Attack on Titan, Vol. 5

Attack on Titan, Vol. 5 collects chapters 19 through 22 of Hajime Isayama's post-apocalyptic dark fantasy manga, serialized in Kodansha's Bessatsu Shonen Magazine and published in English by Kodansha on June 4, 2013. Trost has been retaken thanks to Eren's Titan power, but victory buys him no peace: he wakes from a three-day coma in shackles, held to account for an ability neither he nor the military understands.

The volume turns on what the leadership decides to do with him. Erwin Smith, commander of the Survey Corps, believes the research left behind by Eren's father explains how the Titans came to be — and that the answer is waiting in the basement of the house where Eren grew up, far beyond the walls in Titan territory. Eren is placed under Captain Levi and his Special Operations Squad, and the gate is opened for a long-range scouting formation that will carry the Corps out into the open for the first time in the story.

This is the volume where Attack on Titan shifts from siege defence to expedition, and where its central mystery — what the Titans are and why they came — is stated outright as the thing the Survey Corps is riding out to answer. Isayama's tone stays bleak and claustrophobic even in open country, and the eeriness the series is known for comes as much from what the characters do not yet know as from the Titans themselves.