Attack on Titan s3 – Episode 3 [So much backstory]

Oki gets Kenny and Levi having a western shown down in a bar. Some of the most amazing animation i’ve seen in a long time with Levi using the 3D gear to escape from the people kill him. I get, backstory. Backstory and Politics.
For what it’s worth, the backstory is all actually pretty interesting. Historia’s backstory is heart wrenching and something about Erwin’s story is almost scary to me. The episode starts with Historia talking about her own mother. How she was for the most part, never loved or cared for by her at all. Historia would spend all her time working on the farm and all her mother would ever do was read and neglect to care for her daughter at all.
When she learned how to read and write herself, she picked up a book just to imitate her mother and it was one of the biggest mistakes she’d ever made. She learned what a real family was supposed to be, how a real mother was supposed to act and realized how lonely she was.

She wanted to try hugging her mother. Just once, so she goes over and tries it and her mother violently pushes her away. Still it made her happy, because it was the first time she was acknowledged at all. She was HAPPY to be pushed so violently that she was bleeding, because it was better than nothing at all.
That is awful and heart breaking. This poor thing. Even worse, when lord Reiss comes for her and she meets her father for the first time. She has her first run in with the fact that her existence is a problem. The last words she heard from her mother before she died was that she wished the Historia had never been born.
I feel so bad for her right now. I haven’t read the manga, but the few spoilers I know if I am remembering them correctly tell me that my pity for her will only take me so far in this arc but as it stands right now. This is killing me.

Now Erwin. His backstory upsets me for a different kind of reason. Perhaps because it rings as a little bit too real. His father was a teacher, when Erwin was young and in class he asked a question that he should not have. His father didn’t answer in front of the other students but discussed it with his son when they got home. Being a child and not knowing any better, he goes around and spreads what his father told him to his classmates and friends.
Soon, the military police came looking for his father and soon after that, his father died in an ‘accident’. Even as his young age, he understood that his father was murdered. He was murdered for even suspecting that the king changed history as we knew it to keep people complacent in the walls. To keep people under control. They changed our history and our way of thinking to keep us happy and content under their rule and free thinkers were snuffed out. A backstory like that horrifies me. Erwin’s talk of how the rich don’t care about the continuation or the future of mankind but only of themselves. Their homes, their families, their gardens but not anyone else.
I hate how real everything he said is. It makes me sick.

The rest of the episode is the military police framing Erwin for murder. Making all scout activity illegal and rounding up all the scouts [I feel bad for the innocent ones that have no connection to Eren or his squad in the slightest]. Levi and his squad hiding out in the woods on the run as the military police put out wanted posters for their arrest. Talk about rebellion against the king as they know it by revealing the truth of the Reiss family and establishing Historia as the true queen of the land. Do you want an uprising? That’s how you get an uprising. The people aren’t going to stand and accept that kind of thing. At least, I don’t think they’re going too but who knows?

Also, someone a Titan on the inside working for the government eating Eren and gaining his abilities so they can control the other Titans.

So yeah, lots of backstory and talk of politics. Next episode, we get back into the action from what it looks like in the preview.