# English | Inglés
**Greetings, Hive!** Before I started writing this review I was reading some comments and watching videos about the topic I will talk about today, and to my surprise I found that Shingeki No Kyojin’s season two was a very divisive season among fans; there are those who hated it, those who loved it (like me) and those who just didn't find it like a big deal. I have to confess that knowing opinions different from mine is something I like a lot because it makes me see things out of fanaticism and start to see them from objectivity, finding flaws helps me to have a much healthier and universal appreciation of the work, and of course, to value even more its virtues. For those who know me and those who have read me relatively often around here it’s no surprise that I’m a big fan of Hajime Isayama's work (I even have an Eren’s tattoo on my left arm!), and its second season is a production that for me is practically timeless, no matter how many times I see it, it still impacts me just like the first time; however in this review I will try to speak as objectively as possible in order to not make a post influenced solely by fanaticism. So without any further ado, let's start!
*This review has major spoilers for the first and second season of Shingeki No Kyojin, as I found it very complicated to talk about the overall experience of the show without them. So if you haven't watched the first two seasons of this anime and plan to do so and don't want to ruin the experience, I recommend you don't read this post.*
[source](https://wallpapercave.com/attack-on-titan-season-2-wallpapers)
Shingeki No Kyojin’s season two began airing on April 1, 2017 and concluding on June 17 of the same year with a total of 12 episodes. Yes, 4 long years of waiting since the end of season one, the reason for this was rather simple: the manga had had a couple of production problems, so there wasn’t enough source material to adapt, fortunately this was solved and since then the adaptation gap was much smaller. Witt Studio were in charge once again to giving life and color to the manga panels and just like its previous season, it was an outstanding job. The plot begins immediately after the end of the first season; after fighting and stopping Annie Leonhart, who turned out to be the Female Titan, as a result of the intense combat, a piece of the structure of one of the walls fell and it was discovered that titans live inside them. Practically without time to recover from the combat, a horde of titans is detected coming from the Rose Wall, confirming the worst: another wall has fallen, so the Survey Corps quickly sets out to find the wall’s gap and seal it with the help of Eren's titan powers. On the other hand, thanks to the revelation of the identity of the Female Titan, the commander of the Survey Corps, Erwin Smith, deduces the possible identities of the Colossal Titan and the Armored Titan. What no one had counted on was the appearance of a mysterious eccentric titan with a monkey-like appearance and the ability to control other titans, as well as having great intelligence and the ability to communicate with humans.
[Volumen 11 original manga's cover art](https://shingeki-no-kyojin.fandom.com/es/wiki/Volumen_11)
The Beast Titan
The initial premise of this season is kept relatively simple by the fact that it picks up right after the previous season left off; the goal remains the same: to seal the Maria’s Wall hole and access to Eren's house basement, where it is suspected that lies important information about the titans and the world, however this is constantly interrupted by the events of the first season, and now, by the new threat posed by the supposed fall of the Rose Wall. What stands out the most in this season is the fact that much more attention is given to several secondary characters instead of the main trio (Eren, Mikasa, Armin) and gives a sudden importance to characters who previously contributed little or nothing. I understand why this decision has been one of the main criticisms of the season but at the same time it is one of the reasons that made me enjoy it so much, so let's see, let's go by parts:
Eren Jaeger
First we have Christa/Historia and Ymir, two characters that barely had any participation and here become fundamental to the plot and even have protagonic roles, Ymir is someone who has lied to herself all her life, who has never done what she really wants and who swore to live only for herself, being this way is how she gets in contact with Christa, a bastard of the nobility who has to live hidden from the world. I find this relationship very nice as Ymir constantly motivates Christa to stop pretending to be someone she isn't or seeking approval from others and eventually makes her able to reveal her true identity to the world: Historia Reiss, a direct descendant of the royal family and daughter of the noble Rod Reiss.
Christa Lenz/Historia Reiss
Historia was forced to live isolated from the Reiss family as a bastard which caused her to constantly want to please others instead of living for herself, for Ymir this was like looking in a mirror so she decided to help her change her way of living. I understand that the sudden importance of these characters has been annoying for some merely by the fact that they didn't previously empathize with them, however I find very interesting how the scrip takes seemingly insignificant characters and makes them an important part of the plot, I like that not everything always revolves around the main characters and that more possibilities are explored, especially when it’s well executed, after this season Historia and Ymir's relationship is still important in the plot and that to me that’s a well thought out script.
Ymir
Of course I can't talk about this season without mentioning Bertolt Hoover and Reiner Braun, or rather... The Colossal and the Armored Titan. People, for real, this reveal was something that completely blew my mind and today remains one of my favorite moments in the entire history of anime, but it's also a point that generates quite a bit of discussion, mainly due to the way it was executed. This plot twist takes place in episode 31 and from my perception it is simply sublime, although I understand those who didn't like it, I will try to describe it in a very brief and general way; after the recent graduates of Recruit Troop 104 barely managed to get out alive from the siege of the Titans in Utgard Castle, the Survey Corps stops on one of the walls to calmly plan their next move, Eren, Mikasa, Armin, Reiner, Bertolt, Sasha, Connie, Historia, and other characters arrive the place.
Reiner Braun
It is then when a very confused Reiner, upset by everything that had happened moments before, asks Eren for a moment of conversation, and as the camera pans away from them and focuses on other characters, Reiner confesses to Eren that he and Bertolt are the Armored Titan and the Colossal Titan. The lightness in the words and the way he say it is what makes the scene so confusing because, it is as if they were having any other mundane conversation and it could simply be a bad joke, however as the seconds pass the tension increases, Reiner asks Eren to accompany them back to "their home", everything is more and more confusing, no one understands for sure what is happening, until the inevitable happens.... Reiner and Bertolt are transforms into titans... They two, who were friends, mentors, and examples to follow, were the ones who attacked humanity and broke the Maria Wall that fateful day...
Exactly that confusion and unexpectedness of the situation was what I liked the most of all this, because even seeing it coming (I mean, it was pretty obvious by this point) it seemed to me an atypical and very good way to present it without falling into the clichés of anime as we know it. Now, looking at it from another perspective, I can understand those who on the contrary didn’t like this scene because they feel it was pulled out of nowhere, and well literally that’s what happened and the goal was to cause confusion, I understand that for such a determinant point for the plot people would have preferred a much more standard approach because it can certainly come to feel as if the work doesn’t take itself seriously. Mind you, I'm not criticizing any other form of writing; I just loved the execution of this specific plot twist. Another point in favor of this scene is that in later seasons it’s much more logical why things happened this way, and as I have said on a couple of occasions, I love it when a show takes into account all the elements it has implemented in its plot to continue giving them relevance in the present. And to finish with this I have to talk about the music, or better yet, I will leave a video of Youseebiggirl, theme that beautifully accompanies the whole sequence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy63u2hKoPE
Bertolt Hoover
[source](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbJM_Y06iuUOl3hVPqYcvng)
The rest of the season develops under this much more dedicated to the secondary characters approach, being the cases I named the most prominent, however there is an important participation of Erwin Smith in which he demonstrates why it is him and no one else who is in charge of the Survey Cops, there is also an episode practically dedicated to Sasha and her past and equally for Connie, where we learn about his home village (which by the way was destroyed by the Titans, although mysteriously there are no corpses or traces of blood, it’s believed that they managed to escape but all the horses were still in the stable so.... Something weird is going on here), and I come back and repeat, I like that the whole cast is given importance, it helps tremendously to empathize with the characters, the world, and their situation. I think this season is much less spectacular and visceral than the previous one, I can even say that it can become tedious, a lot of action is substituted to create drama and tension and although I like it, it can get boring. As is classic in anime there are scenes that go on much longer than they should thanks to those typical moments of exchanges of glances, words, or flashbacks, especially flashbacks, this season has a LOT of them and they become exhausting. The action is much more modest in quantity but when it appears it’s equally or more satisfying than before, the choreography of the fights improved a lot and this evolution is consistent with the development of the plot, everything we saw before influenced what we see now.
On the production side I have nothing to say, Witt Studio's job is phenomenal to say the least, this time I watched the season in HD on a 32 inch TV and I was simply amazed by the amount of detail in many of the drawings. Intense colors and expressions, wonderfully choreographed scenes, fluid camera movements, all of this converges in an audiovisual feast that never tires. Obviously I have to mention a theme that became an anthem, a theme that cannot miss in any friends reunion, another amazing composition of the band Linked Horizon, which although it is not one of my favorites, it’s one of the best openings in the anime, that's right, I'm talking about Shinzou wo Sasageyo! This season's opening theme that we will hear throughout the 12 episodes. I know you all know it, but I'll leave it here anyway:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKP-vZvjbh8
[source](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVi2lI40LetxLBKn-rtWC3A)
It is understandable why this season caused so much division among fans, after a long wait of 4 years and the hype that was created thanks to this, it can be disappointing to come across a considerably slower and more intimate product compared to what was seen in 2013. The mystery has been a very characteristic element of the work since its inception and this time around is no exception, only that while before it was mystery + action, now it’s more like mystery + drama + tension, a combination that at least I enjoyed a lot. I think the biggest sin this season commits is not properly managing the screen time, by this I mean: if they were going to focus on the secondary characters then give them much more screen time and not sporadic episodes here and there; while on the contrary, if they wanted to give them just a modest relevance, they could have saved a lot of time that comes to feel like filler, and even though leaving Eren out of the equation for a good part of the season helps to focus on the secondary characters, what I'm getting at is that it's annoying that they stay somewhere in between these two ideas, it may be a bit radical on my part, but it's all or nothing. Now, does this make the second season of Shingeki No Kyojin a bad adaptation? Absolutely not, and is that after having seen it about three or four times I came to the conclusion that Shingeki No Kyojin is a work that is revalued the more you watch it, all those revelations that seem out of nowhere were always there, the signs always existed only that our attention was focused on other things. The mystery of the titans only grows, because despite the revelations of Reiner, Bertolt, and Ymir, we are told nothing more, and come on the logical thing would be to think that Reiner and Bertolt have some relationship with Ymir just by the fact that the three can transform into titans... But it is not so, and if we add to that equation the presence of the Titan Beast, of which NOTHING is ever said, the mystery only grows. Where do Reiner and Bertolt come from? Who or what is the Beast Titan? What is the importance of History in all this? What are the titans? And of course, our protagonist Eren plays an important role within all of this being the bearer of a mysterious power known as "the coordinate". I can't say much more about this since the set of all these elements is what has consecrated Shingeki No Kyojin as one of my favorite works not only in anime but in any audiovisual media, its untypical way in the industry of telling us its story captivated me from day 1, I don't consider it a masterpiece, but a fundamental piece in the history of anime, and this season is no exception.
**¡Saludos, Hive!** Antes de comenzar a escribir esta reseña estuve leyendo algunos comentarios y viendo videos acerca del tema que hablaré hoy, y para mi sorpresa me encontré con que la segunda temporada de Shingeki No Kyojin fue una temporada bastante divisiva entre los fans; hay quienes la odiaron, quienes la amaron (como yo) y a quienes simplemente no le pareció gran cosa. Tengo que confesar que saber de opiniones distintas a las mías es algo que me gusta bastante pues me hace ver las cosas fuera del fanatismo y comenzar a verlas desde la objetividad, encontrar defectos me ayuda a tener una apreciación mucho más sana y universal de la obra, y por supuesto, a valorar aún más sus virtudes. Para quienes me conocen y quienes me han leído con relativa frecuencia por aquí no es ninguna sorpresa que soy muy fanático de la obra de Hajime Isayama (¡hasta tengo un tatuaje de Eren en mi brazo izquierdo!), y su segunda temporada es una producción que para mí es prácticamente atemporal pues no importa cuántas veces la vea me sigue impactando igual que la primera vez; sin embargo en esta reseña trataré de hablar de la manera más objetiva posible con el fin de no hacer un post influenciado únicamente por el fanatismo. Así que sin más preámbulos, ¡comencemos!
*Esta reseña tiene spoilers importantes de la primera y segunda temporada de Shingeki No Kyojin, pues se me hizo muy complicado hablar de la experiencia general de la obra sin ellos. Así que si no has visto las dos primeras temporadas de este anime y planeas hacerlo y no quieres arruinar la experiencia, te recomiendo que no leas este post.*
# Español | Spanish
**¡Saludos, Hive!** Antes de comenzar a escribir esta reseña estuve leyendo algunos comentarios y viendo videos acerca del tema que hablaré hoy, y para mi sorpresa me encontré con que la segunda temporada de Shingeki No Kyojin fue una temporada bastante divisiva entre los fans; hay quienes la odiaron, quienes la amaron (como yo) y a quienes simplemente no le pareció gran cosa. Tengo que confesar que saber de opiniones distintas a las mías es algo que me gusta bastante pues me hace ver las cosas fuera del fanatismo y comenzar a verlas desde la objetividad, encontrar defectos me ayuda a tener una apreciación mucho más sana y universal de la obra, y por supuesto, a valorar aún más sus virtudes. Para quienes me conocen y quienes me han leído con relativa frecuencia por aquí no es ninguna sorpresa que soy muy fanático de la obra de Hajime Isayama (¡hasta tengo un tatuaje de Eren en mi brazo izquierdo!), y su segunda temporada es una producción que para mí es prácticamente atemporal pues no importa cuántas veces la vea me sigue impactando igual que la primera vez; sin embargo en esta reseña trataré de hablar de la manera más objetiva posible con el fin de no hacer un post influenciado únicamente por el fanatismo. Así que sin más preámbulos, ¡comencemos!
*Esta reseña tiene spoilers importantes de la primera y segunda temporada de Shingeki No Kyojin, pues se me hizo muy complicado hablar de la experiencia general de la obra sin ellos. Así que si no has visto las dos primeras temporadas de este anime y planeas hacerlo y no quieres arruinar la experiencia, te recomiendo que no leas este post.*
[fuente](https://wallpapercave.com/attack-on-titan-season-2-wallpapers)
 coming soon.