Fighting Styles of Attack on Titan Part 2: Eren Jaeger

Last week we took a look at a proficient stand-up fighter, Annie, and her techniques. This time I want to focus on aspects of the ground game in Attack On Titan, particularly from the grappling and submissions of Eren Jaeger.

Eren, the main protagonist of Attack on Titan, starts off with little to no knowledge of fighting and merely brawls his way through situations. More often than not, this ends up with him severely injured. As the story progresses, he cleans up his striking under the tutelage of Annie Leonhart and evolves his grappling by learning from Reiner Braun.

Because so many grappling techniques are shared among different grappling styles such as judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, sambo and wrestling, it's hard to pin a unique style to Eren. The most prominent display of Eren's grappling is in the manga, where Reiner and Bertholdt attempt to escape from the walls after being outed as the Armored and Colossal Titan, respectively. During Eren and Reiner's fight, Eren is able to set up a double-leg takedown off of Reiner's straight, a typical counter seen in MMA. While an opponent is throwing a punch, their hands are raised high for the punch and protection of the face, while leaving the entire rest of the body open, making it a prime opportunity for a takedown. The takedown off a punch is also especially effective in that the level change (crouching down and lowering the whole body to change the height of your head and body) acts as a bob in boxing, getting the head out of the way quickly by lowering the head but in this case also allowing for offense. Interestingly, although it appears that Eren is shooting in for a double-leg, he actually utilizes Annie's arm-triangle toss, potentially because Reiner's right arm is extended and being successful with this throw would give Eren a much more advantageous ground position than the double-leg would offer because of the extra control of the head and arm. The arm-triangle is a blood choke in which the attacker's arm is wrapped around one side of the opponent's neck and the opponent's own shoulder is used to choke the other side of the neck, effectively cutting off carotid circulation. Most commonly, the choke is applied from a side control position, where the attacker is on top with his/her entire body off to one side of the opponent, who is on his/her back. The typical double leg targets the lower half of the opponent's body, leaving the head free and arms ready to defend or position for a reversal/submission attempt.

Unfortunately, Eren is unable to maintain top position with this takedown and is reversed onto his back and into full guard by Reiner. In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and other submission styles, full-guard is ground position in which the practitioner is on their back with their legs wrapped around the opponent's body. Surprisingly, this position offers several offensive and defensive options compared to the top position while in guard. Because Eren maintains control of Reiner's right wrist, he is able to lock in a triangle choke by wrapping his right leg around Reiner's neck and using his leg to press Reiner's shoulder into the neck, similar to the arm-triangle choke except using legs instead. The triangle name comes from the the shape of the legs formed from putting one leg's ankle under the other's knee, forming a triangle shaped gap in between the legs.

Eren's triangle to armbar transition

The next grappling sequence is a beautiful transition by Eren from the triangle choke into a belly-down armbar. To do this, Eren unhooks his legs, releasing the triangle and slaps his left leg across Reiner's face while turning face-down, keeping control of the wrist and forearm. The armbar is a submission hold originating from Judo (juji-gatame) where the opponent's arm is hyperextended at the elbow by the attacker using their hips as a fulcrum. A devastating move as failure to tap out can lead to the elbow's tendons and ligaments being severely injured and in extreme cases, broken forearms as famously seen when Frank Mir snapped Tim Sylvia's arm in half using an armbar. This effect is seen much more dramatically in Attack on Titan as Eren rips Reiner's arm off using the armbar.

Reiner's blast double

Later on in the fight, Reiner is able to land a variation of the double-leg known as a blast double; the blast double looks very much like an American football tackle except to the lower body, driving forward with a large initial velocity. From here though, as I mentioned before, Eren's head and arms are still free to defend and Eren locks in a deep guillotine choke, where his arm is wrapped around Reiner's neck and squeezed like a clamp to either blood choke or air choke. The guillotine is also used a neck crank, where the pressure from extending the legs in full guard and arching the back creates a dangerous amount of pressure on the opponent's neck. Eren's guillotine is effective as he almost defeats Reiner but as this is a manga, other circumstances lead him to ultimately fail in his attempt.

Eren's guillotine

Fighting Styles of Attack on Titan Part 1: Annie Leonhart

Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) has quickly turned into one of my favorite anime/manga of all time. Its visceral action and haunting death scenes are all appropriately done and not over the top a la gorefests such as Elfen Lied or Another. Like Legend of Korra, the creator, Hajime Isayama, is a fan of mixed martial arts and this is reflected in the detail given to certain techniques within the manga and to some extent, the anime.

Possibly my favorite character in the series thus far is Annie Leonhart, a small 5 foot tall teenage girl enlisted with the Military Police. She's stoic, apathetic and selfish, but packs a considerable punch. The thing I find most interesting about her is her combat style. I've read many posts on various forums speculating what martial art Annie uses; I've heard Savate, Jiu-Jitsu, Combat Sambo and others. The goal of this post is to elucidate at a technical level exactly what techniques from what martial arts she fights with.

Annie stands fairly upright, guard high and arms extended while keeping her weight on the back leg with the front leg light. This type of stance is nearly synonymous with a traditional Muay Thai stance. Muay Thai is a Thai kickboxing martial art with an emphasis on utilizing the "eight limbs" of fists, elbows, knees and shins. The high guard, while it may look rather silly at first glance, is useful for throwing elbows and initiating a Thai clich, a clinch with both hands around the base of the opponents skull to control the head and allow for knees to be thrown in close proximity. UFC fighter Shogun Rua is a well-practiced MMA fighter known for his brutal Muay Thai techniques. Her stance synergizes well with her combat style, relying mainly on the use of her legs. The narrow and upright stance makes it much easier to raise the legs for throwing or checking kicks. Other than Annie's stance, she also displays Muay Thai prowess in combat, pacticularly with her kicks. She's able to utilize kicks in most situations to either sweep or strike. 

Shogun's traditional Muay Thai stance.

The skillfulness of Annie's sweeps come into motion during the trainees' hand-to-hand combat training, where Annie very easily sweeps Eren with a leg trip. This seemingly effortless motion is commonly utilized by Muay Thai fighters to score easy points for a takedown during a fight when an opponent has overextended on a kick or in this case, a knife thrust. Probably the most prolific user of sweeps such as this is Muay Thai fighter Saenchai. A video with some clips of his sweeps is linked here. Aside of leg sweeps, Annie also shows some ability with wrestling, where she is able to take down Eren during training with an arm-triangle throw.

Annie's kicks are incredibly potent as well, as she throws her kicks with Muay Thai technique, winding up her roundhouse kick to the side from her neutral stance. Winding up the kick from the side immediately allows the abs and more of the body weight to be thrown into the kick, generating more force and potentially more damage to the target. This is opposed to other kicking styles such as Taekwondo, where the chamber is to the front for almost every kick and the snapping motion of the hips right before meeting the target is where most of the force is generated for a roundhouse kick. Using her Muay Thai style, Annie is able to kick off the top half of Eren's head during their battle as Titans

Defensively, Annie fights much more like a Western kickboxer or out-fighter, dodging with bobs and slips to avoid danger and keeping a good distance away from her opponent. Mostly likely this is due to her being smaller as both a Titan and human in comparison to her opponents and blocking traditionally would not be the best sustaining option for a fight. However, she is still able to use her hands effectively in a defense manner, parrying Eren's punches and counter striking during their fight outside the walls. During their final encounter, Annie is able to block Eren's straight by holding her hand against the back of her head and blocking with the elbow out, causing Eren's fist to meet the pointed end of her elbow. This type of static guard isn't seen much in Muay Thai or MMA because of how precise the block would have to be and how straight the punch would have to be to not slip past the guard and slam into the defender's face.

Hopefully this clears up confusion and/or speculation about Annie's fighting and as a Muay Thai practitioner, it was a lot of fun to break down her technique.

Legend of Korra and MMA

Welcome to my first blog post! To give you a short synopsis of what most posts will be about, I'll be examining different facets of martial arts from different TV shows, anime and video games that catch my attention.

Having just finished catching up in Legend of Korra, I felt compelled to share my thoughts on the representation of MMA within the show. I will not be covering the accuracy and techniques of Chinese martial arts found in individual bending styles (i.e.: Baguazhang as Airbending) as I am not trained in any Chinese martial arts; it would be disrespectful for me to dissect them.

Bolin's double leg takedown

Watching Korra as an animation fan and a MMA fan really brought the show full circle for me.The amount of detail given to the portrayal of certain techniques caught my eye consistently. In episode 5 of Book 1, Bolin duels a fellow Earthbender in a 1-on-1 tiebreaker round for one of the Fire Ferrets' matches. To my surprise, Bolin attempts a double-leg takedown, which was unfortunately sprawled and defended by his opponent. I was aware that there was some MMA inspiration to the combat in Korra, since Mac Danzig (retired UFC fighter) was brought on as a consultant, but I always assumed it was only in a capacity where characters would throw boxing-style punches rather than traditional martial art style strikes. To this end, I was pleasantly surprised to see the double leg utilized.

Georges St. Pierre taking down Thiago Alves with a double-leg
https://bigstickcombat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/gsp-double-leg-take-down.jpg

In Book 2, when Korra is in her giant spirit form fighting Unalaq, she employs a Fireman's Carry throw, or kata guruma in Judo and also delivers an excellent flying knee strike not commonly seen in Chinese martial arts.

Kata Guruma
http://www.judosport.net/technik/kataguruma.JPG

There are dozens upon dozens of other small techniques to nitpick in Korra but the general gist is that the animators do an excellent job of making the moves look natural and effective.

Flying knee by Korra