Wound: The Struggle for Trost, Part 8

The lure operation grinds on at terrible cost; a fifth of the participating soldiers are already gone, and Commander Pyxis accepts that his orders, not chance, send them to die, declaring he will wear the name of murderer if humanity survives. At the boulder, Eren's rogue Titan swings at Mikasa, caves in its own head with a punch, and slumps unresponsive, its wounds refusing to close. Rico fires the red flare admitting failure, and the elite Garrison squad splits over whether to abandon the boy. Ian Dietrich ends the argument: whatever Eren is, he represents a possibility mankind cannot afford to bury, so they will hold the Titans off him for as long as it takes. Rico swallows her objections, resolving to show the monsters how dreadful humans can be.

On the streets, the cadets keep drawing Titans toward the Wall's corner. Jean's ODM gear seizes mid-flight, stranding him on foot until he spots a fallen soldier whose equipment might still function. Armin, meanwhile, reaches the crippled giant and drives his blade into its nape, threading the steel through Eren's arm to shock him awake. Lost in a warm dream of home and family, Eren barely registers the intrusion until Armin's voice demands to know why he ever wanted to venture beyond the Walls, knowing full well the hell waiting outside. The answer rises out of him, that he was born into this world, and the dream burns away as the Titan's eyes snap open.

Losses among the lure teams reach a fifth of the force, but Pyxis refuses to halt the boulder operation.

Eren's Titan attacks Mikasa, injures itself, and stops regenerating.

Ian persuades the elite squad to defend the unconscious Eren rather than retreat.

Jean is grounded by malfunctioning ODM gear and forced to hunt for a replacement on a corpse.

Armin pierces the Titan's nape and rouses Eren by invoking their shared dream of the outside world.

Episode 12 of season one, animated by Wit Studio with Production I.G, adapts the chapters Wound and Primitive Desire. It reached Japanese screens on June 23, 2013 and American ones on July 26, 2014, with Crunchyroll listing it as Wound - The Battle for Trost (8).

Noboru Takagi wrote the script and Shintaro Itoga directed, with Feuerroter Pfeil und Bogen and Utsukushiki Zankoku na Sekai as the theme songs. The episode's lore cards cover the punishing weight-shift demands of ODM gear and the training practice of deliberately severing student lifelines to gauge their reactions.