Attack on Titan Part 1: Guren no Yumiya

Attack on Titan Part 1: Guren no Yumiya condenses episodes 1 through 13 of the anime, directed by Tetsurō Araki from Yasuko Kobayashi's screenplay and drawn from Hajime Isayama's manga. Two arcs survive the edit, The Fall of Shiganshina and The Struggle for Trost, while most of the Humanity's Comeback material is trimmed away. Its story concludes in Attack on Titan Part 2: Jiyuu no Tsubasa, which runs to the end of the first television season.

Humanity has spent a century penned behind three enormous Walls when a Titan taller than the barrier itself appears over Shiganshina and caves in the gate. In the chaos, young Eren Jaeger watches a grinning Titan pull his trapped mother from the wreckage of their home and eat her while the soldier Hannes carries him and his adoptive sister Mikasa to safety. When an Armored Titan then smashes the inner gate, Eren swears to wipe every Titan from the earth.

Years later Eren graduates from the military alongside Mikasa, who tops the class, and his friend Armin. Celebration curdles into argument when Jean mocks Eren's plan to join the Scout Regiment, but the debate becomes academic the next morning: the Colossal Titan reappears at Trost, kicks open the gate, and vanishes after Eren's counterattack cuts nothing but steam. In the battle that follows, Eren's squad is wiped out and Eren himself is swallowed whole after hurling Armin free of a Titan's jaws.

Grief nearly kills Mikasa, who burns through her gas cutting down Titans before resolving to keep fighting for Eren's memory. She is saved by something unprecedented, a Titan that ignores humans and beats other Titans to death. Armin realizes the anomaly can be used as a weapon, and it clears the Titan-infested headquarters while the cadets retake their supply depot with a rafter ambush. When the rampaging Titan finally collapses, Eren emerges alive from its nape, his lost limbs regrown.

Garrison commander Woermann responds with a cannon shot, which Eren stops by partially transforming. Armin stakes his life on a salute and an argument, and Commander Pyxis gambles on the boy instead: Eren will carry a massive boulder to the breach in Titan form and seal Trost. The plan nearly dies at birth when Eren transforms and attacks Mikasa, but Armin drives a blade into the Titan's nape and reaches the friend inside, reminding him of the world beyond the Walls. Eren hauls the boulder home while soldiers, including squad leader Ian Dietrich, die keeping the Titans off him, and the hole is plugged, humanity's first real win. Two Titans that reach the exhausted trio are shredded by Captain Levi of the Scout Regiment, and Eren later wakes in a cell under the gaze of Levi and Commander Erwin Smith.

The film opened in Japanese theaters on November 22, 2014, reached the United States on March 27, 2017, and was rebroadcast on terrestrial television by MBS on January 2, 2017. Its end credits run over Guren no Zahyou, the Linked Horizon theme song, followed by YAMANAIAME, one of Hiroyuki Sawano's vocal pieces; both anchor a score built almost entirely from Sawano's series music. The Japanese cast returns from the television series, led by Yuki Kaji as Eren, Yui Ishikawa as Mikasa, and Marina Inoue as Armin, with the Funimation ensemble handling the English dub.