Attack on Titan Episode 9 “Missing Left Arm” Preview Images and Synopsis

Mortal combat erupted with the Titans in Trost District. Eren was able to gain titan powers for himself even after being eaten right in front of Armin’s face. Because of that, a lot of soldiers that would have otherwise died have come back alive. He was saved in the end and brought back by Mikasa after popping out of the discarded titan body, but it’s not that simple. His fellow soldiers welcome him back with looking down the barrel of a loaded cannon and ask, “What are you? Titan or human?!”

I’m excited for this episode’s crew because we’re getting back an old friend. Screenplay this time is done by Yasuko Kobayashi, a well known tokusatsu writer who carried us through a lot of episodes of JoJo’s. Storyboard is by Hideyo Yamamoto. A production setup guy from End of Eva, he’s done a few storyboard for shows like Darker than Black: Gemini of the Meteor and Reideen. Full on episode direction is handled by Yoshiyuki Fujiwara, episode director for not too much in the past. He worked on one Guilty Crown and a few Sword Art Online. Animation direction’s by another trio: Hatsue Koizumi and Satoshi Koizumi, both of whom have a few AD credits but are largely key animators, and Satomi Miyazaki back from episodes 3 and 4.

(Images from Shingeki.tv. © Hajime Isayama, Kodansha, Production I.G., WIT Studio, and The Attack on Titan Production Committee)

Oh, by the way, if you’re interested in the Titan 4koma that come with episode previews, they run one episode behind. The one for Episode 8 will be up until the preview pictures for Episode 10 are almost ready to run, so give it a look while it’s still up.

Put Rivaille on Things

You feel like the day is a bit slow, so you go digging on Naver for stuff about Titan. You find some normal stuff, fan art, cosplay group compilations, instructions on building 3D gear cosplay, colossal titan’s head made out of what I think is bacon and cabbage for a bento box, colossal titan making friend with Hatsune Miku. You know, stuff you’d expect. Then you find the next Titan Twitter Fad.

Rivaille is a shoe-in popularity character. His disposition and looks make him total Josei bait, so it’s not surprising you’d see fanart and picture groups just for him. But for some people, that’s not enough. Sometimes there are things without Rivaille in them, and that’s just not ok.

Magical Girls

Dishware

And then you start getting to the weird ones

There’s a whole gallery of them on Naver that includes ones I couldn’t grab. I think this is now the fifth fad that’s popped up from this show? Because we had “Guren no Everything,” then the reactions to Eren getting eaten, then the reactions to those reactions, and the distorted perspective pictures for playing titan on Twitter. That’s five fan movements in eight episodes if don’t count the ongoing love of Sasha. I wonder what the next episodes will inspire in people.

Actors and Karaoke with a Side of Fries

Titan fanwork roundup time! First off, crack this link open in another window while you thumb through the rest of these. That sound clip is Yuki Kaji (Eren), Hiro Shimono (Connie), and Yui Ishikawa (Mikasa) singing “Guren no Yumiya” at the request of REVO, the song writer, as a condition for him joining the Shingeki Radio broadcast. Listening to them going “HO HO HO HO” in falsetto is pretty awesome.

Edit:

You can now listen to it in this YouTube video. I’m leaving the link at the top for completions sake and also because the link just has the singing while the video has the lead up Kaji explaining why they’re singing.

Second, McDonalds in Japan has put out a new item called the Mega Potato, a giant batch of fries a little wider than a human face.

So this was inevitable.

Third, someone started the trend of picking western actors for their Titan character counterpart. I’m linking it inline instead of posting the picture because the picture is tremendously tall, and I don’t know who anyone is except for Kristen Stewart as the pick for Sasha. Regardless of if you agree with the picks, it did result in this nice poster.

Finally, Rivaille hug pillow.

And I think that’s all I need to say on that.

(Thanks to the Titan anime thread for posting the song link and the info about Mega Potato, and Yaraon for the actor comparison sheet, the movie poster, and the hug pillow picture)

Nothing Like Washing Your Face with That Authentic Colossal Titan Feel

The first set of official Attack on Titan trinkets have gone on sale from Brain Police. It’s a pretty normal set of products, clothes like this serape, phone straps, and towels. I bring it up because some of the products use the standard designs of the characters.

Most of them, however, use these. These particular ones are pictures of the mini-towels, but these designs are also used for the tiny pillow chains and fan phone straps. You might recognize the Chimi Chara designs as being the same ones used in the little bonus 4koma included with some of the episode synopses. There’s a credit on that one that links it to Studio Moriken and some guy named Yuupon who I think is this guy who happens to work for nitro+.

If you happen to be interested in an official way to rub an adorable Rivaille all over your face in the morning, you can find all the products on Brain Palace’s Titan section. Preorders are being accepted until the 26th, and orders will ship sometime in late June.

(Images from Shingeki.tv. © Hajime Isayama, Kodansha, and the Attack on Titan Production Committee)

Attack on Titan Blu-ray Bonus Visual Novel Announced

The Official Shingeki.tv site has announced that there is an Attack on Titan visual novel now in development. The VN is being co-produced by Production I.G. and Nitroplus, a Japanese VN game company. The game will be released in two volumes as a bonus packed in with the Vol. 3 Blu-rays/DVDs, launch date September 18th, and the Vol. 6 Blu-rays/DVDs, launch date December 18th.

They released a staff list. There are two scenario writers, Hiroshi Seko who’s name I’m sure you’re used to by now from the preview and synopsis sets, and a person who’s name I can’t read: 砂阿久雁. I’m not really strong in my name kanji, and it’s hard to find any information on them. They only thing I find reliably is that they are the author of the book Guilty Crown: Princess of Deadpool. Character designer is a person named Namaniku ATK. If you’re interested, you can check out their Pixiv account here, but… well, there’s no nudity on the landing page, but the images are distinctly erotic in nature, so click with care. There’s also a “Participation” credit for Jun Hagane. That ANN page will only list his credit for Demonbane, but he’s also known as an Adult Game Maker and, like the other two, works with nitro+.

You getting that same odd feeling that I am? That it’s weird they’re pulling in people known for making eroge to work on this? Each one of them has a little intro in the Shingeki.tv article that pretty much all boil down to, “Excited about the project, Titan is so cool, will work hard on this,” and it’s all under supervision by Isayama. I guess I just feel like it’s a weird precedent we’re going into this game with.

Vol. 1 of the game will have two episodes, and Vol. 2 will have three:

Vol. 1
1. “Lost in the cruel world” (Mikasa Gaiden)
2. “Choose without Regrets [Advanced Notice]” (Rivalle and Irwin Past Chapter)

Vol. 2
1. “Choose without Regrets” (Rivaille and Irwin Past Chapter)
2. “Title To Be Announced” (Eren and Rivaille Gaiden)
3. “Wall Sina, Goodbye” (Annie Gaiden)

The Blu-ray/DVD with these are a while’s off from being released, so this is a little something to stew over. I wasn’t talking about the Titan blu-rays like the JoJo’s ones because I didn’t think there was as much reason to with the official streams and all that, but you’ll hear about them if they come with big name bonuses like this. Titan’s got a lot of attention, so maybe we’ll get a translation script for them.

(Image from the Shingeki.tv. © Hajime Isayama, Production I.G., WIT Studio, Nitroplus Co., Ltd., and the Shingeki no Kyojin Production Committee.)