This is probably one of the longer attack on titan reviews on the site, and contains spoilers.
Also, this is the review I wrote for final season part 2 (but contains my thoughts on the series as a whole) that I just reposted with my thoughts on the new special. So I wrote most of this about a year ago. I don’t know if that’s allowed by the review guidelines, but I figured I would post it anyways.
Disclaimer: My experience of this show has been incredibly fragmented and thus I'm not confident if my opinions would hold up under a rewatch of the show. I
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first watched season 1 on netflix, then stopped because they didn't have season 2. Then a year or so later I started season 2 on crunchyroll, only to find that I didn't remember enough of the story or characters to watch, so I rewatched all of season 1 and made it a little over halfway through season 2, only to find myself bored out of my mind watching the episodes after eren got kidnapped for the 10th time and dropped it. A while later I decided to continue and once again didn't remember much, so I skimmed season 1 and tried season 2 again, and found it much more bearable and finished it, only to start season 3 and lose interest once more in the first few episodes. A while later I picked up the show again and started straight from season 3, and once I passed the uninteresting first few episodes I was quickly hooked and binged all of seasons 3 and the final season part 1. After that I waited a while for the final final season and watched it, finding that I had once again forgotten half of what had happened in previous seasons despite only a couple months passing, but didn't feel like rewatching any more so I just finished it. Now I’m here, over a year later, writing a review for the Final Season. Part 3. Part 1. Update: Now I’m just adding another paragraph for part 2.
My opinions on this show are mixed. Let me preface by saying that I don’t really feel confident I fully understood a lot of the content in the final season, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, as mentioned, I have never done a full binge of the show, paying careful attention to everything that's happened. And I'd love to, but after having done multiple rewatches of separate parts I'm not confident I'd be able to stay awake during something like that, because this show is boring as hell after season 3. Second, because of the previously stated reason, I had a hard time trying to keep track of characters' motivations and personalities. This was made even worse by the constant reveals of x character was actually a traitor, x character actually didn't mean what they said in this scene 10 episodes ago, as well as the artificial writing of many of the characters, causing them to perform actions not necessarily matching their previously established personality, instead using them as tools to progress the plot. Third, the characters themselves are unmemorable. I couldn’t care less about characters like Conny, Jean, Sasha because all of them are just boring. It feels like the author killed far too many characters in season 1, but then realized that he needs to keep some characters alive, but then forgot that none of his characters have any depth and kept characters nobody cares about around for far too long. Because of this, I had a hard time getting any context behind the decisions characters like Conny and Jean made because I don’t think they’ve had concrete personalities and motivations and relationships developed. Fourth, the story itself became extremely overcomplicated in the final season, introducing ridiculous shit like time travel. And finally, I stopped caring about this show after season 3 and admittedly payed much less attention to events than I should've. But I intend on writing a full review for everything up until now anyways, stating my opinions on the show as well as parts of the show I'm confused about and questions I have. If you think I’m a dumbass for writing a negative review of a show that I didn’t give my full attention to, then go ahead and hate me.
- Season 1 -
Season 1 is one of the better seasons in my opinion. It provides an intriguing story, combined with high production values. The animation is beautiful, the action sequences are stunning, and the soundtrack is perfectly fitting and complements scenes spectacularly. Scenes like the colossal titan looming over the wall while “XL-TT” plays still make me smile even though I don’t even like this show. Shit like that is why I like season 1. However, it’s also where the show's main flaw starts. The characters. The characters in this show are not good. They're bland, forgettable, contrived, artificial, and many characters could be completely removed from the story without affecting it in the slightest. Also, many characters feel like their entire existence in the story is to progress specific parts of the plot. However this problem isn't present in season 1 as much as it is in later seasons. Eren in season 1 is mediocre. He's loud and obnoxious. His entire character can be summed up with "the titans restrict our freedom, i want to be free, also they killed my mom, so fucking kill every last goddamn one of them." His character had plenty of room for growth but it wasn't really present in season 1. Armin on the other hand is just "the planner." His purpose in the story is to come up with plans, figure out the plot, and make some speeches occasionally. Now that wouldn’t be a problem if he even did any of that more than like twice a season. Also Erwin is just Armin but cooler. The only thing Armin does besides plan shit is influence the motivations of a few characters, Eren in particular, for example when he told Eren about the outside, affecting Eren's desire to reach for the outside and for freedom. Armin has always been an average character to me. Nothing about his character is particularly amazing, but it's not that terrible either. Mikasa on the other hand, has always been one of my least favorite characters. Mikasa is essentially Eren's bodyguard. That's her sole purpose in the story. While this is addressed by Eren himself in the final season, the show being self conscious about it doesn't change anything for me. Mikasa is incredibly boring. Her character has basically remained static for the entire runtime of the series. The other characters are varied. Levi is the most overrated character in the series, he is pure fanservice. He has barely any personality, and the occasional attempts they make at giving him some characterization end up incomplete. His character could've been fine but it didn't get enough time put into it and ended up just the typical badass character. Erwin isn't that good in season 1, but he gets better in later seasons. Hange is just kind of there, she does some stuff I guess. The rest of the scouts aren't really important besides a few. Reiner, Bertholt, and Annie I wont discuss until later seasons, Jean, Conny, and Sasha are boring and undeveloped, and none of the other characters in season 1 don't matter because most of them are going to die. Nevertheless, season 1 is still good in my opinion. As I said, it provides a solid package of great production values and an interesting mystery. The characters are my main issue. It remains a 7-7.5 /10.
- Season 2 -
Season 2 is decent as well. Most of my comments from season 1 still stand here. The main difference here is that this season slows down the pacing significantly and goes for a more mysterious approach, giving away bits of lore and information here and there, and also has a more focused story, at the cost of a much slower pacing particularly in the middle section. The production values are still phenomenal, and we get a few more characters in this part. Mainly here is where we get Ymir and Historia, two characters who despite being fairly talked about, Historia in particular, I can't really remember much about. From what I remember, Ymir was this kind of cynical girl who wanted people to be true to themselves, while Historia was this semi-suicidal person who wanted to be respected or something, but I can't really remember. If I rewatched season 2 I'm sure I'd get a better understanding of Ymir, but I just don't really feel like it. Historia on the other hand would require a full s2 and s3 rewatch, which I definitely don't feel like. So although they might be great characters, they're still unmemorable to me. But anyways, this season still isn't terrible, it just has a few more issues than season 1 in my opinion. Particularly the extremely slow pacing during the Eren kidnapping arc around the last 6 or so episodes, the lacking character development, and the ridiculous Reiner and Bertholt reveal. Like I feel like it was supposed to be startling but it ended up just hilarious watching "Hey Eren, come here. Listen, I'm the armored titan, and he's the colossal." Like it makes sense with his character but it doesn't change the fact that I was dying laughing in the middle of a serious scene. Anyways the mystery in this season is better but the slow pacing brings this season down. I despise the whole Eren kidnapping. It's still a decent 6.5/10. Somewhat carried by production values, but the mystery is still good.
- Season 3 -
Season 3 is the peak of the show. Although the first 2 or so episodes are rather boring, the remainder of season 3 and season 3 part 2 are genuinely good. We get all the excellent mystery from seasons 1 and 2, an improvement in characters, the story has several nice twists, we get the basement reveal, along with many other questions answered, and a lot of hype moments like the charge. All of this combined with several really nice consecutive episodes in season 3 part 2. There are several notable characters in this part. The main man is Erwin, who we get good characterization on and some context behind his actions. His speeches continue to bring the hype, and is definitely one of the better characters in the show. However, his character still feels incomplete. It feels like there’s something missing. A key piece that would make his character much fuller. Other characters that get development here are Historia, (although as previously mentioned I can't really remember it, but I remember that it was there), Eren, who becomes a bit more mature and quiets down with his screaming, and Kenny, who's a cool guy I guess, I don't remember a ton about him but I remember liking him. Noticing a pattern? The characters and plot in this show are extremely forgettable. Whether that's just me not paying attention or whether it's an issue with the show I'm not sure, but I never really have this problem with other shows. I think it's due to how artificial everything in this story feels. Everything seems extremely forced - nothing seems to happen naturally, it's all the result of Isayama manipulating characters. And to be fair that’s every story, characters don’t do things on their own, but this show is particularly bad about it. Maybe that's a dumb argument, but I stand by it. Anyways, this season also brings out the big guns with its production values. The animation is unbelievable at some points, like the Levi vs Kenny scene. I suppose the Levi vs beast titan scene as well, but honestly I thought that fight was underwhelming as hell. Maybe it was because I had heard so much about the fight that when I finally saw it, and saw barely a minute of admittedly very good animation but not even as good as other scenes in the show, my first thought was "wait, was that it?" Either way, the whole show still looks stunning, and the music is great. The definite big hitter here though is the Return to Shiganshina arc, and the big three episodes in the middle: perfect game, hero, and midnight sun. They're my favorite episodes in the show and it was here that I felt like the show really had some meaning behind it, that I wasn't just watching a hollow show but one with real heart behind it. These episodes had stakes, they had hype, and they were overall great. Season 3 is also where the show started leaning towards the political side of things, and where it started setting up a lot of events that will return recontextualized in the final season. Anways, season 3 is a much better season than the previous 2, although it still suffers from bland forgettable characters. 8/10.
- Final Season -
Here we go.
Even now, I'm still unsure how to feel about the final season. If I really wanted to get a good grasp of the final season, I'd have to rewatch the whole thing, and I just don't feel like doing that for a show I've pretty much stopped caring about. Instead I'll just pull up the episodes and quickly scan through the contents in order to write this review. I have a variety of issues with the final season. I also have a variety of things that I like about it. The main thing that makes the final season so different from the previous seasons is the completely different direction the story goes in. In just one season, it goes from a fantasy mystery to a political war drama. It already had some political elements in season 3 but it becomes the main focus here. This isn't a bad thing at all if executed properly - but I don't think it was in this case. I'm not sure how to properly put my thoughts on this season onto a review, especially since I don’t remember half of this shit, so I'm just going to dump all my thoughts onto the text as I scan the episodes. This season starts with our introduction to the war situation in Marley. We're introduced to the warrior candidates - our new main characters for this season, Falco and Gabi in particular. We also meet some completely forgettable side characters like Pieck, Falco's brother who I literally remember nothing about, Galliard, the General Magath guy who is somehow still relevant even in the final final season, and several others. One of the main things that caught my eye was when the season first started and Falco said something about remembering flying, swinging swords and fighting titans, which immediately caught my eye for obvious reasons. This is where my confusion first starts. Where the hell is that coming from? I know 9 the titan wielders can see memories from the past inheritors, but Falco didn't have one of the 9 at that time, so where was that coming from? Anyways they keep fighting the war, win, head back, and talk for a bunch of episodes. I can't remember a single thing that happened during these episodes but whatever. I'm pretty sure it's just a bunch of explanations of what life is like in Marley, and backstory for characters I don't care about. Frankly the only good character introduced in this whole thing is Gabi, who's potentially my favorite character in the show, Erwin and Reiner being the only real competition. Gabi is a fairly good look at if Eren was born on the Marleyan side. She's brainwashed by the Marleyan propaganda, and it's done in a fairly realistic way. Falco on the other hand is really bland, nothing special there. I don’t really care though, because Gabi carries hard. I'm just happy that the show finally has a well written character with a concise purpose in the story. She is a good look at brainwashing and propaganda, and how she's been affected by the Marleyan society. Anyways I've got the episodes open here and I'm skimming through, and it looks like we get the backstory of the first Marleyan invasion of Paradis, the thing where the one guy who I don't care about got eaten by Ymir who I also don't care about, which makes some problems for their invasion. But I guess they continue with it, leading to the events of the first episode of the show. Now this is one of the things I liked about this season, the amount of information we got that gave a better understanding of past events was great. Reiner remains one of the top 3 characters in the show along with Gabi and Erwin, and is fairly well written. His mental issues developed from interacting with the people of Paradis were executed fairly well. Anyways afterwards we get our introduction of Eren in this season, and here's where one of my bigger problems with this season begins. I frankly don't understand the change in Eren's character from season 3 to 4. It's partly due to the ridiculous time travel implemented that caused huge problems in the story, in that future Eren essentially was responsible for creating past Eren, who turned into future Eren. Thus Eren has created a closed time loop with no beginning or end in which he is responsible for the changes in his character that caused him to make those changes in the first place, a concept that for some reason people just don't seem to care about in the slightest but irks me to no end. But essentially Eren has now decided that he needs to kill every person on the planet besides the people of Paradis in order to achieve peace and freedom. I almost see it, since Eren in seasons 1-3 was really obsessed with obtaining freedom and killing his enemies, and acted on his emotions, but I don't understand. He interacted with the people of Marley just like Reiner did with the people of Paradis, seeing that the people are brainwashed and don't really understand anything. But instead of thinking about ways that they could try to make peace with the rest of the world, he just decides to annnihilate them all in order for him and the people he loves to become free. This all of course is because of him recieving the memories of future him, another thing which confuses me immensely. The show states that the attack titan can see the memories of its future inheritors. But Eren is the last inheritor, so how can he see the memories of the future him? Is the situation that Grisha saw the memories of future Eren, the future attack titan, and then Eren saw the memories of past Grisha who had the memories of future Eren, essentially allowing him to just see the entire future? Because that's the most ridiculous thing I've heard and just creates more time paradoxes in which Eren is responsible for the changes in his own character that lead to him making those changes. This all of course being due to the absurd time travel concepts introduced by the paths that are never given a concrete explanation. Anyways, I'm also confused by what happened when Eren kissed Historias hand. If that's when he recieved all the memories from past Grisha from future Eren, why did he need to kiss Historia's hand for it to happen? If the ability to see the memories of future and past inheritors is specific to the attack titan, then why did he need to interact with a person of royal blood in order for it to happen? That's one question where I think I'm just forgetting a key piece of information, so that could be easily explained. Anyways, so Eren seems to view the rumbling as the only way to end the cycle of hate and genocide - by committing the mother of all genocide himself, and resetting all of the world with only one race left so there can't be racism anymore, effectively allowing him and the people he loves to be happy and free. Now I haven't read the manga, although I've been spoiled on like half of it so it doesn't really matter, but my question is this. If Eren has all his future memories, and thus knows how the entire situation will turn out, then surely he must win right? Because he wouldn't follow future Eren's plan if future Eren loses. Is his plan to make himself the enemy of the entire world, thus uniting the entire world against him and once he dies, the world will have cooperated against him and will all live happily ever after or something? That seems like the only plausible explanation at this point. But that makes no sense to me, because considering what the people of this world are like, I can hardly believe that once Eren dies, the world will just get along. It seems like they'll just go back to fighting each other, especially since Eren just straight up killed like 80% of humanity and now it seems like the world will just be even more pissed at the people of Paradis. (side note, speaking of "the world" this brings up another major issue I have with this season, the worldbuilding. They talk so much about the world but in the end we barely know any nations besides Marley and Paradis). So this brings up the question: was the whole avengers team up against Eren in the final final season meant to prove that the world will get along after Eren is taken down? Because I'm not buying it. Anways I've gotten way ahead of myself. The episode ends with us being introduced to Eren, and him talking with Falco. Next episode seems to just be a bunch of preparations and dialogue. We get introduced to Willy Tybur, who's character I don't remember particularly well. I don't really know what his motivations were, but despite being Eldian he seems to dislike Eldians and feel like they are sinners. This could all be wrong of course, don't take this too seriously. So anyways he seems to view Eren and Paradis as a threat to Marley and thus does his speech and unites the world against Eren, leading to Eren pulling up and killing him, leading to essentially two episodes of just fighting. This fighting realistically fuels Gabi's rage even further, leading to her boarding the Scout's airship as it leaves and killing Sasha, something which the fandom found inexcusable while I didn't care in the slightest. Sasha has never been much of a character outside of her eating a lot, so I don't really get all the hate. Anyways, these few episodes aren't bad, the cgi titan fights look mediocre at best but it's not terrible, the story is still fine at this point, and the scene in the basement with Reiner and Eren was good. I don't really understand why Eren acted all friendly with Reiner at first, I guess either he recognized he was similar to Reiner but still followed through with his plan, or maybe he was just trying to make Reiner let his guard down or something. But it's still decent Reiner development, and at the end of the day, I still didn't have a ton of issues with the season at this point. It was mainly the lower production quality at this point, as well as the still terrible characters, because a lot of the problems I've mentioned above hadn't really cemented themselves at this point. The season continues. The Scouts retreat, Gabi kills Sasha, we meet new characters like Yelena and Onyankopon who are forgettable and bland, a couple more episodes pass where nothing seems to be really happening, we get flashback before invasion of Eren getting a little development, we see that he really cares for everyone and wants to protect them at all costs. Gabi and Falco escape after being detained. Pyxis gets more screentime, somehow he's still relevant after like 3 seasons, if only he had any personality. The Jaegerist uprising begins, Eren gets drip, and Floch finally starts becoming a really relevant character. Floch is definitely one of the better characters in the show, he's got consistent motivations and personality throughout the final season. He's determined for his people to survive, no matter the cost. He's very nationalist and supports Eren because he believes that Eren is the only one who can save the people of Paradis. He's consistent with his character all the way until the end. Anyways the last few episodes at this point have been a bunch of boring political decisions and mediocre character development. I don't really mind political shows but this one doesn't do it very well, it just ends up boring and forgettable, just like a lot of this show. So now at this point the show has been dropping a little for me. The last few episodes have been uninteresting and the show is starting to take an unclear direction. The show has brought up various topics but has failed to start developing a clear concise theme, instead meandering around various different topics like nationalism, propaganda, cycle of hatred, etc, without leaning towards one or the other. It’s not like a show can’t cover multiple topics, but it’s failing to give any of them anything concrete. The season is still ok at this point in my opinion, but the problems I have with the show are starting to really show. It's abandoned that sense of mystery and intrigue it possessed in seasons 1-3, which was the shows best feature outside of production. The production has also dropped, the directing feels sloppier, the ost isn't implemented as well as it is in seasons 1-3, and the cgi is of course not terrible, but compared to studio Wit’s hand drawn titans, well... it doesn't really compare. The non cgi visuals are good, but it just doesn't seem like it has that same sense of heart put into it as previous seasons. Anyways, next episode rolls around, and this is one I actually remember looking through it now. Gabi, who's been staying with Sasha's boyfriend or whoever, is revealed to be the one who killed Sasha, and we get a great scene where the dad forgives Gabi to end the cycle of hate, which is then immediately ruined by the other girl going ham and trying to murder Gabi. Afterwards I can't remember if this had been revealed earlier, but it looks like here we find out about the wine subplot, one that I couldn't really care less about, from what I remember Zeke distributed wine with his spinal fluid to all of the members of the military to make the plan easier. Idk how much spinal fluid Zeke's got but he must have been working on that wine for a hell of a long time. Anyways now we get the table scene, where Eren completely roasts Mikasa to a crisp. This scene kinda makes more sense now that I assume he's going for the Code Geass ending plan, but I'm still not a huge fan. Here's where it seems like they try to give Mikasa more character and develop her, but instead they just make it even worse by showing all the problems with her character without actually trying to give her any meaning. She is essentially Eren's slave. Everything she does is just to protect Eren. That doesn't make her character deep, it makes it terrible. And just because the show addresses that she has no purpose other than Eren doesn't make her character better, it just throws all the issues with her into the limelight. The concept behind her character had potential, but they never went anywhere with the "she has no purpose other than Eren" idea. They didn't try to give her development, they didn't try to put any thematic message into her character, she's just Eren's bodyguard, all the way from the beginning of the show to the end. Anyways, after the table scene, we see Zeke begins his attempt to escape the forest, and the Jaegerists take over. Next episode we get Zeke backstory, in one of the best episodes of the season. We get a good look at why Zeke is the way he is, and his motivations for everything he does. We also see just how insane Grisha was. Next episode, in the final episode of the final season before the final final season, we get to see the culmination of all the events of the season. Eren and the Jaegerists have taken over, Pieck seems to want to join them and makes a decent argument for why she wants to join Eren only to betray him and reveal that logic doesn't matter to her, because she has friendship, in one of my least favorite moments of the series. The Marleyans show up for a battle with Eren, and the final season ends. My overall thoughts on the final season are complex. I think the direction the show took had a lot of potential, but I felt like it failed to live up to my expectations. The characters are overall better than previous seasons, thanks to Gabi, Reiner, and Zeke, but Mikasa and Eren are even blander than ever, Levi does even less than usual this season, Hange as well, side characters like Conny and Jean do absolutely nothing, and Eren himself becomes a very confusingly written character because we don't know about his ridiculous time travel shenanigans yet that make future him the cause of his own character change, which ends up becoming future him. The gigantic world expansion brought by the basement reveal doesn't get enough exploration, and the thematic messages of the show just feel incomplete and chaotic. It feels like the show tries to cover many topics but never develops concrete themes, instead ending up with a mishmash of underdeveloped messages and incomplete ideas. This season is a 6/10, I listed a lot of problems I have but I really did like some of the aspects of this season, it just felt empty and forced. But at this point I was concerned by the direction the show was taking. It wasn't handling its new direction well in my opinion, and most of the characters were still shit. But it could all be redeemed in the final final season right...?
- Final Final Season
It was not redeemed in the final final season, that's for sure.
Similarly to the final season, I'm slightly unsure how to feel about the final final season. Or at least the first five or so episodes. I definitely know how to feel about the last 7 episodes. Because it follows the events of the final season so closely, the problem of me not remembering the final season particularly well definitely hindered my enjoyment of the final final season. It starts essentially continuing straight from the events of the last episode. Eren transforms, going up against Marleyan forces in the battle for the founding titan. One of the first things you notice is that the animation is noticeably better, although the cg titans still look janky. Eren starts fighting, and Reiner shows up in his plot armor titan, and they start boxing. Can't believe I forgot to mention Reiner's plot armor titan until now. Reiner probably has some of the most plot armor of any character in the show, fitting for the armored titan. No matter how many times he gets beat up, no matter how many times he faces death, he always survives somehow. It's always been like this, even since season 1, and it's infuriating. When he got slashed by Mikasa during season 2 and she conveniently didn't aim for his head/neck, when he was about to get taken down by Eren but Bertholt fell on him, when he got stabbed through the neck and heart by Levi but he transfered his conscience or some bullshit, when he had his head blown off by thunder spears, when he got decimated by thunder spears again, when he survived the armor piercing cannons, when he was an inch away from committing suicide but he just happened to see Falco and thus stopped, and when Eren transformed right on top of him but he still didn't die... It's insane. Anyways Eren and Reiner are fighting and the other characters talk about whether they should side with him or not. The fight continues and we get some good Gabi development, in one of the better moments of the season. She finally realizes that there are no island devils, and Ayane Sakura does an excellent voice acting performance on her. Afterwards the fight continues and Zeke is shot down from the wall, seemingly dead. But he's not obviously. The next episode comes, Zeke finds out that Falco will turn into a titan if he roars, but in one of the few logical moments of the season Zeke places his goals over Falco and roars, turning many people into titans. The battle continues, and eventually, Eren and Zeke finally touch, entering the paths. Now I forgot to mention one thing confusing me. If Eren intended on doing the Rumbling all along, which he did, then why did he have to go through all this shit and the entirety of the last season if he can just touch Historia and rumble? Is it because although Historia has royal blood, she's not a titan/titan shifter? Why would that matter at all though? If it does matter, then why did Eren kissing her activate his memories, (although I'm still confused as to why that happened in the first place since the memory thing is the attack titan and not the founding titan, so Historia shouldn't matter in that situation as far as I remember), if she's not a titan? If he could've used Historia, why would he choose not to? Is it because he had to follow the guide given to him by future him? Due to the existence of future Eren giving past Eren memories, is Eren even capable of doing things different than future Eren did? If Eren knows the events of the future, then was he capable of changing them or is he completely destined to follow them? This is all because of this dumbass time travel. Anyways Eren and Zeke are in the paths and they start conversing, and Eren reveals that he never intended on siding with Zeke, and Zeke just puts him in some chains and tells him that Grisha was awful and that Zeke will help Eren to understand his point of view. The next episode rolls around and we start traveling through Grisha's memories, and we find out that Grisha can seemingly see Zeke at a few different points. So... yeah. Unless that's because Grisha is seeing Eren's memories and Eren can see Zeke, giving Grisha some weird roundabout way of seeing Zeke, then the paths just straight up let you time travel. Anyways Zeke sees that Eren was never brainwashed by Zeke, and is confused by why Eren opposes his plan. To which Eren replies with some nonsense. Maybe I'm just dumb but I don't really understand what Eren's saying here. Some more time passes and we end up seeing Grisha ready to kill the royal family. He loses his conviction, but then Eren whispers to him and manipulates him. Now I assume what's happening here is Eren is directly transferring his memories of him speaking here to Grisha, which ends up bringing up my concerns about the unexplained mechanics of the paths. But I want to finish this review so I won't complain about the lack of explanation of how the paths work. Grisha leaves and starts yelling to Eren that he did it, and then starts rambling to Zeke that he's sorry that he raised him so poorly. He tells Zeke that things wont go his way anymore, and that only Eren will get what he wants, but then immediately contradicts it by telling Zeke to stop Eren. What? You just said that Eren will get what he wants. This of course brings up more concerns about whether characters can influence their decisions in the present through information from the future, or whether they can't change the future, none of which are explained as far as I know. Grisha also directly touches and hugs Zeke, completely throwing out the theory that Grisha is seeing Zeke through Eren's memories and just demonstrating that you can straight up time travel through the paths and interact with the past, making me wonder why Eren doesn't just use that to try to fix things. Surely with literal time travel he could find a way to fix things other than literally murdering the entire world. But the idea that time travel is available to them opens up many possibilities for solving this conflict that don't involve genocide. Although I doubt that they can actually time travel, I assume Zeke touching Grisha is just some bullshit not meant to be taken seriously. Next episode comes around and we see Eren break free from the chains Zeke put him in through sheer willpower. How? I don't know. The whole vow renouncing war thing never really made sense to me, but it makes even less now. We get Ymir backstory because of Eren's talk no jutsu and it's the dumbest thing I've ever seen, basically she was a slave and then she met a centipede thing that is the source of all the titans powers. Where is it from? What is it? Why did it chose her? Who knows, but it did, and now she has the power of the founding titan. And instead of using it to wipe out the people who enslaved her, she decides to become an even better slave, and fight for the king and decimate his enemies. She died to protect him and even in death she continued to slave away to his will for thousands of years. Why? Who knows. Eren vows to set her free and asks her to give him her power, and his talk no jutsu is so strong he just changes her mind instantly and now boom, rumbling. How is this considered one of, if not the, best episode of the show again? Anyways the rumbling seems like it's supposed to be this crazy epic moment, but it got spoiled by the opening anyways so who cares. And now starts the 5 dumbest episodes in the whole show. These episodes were basically an incredibly drawn out sequence of Armin assembling the crew to stop Eren. All characters who were previously enemies will now become allies, despite trying to murder each other for the whole show, despite trying to commit genocide on each other, in order to stop Eren from committing genocide. All characters iq drops to single digits, emotions rule all, Armin uses his level 100 talk no jutsu to gather up the squad. The worst offender was definitely the pie scene, where Armin and the others come across Annie at the festival thing, and she eats a pie and looks at them and stops eating. This is the same person who brutally massacred many of their friends, caused them countless troubles, and enjoyed doing it. And they just go, hey Annie, how’s it going, do you wanna help us stop Eren? And she joins them. Even Levi doesn't care about her, even though she should be almost as bad as Zeke in his eyes. She cold heartedly murdered half of his squad. These five episodes were the most contrived, unbelievable, slow, and blunt episodes in the whole series. The appeal of the final season until now has been the moral ambiguity of the characters, and that neither side seems to be fully in the right. If you side with Eren, you're siding with the guy who wants to commit genocide on everyone except for his people. If you side with Marley, you're siding with people who want to stop Eren from committing genocide, but also want to commit genocide on Eren's people. But now that concept goes out the window as it is made very clear who you are meant to root for now: Armin and the squad, who want to stop Eren from committing genocide, and also want to stop Marley from committing genocide, but also have no idea what to do after they stop Eren. Hange is straight up just like "lets stop him and then we'll buy like two years of time, and then who fucking knows I'm sure we'll come up with something" It seems to me that if the squad wins, it shouldn't really do anything about the fact that Marley and Paradis still want to murder each other. The people of this world are assholes. After Eren is defeated, even if Marley and Eldia worked together to do it, they’re inevitably going to hate each other even more as far as I’m concerned. But that doesn't matter, because the entire story by now is so incredibly artificial that it doesn't matter what logically should happen, only what actually ends up happening. At this point I assume how the story ends is that Eren is stopped by the squad, and then the Marleyans and Eldians just forget their differences and live happily ever after. Anyways these 5 episodes are a complete dumpster of contrived writing and illogical nonsense. Episode 11 comes around, and we get Jaegerists vs the squad. Of course the squad wins easily, with basically no casualties besides Magath and Shadis, but who cares about them at this point. Floch stands tall and fights the whole squad at once, and almost succeeds in destroying the boat, but fails in the end. Final episode comes, and it's just a big flashback seemingly meant to recontextualize Eren's actions but it just doesn't really land for me. This season was an absolute miss in every regard. The story is overcomplicated and completely loses sight of everything it was working towards in the final season, the characters are worse than ever, the visuals are fine but the directing feels empty, and the music should be good but it feels like the same tracks are reused over and over. My overall problems with this season include 1. The ridiculous time travel loops 2. So much unexplained shit 3. Characters are so unbelievably terrible in the last half 4. Weak production compared to seasons 1-3. 5. Inconsistent morals and philosophy. Overall I think this season is a 3.5/10, the first several episodes are maybe a 6-7 but it flops extremely hard.
Final Final Final Season Part 1 -
Well I just finished watching the first part of the final part of the sequel to the final season. I don’t really have much more to say. Not really much more to comment on with Eren’s character. Nothing has really changed. They definitely seem to be leaning towards the idea that Eren wants the squad to stop him though. No explanations for the paths time travel bullshit or the origins of the origin of the founding titan’s power. I assume that will just never be explained. The rest of the cast is exactly the same. Somehow Floch is still alive, and almost stops the squad again. But he of course fails. He almost manages to, but Hange buys time for them to escape. She dies stopping the rumbling titans. If only she had a character established besides being loyal and being obsessed with titans. Production is still bland. Animation is smooth but Mappa’s aesthetic is just really bland imo. Horrendous color palette. Soundtrack is there. It’s not really much to talk about. Considering there’s only a single hour special left in the story, I expect they just beat Eren’s ass and then live happily ever after. I’ve already seen THAT scene from the manga, but I don’t know the actual ending to the story. But I think that’s probably the only possible conclusion at this point. 5/10 for the special part 1. Honestly hardly anything happened plot wise. Also this was full of blatant emotional manipulation, a lot of it.
Final Final Final Season Finale -
Well, it’s finally over. I can’t say I’m particularly sad to see it go. Things went about how I expected. They beat Eren because he became the big villain to let them live long happy lives. Except, not really? He seems to have no clue what he’s even doing towards at the end. Ymir is still the most absurd character I’ve ever seen. The centipede is never explained, not really. Soundtrack was pretty bland, weird ost usage at points. Animation is fine. I hate Mappa’s style though. Directing was very uninteresting. I didn’t understand what was going on at some points, but I have far better things to do than rewatch the anime or read the manga in order to try to better understand a series I really don’t care about. Eren crying because he doesn’t want Mikasa to be with another man was pretty funny though.
End of Review. Feel free to clown on me for writing a review for a show that I don’t give a shit about, and one that I hardly even remember what happened in. Jokes on you, doing so will only feed my need for attention. Attack on Titan is mid. Overall I’d say the series is like a 5 or 6. Probably 5. Still saying not recommended for the extra toxicity factor.
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Nov 5, 2023
This is probably one of the longer attack on titan reviews on the site, and contains spoilers.
Also, this is the review I wrote for final season part 2 (but contains my thoughts on the series as a whole) that I just reposted with my thoughts on the new special. So I wrote most of this about a year ago. I don’t know if that’s allowed by the review guidelines, but I figured I would post it anyways. Disclaimer: My experience of this show has been incredibly fragmented and thus I'm not confident if my opinions would hold up under a rewatch of the show. I ... |
