, threw them over his shoulders, and fled as if his life depended on it.
Aoi froze too.
Huh?
Hannes, are you kidding me?
I trusted you so much. What are you doing?
Fight!
The Titan advanced step by step toward Carla.
The background music turned tragic.
"Eren! Mikasa! Live!"
Carla screamed with all her strength.
Her maternal instinct allowed her to accept Hannes's decision to abandon her. She knew it was the only way to save the children.
But when she saw Eren and Mikasa being carried farther away on his shoulders, she covered her mouth with one hand. Tears slipped out uncontrollably.
"No… don't leave me…"
The Titan pulled her from the rubble with both hands and lifted her toward its mouth.
At that moment, Carla's inner monologue was the scream of her humanity, the desperate cry of her instinct to survive.
The Titan's enormous mouth opened.
Carla struggled.
Then came the bite.
Blood scattered through the air.
Mikasa and Eren saw everything from Hannes's back.
They saw their mother struggle. They saw their mother devoured. They saw blood splatter across Eren's face.
The classic line appeared once more.
On that day, humanity remembered the terror of being ruled by the Titans. They remembered the humiliation of being trapped inside a birdcage.
Aoi sat motionless as the ending song began.
In her mouth, she was still holding a roasted chicken wing.
The texture of the meat and the seasoned aroma instantly dragged her mind back to Eren's mother, Carla.
That woman's despair, combined with the pain of a son watching his own mother die before his eyes, struck Aoi all at once.
A wave of nausea rose in her throat, but she forced it back and barely managed not to vomit.
After all, that food had been bought with money she had earned through hard work. Wasting it would be an insult to the version of herself who had struggled so seriously to earn it.
But even so…
Aoi had never imagined that one day an anime could destroy her worldview with just its first episode.
Attack on Titan.
What kind of anime was this?
Kantoku Sora, do you still remember what your previous TV anime was?
It was AD.
The difference in style between the two works was far too extreme.
And on top of that, the episode's cliffhanger was simply cruel.
Had Mikasa and Eren escaped?
What about Mikasa's father?
What the hell was that colossal Titan?
Why had humanity's walls remained unbroken for a hundred years, only for a red Titan to suddenly appear and destroy them?
The first episode was only a little over twenty minutes long, but it opened so many mysteries that Aoi felt as if her head could not process them all.
Although the bloody scenes had made her sick, they had also created within her a strange, indescribable fascination.
The more bizarre it was, the more brutal it became, the harder it was to look away.
She began waiting for the second episode with enormous anticipation.
On NatsuYume, once the broadcast of Attack on Titan ended, the fans who had followed Sora for a long time were completely stunned that night.
The story was too explosive. No one had expected this.
And casual anime viewers had their worldview shattered into pieces.
The plot of this anime was absurd enough to leave anyone speechless. Characters dying was nothing new, but dying like that within the narrative was far too horrifying.
"So Attack on Titan is actually this kind of bloody, grotesque anime? Is the main plot just watching humans get eaten?"
"Damn, I finished the first episode and I'm completely stunned. Seriously, I can't even describe how shaken I am."
"The emotional direction in this anime is insane. Especially the way it tests humanity. Hannes loses his courage when faced with the pressure of the female Titan and turns around to run, but at least he doesn't freeze completely and still takes the two children with him. Carla screams for the children to run, then covers her mouth and quietly cries for them not to leave her behind. Neither character had much screen time, but those details are unreal."
"When I put myself in Carla's perspective, all I felt was despair."
"So this is how farm animals have always seen us humans?"
"My God, how did Kantoku Sora's new anime end up with this kind of style?"
"That old thief Sora is even brilliant at cutting episodes. I genuinely feel sick. Would it have killed them to make two more minutes and show what happens next?"
"How is this anime supposed to continue? How do you even kill Titans like that? I saw one get hit by cannon fire and still regenerate flesh. How is humanity supposed to fight immortal monsters?"
"What will the second episode do? What can Eren even do? His mother was killed. Is he going to awaken something next episode?"
"Awaken what? He's just a kid. It's obvious the first episode was only introducing the world."
"Does anyone understand what it feels like to watch the first episode of Attack on Titan while eating a midnight snack?"
"Old thief Sora, release more episodes! You ended it there and now I'm suffering."
patre0n ImmortalEmperor