Since That Day

The special opens at the climax it will spend its runtime explaining: Eren Jaeger's Titan, boulder held high, striding across Trost District toward the breach while Mikasa Ackermann watches in disbelief and Armin Arlelt screams encouragement. From there the story rewinds five years. The Colossal Titan kicks through the Shiganshina gate, Titans pour in, and Eren and Mikasa reach their home to find Carla Jaeger pinned beneath the wreckage. Hannes, too frightened to face the approaching Titan, carries the children away instead, and Eren watches his mother be eaten. On the refugee boat, he swears to destroy every Titan alive.

Years later, the newly graduated cadets stand atop Wall Rose in Trost when lightning cracks and the Colossal Titan reappears directly behind Eren. He attacks its nape and it vanishes into steam before his blades land. In the battle that follows, Eren's squad is annihilated; Thomas Wagner is swallowed, Eren loses a leg, and he is bitten apart saving Armin from a Titan's mouth. Inside the creature's stomach, raging at everything the Titans have stolen, he erupts from its body as a Titan himself and rampages through Trost, destroying his own kind while a stunned Mikasa looks on. In his delirium he nearly strikes her, punches his own face instead, and drifts through visions of home.

Dot Pyxis's plan hinges on that power: Eren must carry the great boulder to the gate. His first transformation goes wrong, and a desperate Armin, perched on the steaming Titan, reaches him through their shared childhood dream of the world beyond the Walls. Eren remembers why he wanted to go outside, that he was born into this world free, and rises. Soldiers die by the dozen holding the Titans off as he walks, and the boulder finally slams down over the breach. The recap ends where the arc did: Eren waking in a cell before Levi and Erwin Smith, snarling through a grin that he wants to join the Scout Regiment and slaughter Titans.

The fall of Shiganshina is retold: the Colossal Titan breaks the gate, the Armored Titan destroys the inner one, and Carla Jaeger is devoured.

The Colossal Titan resurfaces at Trost five years later and vanishes before Eren can kill it.

Eren is eaten rescuing Armin, then bursts from the Titan's body transformed, fighting his own kind.

Armin's plea about their shared dream of the outside world pulls Eren out of his catatonic vision.

Eren seals the Trost breach with the boulder, and afterward demands entry into the Scout Regiment from his jail cell.

Since That Day is a recap covering the first thirteen episodes of season one, numbered 13.5 and produced by Wit Studio and Production I.G. Tetsuro Araki and Hiroyuki Tanaka directed, with Yasuko Kobayashi writing.

It aired in Japan on July 7, 2013, using the season's standard themes, "Feuerroter Pfeil und Bogen" and "Utsukushiki Zankoku na Sekai". No US air date is recorded.

Because the episode is a compilation, its information segment consists of two mosaics assembled from the segments of the episodes it recaps.