Titan (Anime)

Titans (巨人) were a species of giant, man-eating humanoids that serve as the catalyst for the events in the Attack on Titan series. The people inside the Walls were taught that they first appeared 107 years prior to year 850 and rapidly exterminated humanity to the point of near-extinction. In reality, they were transformed humans known as Subjects of Ymir, and had existed for nearly 2,000 years.

Appearance
Titans greatly resembled nude human beings. They were bipedal creatures (with a few exceptions) with the same number and arrangement of limbs and features one would expect in human beings. They were all deformed by human standards to a greater or lesser degree, ranging from minor abnormalities in proportions (enlarged head, small limbs, etc.) to apparently lacking skin and subcutaneous tissues, although they did not bleed from such deformities and would regenerate the same deformities if injured, indicating that they perhaps possessed some other mechanism to compensate for this. The vast majority of Titans had a masculine body shape, although all of them lacked reproductive organs. While most Titans had a masculine appearance, some Titans seen have had feminine facial features, although retained a masculine body shape.

Titans, almost universally, had exceptionally wide mouths with an enormous number of small, square teeth. Although some only possessed canines, a majority of Titans lacked them. In all likelihood, they had to use incisors for their primary activity: eating humans. Because Titans lacked a complete or functioning digestive tract, and merely had an abdominopelvic cavity that eventually filled up with what they swallow. After consumption, they would be forced to regurgitate and empty the contents of the stomach before they could continue to eat more humans.

Behavior
Unlike other species, Titans did not mate, nor interact with organisms other than humans; their sole purpose in life was to seek out and devour humans. They did not derive any real sustenance from humans either, as many of them did not taste human flesh for a century after the Walls were raised, but it did not affect their activity nor decrease their numbers.

Some Titans did not react to pain and all would move as long as there was sunlight. Titans did not possess a complete, functioning digestive tract; they merely had a stomach-like cavity that eventually filled up with what they swallowed. After consuming a certain amount, they regurgitated the contents of the cavity before they continued eating more humans.

Most Titans showed no signs of intelligence and acted like mindless beasts; easy to trick, distract, and deceive. Due to this, it had even been noted that a single Titan posed minimal threat to soldiers equipped with ODM gear or a line of cannons, with the danger of Titans coming primarily from their numbers. The Nine Titans were the exception: they had human level intellect due to being piloted by a human. However, some Abnormals were also able to sustain some of their former intelligence, such as the Titan encountered by Ilse Langnar and Conny's mother. These Titans could form thoughts and even communicate with humans.

Creation
All Titans were originally humans of a race of people called the Subjects of Ymir. Ymir Fritz was the first Titan after awakening the power of the Titans. Some say she made a deal with the Devil; a few others claim she "touched the source of all living matter."

Subjects of Ymir became Titans after being injected with Titan spinal fluid, triggering a near-instantaneous transformation. This was exploited by Marley after the Great Titan War, who turned undesirable Subjects of Ymir into Titans to roam Paradis Island aimlessly beyond the Walls. In addition, Marley used them in combat against foreign nations. Titans oftentimes bore strong resemblance to their original human bodies, though females who were turned into Titans lost much of their body features.

Although the organic materials that made up the Titans' bodies appeared to arise from nothing, they were said to be sent from invisible paths that transcended physical space. These paths connected all Subjects of Ymir to a single "Coordinate," the Founding Titan.

The Founding Titan could personally turn Subjects of Ymir into Titans. Karl Fritz created the Colossal Titans that made up the Walls this way. Due to his royal blood, Zeke Jaeger could mimic this ability by screaming after administering his spinal fluid to his victims.

Physiology
The Titans' body structure and power source were very mysterious and they apparently violated several known laws of science, seemingly capable of spontaneously generating both energy and mass. Their extremely high level of activity and body temperature indicated the need for a massive intake of energy to fuel them, yet they apparently never needed to eat at all. They possessed vocal organs and were able to emit simple sounds like roars and screams, yet they apparently did not need to breathe. They did seem to become less active at night or if deprived of sunlight, and so it may be possible they drew their primary source of energy from the sun.

Individual Titans seemed to possess varying levels of stamina once deprived of sunlight; the captured Titan "Sawney" became docile and nearly comatose after only an hour's deprivation, while fellow captive "Beane" maintained a high level of activity three hours after last seeing sunlight. However, this only applied for the Pure Titans; the Nine Titans did not need sunlight to move, and neither did Titans controlled by either Zeke Jaeger's Beast Titan or, presumably, the Founding Titan.

Titans' bodies also seemed unusually light for such large creatures - a severed arm was described as weighing almost nothing, and they were able to move at high speeds despite their size. Due to their size, Titans possessed enormous strength and when combined with this lightness, they could put on amazing bursts of speed and agility.

In addition to their size, speed, strength and large numbers, Titans also possessed incredible regenerative abilities. The only sure-fire way to kill them was by slicing out the nape of the back of the neck measuring 1 meter high and 10 cm across. They regenerated lost and damaged body parts within seconds to minutes, including severed heads (although, there were rare instances where the head would not regenerate if the nape was cut through or blown off). It should be noted that the vulnerable area was where the real human body would be for shape-shifting Titans, as proven by Eren Jaeger. When struck at this site, the human controlling the Titan (or rather, what remains of them) was decapitated, killing both. After death, Titan corpses rapidly evaporated to skeletal remains, then to nothing at all.

How Titans reacted to pain stimuli varies from one to another. Many Titans would utterly ignore injuries which would be agonizingly painful to a human, such as losing limbs, being impaled through the heart, or having their eyes gouged out (even if such injuries would soon regenerate). In combat, some Titans would completely ignore armed humans who were attacking them, and simply proceeded to attempt to eat whichever human was closest to them. Others seemed vaguely aware of humans who were attacking them, and if injured would have a reaction that might have been pain but more accurately seemed like simple annoyance. Some actually did seem to react in pain and shout when they were injured. In Hange's experiments, Beane shrieked in pain when Hange gouged out its eyes with a heated metal spear, but Sawney seemed oblivious to the fact that Hange had impaled it through the heart region using a spear. Humans with the power of the Titans seemingly did not feel pain if their Titan forms were damaged.

History
Around 2,000 years ago, a slave named Ymir discovered a large tree while fleeing from her masters, the Eldians. The tree had an entrance that led to a pit full of water. Unaware of the water, Ymir entered the tree and immediately fell into the pit. As she sank, a mysterious, spine-like entity attached itself to her back, and she transformed into the very first Titan. With her new power, she returned to the Eldians and served under Fritz, eventually bearing him three daughters. When Ymir died, Fritz ordered his daughters to eat Ymir to retain her power, an action that split Ymir's power among her daughters. Eventually, it split into nine⁠—the Nine Titans⁠—which Eldia used to conquer Marley and establish the Eldian Empire.

The Nine Titans were distributed among Eldian noble houses. The Fritz family maintained order over the other eight houses, who were locked in constant conflict, using the Founding Titan.

However, after 1,700 years, Karl Fritz inherited the Founding Titan and chose to abandon the conflicts of the mainland. In his absence, the Great Titan War began; and the chaos it caused allowed the Marleyans to rebel and take over the continent. The King and many Eldians fled to Paradis Island, where he used Colossal Titans to construct three Walls around his territory. In the years after, Marley would send undesirable citizens to Paradis Island as Pure Titans, doomed to wander the island.

Types of Titans
Titans were classified according to their size and abilities. The following is a list of various known Titans so far in the series.

Trivia

 * Despite their English name originating from the of, the Titans of Attack on Titan are much more influenced by the  of . Most notably, both the Titans and the jötnar originated from an ancient being by the name of "."
 * Some Titans are modeled after friends and acquaintances of Hajime Isayama. Sometimes, he will even take requests.
 * Isayama revealed that his images of Titans were inspired by the "Man-eating Mona Lisa" from the ' manga and the dinosaurs from the ' films.

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