It's yet another Omine episode, you know what's up. We have some very clean ODM cuts with great directing, I don't know what else to say because my mind is still hung up on the last part of the episode. The scene where Armin and Connie faces their ex comrades Daz and Samuel once again brought back memories of S2E6 "Warrior" when an enraged Eren screamed at Reiner for being traitors. Oh, how the tables have turned. Both of them probably couldn't understand their feelings back then until Armin talked to Annie in the crystal after raiding the port, and for Connie this was his moment.
In essence, the world of AOT is too cruel for clean solutions to these problems. It's the key component of the port fight which illustrates the same dilemma. Armin and Connie didn't have time to explain why they were going against Eren, and why they were betraying them. It was at that moment when Connie had a flashback of Bertholdt, as he now understood why Bertholdt and Reiner did what they had to do, and at the same time, he understood Samuel's feelings of betrayal by people who he thought were on their side. The callback was exactly reminiscence of that (Get it? Cos the next episode is called reminiscence/retrospective). Think back to S3P2 in "Descent" when Bert remarks that no one is in the wrong, this world is just that cruel. It's difficult to paint people as outright villains or traitors because it's just not that black and white.
Isayama uses this to illustrate changing perspectives along with the idealism which enables the alliance to work against the island to save all of humanity, but at the same time it's also important to ask: what about their homeland? This is sure to spark some controversy but I like how Kiyomi puts it:
"All you're doing is making your world smaller. These killings will surely continue as they always have."
Now even Floch acknowledges this, as had many other characters on this show, and I'm sure we can do as good if not better than that.
"Violence is one thing you can't take from humanity. Right, captain?"
Of course, this resonates deeply with Levi, who was raised to believe in violence as a means to an end to "talk" to people by Kenny. What does it take to end this cycle of human conflict, and how far will the idealism of the survey corps carry the alliance forward? I just can't wait to find out.
