Ironically, my previous Attack on Titan posts were long but dealt with short mini-arcs, while this post will probably be shorter but deals with the longest arc in the history of anime.
It's just that I don't have a ton of stuff to say about Defense of Trost. It had a couple of major plot twists and some terrific emotional moments, but it was really drawn out both in terms of plot and production values. By the time we hit episode 13 (which was the ninth episode of the Trost arc), the telltale signs of an unfinished product were readily apparent. 13 clearly went to air with several sequences unanimated and masked by cutting away to static scenery shots while still hearing the sounds of the battle (the audio post production is probably tracked to unfinished visuals so you could still hear the sounds of what they animated, but the animation itself was absent). On that front it feels a little weird to judge it now, because clearly the home release will be at least somewhat better. Strangely enough, this same sort of thing happened last year with Psycho Pass, even forcing the creators to issue a public apology for the quality of episode 18, but in the case of Titan, I didn't really see that type of outrage.
As I said above, this arc definitely has some extremely powerful and gripping emotional moments. Eren saving Armin from the jaws of the titan only to be eaten himself, Mikasa's emotional breakdown when she discovers he is actually alive, and several other minor scenes that really help illustrate the horror and desperation of humanity. Especially powerful was the scene where one of the soldiers slowly and methodically cleans and loads his rifle, only to stick it in his mouth and blow his brains out. It does a good job showing the characters in moments of determination and heroism, but also in moments of utter terror and panic. Even the ever-stoic Mikasa balls when she hears Eren's heartbeat. I like this kind of emotional range, and I like that they aren't just divided into cowards and Rambos. Even Armin, who was paralyzed with terror as Eren was eaten by a titan, bravely jumps on titan Eren and shoves a blade in his back to try and shake him out of his enraged state.
Still, Defense of Trost is really held back by the pacing. It almost felt like a daytime soap opera, where a discussion between two characters can be spread out across multiple episodes. Those shows have thousands of episodes and need to pump out 30 minutes of content five days a week, so I can at least understand why they do it. Here it was more inexplicable and definitely hurt the show somewhat. This arc could have easily been reduced to 5 episodes instead of being 9 without actually cutting any of the events it depicts. All you'd need to do is tighten things up a bit (homophone humor) so that the individual scenes don't drag so much. The reveals and twists this arc contains are strong enough to carry it over 5 or even 6 episodes, but by episode 12 or 13, I was already waiting for the arc to end so we could proceed elsewhere. Since I have not read the Titan manga, I can't tell if this was done because of how that story progresses, or if it was again related to production difficulties with this show, but I don't really care. Just make it work well and I'll be happy.
