

At the ends of s01e02, the recruits are given a speech when joining the Survey
Corps by Keith Shadis, and he says that they will be training for 3 years
before they are expected to fight any Titans.

Why does it take 3 years to train a Survey Corp member? That seems like a good
deal for all the refugees and should have caused their ranks to swell,
especially with the now overflowing motivation of urgency. Three years of food
and housing is nothing to sneeze at in those conditions.

For reference, most modern militaries have boot camps at most a few months
long. US military boot camps range from 6 - 13 weeks depending on the branch
of the service. Advanced non-infantry job training may take longer. Modern
special forces may go through a number of schools after basic training, but
still less than 3 years worth. Historically, boot camps were much shorter and
less organized.

Three years seems like an especially long time for a para/military boot camp,
though it does correspond to the length of time in attendance at a Japanese
high school, which is also a common setting for anime. Is this more than a
coincidence?


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2018-07-29T04:46:37.030
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attack-on-titan
Why is the boot camp for the Survey Corps 3 years long? Because Japanese High School?


The biggest reason for that would be the 3D maneuver gear.

Modern army boot camp is held only for several months because they just need
to learn to use guns, knives, close-quarter combat, learn to drive
helicopters, tanks, humpvee, etc, which is easy compared to the 3D maneuver
gear.

To maintain balance using the 3D maneuver gear even in still position is hard
(see Eren's training). Now imagine moving around at high-speed swinging left
and right, up and down. People not used to it would throw up. The 3 years are
used to make the recruits used to the 3D maneuver gear so that they can move
around correctly, because wrong moves means death in the jaws of the Titans.


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