7th Time Loop – 12 (Fin) – Even Poison Can Bring Happiness

Called it! Not that I expect any reward, as it was a foregone conclusion that Rishe would show Michel, Kyle, Arnold, and the entire capital the good way to use black powder, which is with pretty fireworks. This application never occured to Michel, so caught up in being the bad guy he had one hell of a blind spot. But that’s what his trusty student is for.

Count Lawvine is about to have Michel arrested for threatening to unleash a more violent demonstration of the powder on the city, but it’s Prince Arnold himself who tell him to stand down. He’s agreed to a technological alliance with Coyolles after all. He’s not doing this out of kindness, but because it’s the pragmatic thing to do. Rishe also privately hopes that in seeing a weapon of war used in such a pretty and joyful way, perhaps Arnold can draw some parallels to his own war-hardened self.

Michel bids farewell to Rishe where they met in this loop, at her herb garden, and he admits that he was wrong: she’s going to make a great empress and bride of Arnold. It isn’t just her scientific mind, but her political one that she flexed in getting him to rethink his plans and getting Arnold to sign a deal with Coyolles. Michel is going to be very busy fulfilling the kingdom’s obligations to Galkhein.

That leaves the deliver of the ring. Rishe presents the box to Arnold, who tells her that wearing the ring is “unnecessary” as he only requested that he be allowed to gift the ring to her. But it’s not unnecessary to Rishe. In her country, a wife-to-be wears the ring on their ring finger and keeps it there for life. Rishe doesn’t take no for an answer, and Arnold gets on one knee to properly slip the ring on her finger (after kissing said finger), a sequence during which time she briefly forgets how to breathe.

Now that the ring, with a sapphire the color of Arnold’s eyes, is on her finger, she feels like she can accomplish anything. Arnold, in turn, finds himself in a much better mood than he’d imagined. Rishe asks for another boon, which Arnold is happy to grant: that they journey across the world together so she can show him all of the beautiful and wonderful things in the world.

He agrees, and adds that he’s already found one of those things, referring to her of course. It’s a very romantic and feel-good way to end this story, at least for now. Rishe looks to be well on her way to avoiding being killed by Arnold in her seventh loop, thanks to all of the skills and experience she amassed in the previous loops. No second season has been announced as I write this, but I wouldn’t mind seeing one somewhere down the road, as Rishe was an infectiously charming, capable, and lovable protagonist.

7th Time Loop – 11 – A Clockwork Blue

Burning the midnight oil to come up with a way to get Arnold to go along with an alliance with Coyolles, a fatigued and frustrated Rishe takes a break out on the balcony, and is treated to a wondrous sight: a cloud of glowing fireflies. Right then and there, my mind went to fireworks, or the peaceful application of Michel’s black powder.

Arnold is also drawn outside to his neighboring balcony, and Rishe jumps across to be with him. He instinctively reaches out to catch her even though she could easily leap the distance. He also came outside with sword in hand, thinking at first they were the torches of a battlefield in the streets below. When Rishe compliments his deep blue eyes, he tells her he once wanted to gouge them out since they were the same as his father’s.

Arnold believes it’s the nature of his blood that he should look upon the peaceful sleeping capital with revulsion, but Rishe tells him it’s not nature, but one’s amassed experiences that color their perspective, and that means he can learn her perspective that sees the beauty in his capital, and his country.

When he tells her he’ll “discard” her if it becomes necessary, she sprinkles a little truth in her response, saying she’ll become a maid, a knight, or an herbalist; anything to slip back into the palace and return to his side. However much he may hate his eyes, she’ll always believe they’re the most beautiful.

After days of planning, Prince Kyle finally gets his audience with Prince Kyle, who is short on patience. Rishe is wearing all new jewelry, showing off the technological skill and and artistic talent Coyolles has to offer. Then she presents him with the watch he gave her, only for him to notice it’s a very good reproduction, also created by Coyolles artisans.

The technology used to so perfectly copy his watch could one day expand to machines that could create a new world: carriages without horses and ships without sails. To all of this optimistic pablum, Arnold basically says “Okay, sure … AND?”, as he believes all of the things Kyle wants to provide can simply be taken by military force.

That’s when Kyle says he attempted this second negotiation because Rishe told him it was impossible that Prince Arnold wouldn’t want to attain “the power to make the future a more wonderful place”. Like Rishe, Kyle can also see the kindness hiding behind the scowls and threats. They don’t trust his looks, but his actions to make Galkhein a better place.

Unfortunately, these delicate negotiations, for which rhetorical points and timing are so important, is interrupted by Prince Theodore, who urges Rishe to come with him. Throughout this meeting, his men have been tailing Professor Michel to keep him away from Arnold, but he’s given them the slip, in some cases by using what amounts to sleeping poitions.

When they finally do track him down, he’s in the courtyard of the palace, ready to make an impromptu demonstration of his black powder to Prince Arnold. Now Rishe must pivot to dealing with both of her twin dilemmas at once: convincing Arnold to embrace Coyolles as an ally rather than invade, and show Michel and Arnold the peaceful application of black powder: the aforementioned fireworks inspired by the fireflies.

7th Time Loop – 10 – The Harbinger of Death

Rishe is practicing her sword alone in the training yard when Lawvine approaches her, and notices there’s hesitation in his strikes. Rishe admits that she’s terrified of a future where everyone will have to go to war, fight, and die. Lawvine thinks she’s right to fear that future.

The future of his own son was taken in such a manner, and while he’ll always be proud of him for fighting, he wishes he had lived. He tells her not to neglect her own hopes and feelings, for when the time comes they’ll help her move forward in dark times.

Rishe wants to move forward, which means surviving longer than her past time loops. That’s why she’s a knight candidate; because it’s the only way she’ll get the unvarnished version of the training regimen her fiance has designed for the other would-be knights.

But one day Arnold visits a training session, and immediately recognizes Rishe. Fortunately, he doens’t have a problem with her training as long as no one else finds out and she makes sure to get proper rest. As for her overhearing him rejecting Prince Kyle’s offer, she thinks he’s putting up a tough, cruel facade to hide his fundamentally kind nature. Arnold disagrees.

Rishe manages to prepare another medicine she believes will help restore Kyle’s strength, and also tells him she overheard him asking Arnold for an alliance. She offers a modest alliance between them in his place, as she believes she’ll need Kyle’s help to convince her fiancé that war isn’t necessarily the answer.

As for Professor Michel, after hearing how Kyle’s request was shot down, he’s now convinced he’s found the royal he’s been looking for who will accept the gift of black powder, i.e. explosives, which will certainly be a game changer in any future war, not to mention a decisive advantage over any of the empire’s enemies.

Michel had a fucked-up childhood, with his father blaming him for his mother’s death, and telling him he had to atone by finding and realizing his calling. That Michel’s calling ended up being designing weapons of mass destruction doesn’t matter. Fulfilling his calling, even one that throws the world into chaos, is all that matters.

This makes him as dangerous a threat to Rishe as Arnold, as it increases the chances a horrific war will claim her life once again. The episode ends with her having arranged to use some of Theodores retainers for some purpose, but otherwise she has no idea if it’s possible to convince Michel not to present Arnold with black powder.

In that regard, the more lightweight half of Arnold discovering her disguised as a knight candidate clashed with the sudden existential crisis of her former mentor whom she had a falling out with over this very same matter.

Even if she told Michel the truth about her loops and he believed her, it wouldn’t change the fact that he believes with absolute certainty that he must bring about the destruction of the world so a new one can rise in its place. And that’s a bummer, because it’s pretty standard villain thinking.

Attack on Titan – 46 – Playing to the Crowd

The Rob Reiss Big-Ass Titan is coming; there’s no getting around it. And it’s attracted to huge groups of people, so it’s avoiding villages and going straight for the densely populated Orvud District, which Erwin keeps UN-evacuated.

Using the citizens of bait may at first seem to run counter to their first mission to protect the people, but if Orvud is emptied the Titan will head to the main wall and possibly break all the way through to Mitras.

I assumed we’d get some kind of Battle of Helm’s Deep-style all-nighter siege, but dawn arrives far quicker than I expected, but both the wall defenses and the Scouts are as prepared as they’re going to be.

They’ve got a plan. Historia isn’t sitting on the sidelines to let her future subjects bear the brunt of the battle; she’s on the front lines, against Erwin’s urging. She muses that if she’s to be accepted as the new ruler, she must earnit with deeds, not simply lean on her name.

In a nice nod to the opening, which IMO is the best of any Titan season, Eren notices a trio of kids not unlike him, Mikasa and Armin back in episode one, on a similarly lovely day, before the Colossal Titan attacked.

Showing Eren looking behind his back and seeing who he must protect is a nice move, and the three kids are the first citizens who I actually want them to protect (a bunch of others are annoyed they have to carry out an evacuation drill).

As for Eren punching himself until the weak, ineffectual, useless brat within him is “gone for good”, that doesn’t work quite as well, but I like the fact that he’s inspired by Historia’s transformation into one of the strongest among them.

When the Rob Titan reaches the wall, no amount of artillery bombardment does much good, and he puts his hands on he top of the wall and stands up, revealing his face and half of his head has been sheared away.

The Scouts shoot more gunpowder into him, and Eren transforms into a Titan to personally deliver another load of powder directly into the very large and open head cavity, thus destroying the core from the inside.

This is where the wheel is broken and history doesn’t repeat itself; the three kids are scared, but their homes and families are spared the cruel, gruesome fates of Eren’s, Mikasa’s and Armin’s.

Even more significant, the fates conspire to make Historia, not Eren, the public savior of the day, as the assembled masses watch in awe as she delivers the killing blow to the Titan core high over the city, before landing in a wagon.

Little do they know she just had her first—and last—fight with her dad. And she won.

When she rises from her fall, she promptly tells all within earshot her name, Historia Reiss, and her position: their ruler. It’s yet another badass moment in perhaps the best character arc Titan has yet delivered. She achieved what she set out to achieve: gain credibility with the people and legitimize her claim to the throne though great heroic deeds.

Meanwhile, Kenny bleeds out against a tree not far from the destroyed Reiss caverns, his entire team destroyed in the fracas the night before. Levi arrives to confront and possibly arrest him, but takes a look at Kenny’s burns and wounds and declares him beyond healing. Kenny isn’t so sure, and presents a syringe of…something. Is that Titan serum? Whatever it is, Levi needs to be on guard.