The Night of the Closing Ceremony: Humanity's Comeback, Part 2

Two years into training, in the year 850, the 104th Cadet Corps runs weighted endurance drills while commandant Keith Sadies picks apart each cadet's strengths. Reiner quietly shoulders Armin's pack to spare him, then during hand-to-hand practice drags a reluctant Annie into a sparring match to teach Eren a lesson. She dumps both boys effortlessly and explains her contempt for the system: only the top ten graduates may join the Military Police, meaning the best Titan killers are rewarded with a posting farthest from any Titan. Reiner concludes she has no business being a soldier at all.

At dinner, Eren overhears Jean strategizing his way toward the interior and mocks his motives, and the two nearly brawl until Eren ends it with the very takedown Annie taught him, while Mikasa deflects Sadies' inquiry by blaming a noise on Sasha. Graduation arrives, ranking Mikasa first ahead of Reiner, Bertholdt, Annie, Eren, Jean, Marco, Conny, Sasha, and Christa. When Thomas Wagner calls the fight hopeless during the celebration, Eren argues that surrendering would waste every sacrifice already made, then storms out. Armin and Mikasa reveal they will follow him into the Scout Regiment, Armin to serve humanity, Mikasa to keep the last of her family alive.

The next day the graduates watch the Scout Regiment's veterans parade through Trost and reunite with a newly promoted Hannes, who apologizes for failing Eren's mother. Atop the Wall on cannon duty, several classmates admit that Eren's speech converted them to the Scouts, and Sasha confesses to stealing officers' meat. Lightning cracks, and the Colossal Titan looms over Wall Rose again, blasting the graduates from their footing as it kicks through the gate. Sasha snatches Samuel out of the air, and Eren swings up to face the creature that destroyed his home, greeting it after five long years.

Annie defeats Eren and Reiner in sparring and delivers her critique of a military that ships its best fighters away from the front, while Eren later reuses her disarming throw on Jean. The final rankings place Mikasa at the top of the class, with the full top ten also naming Reiner, Bertholdt, Annie, Eren, Jean, Marco, Conny, Sasha, and Christa.

Eren's graduation-night speech about honoring the dead redirects several classmates, Conny and Thomas among them, toward the Scout Regiment. Hannes, now a captain, apologizes for the day Carla Jaeger died. The Colossal Titan then reappears without warning, breaches Trost's outer gate, and sets up Eren's first rematch since Shiganshina fell.

Wit Studio and Production I.G produced the episode, fourth in season 1, directed by Makoto Bessho and written by Yasuko Kobayashi. It compresses five manga chapters, That Day, Night of the Disbanding Ceremony, Captain Levi, Delusions of Strength, and What Should I Do Now?, and aired in Japan on April 28, 2013, with the American date falling on May 24, 2014. Crunchyroll titles it Night of the Graduation Ceremony - Humanity Rises Again (2).

The opening is Feuerroter Pfeil und Bogen and the ending Utsukushiki Zankoku na Sekai. The anime's ODM gear packs hold four blades per side, down from six in the early manga, and the TV broadcast briefly showed the wrong regiment logo on Hannes' vest, an error the Blu-ray corrected.