Board Thread:Manga/@comment-5774380-20190607184944/@comment-35822279-20190607203929

This was another great chapter in my opinion providing a healthy balance of thrills and narrative payoffs.

Pros:

- Probably the most surprising part of this chapter was how much dialogue there was as I expected it to be action heavy like the last chapter but this ended up being this chapters biggest strength as the dialogue was engaging, insightful, and well written. Nearly every character got to have an impressive showing from primaries like Armin (Easily his best appearance since Hero as he got to flex his intelligence and resolve his current arc by recapturing his fighting spirit) to smaller characters like Nile and Pixis getting to go out on high notes (Pixis making the best of a bad situation with one last inspiring speech and Nile getting to express his humanity one last time helping to make their inevitable exits work for me).

- Magath and Pieck again blew me away with their wicked surprise attack on Zeke as it showed an impressive understanding of their enemies strengths and weaknesses (Ex. straight fight against Zeke is suicide but his arrogance is a critical weakness) and reaffirmed them as two of Marley's best characters (seriously if they were good guys in any other series I would be seriously cheering for them and that is an impressive accomplishment). The execution of this scene was also done flawlessly by Isayama with excellent drawing, narrative depth (Floch's lacklustre leadership leading to a succesful ambush), and pacing making the moment really work for me.

- It was nice to see a resolution for Gabi and Falco's arcs (they both finally confess their sins and in Gabi's case move forward) and leaves them in a great position to have further development due to Zeke preparing to scream (I'm putting my money on Falco getting the Armour in the next two chapters).

Cons:

- My only complaint is Zeke's death being baited again as while I have enjoyed this current stretch a lot (the most since 97-101) Isayama has to stop baiting characters dying when we know there safe as it's a pretty cynical way of keeping people invested and does lessen these moments greatly in the long run and on future reads/watches (Hero is unfortunately a big example of this with the next two chapters robbing a powerful moment of its weight to the point that the recent anime retelling made me go twas fine rather than OMG) so hopefully either he makes good on this as Zeke does die or Eren betrays him early when he's reeling for maximum emotional impact.