Board Thread:Manga/@comment-27321453-20200708115559/@comment-1327106-20200709173207

The chapter was surprisingly light on things actually happening, but as a trade off we got multiple gorgeous two page images or other large panels. I'm also glad we got some more pieces of the puzzle filled in. I just didn't think they would be as straightforward as "yes, Eren really is trying to wipe out the rest of humanity" which is what we get from his conversations with Floch and Historia. He might have reason to lie to Floch, who's going to be a part of his plans, but lying to Historia, when he has the option to simply leave her in the dark, wouldn't make sense.

I would have liked more on why he made this choice other than the reason he gave Historia. He says this is the best option to stop the hate, but I'm not following how he arrived at this conclusion. He's seen some discouraging things, but I'm not seeing what he's tried at before resorting to the nuclear option. If anything, his only attempt at befriending people from the outside world was with the Mid-East refugees and that actually went well.

I'm not sure if it's something with the official translation, but the conversation with Historia sounds like it takes place after Eren has come back from Marley. He tells Historia "The Military Police Brigade is moving forward with a plan to turn you into a Titan and feed Zeke to you now that he's here on the island." Zeke obviously doesn't get to the island until after the attack on Liberio.

And if we take the dialogue at face value, this also means Historia is probably not actually pregnant (if you're a fake pregnancy theorist) because the panel that flashes to her in the Eren/Zeke conversation shows a distance shot of them both and Historia's belly is not distended like it is in the only non-flashback panel we have of her in the current arc.

However, the thing that makes me uncertain, is that despite the dialogue saying Zeke is now on the island, Eren's hair looks too short to this to be a trip after breaking out of prison. I suppose Eren's dialogue could be temporally from another time, just like his wish for his friends to live long lives seems really disjointed from the conversation with Zeke (who is he even talking to at that point?), but that would mean the conversation we're hearing is not the visual we're seeing, and it hurts my brain to think about why that would be.

I also liked the Zeke/Eren conversation about Mikasa. When you're looking into whether a girl is genetically predispositioned into caring for you, you either are as thick as a brick or you're hoping that it isn't what you think it is. And judging from Eren's lack of a reaction, it sounds like it's the latter. He already suspected Mikasa was interested in him in a way that went beyond friendship, but he was hoping he could chalk it up to something else.