4 out of 5

Sometimes we get chapters and chapters that are one long battle; sometimes this stuff is so compressed that I have to keep flipping back and forth through pages to make sure I’m following the story threads – threads that (translation aside, though it reads well) are worked in in a way where we can sense conversations and thoughts are happening between panels, and we’re only “hearing” the conclusions / outcomes of those. While I think some of this is accidental, and while this can also be a very bad way to experience a story – by locking you out of too much of the narrative – the experience of seeing Isayama’s skills as a writer and artist grow over these chapters is exciting, and he’s growing into this storytelling ability as well. So it’s imperfect; it’s also incredibly rewarding, as the context is there once you realize you’re not going to be handheld through the details. This is why AoT’s world is much richer than that of many of its genre peers.

So we open with a very morally sticky interrogation sequence, and newly disseminated information regarding the royal family, with Hajime edge-of-your-seat toggling between different conversations, never really manipulative so much as divvying up the most exciting but also logical way to relate this information; drip-fed because of the denseness as much as rearranging for impact.

Plans are made to sneak Eren and Historia around the MPs, as that is currently the conflict: those in the walls are being pitted against the survey crew. Inevitably this goes wrong, and things unfurl into a chase sequence in the back half. Here we start to decompress again, but it’s well-earned after the talking heads; unfortunately, some of the action is still a bit sketchy-inscrutable at points, and it’s not always clear what Hajime intends to indicate with some points of focus. A Big Bad from Levi’s past is introduced; this feels deserving of a bit more build up than it gets, as Hajime tries to juggle the background during the action and it’s not especially convincing. But because some events here tie back into the themes being debated during the interrogation, there’re story rewards, alongside this section being pretty tense, despite the above criticisms.