Soldier

Night should mean safety, yet Titans converge on Utgard Castle beneath a full moon while the Beast Titan scales Wall Rose. Hours earlier, the resting Scouts had puzzled over signs of recent habitation in the ruins, including supplies whose labels none of them could decipher. Ymir needles Conny out of his suspicion that the Titan sprawled on his house resembled his mother, and later, rummaging for food, she hands Reiner a can of herring. He cannot read the script printed on it. She can, and both freeze as the implication lands.

The alarm sounds before Reiner can press her. Below, Nanaba, Gelgar, Lynne, and Henning carve through the attacking Titans, but one breaks through the castle door. Reiner holds the stairway almost alone, taking a Titan's bite to the arm and hauling the creature bodily toward a window before Conny cuts him loose and Ymir kicks it out. Christa dresses his wound with a strip of her skirt. Bertholdt lets slip that Reiner once behaved less like a soldier and more like a Warrior, a word that visibly unsettles him.

Then boulders begin to fall. The Beast Titan's throws obliterate the stables and the tower top, killing Lynne and Henning instantly, and a fresh horde converges on the ruin. Nanaba and Gelgar fight until their gas and blades give out; Gelgar is devoured reaching for a bottle someone already emptied, and Nanaba dies screaming for her father. With every officer gone, Ymir borrows Conny's knife, asks Christa to remember their old promise and to live a life she can be proud of, then hurls herself from the tower and transforms into her Titan.

Reiner learns Ymir can read the unknown script on a canned herring label, a language he recognizes but cannot read himself.

Titans breach Utgard's door at night, forcing the gearless recruits to improvise with a powderless cannon and a single knife.

The Beast Titan bombards the castle, wiping out the horses and killing Lynne and Henning with thrown boulders before summoning more Titans.

Nanaba and Gelgar are killed after exhausting their equipment, leaving the recruits defenseless.

Ymir transforms, cutting her palm with Conny's knife and revealing her Jaw Titan to protect Christa.

Soldier is the fourth episode of season 2 and the 29th overall, animated by Wit Studio and Production I.G, directed by Hitomi Ezoe and scripted by Hiroshi Seko. Japanese broadcast came on April 22, 2017, with the US simuldub following May 14. It adapts the manga chapters Utgard Castle, Soldier, and Ymir.

A flashback shows a friend saving Reiner from a Titan during his childhood flight, an early fragment of the Marcel story expanded later in the season. Ymir's rooftop request to Christa becomes the emotional anchor of the following episode, Historia.