At eight o’clock, the Ion TV screen paused.

The Attack on Titan opening theme, Guren no Yumiya, began with its eerie and tragic quality.

Kenji Toda, who had been waiting in front of the television, focused.

Anime was a matter of taste. Attack on Titan had faced minor controversies since it began airing, but for someone like him who preferred unconventional works, he had loved it from the first episode.

He had known of Shirogane-sensei since the Hunter x Hunter era and had watched everything since. His honest assessment was that he had not connected with Shirogane-sensei’s high school output. But Arcane, Hunter x Hunter, and Attack on Titan were genuinely exceptional.

The opening visuals pulled him in. His thoughts settled into the episode.

The twelfth episode picked up directly from the previous one. Eren had transformed into a Titan and was preparing to carry the boulder to the breach. Then he began attacking the surrounding Survey Corps members indiscriminately.

Even with Mikasa shouting at him from close range, he did not stop. He had become a mindless Titan.

If he keeps this up he is confirming everything the people who distrusted him feared. He will become a target for everyone.

Kenji watched Eren, unable to recognise Mikasa, attack her with lethal intent.

"Eren. I’m Mikasa. I’m your family. You need to carry the boulder to the hole."

She held onto his hair and kept trying to reach him.

The entire Survey Corps fell into panic. Every additional Titan Eren let through the breach while rampaging could mean dozens or hundreds of lives.

The Japan version of Attack on Titan did not focus exclusively on the main cast. Scenes of civilians being pursued and consumed appeared throughout, and nothing was handled sloppily to save money.

Production cost per episode at this level made cost control a secondary concern. The priority was depicting the cruelty of the Titan world and the protagonists fighting back in desperate conditions.

The high-ranking officers were already in despair. Wall Rose seemed lost.

The low-ranking soldiers did not retreat.

Where would they retreat to. Their homes were in the territory between Wall Rose and Wall Sina. They were not following orders from above.

They were using their lives to protect the rampaging unconscious Eren and to fill the gaps around him, clearing the path to the breach. Not because they believed he could actually do it in this state, but because they had no other option. If they retreated here, their families would be killed.

The tragic music began.

Kenji’s eyes were wet without him noticing.

Under the setting sun, Mikasa was fighting to protect Titan Eren. Armin was pushing toward him from another direction.

The screen shifted to a different location. After watching for a moment Kenji understood this was Eren’s dream sequence.

In a single day, Eren had transformed two and a half times. The first time when he was swallowed and transformed inside the Titan’s body. The second time partially, to block cannonballs and protect his companions.

The third time now, losing consciousness and rampaging shortly after the transformation. There appeared to be a limit on how many times he could transform.

Then Armin arrived and saw the scene around him. Groups of people were helping clear the path and Eren was lying unconscious in the road. Armin’s expression shifted immediately into something harder.

He climbed to the top of Titan Eren’s head, raised his blade, and stabbed down into the nape.

"Eren won’t die. It’ll just hurt a little."

The blade struck Eren’s actual body, encased within the Titan’s flesh at the nape.

The human body is inside the Titan body at the nape. Which is also the Titan’s weak point. Kenji registered this but had too little information to draw a conclusion yet.

Armin kept talking from on top of Titan Eren’s head, trying to reach him.

"Eren. Your mother’s grudge hasn’t been avenged. Didn’t you want to exterminate every Titan."

In the dream, Eren looked at Armin outside the window, tapping on the glass and saying these things to him.

He turned to look inside the house.

His mother was there. His father was there. Mikasa was there.

Eren stayed inside the dream, unwilling to leave.

On the other side, while Eren remained in the hallucination, the soldiers were spending their lives buying time for him. Nobody knew if he could complete the task. But as long as any possibility remained that the wall could be saved, they were willing to gamble with their lives.

Wake up, Kenji thought, already angry.

Are you even the protagonist. So many people are risking everything for you and you are stuck here in a dream.

The BGM became stirring.

Armin spoke to Eren sentence by sentence.

"Didn’t we agree that one day we would go outside the walls?"

Kenji’s chest moved.

"To go somewhere very far away. To see water that burns. Lands of frozen ice. Snowfields. The sea that only exists in books."

The tears had already arrived.

So this is what you are all fighting for. This is what you are gambling everything on.

Precisely because these things existed in the real world as ordinary facts, watching the characters in the anime risk their lives for them produced a specific kind of awe.

"The reason you stopped mentioning these things after that day," Armin said quietly to Titan Eren. "Was because you didn’t want me to join the Survey Corps, was it."

"Eren, answer me. One step outside the walls is a hellish world. You might die the way our parents did. Eren, why do you still want to go to the outside world?"

In the hallucination, Eren looked at the backs of his parents. He turned around, turning away from the warmth of the dream.

"Is that even a question?"

"Because I was born into this world."

The line connected back to the first episode. Humans had built walls to avoid being preyed upon by Titans. How was that different from livestock kept in a pen. Born into this world and only ever permitted to see three walls. How could anyone be content with that.

The core ideology of Attack on Titan, its exploration of freedom, began to take root in the minds of millions of viewers across Japan. This was why the work had been praised so extensively during its original serialisation.

The process of building this theme through the plot was genuinely thought-provoking. The reason it had been criticised in the later stages was that the author had posed the question without providing a satisfying answer. Rei had addressed this in the Japan version. But that was ahead.

Kenji, having followed this anime for three months, was stunned by Eren’s words.

The room in the memory burned away. Titan Eren lying on the ground let out a roar toward the sky and hoisted the boulder, larger than his own Titan body, off the ground.

Every soldier in the city felt it.

To prevent other Titans from interfering, some soldiers ran through the streets with their own bodies as bait, drawing the Titans away from Eren’s path.

"Every one of us is free from the moment we are born."

"It doesn’t matter how powerful the things blocking us are. The burning water, the endless sea: the people who can see those things are the freest people in the world."

"Fight. It doesn’t matter what price we pay. No matter how terrifying or cruel the world is."

"Fight."

"Fight."

"Fight."

Eren roared and drove the boulder into the breach with everything remaining in him.

Across the city, every soldier was fighting simultaneously. Successful kills. Titans grabbing soldiers and consuming them. One figure bitten in a Titan’s mouth still driving a blade into its tongue with the last of their strength. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Kenji had stood up from the sofa without deciding to.

The stirring BGM filled everything. Underneath it, the singer’s voice was present within the arrangement.

On screen: the angry faces of the soldiers. Armin’s tears. Commander Pyxis watching everything from the highest point in the city.

This evening, all the soldiers fighting to the death. Their sacrifices were not meaningless the way the Survey Corps’s losses had been in the first episode. That was the difference. That was what twelve episodes had been building toward.

Kenji’s tears kept falling.

Call of Silence, a piece from his previous life that he had known as a god-tier anime song, was making its first appearance here as a rearranged background track within the episode’s BGM.

Divine.

This was the only thought in Kenji’s mind.

An anime that was, in a genuine sense, exceptional to him.

Whatever direction Attack on Titan went later, the twelfth episode had given him the conversation between Armin and Eren about the future and what they were fighting for. Eren falling between the dream and reality.

The soldiers guarding the unconscious Titan Eren and dying to protect the only remaining hope. And finally that roar, the boulder driven into the breach, the strike that stopped the Titans surging outside the wall.

Fight.

"This is what a hot-blooded anime should be. I haven’t cried watching anything for over ten years. Shirogane-sensei. You are really something." Kenji pulled out a tissue.

His head was full of the plot and the BGM. He opened his laptop and went to the forums.

They were already packed with people exactly like him.

"I cried."

"I owe Shirogane-sensei an apology. I never openly criticised Attack on Titan but I had doubts in my heart about whether the early plot decisions were mistakes. Tonight I am completely convinced."

"Is this the most exceptional single episode across all of Shirogane-sensei’s works?"

"For me it does not surpass the Ant King’s death or Sai’s disappearance. But those took dozens or hundreds of Chapters to build the characters to that point. Attack on Titan did this in twelve episodes."

"Demon Slayer had me crying throughout. Now Attack on Titan is starting. I am not going to survive this year."

"Fighting for family makes me cry. Fighting for freedom also makes me cry. What exactly is my threshold."

"It is late at night and I have been sitting here dazed for over ten minutes after it ended. Eren is shouting to fight and I feel uncomfortable. Have I fought once in thirty years? From the bottom of my heart, have I ever truly worked hard for something I actually love."

"Studies, work, daily life. I know that if I tried I might be able to push things toward what I imagined. But I am also afraid that if I try and it still does not work out, I will no longer have the excuse of not having tried.

At least if I never try I can tell myself I am not a failure, just someone who did not make an effort. Shirogane-sensei’s works make me think about things I usually avoid. Attack on Titan more than any of his others."

"It is going to be a masterpiece. Shirogane-sensei is going to be elevated again."

"Is that not already obvious? In Japan’s anime industry Shirogane-sensei has no real opponents in the strict sense. The only thing he is ever competing against is his own previous work."

"In my life the things that have made me cry most consistently, apart from my parents, are Shirogane-sensei’s works. This has been true for years."

"I will not be able to sleep tonight. How does the plot develop from here. It is genuinely painful not knowing."

"Tonight’s episode is also a god-tier cliffhanger. The arc’s plot has been told clearly. What comes next: is Eren welcomed as the hero who saved hundreds of thousands of people, or is he rejected by the people inside the walls because of what he is?"

After episode twelve of Attack on Titan aired, the discussion volume reached a level that had only been seen earlier in the year when the Demon Slayer film released.

The anti-fans who had been questioning the anime’s quality a month ago had disappeared completely. Not one was visible. Across Japan’s anime forums there were only posts from viewers who had been moved by this episode.

Rei was in his hotel room reading through the discussion threads on his laptop.

He knew that when episode twelve aired in overseas territories the following day, the wave would spread internationally. And the response Attack on Titan was generating had only just started.

Twelve episodes covered only the first major arc of the work. From the wall being breached, Eren watching his mother die helplessly and fleeing like a stray dog, to encountering the same situation three years later and not repeating the mistakes of the past. He had not been able to save his mother.

This time he saved Wall Rose and the hundreds of thousands of people inside it. He saved thousands of children exactly like who he had been.

The first arc had completed a certain kind of closed loop.