Current Events > Finally finished Attack on Titan *SPOILERS*

(+) Yeah! (+)

Turns out the only way to save humanity is to kill 80% of it.

What a lovely message.

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Did you expect it to have a happy ending?

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Xavier_On_High posted...

Did you expect it to have a happy ending?

Oh not at all.

Let's just say though that five volumes ago, I would have thought the tragedy would have been a bit more poignant than "I have to genocide because I saw the future."

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Never personally saw the ending but didn't he kill everyone because his sister didn't love him, even though she did and they're both just really bad at communicating?

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CyricZ posted...

Turns out the only way to save humanity is to kill 80% of it.

What a lovely message.

Did you read the original last chapter, or the one with the 4 or 5 bonus pages the author released about a month later that drastically changes the ending? Based on the way you phrased things, I'm guessing it's the former.

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s0nicfan posted...

Did you read the original last chapter, or the one with the 4 or 5 bonus pages the author released about a month later that drastically changes the ending? Based on the way you phrased things, I'm guessing it's the former.

I read the English published version.

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CyricZ posted...

I read the English published version.

Hmm... not sure which version they published. FYI in the extended pages we see that Mikasa dies of old age, then years later stealth bombers obliterate the island. While everything Eren fought to protect is being blown into tiny pieces, a child at the edge of town walks into a large crack in the tree that grew where they buried Eren, mirroring what happened with the original Ymir, implying that a new generation of titans would be born and the whole cycle repeats, making all if it completely meaningless.

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s0nicfan posted...

Hmm... not sure which version they published.

Yes the English published version had that.

Like I don't even care about the whole "it's all going to happen again" because honestly that doesn't matter really.

The whole "it's okay to do a little genocide if it means you're saving your friends" is the crux of it.

And of course if the whole moral is "there is no moral, this is just a shit world with shit people", then Isayama could have said that in one book instead of 34. Honestly I feel he just had ideas that got away from him and wrote himself into a corner.

3PiesAndAFork posted...

Never personally saw the ending but didn't he kill everyone because his sister didn't love him, even though she did and they're both just really bad at communicating?

That certainly had a hand in it. It's pretty much outright stated that if the two just had a frank talk about each other, they could have averted so much.

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If they had actually turned Eren into the villain and not do a half assed attempt to redeem him at the end I would have been fine with the ending.

Also, less necrophilia never hurts.

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CyricZ posted...

it's okay to do a little genocide if it means you're saving your friends

I dont think Eren's actions were represented or supposed to be interpreted as good or okay

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Gwynevere posted...

I dont think Eren's actions were represented or supposed to be interpreted as good or okay

Armin begs to differ.

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CyricZ posted...

Armin begs to differ.

Armin is the one that allowed Mikasa to get the killing blow on Eren, knowing that would put an end to the power of the titans.

Plus, it's possible for Armin to understand Eren's reasoning for doing what he did without agreeing with it

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Gwynevere posted...

Armin is the one that allowed Mikasa to get the killing blow on Eren, knowing that would put an end to the power of the titans.

Plus, it's possible for Armin to understand Eren's reasoning for doing what he did without agreeing with it

And all but thanked him in their final conversation, which he was made to forget and then remember at the last moment.

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CyricZ posted...

And all but thanked him in their final conversation, which he was made to forget and then remember at the last moment.

In that scene, Armin is the audience surrogate. His "just one step short of thanking him" is meant to be the audience's.

That wasnt my interpretation of it, but I'll actually go reread the last few chapters and see if I'm just misremembering something. Because I dont recall Eren's choices being framed as morally correct at all

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Gwynevere posted...

Because I dont recall Eren's choices being framed as morally correct at all

That's not the argument I'm making. The argument is that accountability was being shuffled aside for friendship and implied gratitude.

Eren betrayed everything they had fought for since childhood. Armin should realistically have nothing but contempt for his former friend.

The moral ambiguity of "I became the villain so you could be the hero" (The Boss style) goes over like a lead balloon given the actual cost of him becoming the villain.

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the ending is so bad i quit anime/manga over it

threw everything away to appease 15 year old shippers who just wanna see the Cute Anime Boy admit he loves the Cute Anime Girl

even the fucking voice actors thought it was great, there's no escape, there isn't a single critical bone in the entire anime community

I've noticed in AoT and another game a tendency to brush aside genocide and war crimes

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It was like everything after levi got blown to hell was written by a different person.

The story was written like it was complex, everyone playing 4d chess and then the end was just complete garbage.

I read that isayama got bullied at school. His drawing is crap but he makes sure the faces of the titans (resembling the bullies that bullied him) were done to fine detail.

Maybe he got half tired of writing this story and this is his way of showing power, screwing the fans over with the ending.


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Cobra1010 posted...

It was like everything after levi got blown to hell was written by a different person.

The story was written like it was complex, everyone playing 4d chess and then the end was just complete garbage.

I read that isayama got bullied at school. His drawing is crap but he makes sure the faces of the titans (resembling the bullies that bullied him) were done to fine detail.

Maybe he got half tired of writing this story and this is his way of showing power, screwing the fans over with the ending.

I think it's more the opposite. He had a simple story all planned out and when the series blew up the magazine/editors convinced him to scrap his ending and drag the series out.

Isayama sort of admit as much himself.
https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2013/12/06-1/author-commands-on-changes-to-attack-on-titan-ending

However, one of the more substantial changes to the series' direction is that he was abandoned plans for an audience traumatizing ending. He had been thinking about something along the lines of the Frank Darabont adaptation Stephen King's The Mist, but response to the series, and especially his anime adaptation has left him unable take that path, and a bit lost. With all the support that the series has received, he didn't want to slam the fans with a traumatic conclusion.

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Eh, it was fine. The point was the old hypothetical How far would you go to save your loved ones?, just dragged out to Erens entire story post-time skip (which wasnt so bad because there were other characters with their own shit going on). The way things were progressing in the last few chapters, I was expecting an Everyone holds hands and sings kumbayah ending, and Im glad we at least didnt get that.

And people horribly misunderstand Erens relationship with Mikasa. When he grew up, he developed feelings for her and knew that she liked him, but by that point he also knew he would need to commit genocide and die to save Paradis and so he couldnt do anything with his feelings for her. Thats why he acted stoic and tried to push her away. In the end, he could only finally be open and honest with all of his friends, most notably Armin and Mikasa, because he knew they wouldnt remember until after everything was over anyway. His little tantrum on the beach doesnt make him less of a character, it makes him more human. It shows that beneath his tough exterior he was as frustrated as anyone would be in the situation he was in.

s0nicfan posted...

Hmm... not sure which version they published. FYI in the extended pages we see that Mikasa dies of old age, then years later stealth bombers obliterate the island. While everything Eren fought to protect is being blown into tiny pieces, a child at the edge of town walks into a large crack in the tree that grew where they buried Eren, mirroring what happened with the original Ymir, implying that a new generation of titans would be born and the whole cycle repeats, making all if it completely meaningless.

I DID NOT read that and i LOVE IT. Thanks!

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CyricZ posted...

That's not the argument I'm making. The argument is that accountability was being shuffled aside for friendship and implied gratitude.

Eren betrayed everything they had fought for since childhood. Armin should realistically have nothing but contempt for his former friend.

The moral ambiguity of "I became the villain so you could be the hero" (The Boss style) goes over like a lead balloon given the actual cost of him becoming the villain.

Ah, then we just disagree on the message of the story then. Which is totally fine, art is meant to be interpreted in different ways

I get that, given a lens of perfect morality, Armin should have nothing but contempt for Eren. But being his lifelong friend from childhood, I dont think Armin could ever truly hate Eren. Which, in my eyes, is not an approval of his actions

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Isayama: "I think I wanted to attack something. Like betraying people or hurting people. And, well, it's not exactly nice, but hurting the readers too... In all honestly, I feel that's what I really wanted to do. For me, as a reader, when I think, "this manga will remain in my heart," it means, for example, it phenomenally hurt me: It's those kinds of experiences I'm after."

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Cobra1010 posted...

Isayama: "I think I wanted to attack something. Like betraying people or hurting people. And, well, it's not exactly nice, but hurting the readers too... In all honestly, I feel that's what I really wanted to do. For me, as a reader, when I think, "this manga will remain in my heart," it means, for example, it phenomenally hurt me: It's those kinds of experiences I'm after."

Sounds like a loving husband and father.

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Cobra1010 posted...

Isayama: "I think I wanted to attack something. Like betraying people or hurting people. And, well, it's not exactly nice, but hurting the readers too... In all honestly, I feel that's what I really wanted to do. For me, as a reader, when I think, "this manga will remain in my heart," it means, for example, it phenomenally hurt me: It's those kinds of experiences I'm after."

Which is a perspective for him to have certainly, but then I also just finished a book that hurt quite a bit emotionally, and I feel it was much better, because it was about the pain that the characters were going through and empathizing with it rather than just feeling like you're being abused by the writer.


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