A Choice with No Regrets: Part One

Years before Wall Maria falls, Levi runs a small crew of thieves in the underground district beneath Wall Sina with his partner Furlan Church, using omni-directional mobility gear to raid merchant supply crates and vanish before the Military Police arrive. Their earnings are climbing, and Furlan quietly pads the cut of Yan, a comrade whose failing legs are forcing him out of the work, while wondering how much more money a life on the surface will cost them.

Their duo becomes a trio when a girl crashes through their door clutching an injured bird against her stomach. Thugs chasing her over an unpaid stair toll retreat after Levi bloodies the one who dares lay a hand on him. The girl, Isabel Magnolia, wants the bird returned to the open sky, and after Furlan splints its wings she begs to join the crew, envious of how they fly. Levi's condition: she learns to clean first. Isabel trains up on the gear, becomes part of the family, and eventually releases the healed bird at an opening to the surface.

An old man then approaches with a job that has already been paid for, the payment being Yan, taken to a surface clinic where his legs can be treated. The client in the fine carriage promises surface citizenship as the reward. Mid-heist, the trio realizes a second force in green cloaks is overtaking their Military Police pursuers: the Scout Regiment. Levi dodges one soldier, brawls with Miche Zacharius, and is finally cornered by Erwin Smith, surrendering when he sees Isabel and Furlan already caught. Interrogated in shackles, the three insist they taught themselves the gear to climb out of the gutter. Erwin offers to erase their crimes if they enlist in the Scouts; the alternative is the Military Police. Levi grudgingly accepts.

Isabel Magnolia joins Levi and Furlan's gang and masters mobility gear. An anonymous client, later shown to be connected to Nicholas Lovof, hires the trio with Yan's medical care as leverage and surface citizenship as payment. The Scout Regiment ambushes the crew during a heist; Miche subdues Levi and Erwin Smith forces his surrender. Erwin recruits all three into the Scouts in exchange for dropping their charges.

This OVA, numbered Episode 0.5A, adapts Attack on Titan: No Regrets, the spin-off manga with art by Hikaru Suruga and story by Gun Snark, itself based on Gun Snark's visual novel of the same name. Wit Studio and Production I.G produced it, with direction by Masashi Koizuka and Shintaro Itoga and a script by Yasuko Kobayashi. It shipped with the Japanese special edition of manga Volume 15 on December 9, 2014, reached English audiences with Volume 18's special edition, and aired on NHK General TV in November 2021 as part of a special omnibus broadcast alongside Part Two. The in-episode lore text explains the underground was begun as a Titan-proof colony, abandoned mid-project, and left to decay into a slum whose sun-starved residents often suffer leg ailments.