In Attack on Titan, the Titans behaved not like humans, but like emotionless beings. However, there were some Abnormals among the normal Titans that behaved differently than ordinary Titans. The mangaka of Attack on Titan revealed the nature of these Titans.
What abnormal Titans are there? By abnormal Titans, we mean the beings that do not belong to the Titan Shifters. They form their own category as they differ from normal Titans in their characteristics.
- In OVA 1 and a special chapter of the manga, there appears a Titan that can speak. It is even possible for it to show emotions. Another Titan that could speak was Connie’s mother. She welcomed her son with “Welcome home”.
- Rod Reiss transformed into an abnormal Titan that is twice the size of the Colossal Titan. He could only move by crawling on the ground.
- In the Titan Forest, Eren and Ymir encountered a Titan that simply observed them. It made no attempts to attack them.
- Additionally, there are several Titans that can jump several meters high. Normally, Titans do not have the strength to cover such long distances in one leap.
- Other abnormal Titans that occur more frequently are those that run towards a specific group of humans while ignoring other living beings.
Especially the first Titan mentioned seemed almost like a real human. It could be that this represents a more advanced form of Titans that have progressed further in evolution. The mangaka Hajime Isayama, who is now working on another manga, clarified what mystery lies behind the abnormal Titans.
In the 1st season of Attack on Titan, some of the Titans can already be seen:
Abnormal Titan is a defective product in Attack on Titan
What secret lies behind it? According to Isayama, the abnormal Titans are “glitches”. One could imagine it as a defective item that falls off the assembly line in a factory:
At the beginning, I was just starting to develop the idea of the Titans. There are normal Titans and there are abnormal Titans. Normal Titans were for me something like programmed beings, and some of them contained a “glitch”, something like a defective item from a factory. I didn’t think much more about this Titan while writing the story.
Hajime Isayama, in an interview with Crunchyroll
This also means that the abnormal Titans are not an evolution of the normal Titans, but rather “defective” Titans.
The probably strangest behavior was shown by the Titan from the OVA. He knelt down before Titan Hunter Ilse Langner, who was accidentally named after a German journalist. The Titan mistook Ilse for Ymir and seemed to belong to the cult that worshiped Ymir.
The Titan could not only speak individual words like “Lady Ymir”, but also show emotions. He began to cry when Ilse yelled at him. Ilse recorded her observations in a notebook that was found by Hanji Zoe.
But in the end, the nature of the Titans prevailed: Ilse was eaten by the abnormal Titan.
In Malaysia, there are other abnormal Titans that were not intended by the mangaka: Attack on Titan received an absurd modification, wrapping Titans in cycling shorts
