AOT S4E15 - Sole Salvation

Love your point about there not being many shows that have the intricate layering - the only one that I think comes close is Dark.

when you deep that it’s flock that found commander erwin on the battlefield

I really love the way in which Zeke wears and becomes attached to Ksaver's glasses, despite not needing them. And so when he becomes the successor and inherits the beast titan, it's like he is inheriting the power through the titan itself, as well as Ksaver's beliefs through the glasses. Just a tiny detail I think is worth noticing

One cool detail in this episode that I love is Zeke’s reaction to Eren calling him brother. He starts to a tear up a bit. It’s pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things but it makes sense considering his childhood. It makes sense that he really wants familial affection and wants to “save” his little brother even if he’s never met him before and has no clue if he can trust him or if there remotely similar. Zeke just strikes me as someone very smart, calculating and not easy to open up, however the speed with which he lets Eren in is just interesting to me. Even now that he’s grown up and matured he still really just wants his family to love him, something his parents couldn’t really do.

I’m unsure if this is your first anime? If it is, this is iconic because you are starting with one of the best. Even if it’s not, I love that I can see your reaction to these episodes, as I’ve always enjoyed your commentary on filmmaking. And lowkey, I now get to appreciate it with one of the GOATs! I also love how you’re noticing the intricacies of the plot structure that Isayama has given us, because AOT is known for breaking out of the standardized ways of telling a story. And boy, I can’t wait to see how you feel at the end…

One of the many brilliant qualities running through this season is the revelation that on both sides of this wall, the promising futures of young individuals are consistently thrown away by their respective dogmatic elder’s abstract visions for a “brighter tomorrow”. So good.

I remember you mentioning before that AoT might end up being one of those shows for you that you don’t want to rewatch -- but I highly recommend that you do. Even just the thing you said about “threads” in this show makes the series one of the most worthy series of a rewatch ever (if not the most). I cannot stress this enough. Also -- in the previous ep “Savagery” you mentioned the importance of language and specific phrasing. I couldn’t agree more, which is another reason a rewatch is a great idea. I’ve seen the series multiple times both in Japanese and English dub, and it only made my understanding of the weight of every single line deeper. The translations in the sub and dub aren’t identical, even when they’re conveying the same idea, so hearing those ideas expressed in different ways really reinforces the meaning behind the dialogue and makes you appreciate the intent behind it even more.

We need to make ‘Erwinian’ a real word

I would like to point out this really cool detail of Eren's face becoming visual storytelling! At the start of the series, Eren resembles his mother, Carla, but as the story progresses he starts to look more like Grisha. You can see it in this episode very clearly too, younger Grisha and current Eren look very, very similar to one another. As a teen, Eren had Carla's softness, her rounder face, more expressive anger, more emotional openness, a sense of innocence to him. He's still an idealistic mama's boy and wants nothing more than to protect his home in which he grew up in. But as an adult, his facial structure hardens, he grows out his hair and facial hair and he begins to sport a more aggressive stare that mirrors Grisha's in his earlier years. A few of the characters point this out too here and there. Keith Shadis tells pre-timeskip Eren in 'Bystander' 'you look like your mother in almost every way… but the daggers in your eyes are your father’s.' And when Zeke meets Eren for the first time he says ' you look nothing like your father', but in this episode, when he meets Eren in Marley he says 'you’re starting to resemble father a bit.' It's like Carla = his heart/home/humanity Grisha = his obsession/mission/inherited violence

The thing is in the episode “bystander” that you love, eren’s mom said that “i dont care if he will be special or not, hes already special because he was born into this world”, just wanted to remind you because its cool