#plain-dude

That’s a bit of question as there are many creators, components, and reiterations of Lost Girls! ^^;

Short story, no. Isayama only supervised the original visual novels, Wall Sina Goodbye and Lost in a Cruel World. Long story, eh… there are quite a few people involved with the Lost Girls series?

Let’s go through a brief history, shall we? It can get a bit confusing. The Lost Girls series was first coined such after the novelization of the Wall Sina Goodbye and Lost in a Cruel World visual novels. A new story called Lost Girls was also written for the novel edition. 

Hiroshi Seko is the author of both the visual novels, the short story Lost Girls, and the novel collection of three stories: Lost Girls.

RyōsukeFuji is the mangaka of the manga version of Lost Girls and is adapting Hiroshi Seko’s work. As of the moment, I am unsure if Seko Hiroshi is working directly on the project. 

If you have any additional questions about the series, might I suggest you ask plain-dude or checking out their blog? They translated the first chapter of Lost Girls and published it today! 

I also vaguely remembered Isayama mentioning Hanji was based off a weird(?) friend in his hometown Q&A

I think you might be right about that. I do remember reading something like that, although I'm not sure if it was from the Homecoming Q&A or not. 

ETA: Hanji is based off an odd childhood friend of Isayama's. 

For my SnK readthrough, I read the Kodansha version, but I use the scanalation sites for my screen captures. If the text is radically different, I retype it to match Kondansha's translation.

But in the instance above, I'm wondering if Kondansha got it wrong.

I've seen posts where people call Hange "titan obsessed" and "a titan lover". I always thought those viewpoint were off base.

To me, Hange dealt with her hated of titans was by humanizing them to a degree, but mostly by recognizing the need to understand them on a scientific level.

She has a tendency to hide her true feelings with a brave face and dose of humor. We saw this during the torture of Nick and again when Eren found her smashing the table.

Granted, when she was testing Sonny and Bean she showed strong emotions, but I never took them seriously. In my headcanon, she enjoys getting a rise out of Moblit and playing the role of an eccentric. I feel like she uses her extreme behavior to draw attention to her cause, since many in military think capturing and testing Titans is a waste of time.

But in the panel above, she's having a serious conversation with Erwin. It's just the two of them. There's no need for theatrics.

In the Kodansha translation, she says, "maybe they're so cute because in part because of the pity you feel for them".

I checked several scanalation aggregator sites, as well as fuku-shuu's translation, and they were very consistent in the rendering the text "Their pitiful existence is one of their tragedies".

I know it's a small panel, a single line, and an example of me being super picky once again. But I'm very curious about the original intent.