With nary a moment to lose, Pyxis begins his plan to seal up the wall and retake Trost. On its face, the plan is simple, but even with Armin's insight and analysis improving their chances, it's a long shot.
You'd think that the team would be eager to turn the tide, but instead the opposite is true. Morale still seems to be rather low and there is rampant talk of desertion.
Even the threat of death doesn't seem to deter the rhetoric. Thankfully, Pyxis chimes in with a motivating speech that actually delivers the desired results and gets the troops back on board. Well, mostly.
It seems that even the elite troops sent to protect Eren's titan form (because apparently it needs protecting?) go out of their way to let him know how much the plan sucks and how people are going to die because of him. It's a pretty crappy pep talk quite frankly. It's honest, I suppose, though I don't know why the blame is being put on his shoulders. It wasn't his idea and he didn't choose to be half-titan. I can understand the "don't let them die in vain" thing, but really, if that was meant to bolster his confidence, it sounds like it would do a pretty crappy job of it.
I did find it oddly amusing how the speech put emphasis on how the troops were all individual humans with names and families. In universe, it makes sense, but considering this show has had a problem fleshing out anyone outside of a half dozen or so characters, it's rather ironic from the viewer's perspective. Even the names that get listed aren't people we're familiar with in any sort of fashion. Then again, maybe that was the point. Even if we have no idea who they are, they are still people and not useless titan fodder.
I predicted in the last post that Pyxis' over-eagerness would cause problems, and, sure enough, said problem makes for the episode cliffhanger. Rather than pick up the rock and carry it like he's supposed to, Eren (in his original titan form) turns and attacks Mikasa instead. It might be due to his resentment of her protective nature coming back up, but that's speculation on my part.
I could armchair quarterback and say that the big, mindless brute would have been better utilized on the other side of the wall, punching titan skulls in while it was the humans who put the boulder in place. It doesn't seem like there would be any way to do that, though. Heck, the question comes up of whether even a titan's strength would be enough to move it. As such, you can't really fault the general's thinking here.
Really, there's not a whole lot to this episode. It was just kind of there. I guess they were going for a "calm before the storm" sort of thing, as the team psyches itself up for a big battle, but it still leaves little to talk about when all is said and done.
Even the attempt at existential philosophy falls flat. There's a scene where Pyxis and Eren are talking and the general relates an idea that, while humans frequently fight each other, they'd rally and unite when facing a common foe. Eren rebuffs the idea, citing their current circumstance as proof to the contrary.
The episode never really goes anywhere with it. Maybe it was supposed to parallel the desertion plot point, but that doesn't seem like the same thing. I guess you could argue that it ties in with Pyxis' admittance that people were sent out to reclaim territory after the first wall fell, knowing that it would end in failure because the inner communities couldn't sustain the population numbers, though even that revelation is surprisingly glossed over and nothing is done with that either.
The only real highlight moment was Armin offering his strategic input. I did like how the superior officer actually encouraged him to speak up when Armin started off sheepish and talked about how it wasn't his place to criticize the plan. It's possible he knew about Armin's intellectual prowess, but it seems like he was open to hearing any potentially helpful ideas.
The cliffhanger also worked rather well. A genre-savvy viewer would know that things were going to go awry at some point, but the turn was still sudden enough that it achieved the desired result.
I wouldn't go so far as to call this a bad episode. It's certainly not a particularly strong one. It does advance the plot in some points and it does build up to, what I assume, is going to be a big action set piece, but I doubt it's going to stand out in people's memory in the long run.
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