Whereabouts of His Left Arm: The Struggle for Trost, Part 5

A flashback returns to the day the Scouts left on their latest expedition, shortly before the Colossal Titan struck. Townsfolk marvel at Captain Levi, who bristles at the praise, while Hange jokes about his obsession with cleanliness. Beyond the Wall the veterans go to work: Levi carves apart a Titan mid-bite to rescue a soldier, dispatches two more alone, then holds the dying man's hand and assures him his sacrifice will live on inside him. Erwin arrives with grim news, the Titans are streaming north toward Trost, and orders a full withdrawal.

Eren's own buried memory resurfaces. Swallowed whole and stripped of his left arm, he drifts among the dead inside a Titan's stomach until grief hardens into fury. Vowing extermination, he erupts from the creature's back in a giant body of his own, decapitates the thing that ate him with a stomp, and keeps stomping.

In the present, the Garrison treats that miracle as a threat. Captain Kitz Woermann demands to know whether the boy is man or monster, deaf to every answer, while Mikasa promises a brutal end to anyone who harms him. Fingering the key at his neck, Eren recalls Grisha's injection, the promise of the basement, and his father's command to master the new power if he wants to protect his friends. When the wall cannon fires, Eren bites his hand, and a half-formed Titan skeleton blooms around the trio, catching the shell before it lands.

Flashbacks depict the Scout Regiment's expedition, including Levi's rescue of a dying comrade and Erwin's order to turn back toward Trost.

Eren's memories reveal how he lost his left arm, awoke inside a Titan's stomach, and transformed for the first time.

Kitz Woermann interrogates Eren before the wall-mounted artillery, holding Mikasa and Armin as accomplices under threat of treason charges.

Eren remembers Grisha's key, the injection that clouded his memory, and the secret waiting in the family basement.

A partial transformation stops the cannonball, exposing Eren's power to the entire Garrison.

This is the 9th episode of season one, animated by Wit Studio with Production I.G, adapting the chapters Captain Levi and Where's the Left Arm?. Japanese broadcast came on June 2, 2013, and the US airing on June 28, 2014. Crunchyroll used the alternate title Where the Left Arm Went - The Battle for Trost (5).

Yoshiyuki Fujiwara directed from a script by Yasuko Kobayashi, bookended by the opening Feuerroter Pfeil und Bogen and the ending Utsukushiki Zankoku na Sekai. The episode's lore segment notes that after Wall Maria fell, Scout expeditions shifted toward establishing supply points and routes for a future operation to reclaim the lost territory.