Attack on Titan: Roar of Awakening

Attack on Titan: Roar of Awakening retells episodes 26 through 37 of the television anime, the whole of the second season and its single storyline, the Clash of the Titans arc. Masashi Koizuka directs from Yasuko Kobayashi's screenplay, picking up where Jiyuu no Tsubasa ended and leading into Attack on Titan: Chronicle.

Hours after Annie Leonhart's capture exposes a Titan hidden inside Wall Sina, word arrives that Titans are loose within Wall Rose with no breach to be found. Section Commander Miche Zacharius stays behind to buy time and meets something new: a fur-covered Beast Titan that speaks, takes his gear out of curiosity, and lets its lessers eat him alive. In Ragako, Conny finds his village destroyed without blood or bodies, and a legless Titan sprawled across his own house whispers a welcome home.

The survivors shelter at the ruined Utgard Castle, which comes under siege after dark by Titans that should not be able to move at night. The veteran officers Nanaba, Gelgar, Lynne, and Henning die one by one, and with the recruits defenseless, Ymir takes a knife to her palm and reveals her own Titan form, fighting the horde and pulling the tower down on top of it. Mangled but alive after the Scouts' rescue, she gets her reward: Christa keeps their old promise and speaks her true name, Historia. Atop Wall Rose the next day, Reiner tells Eren, almost casually, naming himself the Armored Titan and Bertholdt the Colossal, the pair who broke Wall Maria five years ago, and invites him to come along quietly. The confrontation erupts into a double transformation; Eren fights the Armored Titan and is winning the grapple when Bertholdt's steaming body topples from the Wall onto them both.

Eren and Ymir wake as captives inside a Forest of Giant Trees, where the film lingers on its captors: Reiner's mind has split under years of living as both soldier and Warrior, and Ymir admits she wandered sixty years as a mindless Titan before eating one of their friends restored her. The rescue force arrives at dawn. Erwin loses his arm leading a charge through a Titan horde, Armin freezes Bertholdt with a cruel lie about Annie being tortured, and Eren is cut free, only for the smiling Titan that ate his mother to appear and bite Hannes in half mid-battle. Grief-stricken, Eren strikes the Titan's hand with his fist and something answers: every Titan on the field turns and tears the smiling Titan apart, then charges Reiner and Bertholdt on Eren's furious command. Ymir chooses to leave with the Warriors, the Scouts retreat, and the military pieces together the horror that the Ragako villagers themselves became the Titans of the invasion. In the aftermath, a new Squad Levi forms around Eren and Historia in a quiet mountain cabin.

The film reached Japanese theaters on January 13, 2018, serving as a refresher between the second and third television seasons, and was released in the United States on July 10, 2018. It marked a handoff in the recap series, with Masashi Koizuka directing solo after Tetsurō Araki helmed the first two films, and its structure benefits from covering a single tight arc rather than stitching together multiple storylines.