Armored Titan

Fifteen meters tall, the Armored Titan is sheathed nearly head to toe in segmented plating that reads as armor rather than flesh. Reiner Braun's version projects raw bulk; Hajime Isayama has said he modeled it on the professional wrestler and mixed martial artist Brock Lesnar. Stripped of its plates, whether shed deliberately for speed or crumbled away by the Founding Titan's influence, the exposed body looks raw and unfinished, as seen when a weakened Reiner transforms incompletely in Liberio.

The plating defines the power. It stops a direct hit from wall-mounted cannons, snaps the ultrahard steel of maneuvering-gear blades on contact, and rides out the Colossus Titan's explosive transformation at point-blank range. All that mass converts to offense whenever the Titan charges, letting a single slam shatter gates and Walls. The cost is mobility: fully plated, the Titan manages only a moderate run, so Reiner sheds the armor behind his knees when he needs real speed. The protection also has ceilings. Modern anti-Titan artillery punches straight through it, and whoever holds the Founding Titan can will the armor to disintegrate, leaving the body helpless until a fresh transformation restores it.

A secondary hardening talent, similar to the Female Titan's, produces crystalline claws on the hands and feet, which let the Titan climb the Wall at Shiganshina with ease.

Like its eight siblings, the power appears after Ymir Fritz's death and passes among Eldia's feuding houses for seventeen centuries until Marley seizes it during the Great Titan War. Reiner Braun inherits it in 843, soaks up enemy artillery in one of Marley's wars, and in 845 joins the Paradis Island Operation. While Bertolt's Colossus Titan blows open Shiganshina's outer gate, Reiner charges the inner one, breaching Wall Maria and letting the Titans flood the interior. He then hides among the Walls' population for five years.

Reiner finally reveals himself to Eren Yeager after the Wall Rose invasion, and their first duel ends only when the Colossus Titan drops onto both combatants, allowing Reiner to bite Eren free of his Titan and flee. The rematch at Shiganshina goes worse: Eren's new hardening batters the armor, Thunder Spears blast open the nape, and only a desperate transfer of consciousness through his nervous system keeps Reiner alive long enough to recover and fight again before being extracted by the Cart Titan.

Four years later, at Fort Slava, Reiner shields Zeke's Beast Titan from naval bombardment and loses everything below the head doing it. During the Survey Corps raid on Liberio he wakes from despair just long enough to transform in a broken, armorless state and pull Porco Galliard out of Eren's grip. When Marley strikes Shiganshina in return, the Armored and Attack Titans clash a third time; the fight dissolves into chaos as Zeke's scream turns Falco into a Pure Titan that gnaws at Reiner's nape, and when the Rumbling begins, the armor crumbles off Reiner's Titan even as he shields Gabi from falling debris.

Fighting for the allied survivors afterward, the Armored Titan holds the harbor alongside the Female Titan, sacrificing its face and arms to protect the Azumabito engineers, then leaps from the flying boat at Fort Salta to grapple the Beast Titan and later tackles the creature emerging from Eren's severed neck. When Eren dies and the Power of the Titans ends, the Armored Titan vanishes with it. It placed second on the series' Titan popularity poll.