Attack on Titan Made Me Question Who Gets to Communicate

Spoiler scope: Attack on Titan season 1, including the expedition in episodes 17–18. This is a question raised by that season, without explanations from later seasons or the manga.

What strikes me about Attack on Titan is how tightly its world can hold an ordinary person. Power, the desire to control, and the technology available to people seem to form a web that is difficult to escape. It is a gripping story, but watching the first season also made me wonder about something very practical: why can they build equipment like that, yet not communicate with one another more easily?

The equipment is not just an impression. The anime's official season 1 glossary describes gear designed for rapid movement in three dimensions, specialized steel made in factory cities, and cannons adapted to defend the walls. That is the contrast that prompted my question. I could see the effort and skill behind tools for moving and fighting. I wanted to know why reaching another person with information still seemed so difficult.

That does not mean those manufacturing skills would make electronic communication possible. Mechanical equipment and wireless communication are different technologies. I cannot use the existence of one as proof that the other could have been built, then treat its absence as evidence of a deliberate decision.

The expedition gives the question a concrete setting. In episode 17, the soldiers spread out in a long-range scouting formation to avoid Titans. In episode 18, the right flank has suffered devastating losses, yet the command is to change course and continue. There is a system for coordinating them; my question is about how much an individual can reach others and check what is happening within it.

While watching, I wondered whether easier communication would make people harder to keep under control. If they could reach one another more freely, could they also question what they were being told more easily? I even wondered whether that was why better communication had not been developed. That was a suspicion I had as a viewer, not a policy the first season had established for me.

I want to leave that distinction intact. I am not claiming to have found the explanation for the technology in this world. What interested me was the helplessness behind the question: an individual can be surrounded by impressive equipment and still have very little ability to find things out for themselves. That is where the story's web of power feels especially tight to me.

For a different question raised by the season, the series essay on whom to trust follows the characters' judgments and includes the viewing-order guide.