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HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD

I'm glad people finally realized Isayama as a hack. It should come as no surprise to people who already knew what this series was, an overly complex pseudo-fascist dreck that far overstayed the initial welcome of its premise.

The ending was fascinating. It demonstrated that no matter how morally reprehensible you make a character, with the simple addition of a completely new plot point in the very last chapter, you can absolve them completely of all responsibility. I'm talking of course about Eren Jaeger, who was a terrible character well before Isayama decided to completely revise not only the character but the entire fabric ... of the series' universe.

Firstly, lets discuss Eren. I think this character was rather charming in the initial story, but he was honestly nothing as special as he was made out to be. A very angry little boy borne of intense familial trauma, who channelled that rage and desire for vengeance to become something of a heroic figure. We get to experience and sort through the mystery of the world around him through the device of his missing father and the mysterious basement. We meet his friends, his superiors. We learn (part of) the truth behind the catalyst for the story: three other child soldiers he has been friends with are in fact traitors bent on destroying his people.

Things happen and we get to see whats in the basement. We get to know there is a world outside the walls. And what do you know, the people of the walls are actually on an island. And outside the island, there is another nation where more of their people live. They, and everyone on the island, are genetically Titans. The main "monsters" of the series And these people undergo forced ghettoization and have to wear armbands with yellow marks. Yes, the "Eldians" are written as direct analogues for the Jewish people during the Holocaust.

Eren finds out that the three traitors are part of his race, but they come from that outside nation. They were child soldiers recruited by the dominant Marley to infiltrate the island and kill everybody. Yes, they sent child soldiers to kill a bunch of innocent people. Children who were brainwashed from birth to believe they were part of an "evil" race, but they could become good Ger- ahem, soldiers, by going to this island and killing everyone. This is the reason Eren's mother died and so many of his friends have died.

Eren, one way or another, comes to all this information. He hears it from one of the traitors themselves. So what is the solution? He labored under the assumption that his enemies were the titans eating everyone within the walls. Then he finds out that all these titans are his people. And they've been forced onto a prison colony to cannibalize themselves. All while another nation uses the subservient special Titans as military weapons.

So Eren comes to this conclusion that there is no solution. I admit it, if this were really happening, there wouldn't be any cut and dry solution to this either- Just kidding, that's not true at all. Obviously the solution would be the liberation of the Eldian people in Marley. That in itself would be a good idea. It sounds idealistic when considered in a real world context. But this is just a fictional work where characters have godlike powers with which to act on ideals like this. We know the Eldians on the continent fight for Marley. However, they do so at gunpoint. They're shown to be terrorized by secret police and regularly murdered. They're forcibly conscripted into the army, including children.

So what does Eren do? He decides to- stay with me here- wipe out the entirety of humanity outside the island. Every single person. Eldian, Marleyan, whatever. His solution is genocide. He weighs everything in his mind (this is after a timeskip by the way, so he's older now) and decides the solution is to just murder everyone. To protect his friends' way of life or some nonsense. To this effect, he tells the audience he will keep fighting for what he believes in. And he does so by transforming into a titan, killing a bunch of women and children in an apartment building above him.

While all this is happening, we have another absolute piece of work- Zeke, who happens to be Eren's half-brother or something. This guy is an Eldian restorationist, since Eldians actually used to be the people doing the terrorizing in the past. They were a monarchy whose king basically subjugated the entire world through some sort of weird Titan magic. This is the world that Zeke wants apparently, since he sets into motion a series of events that lead to a fascist uprising on the island known as the Yeagerists. People who support Eren's violent solution of war with the outside world on the grounds of intense ultra nationalism.

Of course, Eldian restorationism is a plan that addresses none of the root problems and Zeke realizes all he has done is enable Eren, who at this point has transitioned fully into a genocidal lunatic, to initiate the "Rumbling" which will basically have a bunch of Titans exterminate the entire world.

The dynamic of the latter half of the series is as follows: We have Eren Yeager with his genocide, and we have Zeke with his "oh shit, this is fucked up, and I fucked up" foot-eating panic. What's Zeke's counter-solution? Eugenics, of course! We have a marginalized race that wields extreme power. We don't want to murder them all... and we don't want Eren to have them murder the rest of the world. How do we come to some sort of amenable outcome here? Why, take away their ability to have kids so the race is completely exterminated with extra steps! Really makes the Jewish analogues kinda uncomfortable, don't you think?

Eren's transformation is borne of trauma and lack of answers, but it is a transformation all the same. He is a maniac, and he is a bad person. None of the characters are good people, but many of them have a condition that precludes outright condemnation: they were either child soldiers who were literally brainwashed, or in the case of Eren's friends and comrades, people who were roped into Eren's unilateral declaration of war against humanity with no consultation and against their will. They're still shitty people, but most of them had no idea what was going on. There is nuance to this sort of characterization.

Is there nuance to Eren? Yes. But Eren was given all of the information during a period of non-conflict between his island and Marley, and still chose to kill everyone regardless of their alignment. Eren cannot say he didn't know any better. He cannot say he was brainwashed (I say this... tentatively. Because we are not even broaching the subject of Eren's completely ridiculous titan powers yet.)

These characters are shitty, but none of them thought genocide was the answer but Eren. They realized Eren was wrong, and that they had to stop him. Eren's transformation might make for some compelling popcorn reading, sure. That doesn't change that his reasoning is absolute lunacy and callous disregard for human life on a scale beyond any of his aggressors. He's not a good character, both personality wise and narratively. He went from a rather generic manga hero to a depraved mass murderer with a series of convoluted time skips and flashbacks.

Now, stay with me here, my condemnation of Eren doesn't mean the series is completely unsalvageable in terms of a satisfying ending. Indeed, the satisfying ending here is the characters realizing just how profoundly evil Eren is and wiping him off the face of the earth. And Armin and Mikasa, his best friends, realize they do have to kill him. Good. Right track.

Isayama, however, couldn't help himself from being an awful and lazy writer. Maybe he saw himself in Eren. Who knows. Either way, instead what we got was an extremely mind boggling ending. Eren is killed and then there's a flashback where he reveals that the entirety of the plot was somehow both predetermined and influenced by him at the same time. This sounds paradoxical because it is. Isayama doesn't bother explaining it to any degree of clarity.

Eren basically got the power of the "Founder" titan Ymir. Theres no past or present or future with Ymir's power, it exists outside of time. Eren attained this power and was somehow able to enter this point outside of time and experience literally everything that happened in the series. Are you following me? He then, for NO reason (literally, he says he doesn't know why) just manipulates everything that happens so that he becomes a genocidal maniac and starts the rumbling. All so that he can be killed and titan powers can be erased from the world for some reason. He had his mother killed. He saved the traitors so they could destroy the walls. Everything that happened, Eren experienced and apparently compelled to happen. Why? Only Ymir knows, apparently.

This is introduced in the LAST goddamn chapter, out of nowhere. And in doing so, Isayama has the opportunity to give us a dream sequence or something in which young good boy Eren returns to explain his actions. The brash young protagonist Eren that people grew up with and loved. Deep down, he's still somehow this kid and not the mass murderer. He just did it... because... um.. he had to, to remove titans from the world. He killed his mom because of this. Not only his mom, actually. He wiped out 80 PERCENT OF HUMANITY to achieve this goal. This 80 percent does not include the island of Paradis, by the way. In fact, the islanders believe Eren died a martyr and the Yeagerist fascist movement seized power in the monarchy. They are now supposedly building their military in anticipation of war with the remaining 20 percent of humanity.

Eren removed the titan powers from the world, so the fascists can't do much, right? Except the Paradis soldiers are clearly able to wage conventional warfare, not to mention they are capable of manning rocket powered spears designed for killing Titans while maneuvering perfectly through the air. Eren murdered almost of humanity and left behind in his wake a fascist movement intent on war. And Armin, his best friend, actually THANKS him for this. Fin.

The ending on its own would've been predictable, but okay, if Eren had died and that was that. I mean, considering what I just said, its poorly written but predictable. It is probably the most amenable ending you could come up with in the "eugenics vs genocide" dichotomy. But Isayama's mealy-mouthed titan time travel shenanigans in the last chapter attempts to humanize and even redeem Eren's actions rather than just make him a traumatized killer. I have never seen such a mockery made of the concept of genocide.

Attack on Titan had its ups (the beginning of the series) and its downs (the rest of it.) Behind it all was an absolutely terrible mangaka who fooled many people into thinking he had written a main character worth rooting for. And in the ending, he finally let the mask slip and reveal the sham behind the smoke and mirrors. For that, I can at least thank him. This manga is utter garbage and it deserves to be seen as such.

This is a very well constructed manga. Rather than getting into detail on why it's so great, I'd rather just discuss the major critique of it I had.

Its a story that is on par with any of the anti-war greats, something that never holds back its critique and depicts its subjects unflinchingly. It has beautiful art, well-composed plots, and realistic character development throughout. It is a true realization of many staples of the mecha genre. Each arc is its own story- with the setting being one of the only shared traits throughout (more on this later)- that explores different themes and perspective. It would be ... too hard to summarize each one, so its best explored for yourself. Much of it strays from romanticization, though thats an inescapable byproduct of the format and its definitely present. Whats important is that it does not overly try to rehabilitate its subjects. Its a war story done quite right.

Yet, disappointingly, what threw me off was one central aspect of the entire series- the gimmick that would serve as the "connecting thread" between the disparate stories and characters of each arc. I am talking about the character of Kenichi Inuzuka, the deviant war correspondent who chronicles everything thats going on in the war-torn Huffman Island.

He serves as an important character in-universe who's actions have ostensible political weight- he is a rogue wartime filmographer who takes pictures of the various conflicts as well as all sorts of war crimes and brutality and then uploads them to the internet free of any government regulation. His work serves as an expose of the horrors of war and an important framing device for many of the messages of each arc. His own motivations are far less scrupulous however- he is an unabashed pervert, a total hedonist and self described war otaku who just wants to film all the mechas and soldiers.

This character is incredibly annoying both as a distinct personality and a plot device. Of course this is a futuristic mecha anime about a global conflict that has absolutely no basis in actual geopolitics. Yet the suspension of disbelief involved with this character often serves a gigantic plot hole in what is otherwise so well constructed. He is seemingly omniscient because he is an "information broker" and journalist, somehow seeming to know everyone and everything on a very personal level. He can appear everywhere at once, with no sense of scale as to the distance hes traveling between each location or time that has passed. He is seemingly indestructible, running around live gunfire and explosions that is shown brutally dismembering armed soldiers. He appears to exist almost as a godlike figure in this universe, and its unbearably corny when scenes that have emotional weight are interrupted by this nerd showing up in front of soldiers inside giant mechs and somehow communicating with them. The scenes where he appears in front of characters as a sort of messiah, offering them gifts of super deadly military ordinance are awful. It almost feels like the editors forced the writers to include him more. Or theres maybe the off chance they actually felt this guy was some sort of clever mysterious figure. Either way it sucks.

Because of the tangential nature of the arcs, nothing is really explained about the logistics of Inuzuka's operation by about 3/4ths of the way through the series. He is shown to be receiving equipment from a disheveled looking journalist in Japan, who obviously has money and connections. But how much? How much of this is funded? He's shown looking dirt poor and needing money for bus fare at some point. Yet at other points he's just cavorting around with top military brass and offering weapons to people like he controls every financial channel within these governments. The wild inconsistency is perhaps meant to contribute to the mystique of his character, but it feels juvenile when juxtaposed against much of the grounded content of the rest of the manga.

Inuzuka's personality and perverted disposition isn't in question here at all, though he gets old 30 chapters or so in. He is still as layered a character as any other- and the arc that focuses on him is perhaps one of the best in the entire manga. I'm sure theres a statement to be made on his character- that its kind needed to be a journalist in that situation, and more generally, its probably the kind needed to survive at all. If he was as powerless as he looked or perhaps wasn't give the seemingly infinite resources he had, I would definitely have enjoyed this sort of brunt appraisal of journalism. As it stands, he feels to much like a product of a mangakas attempt to make a noteworthy character more than a sincere piece of storytelling.

The manga is not fully scanlated, so I cannot give an overall appraisal of the work at this time. Please read it for yourself, I think whether or not you agree with my evaluation of Inuzuka, you will thoroughly enjoy this manga if you are anti-war and a fan of the mecha genre.

I won't mince words, this is a deeply irresponsible work. I wanted to see it through, but I dropped it after much deliberation.

Youjo Senki is the tale of an objectivist who is reborn as a child soldier in a imperial nation that is a mix of WWI and WWII era Germany geopolitics and military, but technology is supplanted with magic. The main character, who is renamed Tanya, is the picture of Japanese neoliberalism and the central "punchline" of the story is that her result-oriented pragmatism is instead seen as fierce patriotism and ideal military prowess by her superiors. Tanya has the foresight of extensive knowledge ... related to military procedure and uses this to amass countless accolades, hoping to secure a cushy desk job position in the rear guard (which is the neoliberal ideal.) Instead, the military brass in their fear and admiration continue to assign her to the front lines where she doesn't want to be. This initial formula was quite entertaining to me.

Unlike a majority of people who have been enamored by the WWII style German military outfits and believe this to be a celebration of the military might of the Nazis, its actually quite clear from interviews with the original LN author that is intended to be two things: 1) a manga that covers WWI history and military procedure, a market relatively untouched in Japan and 2) a satirical critique of war, religion and Tanya's underlying objectivism. The story makes clear that war is a terrible thing and the justifications the "pacifist" Tanya makes for her actions are in fact deeply hypocritical. Tanya believes her actions are simply to maximize efficiency and end the conflict as quickly as possible, when in reality, she becomes seen as a "devil" even by those within her own nation.

The issue, for me, stems with the execution of such a message. Beneath all the dense plot and attention to detail is a fairly stock standard isekai plot. Tanya is an all respects a very generic Mary Sue, with the ability to defeat entire squadrons and forces much more powerful than anyone else can handle by herself. She is armed with knowledge nobody else possesses, power that far eclipses anyone else, and also has divine intervention guiding her. The manga goes out of its way to establish a tense action story in each sortie, with Tanya rushing forward into explosive air battles. It is written almost like a shonen at its core, and as a result, Tanya is presented as the one to be rooting for. Whether inadvertent or not, she is increasingly built to be a sympathetic character which in turn assigns moral ambiguity to her actions. Even though what she is doing is clearly evil. Her actions are sociopathic to their core, and in any actual context she would be considered a war mongerer. All sympathy or moral ambiguity her actions may imply are simply projected onto her from the outside. Her inner monologues make it clear that war is simply an equation of human capital to her, and it doesn't matter as long as she comes out safe and on top. This would be a brilliant satire if the format for it wasn't so weak. Instead, you have people in reddits and on image boards praising the nazi loli for her epic war crimes, and much of the fault does lie in the delivery.

Maybe you think I'd be wrong to state that because Carlo Zen specifically made sure that the world he was building was not a fascist one- the Empire is one supposedly devoted to racial equality. Yet I cannot shake the fact that this is such a weak way to develop an anti-war and ultimately anti-capitalist critique. If you want to develop a satire, you develop a satire. If you want to develop an action adventure story, you develop an action adventure story. If you are going to develop both, you need to find a proper balance. Where Youjou Senki fails in its balance is that so much emphasis is weighed to the isekai action story that it becomes easy to forget what it is critiquing. The message is essentially eclipsed by a bunch of heroic looking figures in Nazi garb committing what are essentially war crimes.

Carlo Zen is admirable in his goals, but his execution is irresponsible. The final nail in the coffin for me was an entire chapter devoted to her committing an obvious war crime, that is followed with her monologuing to another sympathetic character that what they are doing actually saves lives and is justified. The way he goes ahead and presents these realities of war as morally ambiguous is already logically weak to me, but the fact he plays it straight and attempts to humanize the aggressors was borderline insulting. I would've a million times preferred her to just have the usual monologue about human capital. Instead what would be a powerful statement is marred by common isekai tropes and an attempt to present nuance where there doesn't need to be. To cap it off, this brutal war crime was preceded by a very generic anime battle. It robs the message. And its clear that it did because I see plenty of discussion where people attempt to justify this action by Tanya morally and pragmatically. This demonstrates a death of the author issue that I just don't feel comfortable reading.

To reiterate, its irresponsible. But not because of the author's intentions. Its because this medium is so weak for what he wants to accomplish. There is a popular saying: "there is no such thing as an anti-war film." Why is that? The spectacle, the action, the generic emotional arcs rob the central satire. The action in this series and the MC are clearly presented to be "cool." The author becomes so engrossed in telling a war story that he ends up softening his critique of war. In trying to present an anti war message, it fails because the isekai aspect glorifies it. Not my cup of tea.