User blog comment:XGlass Reflection/Ch. 54 Review~ Erwin of the Rebellion/@comment-2214433-20140209230506/@comment-179280-20140212075330

@Gurgatory The Female Titan arc was good in regards to the action scenes, but its main problem (and personally, the problem I have with it) is that it, as a story arc, was really unnecessary. Like, it actually introduced nearly zero relevant things which, adding insult to injury, are revisited in the next arc. The only important things that happened here that can be listed would be that there are gigantic Titans that serve as the foundation for the walls and that there are enemy Titan Shifters infiltrated within the human ranks, and guess what: the Clash of Titans arc gets us to the same by revealing who the Colossal and Armored Titans are. The only thing Annie's Titan arc was important for was for breaking a piece of the Wall. The manga itself was bad for the story and pacing (Crushing Blow sacrificing all the plot progression for a cool, 30-second fight), but the anime made it worse with the sub-par animation (compared to the first 13 episodes) and all the Levi and Jean filler.

In the end, it's like Misk accurately summarized it out in a conversation the other day: it's like Isayama is trying to go from the UK to France, but taking all the way through Mexico to get where he wants to go.