Thursday, December 10, 2015

Attack on Titan: No Regrets (manga, vol. 2) story by Gun Snark, art by Hikaru Suruga, translated by Lindsey Akashi

Yet another vacation reading review. Warning: this post contains spoilers.

Levi, Furlan, and Isabel are secretly planning to steal some documents from Erwin, so that they can live a good life in the capital. However, Levi and Isabel find themselves getting caught up in the Survey Corps members' passion for their work and their goals. They can't steal the documents and kill Erwin outside the wall without seriously risking everyone's lives, something they're no longer willing to do, so they opt to put their work on hold for a bit, at least until the latest outing is over. That decision lasts until it starts raining heavily. The rain makes everyone's flares useless and cuts all the squads off from each other – it's too perfect an opportunity to pass up. Levi goes off to get the documents on his own, so that Furlan and Isobel won't leave their squad shorthanded. Unfortunately, they're killed. Levi then learns that Erwin always knew about their mission but wanted them in the Survey Corps anyway, because of their talent with the 3D maneuvering gear. And so Levi joins the Survey Corps for real.

Meh. I was right, Isabel and Furlan were nothing more than cannon fodder. However, I was not right about the way things would work out between Erwin and Levi. Erwin did almost nothing to try to win Levi over – it felt like Levi started following him primarily because he had no other options left, rather than out of a sense of loyalty. Not at all what I was expecting, and it left me feeling disappointed.

The artwork was nice, certainly better than the artwork in the original series, but the story was a bit of a letdown.

There were two shorts after the main story, both of them set prior to Levi, Furlan, and Isobel joining the Survey Corps. In the first one, Levi wins an arm wrestling contest and is allowed to pick any prize he wishes. On the one hand, I liked that Levi's choice was so very practical. On the other hand, I disliked that the story seemed designed to set a middle-aged woman character up to be the butt of a joke. In the second short, Isabel hears a ghost story and gets scared. I think this was meant to be funny, but it just seemed pointless.

No comments:

Post a Comment