Board Thread:Manga/@comment-5774380-20160808233126/@comment-1037137-20160809074003

Tausendberg wrote: One thing that's important to keep in mind when looking at the Wall People's army as Redshirts...

The military of the world within the walls was never meant to be really be an effective fighting force. The whole premise of the civilization is a giant farce cooked up by King Reiss and his titan shifter descendants. Technological development is deliberately hindered (who knows how long the Interior had Thunder Spears). The Survey Corps for most of its history is an intendedly quixotic organization that serves to kill off the most curious and willful of the population while keeping people afraid of the outside world. The training doesn't prepare the soldiers for really fighting Titans (it is military malpractice that soldiers are sent to fight titans without ever seeing them beforehand, causing many of them to panic) as demonstrated by the enormous skill discrepancy between the Survey Corps and the Garrison and Military Police (Survey Corps Officers, not even superhumans like Mikasa or Levi, are able to kill multiple titans in a single engagement while Garrison and MP soldiers seem to die by the dozens).

And Erwin's clarity of purpose and the Survey Corps are able to shake up all of these dynamics but they're still like Redshirts but just keep in mind where they were coming from. That's quite the conspiracy. Does Historia's ascension promise some chance of breaking this shadow grip the Reiss family has imposed on whatever's left of humanity?