Night of the Disbanding Ceremony

A military official addresses the graduating 104th and lays out their three paths: the Garrison guarding the towns and reinforcing the Walls, the Survey Corps venturing into Titan country at terrible cost, and the Military Police Brigade serving the king deep in the interior, open only to the top ten.

Celebration in the mess hall turns sour when Jean, freshly qualified for the Military Police, punctures Marco's talk of honor by naming the real motive out loud: escaping the miserable frontier town for comfort far from the Titans. Eren cannot stomach the cynicism. Their opposing philosophies, Jean's hard-nosed self-preservation against Eren's vow to hunt every Titan and see the world outside, ignite a brawl that Mikasa ends by dragging Eren away.

Outside, Mikasa states she will follow whatever branch Eren picks, refusing to lose the only family she has left and honoring the debt she feels for the day he saved her. Armin joins them and declares for the Survey Corps too, brushing off Eren's concern that his gifts are academic rather than physical.

Meeting Hannes again stirs old wounds. The Garrison veteran still carries his failure to save Carla, and mentions that Dr. Yeager once cured a plague that swept the town, saving his own wife. Asked where his father was last seen, Eren collapses under a skull-splitting headache, glimpsing a buried memory of Grisha forcing an injection on him. He wakes in his bunk with no recollection of the episode.

The next day carries an unfamiliar optimism. Connie admits he too has chosen the Survey Corps, and other classmates follow suit. Atop the Trost Wall, Sasha produces meat stolen from the officers' stores, and Thomas, Samuel, and Mina talk themselves into sharing it, dreaming of herds grazing on reclaimed land.

The daydream shatters. The Colossus Titan materializes at the gate exactly as it did five years earlier, and the blast hurls the graduates from the Wall. Their maneuvering gear saves everyone but Samuel, knocked senseless by debris until Sasha's grapple spears his calf mid-fall. Recalling his mother's death, Eren rallies the squad, scales the Wall, and comes face to face with his oldest enemy.

The chapter debuted November 9, 2009 in Japan, with the English release on June 19, 2012, closing out the Wall Sealing arc between That Day and First Battle. Its events span two anime episodes, the second half of the fall of Shiganshina and the closing ceremony episode.

Isayama's original outline placed this material, somewhat altered, in the first two chapters of the series. The volume's information page explains the weight-shifting principles behind vertical maneuvering equipment, stressing that its apparent effortlessness masks intense full-body muscular strain.

The chapter quote is Eren's greeting to the Colossus Titan, marking five years since their first encounter.