Attack on Titan Part 2: Jiyuu no Tsubasa

Attack on Titan Part 2: Jiyuu no Tsubasa compresses episodes 14 through 25 of the first television season, picking up exactly where Guren no Yumiya stopped. Tetsurō Araki directs, Yasuko Kobayashi scripts, and three arcs are retold: Eve of the Counterattack, The 57th Exterior Scouting Mission, and the Assault on Stohess.

With Trost sealed, the military must decide what Eren Jaeger is. At his tribunal the Military Police push for execution while Commander Erwin Smith claims him for the Scout Regiment, and Captain Levi settles the argument by beating Eren bloody in open court to prove he can be controlled. Handed to Levi's Special Operations Squad at a ruined castle, Eren fails to transform on command in a dry well, then accidentally does so reaching for a dropped teaspoon, teaching Hange that his power needs a clear goal behind it.

The 57th expedition rides out under a formation designed to dodge Titans rather than fight them, and it works until a Female Titan appears, intelligent, fast, and hunting Eren specifically. She annihilates the right flank, studies Armin's face before sparing him, and shrugs off Jean and Reiner's attacks. Erwin diverts the column into the Forest of Giant Trees and springs a trap of hundreds of grappling anchors, but the captive screams, summoning ordinary Titans to devour her body while the pilot escapes in Scout gear. Disguised as a soldier, she murders Gunther, transforms again, and butchers Eld, Petra, and Oruo one by one while Eren, having chosen to trust his squad, watches from ahead. His revenge transformation ends with his defeat and capture, and only a rescue by Mikasa and a blade-blurring assault from Levi pulls him out of the Titan's jaws.

The failed expedition costs Erwin his freedom of action, but Armin has deduced the enemy's name: Annie Leonhart, whose stolen gear tied her to the killing of the research Titans Sawney and Beane. A ruse in Stohess District tries to lure her underground; she refuses the tunnel, laughs when the trap is revealed, and transforms using a blade hidden in her ring. The resulting battle wrecks whole blocks of the district, with Eren initially unable to transform against a friend until rage at his squad's deaths unlocks him. He batters the Female Titan across the city, and when Annie tries to scale Wall Sina, Mikasa shears her fingers off. Defeated and weeping, Annie encases herself in an impenetrable crystal before she can be questioned. As the dust settles, the fighting has torn a hole in the Wall's surface, and inside it a colossal Titan face stares out, a secret Pastor Nick demands be hidden from the sun.

The film premiered across Japanese theaters on June 27, 2015, was rebroadcast on MBS on January 3, 2017, and reached the United States on March 28, 2017. It introduced two new theme songs, Hiroyuki Sawano's theDOGS, issued July 1, and Linked Horizon's Jiyuu no Daishou. The ending credits carried newly animated footage that tied directly into the anime's second season.