Attack Titan

Every one of the Nine Titans passes memories backward from earlier holders. The Attack Titan alone works in both directions, drawing recollections from inheritors yet to come. Zeke Yeager calls it "the power to transcend time" and suspects Eren deliberately curated which memories reached their father. Those visions push each holder relentlessly onward; across every era, the Titan is said to have fought for freedom.

The transmission arrives incomplete, just as inherited memories of the past do. Eren Kruger repeats words about protecting Mikasa and Armin decades before either is born, unaware whose thoughts he is voicing. Grisha Yeager learns from his son's future that the Founding Titan answers only to royal blood, and he watches the Rumbling in horror, begging Zeke to stop Eren. Eren himself sees enough of the future to know he reaches the Coordinate, yet never learns that Ymir Fritz obeys royalty alone, and never sees what Mikasa will choose at the end.

The Titan stands fifteen meters tall and cannot harden on its own; Eren gains that ability only by ingesting a specialized serum marked "armor" during his rescue from the Reiss family.

Emerging with the other eight powers after Ymir Fritz's death, the Attack Titan never falls into Marley's hands during the Great Titan War, staying hidden on the mainland while the Founding Titan crosses the sea to Paradis. In 819 Eren Kruger, an Eldian mole inside Marley's Public Security Authorities, inherits it from an unknown predecessor. Thirteen years later, after the Eldian Restorationists are converted into Pure Titans at the island's edge, Kruger transforms and annihilates his colleagues and their ship, then entrusts Grisha Yeager with his mission and his Titan.

Grisha carries the power inside the Walls for roughly thirteen years, until Wall Maria falls. At the Reiss Chapel he pleads with Frieda Reiss to save Eldia, and when she refuses, memories from his son's future drive him to overpower her Founding Titan, killing her family apart from Rod. That night he injects Eren with Titan serum; the mindless boy devours his father and wakes carrying two Titans in his blood.

Eren discovers the power at Trost in 850, slaughtering twenty Titans in a semi-conscious rage, later hauling a boulder to seal the breached gate and hand humanity its first real victory. The Titan afterward fights the Female Titan on the 57th expedition and again in Stohess, battles the Armored Titan above Wall Rose and at Shiganshina, and defeats the Colossus Titan through a hardened decoy that lets Eren strike Bertolt directly. In Marley, Eren transforms mid-speech to butcher Willy Tybur, wrecks the War Hammer Titan by cracking its wielder's crystal in the Jaw Titan's bite, and swallows the fluids within, taking a third power. During the final battles it holds off the assembled Warriors at Shiganshina until Eren abandons it to reach Zeke. With Eren's death, the Attack Titan ceases to exist along with every other Titan.

Three holders appear in the story. Eren Kruger spends his tenure undercover, using the Titan once on record to erase the evidence of his double life. Grisha Yeager, a doctor and Restorationist, wields it twice with world-altering results: seizing the Founding Titan and passing everything to his son. Eren Yeager, the final holder, turns the power from humanity's shield into the instrument of the Rumbling. A quiet visual tell marks the inheritance: Grisha's dark eyes turn light after he receives the Titan.

Hajime Isayama based the Titan's design on the MMA fighter Yushin Okami and its punching motion on Akiyo Nishiura, and he has acknowledged Game of Thrones as an influence on the series after binge-watching it in 2016. In Japanese, the Titan shares its name with the series itself: Shingeki no Kyojin.