#aot shitposting

The episode opens with Ymir’s Jaw Titan swinging through the forest toward Bertholdt, Reiner and a strapped-in Eren. Bertholdt says, “Heads up: she’s back,” before Reiner transforms into the Armoured Titan (he’s the Armoured Titan) so Ymir and Bertholdt can hop on his back with Eren and escape to the beautiful freedom of the Liberio Internment Zone.

Rewind for a second:

“Heads up: she’s back.”

Bertholdt, my lanky love…she was fifty feet away from you, and Reiner was looking in the same direction.

I do get it. It’s dialogue for the audience, to remind us that Ymir is working with the Warriors. It’s a brief line to establish where everyone is at, and to line up the transition into them all escaping.

…but it’s still absurd in-universe, and I love absurdity, and so does Isayama. Bro never misses a chance to draw in something deeply silly.

And it’s Bertholdt too! The famously quiet Bertholdt, saying completely useless words! If it were anyone else, I could write it off as them psyching themselves up, but it’s him. There’s whole episodes of this thing where Bertholdt is on screen but has no lines. I’d swear they got the VAs to do filler noises for those episodes just out of embarrassment at how light their scripts were otherwise.

I don’t think it’s just a dub line either. I don’t speak Japanese, but the sub translation is “Here she comes, Reiner,” and the manga translation is, “She’s here, Reiner!” so every version of Bertholdt always says something right here. Manga version is actually especially silly, because Reiner’s already on his feet with his shiftin’ knife out when Bertl says it.

It gets better if you consider @oxygenbefore1775’s post about the Armoured Titan’s bad vision:

Imagine if Bertholdt knew about the poor vision, and thought he was being genuinely helpful to Reiner by pointing Ymir out. (I speak from experience here. I also have poor vision, and have had quite a few times where some well-meaning ignoramus assumed I couldn’t see something large and obvious just because it was in the middle distance. I can see it! I can see the colours and the movement and the general shapes! I just can’t make out fine detail.)