War on Two Fronts

Watching the Beast Titan's forces assemble, Erwin quietly asks himself which side will claim victory, Titans or the human race. Reiner spikes his hardened fingers into Wall Maria and begins climbing while Erwin forbids anyone from engaging him, still reading the enemy's intentions. Among those forces he picks out an oddity: a four-legged Titan hauling supplies on its back, clearly no fresh transformation. Erwin concludes it serves as the enemy's scout, probably the very thing that betrayed the Corps' presence, and warns his soldiers that more intelligent Titans may be hidden among the horde.

The Beast Titan then does something no one expects, slamming a fist down and bellowing a command that sends the smaller Titans charging. Erwin recognizes the Utgard Castle playbook: kill the horses first, sever both escape and supply, then starve the Corps until Eren can be plucked from their weakened hands. His counter splits the forces, three squads racing to defend the horses while Squads Levi and Hange guard Eren with their untested new weapons. Pulling Levi aside, Erwin reassigns him to hunt the Beast Titan itself; Levi accepts, framing the kill as atonement for letting Reiner live. Erwin also tells Armin plainly that command of the Corps' forces belongs, in his judgment, in his and Hange's hands.

Atop the Wall, Reiner reflects on how close Levi's blade came to ending him, the transfer of his consciousness through his body the only thing that saved his life, then finds Erwin standing calmly beside him. He chooses to ignore the commander until Eren transforms in the district below and, instead of fighting, runs. Reiner panics at the thought of Eren mastering the Coordinate the way he mastered hardening in two months, then works out the logic: a genuine escape would have used maneuvering gear over the Wall, not a conspicuous transformation in the open. Erwin is dangling Eren as bait to pull him off the horses. Impressed and appalled at once, Reiner takes the lure anyway, exactly as Hange predicted, since letting Eren slip away risks the Beast Titan being flanked and destroyed. In the heart of Shiganshina, Eren turns to meet him, remembering Armin's warning to fight far from the Walls where Bertolt might lurk. Confident from their last bout, Eren slips Reiner's blows and drives a punch clean through the armor plating of his face, silently promising to take back the town he once called home. As Reiner topples, Mikasa, Armin, and the squads sweep in carrying the Thunder Spears.

Erwin identifies the quadrupedal Cart Titan as an intelligent enemy scout and warns that more like it may be present.

The Beast Titan commands its Titans with a battle cry, revealing the Utgard strategy of destroying the Corps' horses to trap them.

Erwin assigns Levi to kill the Beast Titan and names Armin and Hange as the leaders he intends to entrust the Corps to.

Eren's staged flight baits Reiner away from the horses, a ploy Reiner sees through yet cannot afford to ignore.

Eren shatters the Armored Titan's facial plating in their Shiganshina rematch as the Thunder Spear squads move in.

Chapter 75 overall opens volume 19, published in Japan on November 9, 2015 with the English simulpub a day earlier, within the Return to Shiganshina arc. Pre-volume printings titled it Two Battlefronts, and the anime covered it in the episode Thunder Spears.

A documented proportion error affects the chapter: Wall Maria at 50 meters should stand roughly three and a third times the 15-meter Armored Titan, yet panels show it at least eight times his height, and the inflated scale bleeds into the plot by stretching Reiner's climb despite his running start.