User blog comment:XGlass Reflection/Ep. 25 Review~ I'M ALL FIRED UP/@comment-7418318-20130929092353

I have a few problems with the episode.

First we get further "monsterization" for Annie. In the manga she looked shocked when she noticed that she crushed all those people in the church, but in the anime she just notices, without even changing her expression, as if it didn't matter to her.

Then Eren, who is supposed to be in full control of himself (at least until he lights up) intentionally crashes through a house, destroying it completely in the process, not caring if there are still people inside who would undoubtably be killed by this action. In full control my ass...

In the Manga they were chasing Annie to prevent her from escaping, but they were unable to catch up and only when Annie was almost at the top of the wall did Hanji call the soldiers back. You can see more than a dozen of them stuck to the wall below Annie. Mikasa was only able to catch up and attack her because Eren threw her, not because she's oh-so-badass. It's really beyond my understanding why everyone except for Mikasa is just sightseeing in the anime, despite their orders to stop Annie from escaping at any cost. And in my opinion the defeated Eren throwing Mikasa is a far better scene than his hopping after Annie...

And what the hell was with Levi turning up all of a sudden? Let's ignore for a moment that his leg wasn't supposed to be healed yet, why would he interfere at the ponit he did with the words he did? When he "stopped" Eren, Eren had also stopped attacking by himself. It makes Levi look like an easily panicked idiot rather than the always situation aware, coolheaded leader he's supposed to be.

If they really needed to have a badass Levi moment that badly, they should have him and Mikasa cut one of Annies hands each...

And instead of Eren pulling Annie out as he did in the manga, they made him hesitate so that now it's all Erens fault that they were unable to capture her. Armin even outright says so... down the drain goes the last bit of character development Eren had left after Ep 24's transformation due to (anime-)rage rather than (manga-)reason...

On the positive side, I really liked the extensions in the confrontation between Erwin and the military police, especially when he tells his collegue to take over for him. It really shows how dedicated Eren is to his cause and that glory and fame are completely irrelevant to him.

And the music score was fantastic, especially the modified pieces of the main theme and Call your name cut together.

To sum it up I really dislike the episode. It's nice for watching with the brain switched off, but once you start thinking about it, it really sucks. Mikasa is promoted to even higher superhuman status, Levi is reduced to an always complaining idiot who can't read the situation, Eren's character development was sacrificed for visual effects and Annie's having empathy for the people she crushed was just forgotten completely.

Edit: Originally I though this would only be a mild critique and now it turned into a rant :(... but the more I think about it, the less I like the episode.