Today, we begin Attack on Titan's second to last arc: Marley. This arc is almost universally agreed to be the best arc in the manga, as the majority of the mysteries and questions put forth up to this point have been answered, allowing for an untethered step forward. It continues after a 4 year timeskip from the previous chapter, on the continent of Marley.
To new readers, animeonlies, and people that dropped the series years ago, this arc is what began the serious resurgence in SnK hype, and it's what got people really thinking "Oh fuck, this might actually be a great manga." As I said at the start of the last thread, many people look at Marley Arc as the point where SnK reveals its true colors.
In the first few posts of this thread, I will summarize the history in this story up until the events of chapter 1. This history was mostly revealed in the last few chapters, and it's so paramount to the events of this arc that I want to make sure people reading this thread actually understand it. If you're someone who missed the rest of the volume dumps, and if you want to know what happened in them, just read the OPs of each of the previous dump threads. At the start of each one, I'd summarize the prior volume. Naturally, this shouldn't be a substitute for actually reading / watching the series, but I'm not naive enough to believe everyone in this thread will do that simply because I encourage them to.
Anyways, please use spoiler tags for any spoilers you post, and try not to post images during the dump. If you need to shitpost, do it in one of the many shitpost threads up.
Chapter 1 occurs in the year 845, for reference. The far history of SnK is not fully detailed until Chapter 122, so I'll first summarize what was revealed in chapters 86-90.
The history prior to the events of Chapter 1. Part 1: Roughly 2000 years ago, there existed a barbarous tribe known as the Eldians. Among them, a girl named Ymir Fritz obtained the power of the titans and became the first titan - the Founding Titan. Although the validity of what came next is debated, as time and bias distorted history, the most general consensus is that Ymir used her power to bring wealth to Eldia whilst annihilating any opposition. 13 years after obtaining the power, Ymir died. Her power split into 9 unique titans: The Founding Titan, Colossus Titan, Armored Titan, Female Titan, Beast Titan, Attack Titan, and 3 others which are revealed later. Ymir's descendants (Subjects of Ymir) are all capable of becoming titans by consuming the spinal fluid of a pure titan, but only inheritors of the aforementioned 9 titans have control over their titan-shifting abilities. This power is generally passed on before the previous shifter dies, by having another Subject of Ymir transform into a titan and consume the shifter's spine. If a shifter dies without being eaten, their power sent via the invisible PATHS into the body of a newborn Subject of Ymir. Eventually, Subjects of Ymir became the majority in Eldia, as their ethnic cleansing of other nations, particularly Marley, allegedly continued for centuries. Eldia had essentially conquered the world. Despite this, tensions between the royal families, which each held one of the 9 titans, grew to the point of in-fighting. In the mid-700s, the nation of Marley reportedly managed to incite a civil war, which lead to the Great Titan War. By the end of it, Marley had gained control of 7/9 royal titans and pushed the 145th Eldian monarch, Karl Fritz, back to his island of Paradis.
The history prior to the events of Chapter 1. Part 2: King Fritz, who held the Founding Titan, along with many other Eldians, took shelter on the island of Paradis. For scale, the mainland that Marley took control of is shaped like an upside down Africa, with Paradis being off to the side of it like Madagascar. The SnK world is roughly 3x the size of our world. On Paradis, King Fritz used the millions of Colossus Titans he held to form three great walls: Wall Maria, Wall Rose, and Wall Sheena. With only a few non-Eldian bloodlines on Paradis, Fritz shut the gates to the walls. He claimed that if any nation attempted to invade Paradis, he would awaken the millions of Colossus Titans within the walls and use them to trample all earth outside of Paradis underfoot. Soon after, King Fritz used the Founding Titan's power to wipe the memories of all Eldians on Paradis, allowing for a 100-year period of blissful ignorance on the island. However, despite his threats, Fritz had no intention of following them through in the event of an invasion. Ashamed of his ancestor's sins, he made a pact with the Founder to renounce war, forcing future royal inheritors of his all-powerful titan to adhere to his pacifism. Eldians outside of Paradis are placed in ghettos and oppressed for the sins of their ancestors. Marley, holding most of the 9 titans, uses their titan power to gain the upper hand in wars and decimate their enemies. Marleyan Eldians that conspire or commit severe crimes are taken by ship to a port off the coast of Paradis, where they are injected with titan spinal fluid and turned into titans. This is where the titans that wander Paradis originate. The drive that these titans have towards eating humans comes from their subconscious desire to transform back into a human, as they devour people hoping that one of them is a titan shifter capable of passing that power on.
The history prior to the events of Chapter 1. Part 3: In 780, a homeless Eldian girl is given the name "Ymir" by the leader of an underground Eldian cult. The cult is eventually found out and taken to Paradis, where they are titanized. In the early 800s, an Eldian kid named Grisha Yeager is wandering the Liberio Internment Zone in Marley with his little sister. He sees a blimp and decides to (illegally) take his sister outside of the zone so they could watch it dock, but they're caught by two Marleyan authorities after making it there. Grisha is beaten by one of them, and his sister is escorted back to the zone by the other. The next day, his sister's body washed up in the river, having been torn apart by dogs at the hands of the Marleyan authorities. Grisha's rage was palpable, and at the age of 18 he joined an underground group of Eldian restorationists that was headed by a hidden Marleyan insider known as The Owl. There, he met Dina Fritz, a descendant of the royal family, and they had a son named Zeke together. Soon after, Marley announced that it'd be inducting Eldian children into their Warrior Program in an effort to raise soldiers capable of inheriting one of the 9 titans. This would be for a Paradis recon mission. Having unloving patriotic parents, Zeke was pressured to become a warrior and use the power on Paradis to free Eldia. This backfired, as Zeke chose the safety of his grandparents and outed his parents to Marleyan officials. The restorationists were sent to Paradis, with two of the Marleyan officers there being the ones that caught Grisha and his sister near the blimp. All of Grisha's friends are titanized, with Dina becoming the titan that would later eat Eren's mom. Before Grisha is killed, one of the two aforementioned officers reveals himself to be The Owl. He transforms into the Attack Titan and slaughters the Marleyans on the port.
The history (mostly) prior to the events of Chapter 1. Part 4: The Owl, a man known as Eren Kruger, was the inheritor of the Attack Titan, which had gone missing after the war. Using a doctor to falsify bloodtests so that he could not be caught, he proved his "loyalty" to Marley by torturing hundreds of Eldians. After slaughtering everyone at the port, aside from Grisha, he revealed to Grisha the truth of the king's pacifism, and he gave Grisha the mission of inheriting his Attack Titan and stealing the Founding Titan away from the royal family. The end goal was to restore Eldia, but Kruger insisted that he also "love someone inside the walls" so as to avoid continuing the cycle of hatred. Grisha eventually did just that. After making it to the walls and having a son named Eren Yeager, he managed to find the whereabouts of the royal family. On the night that the first wall fell, he murdered almost every member of the family and stole the power of the Founder. He could not make use of this power, however, as he was not directly descended from royal blood, so he titanized Eren and had Eren eat him in hopes that he would find a way to use it down the line. That day, in 845, Wall Maria fell at the hands of three young Marleyan Warriors: Annie, Reiner, and Bertholdt, who held the Female, Armored, and Colossus titans respectively. Initially, they had a fourth shifter kid with him, but he was eaten by the mindless titan of Ymir (from year 780.) The three warriors infiltrated the walls, separate from Ymir, who also found her way inside the walls, and the rest is history
I'll probably go up to Volume 30 and do a poll asking people if I should just dump 123 through 128, but if these Marley threads are desolate then I'll stop at Volume 26.
