Midnight Sun

This episode is amazing, true raw talent in the voice acting department. It's gritty, sad, gut wrenching, and emotional all at once. It's something that needs to be recognized in the anime industry and something that this episode does perfectly. Seeing this adaptated in the anime leaves me shocked at how voice acting can make a scene 1000x better.

Without divulging too much of the plot, I'll give a summary of what was so perfect about this episode.

There was a wonderful lack of fighting scenes this time round, yet tensions ran so much higher than ever. The lack of a soundtrack throughout the episode gave such an eerie setting you'd think someone was about to die (they do that a lot with this show). The production staff made a fantastic use of stills to summarise a plot point (see the very last scene) and still had some fantastically fluid animation to make sure you were always immersed and never taken away from the story.

The voice actors all did a very, very special job, even watching without subtitles I was able to tell what they were saying (bare in mind I don't understand Japanese) and I genuinely thought at several points that the VAs were put under physical pain to produce such terrifying and perfect sounds.

Hiroyuki Sawano was wonderful as always with his accompanying soundtrack, and did a great job rounding off the episode with the renaissance-like image at the end.

Very rushed review but I loved this episode, probably the best single piece of TV I've seen to date. 10/10

Why am I doing this to myself, I know every week is like being punched in the gut. No OST? No problem, the japanese VA cast come in and ruin your whole day with outstanding performances. Emotional rollercoaster. This and the previous episodes are such contrasts but represent the wide range of events that can occur in the world of Attack on Titan. Masterpiece.

The second part of season 3 is one of the best anime i have ever watched... this episode is the first of the aftermath of the battle but the lack of fighting is replaced with fantastic emotional scenes and incredible voice acting. I so much wish season 8 of game of thrones was bittersweet (as they promised) and well written (instead of not written at all) as s8 part 2 is...

Emotional and hard to swallow, just like life we come to face difficult decisions and have to let go of things and people we love, respect and care for. Never knowing what will truly be the best for us in the future. Attack on Titan continues to tackles these questions and develop its story and characters is such a beautiful way. My hat goes off to these writers and artists. BRAVO!!!!!