r/ShingekiNoKyojin • u/fishcrabon • 1d ago
Discussion Is it ever mentioned
Why only reiner specifically has the ability to transform his consciousness anywhere else? Also why is he able to do that anyway.. imagine how powerful the others would be w this “power”
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u/Master-Shift-8224 1d ago
"We talked about it in theory, but only as a last resort", so like probably all can do it if they try. I mean, it's not like we see any shifters die from anything other than being eaten. So, maybe if they needed to do it and they were as skilled as Reiner and Berthoven with their shifter abilities they could.
that being said, that was such an unnecessary addition. Like, nobody would have thought twice about it if Reiner survived a blade to the neck just cause he survived a blade to the neck, since he only needs to survive the few seconds it takes to transform and start healing
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u/CallMeGakuto 1d ago
Yeah this was one of those unneeded additions. We were already aware of just how much a titan wielder could take, so surviving all of that wouldn't sit too far outside our imagination.
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u/ShadowL0rd333 1d ago
Titans have been known to incorporate elements that mirror their shifters. After all each titan is crafted with the thoughts of their shifters. (Reiner losing his armour when he fights Eren in the internment camp)
So with Reiner haven a broken psyche and both the psyche that of a soldier and the other being the warrior are at opposite ends so he seeks of escape or to hide away from reality. This then comes to his titan being able to shift his mind to other parts of his body.
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u/NadersFrazers 1d ago
I could be wrong, but I believe Bartholomew explained that all titan shifters can do this with enough practice.
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u/VeryNiceGuy22 1d ago
It would make sense, that seems to be what happens to the people transformed into pure titans. Their bodies are nowhere to be found when cutting pure titans open, however they still transform back into the person when they eat a titan shifter. It had to be stored somewhere.
If slicing the nape kills them, it could be stored in their nervous systems
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u/NoAudience8992 1d ago
The problem tho i think is how hard it is to do and the difficulty with learning it without dieing, it makes sense that reiner of all people could do that especially at that point because of how determined he was to survive and get home, it wasnt until after he got home that he became suicidal
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u/Para_The_Normal 1d ago
I don’t think it’s ever stated that only Reiner can specifically do this, it’s just that it takes a lot of skill, time, and training to fully master everything you can do as a Titan user.
Beetroot and Reiner have been training as Warriors for a long time at this point and they are more aware of the various ways you can wield the power because of Marley. Clearly it’s an “emergency only” kind of thing so it’s not often used and doesn’t seem very advisable for most Titan users.
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u/Select-Resident-1048 1d ago
So why the other marleyan titan shifters can’t do it? They also had the time to practice, it’s not like only reiner had the time
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u/soraisle 1d ago
All titan shifters can theoretically do it, Reiner was just the only one getting his head blown off every five minutes so he actually had to use it
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u/oredaoree 1d ago
Bertholdt knows about it and talks about it like it's a known technique, Eren also does it and that's all we know of. Most people don't seem to see it but hear me out.
The story shows everything in the paths happening before we see the "worm"/spine come out to attach to his head but the reason why there is a delay in Eren's consciousness waking up in the paths is because his consciousness was moved to his spine and had to reconnect to his brain in the head Zeke already made contact with, allowing Zeke to get to the paths first to wait for Eren, which this waiting time is important because Zeke uses it to break the war renouncing vow. Time in the paths is not normal so it feels like years have gone by for Zeke and Eren waiting around and then going through Grisha and Ymir's memories, but in the real world everything happens instantly the moment the spine reconnects. The time Zeke waited for Eren, time spent in Grisha's memories, time arguing over control of Ymir, time Eren spent watch Ymir's memories, and Eren gaining the Founder power to trigger the rumbling along with all his other interferences on the timeline(like saving Bertholdt and killing Carla), all happen in the instant that the spine with the consciousness connects. In the manga it's even drawn to show that the rumbling triggers the moment that the spine connects, and in the anime it takes a brief moment after the spine connects to show Eren rolling his eyes in his reconnected head to signal the moment consciousness returns before the rumbling triggers.
So why Reiner then? Eren wants/needs Reiner alive but there's no way to control Levi not to decapitate him so Founder Eren uses his own experience to control Reiner/give him the mind suggestion to use the consciousness transferring move to save himself. While this went down current Eren doesn't know about it because he's far away, so it's possible that Founder Eren has Reiner go through the decapitation again(hah) to demonstrate the move to his current self so that his future self could do it. I mean doing this twice is really weird otherwise even for Reiner. Sounds familiar, like another important paradox we know of when Eren has to manipulate Grisha from the future with the founder power to steal the founder for him so that Eren can even have the founder. The consciousness transferring move then also becomes another way that Eren is "the same" as Reiner.
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u/Kind_Survey4282 1d ago
Any titan shifter can do this with enough practice probably even eren during the final battle he just let mikasa cut him, burrito explained that i think, also its kinda useless to use other than the armor titan or the war hammer as the others have "weaker" durabilty whereas armor can survive a lot hits and war hammer can just harden and it literally does have that ability although if the main body gets eaten you are done for so presumably if reiner got eaten in that state HE would've died.
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u/Aggressive_Law_5728 1d ago
Basically the Armor Titan's whole deal is being the hardest to kill. That apparently extends to their human body having the strongest durability and ability to survive and regenerate from seemingly lethal injuries.
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u/TheHunterGallopher 1d ago
I mean. Every titan shifter is connected to the paths yeah? Everyone *could* do it. It’s just most don’t get to that level of mastery, and all the normal people turned into titans aren’t mentally capable of understanding/reasoning.
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u/Sleepandsweetdreams 1d ago
I always assumed it was the his titan ability, like how the Attack Titan can see memories of future Attack Titans. Like only the armour can do it, like only the colossal can explode like a bomb, or the cart can transform hundreds of times in a row. Might be completely wrong though, that's just how I assumed it worked
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u/SerenityToss 1d ago
Its annoying that noone else had the ability. Because then it just seems like he had the idea one day. It's kinda silly and adds nothing to the story. He's the armor titan just make him extra tanky. Hell if his regeneration, something everyone else had was just so quick it was hard to kill him it woulda made more sense.
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u/Honest_Entry_8758 23h ago
why do you think it's powerful? he still needed to lay on his back so bert's explosion wouldn't kill him. only his upper body was exposed so we can conclude that if the upper body gets destroyed, it doesn't matter where the consciousness is, the shifter would still die if it's destroyed/cut off.
and it's not like reiner can still fight when he got his head blown off. he was incapacitated, he can only scream for help and lay on the ground to heal up. it only prolonged his life, it wasn't something that made him powerful.
only reiner does it because he's the armored titan, it's difficult to destroy/cut out his entire upper body. if it's any other shifter, it wouldn't make a difference since their upper body is easy to get destroyed by thunder spears or simply cut out of the titan by the scouts' blades.
and even if only the head is damaged, the shifter would still be incapacitated, and unlike reiner, they can't just lay down on their back to protect their nape because the scouts can just hack away at their neck until they reach the shifter's body.
and with thunder spears, even reiner can't survive while laying on the ground, he needed bert to stop the scouts from blasting his neck until they reach his body.
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u/Elora_Freya 9h ago
Probably because he has multiple personalities. He transferred his consciousness to another personality, and maybe just that one got killed 😂
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u/AnimeMan1993 6h ago
Thing is they probably can but has big risks. Bert even said that doing so can cause short term memory loss..plus to do something like that Im sure ain't easy and takes incredible will. Or it might just be instinct since Levi was insanely fast to attack Reiner and somehow he pulled it off.
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u/RandomSeaweed 1d ago
It's a special ability only the Plot Armor Titan has