Smile: Assault on Stohess, Part 1

Annie Leonhart dreams of training under her father before waking to another day in the Stohess District Military Police, a branch rotten with laziness and graft. Her colleague Hitch Dreyse cheerfully admits she enlisted precisely because the interior police do nothing; Marlo Freudenberg, by contrast, wants to climb high enough to scrub the institution clean, an idealism Annie says reminds her of Eren Jaeger. When the pair catch their own officers selling equipment to the black market, Marlo's attempt to report them earns him a coin, then a beating, before Annie and Hitch pull him free.

As the Scout Regiment convoy rolls into Stohess on its way to the capital, Armin Arlelt intercepts Annie in a back alley. The Eren in the convoy is Jean in a wig, he explains; the real Eren needs to slip out of the city, and they need a Military Police insider's help. Annie picks the plan apart but relents when Armin appeals to her as a good person. Before following, she slides a ring onto her finger. The group walks her to a tunnel entrance leading underground, and there she stops. No civilians anywhere in sight, and Armin watching her too carefully: she reads the ambush for what it is.

Armin finally voices what he has carried since the killing of the test subjects Sawney and Beane: the gear Annie presented for inspection belonged to the dead Marco Bodt. He admits he could not bring himself to believe his own suspicion, and wonders aloud why she spared his life on the expedition, a mercy that led directly to this trap. Mikasa Ackermann cuts the pretense short, drawing her blades and naming Annie the Female Titan. Annie's answer is a long, unsettled laugh: Armin has won his bet, and hers is just beginning. Disguised Scouts burst from cover and pile onto her, gagging her against a bite, but the ring's hidden blade pricks her skin. The transformation blast kills her captors as Mikasa drags Eren and Armin below ground, and a pillar of light and steam climbs over the rooftops of Stohess.

Marlo is beaten for confronting corrupt officers selling Military Police gear, exposing the rot inside the interior brigade.

Armin recruits Annie for a fake escape plan while Jean rides in the convoy disguised as Eren.

Annie balks at the tunnel entrance and deduces the operation against her.

Armin reveals the evidence that unmasked her: she turned in Marco's omni-directional mobility gear after the Titan test subjects were killed.

The capture attempt fails when the blade concealed in Annie's ring lets her transform, killing her restrainers and unveiling the Female Titan inside Wall Sina.

Smile is the 23rd episode of the first season, opening the Assault on Stohess arc. Wit Studio and Production I.G produced it from the chapters Grin and Mercy, with Hirokazu Yamada directing and Hiroshi Seko writing.

It aired in Japan on September 15, 2013, and in the United States on October 18, 2014, with "Die Flügel der Freiheit" as the opening and "great escape" as the ending. Crunchyroll lists it as Smile, Raid on Stohess District (1).

The information segment counts the Military Police at roughly 2,000 members, about 5,000 including the Garrison forces under their command, with some 200 stationed per walled city to oversee cadets, monitor the Garrison, and direct firefighting.