Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan) - generic discussion thread

[hero147]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Why would you even wonder that? That's not how cannons ever worked.
The way cannons work and firearms in general work is by using explosives to propel the projectiles. You don't put explosives on the projectiles themselves.

The kinetic force alone is more than enough to create devastating damage. There doesn't seem to be any relevant difference between medieval-renaissance cannons and the cannons shown in this anime.

Many modern day projectiles are lined with explosives to detonate before impact to inflict maximal damage to the surrounding area.

[Hmm....]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Well, the question you should ask yourself is "Why would they create such complicated machinery and those blades if they were never proven to be effective in any way against Titans? Why not just using cannons or other long range weapons and stay the hell out? Who the hell even thought about using blades against titans when they clearly have firearms technology available?"

Isn't it absolutely unthinkable that the government would spend such a huge amount of money to provide such equipment to every single soldier (even the corps that never saw a titan in 100 years) if there was no proof whatsoever of their usefulness?
Isn't it more rational to assume that they work and that we simply haven't reached the part where they show us how?

I have no doubt that machine is the best tool humans have to offer against the titans, but that doesn't mean it will be reliable let's alone effective. It may not even work at all and simply better than nothing. If anything, it can be used to climb the wall during their wall mending. That's why it's provided to all "wall menders" ?

We have no evidence so far in actual story how well that thing do against the titan. Since we never been shown even a single titan defeated yet. All we see so far is that cool scene perform by heavily plot shielded character in the opening scene. I doubt it will work just like that in actual story. Also, I'm more interest in the process leading to that scene. How many people is needed as a decoy ? How many people need to attack a titan at once for a single person to reach its neck ? And how many have to die in the process ? How effective can it be ? Let's look at the recon team from the beginning. How many titan they actually faced ? we don't know. How many they managed to kill ? we don't know. The only information we know is that.... There is a lone titan. Recon team surround it and attack it. Then, they fall back to the wall beaten (and eaten). Together with what leader said to the mother "We suck". I can't help but deduct that they fail to kill even one titan despite large casualties.

Yes, I'm sure the anime will show us sooner or later how that machine work against titan and their tactic. I am looking forward to it. Actually, I kinda hope it's not working too well to add more drama and struggling to our protagonists The last thing I want from this anime/manga is that Elen can simply charge at titans and singlehandly slice dozens of them with ease. He may probably do just that later on in the story and I just have to live with it though

[Utsuro no Hako]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Why would you even wonder that? That's not how cannons ever worked.
The way cannons work and firearms in general work is by using explosives to propel the projectiles. You don't put explosives on the projectiles themselves.

Sure you do -- that's what a "shell" is. Per Wikipedia:

Solid cannonballs (“shot”) did not need a fuse, but hollow balls (“shells”) filled with something, such as gunpowder to fragment the ball, needed a fuse, either impact (percussion) or time. Percussion fuses with a spherical projectile presented a challenge because there was no way of ensuring that the impact mechanism hit the target. Therefore shells needed a time fuse that was ignited before or during firing and burnt until the shell reached its target. Early reports of shells include Venetian use at Jadra in 1376 and shells with fuses at the 1421 siege of St Boniface in Corsica. These were two hollowed hemispheres of stone or bronze held together by an iron hoop. Written evidence for early explosive shells in China appears in the early Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) Chinese military manual Huolongjing, compiled by Jiao Yu (fl. 14th to early 15th century) and Liu Ji (1311–1375) sometime before the latter's death, a preface added by Jiao in 1412. As described in their book, these hollow, gunpowder-packed shells were made of cast iron.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Hmm....

We have no evidence so far in actual story how well that thing do against the titan. Since we never been shown even a single titan defeated yet. All we see so far is that cool scene perform by heavily plot shielded character in the opening scene. I doubt it will work just like that in actual story. Also, I'm more interest in the process leading to that scene. How many people is needed as a decoy ? How many people need to attack a titan at once for a single person to reach its neck ? And how many have to die in the process ? How effective can it be ? Let's look at the recon team from the beginning. How many titan they actually faced ? we don't know. How many they managed to kill ? we don't know. The only information we know is that.... There is a lone titan. Recon team surround it and attack it. Then, they fall back to the wall beaten (and eaten). Together with what leader said to the mother "We suck". I can't help but deduct that they fail to kill even one titan despite large casualties.

Logical deductions aren't simply based on what is evident to the eyes. Even if we have not seen them killing a single Titan, I think that there's still evidence that they believe that using that equipment along with the related strategy is the best they have to reach that purpose. They are a special corp trained to fight Titans and they had one hundred years to try various methods and to check what's most effective and what's not.
We can assume that what we saw in the beginning is the result of hundred of years of intelligence gathering on the titans, their weakness and the best way to defeat them. And of course we also know that even with all that, they still get severe casualties.

So well I think that in the worst case scenario you can think that they believe that theoretically they should be able to kill a Titan with that equipment, even if they never managed it, and that anything else has even less of a probability to work. Anything below that doesn't make sense, else they would try something less complicated.

You also see Hannes who originally intended to kill a Titan single-handedly. Would he even think of trying if it was an established fact that a human never killed a Titan before? This is also something to think about.


@Utsuro_no_Hako and hero17
All right, thanks for pointing out that there are examples of explosive projectiles, but that's not what you usually get in conventional weapons. This is beside the point. Cannons do not need explosive projectiles to be effective.

[LeoXiao]

Originally Posted by hero147

Many modern day projectiles are lined with explosives to detonate before impact to inflict maximal damage to the surrounding area.

I'm convinced even further that this isn't the modern era we're talking about because in the very start of the 2nd episode you see armies of humans fighting the Titans with spears.

[chaos_animagic]

BTW, it is just me... or did the "football Titan"... looked like a "Robot" of some type?
(as he seemed to be spouting some sort of steam after charging)

Does that mean Titans can build Titans?

or these Titans are as previously speculated to be weapons of mass destruction created by an unknown species (that's not human)... (could explain how the Titans lived for hundreds of years without any actual food as they tend to eat humans mostly - plus the amount of titans that's out there - unless they eat each other...)

That and the "super Titans" suddenly appearing out of no where after hundreds of years.

I'm convinced even further that this isn't the modern era we're talking about because in the very start of the 2nd episode you see armies of humans fighting the Titans with spears.

And that was like what? hundreds of years before the current era?

The scenes they showed was before the creating of "WALL" (which takes how long? we're not sure, but I am pretty sure it takes quite a while to create something that's large enough to house millions of people (divided by sections, as we've seen the semi-circle district lost around 10,000 people, while saving at least 75% of people) - there's 3 other semi-circle + passing first wall's section.
This tells me the first Wall is larger than "Great wall of China" (if you turn it into a circle)

What was modern weaponry's history now?
How many years did to take to go from Cannon to Missiles?

[Randrak42]

Armoured Titan and Colossal Titan are the terms used in the series BTW.

I know...original xD

[Hooves]

What I'm more surprised is that the opening on youtube has already reached 900,000+ views. This anime sure is getting popular quickly.

[blakstealth]

Originally Posted by Hooves

What I'm more surprised is that the opening on youtube has already reached 900,000+ views. This anime sure is getting popular quickly.

Implying we looked at the same video, I just looked it up to listen to it, and it has now reached over 1 million lol.

[Hooves]

Wait seriously!? I just looked it up 2 days ago and it had 923,850 viewers

[Panzerklein]

Originally Posted by LeoXiao

I'm convinced even further that this isn't the modern era we're talking about because in the very start of the 2nd episode you see armies of humans fighting the Titans with spears.

At start of 2nd episode is actually under the Wall's Narrator' view and knowledge. And the Wall people shut themself inside the Wall for 1 century, I doubt that knowledge about outside is very limited.

[Grifis]

Originally Posted by chaos_animagic

BTW, it is just me... or did the "football Titan"... looked like a "Robot" of some type?
(as he seemed to be spouting some sort of steam after charging)

Does that mean Titans can build Titans?

or these Titans are as previously speculated to be weapons of mass destruction created by an unknown species (that's not human)... (could explain how the Titans lived for hundreds of years without any actual food as they tend to eat humans mostly - plus the amount of titans that's out there - unless they eat each other...)

That and the "super Titans" suddenly appearing out of no where after hundreds of years.


And that was like what? hundreds of years before the current era?

The scenes they showed was before the creating of "WALL" (which takes how long? we're not sure, but I am pretty sure it takes quite a while to create something that's large enough to house millions of people (divided by sections, as we've seen the semi-circle district lost around 10,000 people, while saving at least 75% of people) - there's 3 other semi-circle + passing first wall's section.
This tells me the first Wall is larger than "Great wall of China" (if you turn it into a circle)

What was modern weaponry's history now?
How many years did to take to go from Cannon to Missiles?

My conspiracy theory is there is another group of mastermind Titans (with brains) that spent some time constructing IronTitan. After numerous trials and errors over many many moons and finally exactly 100 years after, they successfully created the wall attacking IronTitan. So when the time came, they brought IronTitan and their zombie infantry units to front line for the attack.

[Master_Yoma]

So is Zapp Brannigan running the show here sending a lot of people to there death seem like some thing he will do

[miroku2192]

So how do titans sustain life? They don't have reproductive organs, they can live 100 years without eating, it's just...weird. Oh and they can apparently teleport too, say hello to big giant who just appeared out of thin air and was like "LULZ HUMAN RACE IM GOING TO EFF YOU UP TEEHEE". *kick*.

Anyway, if Eren got injected with something, we can be sure that will be useful later in the future. And what comes with injections? Some kind of virus, some kind of antibody. Now extracting this further, if, as someone pointed out earlier, Titans are in fact CREATIONS, then we can assume their might be some ties with Eren being injected with some kind of serum. in other words, Eren is going to go full beast mode against the Titans, not sure if that means he'll have super human strength similar to that of Titans or what, he might turn out into Superman or something (lulz). Who knows. THough his dad did say "it's no good" or you're no good, so...that could be some harsh foreshadowing right there :X

[Metalsnakezero]

Just read the manga and my stomach is doing flips. I hope they'll animate most of the manga at this point because it'll look sick!

[Enternal]

Originally Posted by LeoXiao

I'm convinced even further that this isn't the modern era we're talking about because in the very start of the 2nd episode you see armies of humans fighting the Titans with spears.

Haha. I guess I will say it again like I said in many pages back but the title of the 1st chapter of the manga, which the 1st episode of the anime has the same name is:
"To You Two Thousand Years Later (Fall of Shiganshina part 1)"
"Ni Sen Nengo no kimi e ―Shiganshina Kanraku ①―"

So I'm guessing that somewhere along the timeline, we destroyed ourselves and all of our technology pretty much got reset. Similar to Scrapped Princess and games that you might have encountered. You will see it even more later if they ever show you a quick glimpse at how these 3D gears are manufactured and how they work.

[Boduar]

I really really really hope we get past the whiny, weak, and stupid(and overall just emo) main character phase soon. I would really enjoy this show a lot more if MC doesnt grind on my nerves.

[garbage]

Originally Posted by miroku2192

Anyway, if Eren got injected with something, we can be sure that will be useful later in the future...

well this is very important....he needs it to pilot VVV later on

[jeroz]

Eren has been infected with poison so when one titan eat him it will spread to the rest of the titans after it goes back to the nest , creating a genocide.

Originally Posted by Boduar

I really really really hope we get past the whiny, weak, and stupid(and overall just emo) main character phase soon. I would really enjoy this show a lot more if MC doesnt grind on my nerves.

So in other words, can't wait for ep3?

[Endless Soul]

So if they have the know-how to make canons, surely they have the know-how to make muskets. I imagine the concentrated firepower of several muskets can seriously wound a Titan, especially if aimed at the eyes.

Endless "Blackpowder" Soul