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Btw, I love your reviews, keep going, don't stop doing them. Don't let one controversial review stop you.

Even the people of Paradis were sickened by what he did because they knew Paradis was finished.

Actually he becomes a national hero on Paradise actually. And Paradise becoming a far right-wing place is implied to not be a good thing.

And the darker reality of the story is if he killed every single other society besides Paradis, and lived in harmony afterwards, the series would undoubtedly be promoting fascism and genocide LOL.

Yes. Which is why before watching the last episode I wanted to finish AoT so I would not have anything more to do with that part of the fanbase. Eren does nothing wrong because the people outside of Paradise declared war on them first is pretty much racist logic. You can justify every kind of genocide that way. Germany did nothing wrong, it's the fault of the Treaty of Versailles. Japan did nothing wrong, they were just doing their best not to become a Western colony like other Asian countries etc. Us vs them taken to the extreme does not make one a hero, but a fascist. Agree. My point is that the way the Rumbling is portrayed shows that these people are in the wrong. People like to be edgy and identify with villains, or maybe they identify with because they already think in that fucked up way irl, and this opens a whole debate about the responsability of the artist towards his audience.

My biggest issue with the ending is that it should have focused more on the Rumbling and how it destroyed innocent lives than the few scenes that were shown.

His plan failed because Paradis got obliterated later down the line (sooner in the manga). There was no equal footing because the world struck together in unity to eliminate Paradis.

Yeah, but he didn't know that.

So what is the message of the anime at that point?

There is no message, there are only interpretations, seems to be the take many artists have regarding their work. One take would go like this: basically if the Rumbling is a metaphor for Nuclear Warfare, the ending is basically a crazy person whit his hand on the button type of scenario. But the ending obviously went for being open to different interpretations rather than having a clear message.

Mikasa never grows as a character with her own identity, Armin agrees with genocide, the whole arc with Erwin is meaningless, the people of Paradis are no longer villains to Marley but to the rest of the entire world now, Eren loses all sense of agency being only a tool for a god. The writing is just bad, I don’t know what you’re trying to convince me of.

I mean the point about Mikasa is valid. She's still a far better written character than Levi, than again, everyone is. Erwin's arc ended with his death. I don't think Armin agreed with genocide at all, but rather he felt he had to share the burden with Eren because he felt responsible for Erens actions. The whole thing with Eren and determinism is like, I think it was his mentality that made him a slave to his crazy notion of freedom, not Yimir or the worm or destiny. Those were just excuses. Like Yimir, Eren is the slave of himself.

I want tl really question why you believe choosing a painless death is succumbing to despair.
It's not about what I believe. Zeke had a very pessimistic mindset based on his upbringing, and his option (apparently the most rational) was ultimately based on his own nature, just like Eren's. Armin and Hange were the true idealists, but they didn't manage to find a solution.
I think the reason Isayama killed Erwin is because he was the only one who could have come with the right solution - being saner than Eren, less pessimistic than Zeke and more decisive than Hange and Armin, but Isayama would rather write a tragedy so he had to kill the one character who could have found the best solution. Or more likely Isayama himself didn't have a solution to the whole conflict, therefore he couldn't write one for Erwin, therefore he didn't know what to do with that character so he killed him off.

Eren is selfish and obnoxious and fueled by rage

Everyone in the story except the Yeagarists (including Eren himself) would agree lol. Fortunatelly it seems that more and more people agree with this, because before the last episode aired the fandom was filled with Eren fanboys and fangirls, and it kinda made me feel guilty for liking AoT lol.

So basically the actual complaint should be that Isayama couldn't find a solution to the conflict he created, so he instead chose to go with the most terrible scenario and have the audience confront that scenario. As for what is the point of doing so. Ig it's like watching a horror movie. The relief that at the end of the day it's not happening to you.

W AOT review

Good review, I've heard of several takes about AOT ending when the manga came to its' conclusion a few years ago it feels like. Another thing I notice that a lot of other people were saying, was the missed opportunity of a plot twist.

PS.
Shalltear reminds me of Nina Tepes from Dance in the vampire bund. You should give it a try if you haven't yet.

You hit the nail on the head with that AoT review. AoT story is very disappointing because for a story about war and conflict it doesn't even try to solve the problem of hope, which I argue one of the (if not THE) fundamental problem humanity struggled with ever since we came to be.

Eren’s solution is not war. It was slaughtering of people en masse for his own selfish desires.

No, Eren's solution wasn't war. It was levelling the fields, as to give the possibility of fair war somewhere in the future, because the actual war was one sided. Of course, there was nothing fair in having harmless people crushed by titans colossal titans either. You could say he took the unfairness of Marley's war to its logical conclusion.
Which is ultimately why Eren thought his solution was the best. Because according to him, by going with the Rumbling only to be stopped by his friends before commiting total extinction, meant that Paradise and the outside world were at an equal level. It would take time before Marley and the world could retaliate, and the future war could be fought on equal terms. Of course the glimpse into the future we see shows that it was still one sided, but that's the thing. Eren couldn't see that far. He just choose the solution his mentality could accept, based on what he knew.

So there were two options left. Choosing Zeke's solution or letting Marley do their thing. Both options would have let to far less death and destruction, and seen from an objective perspective, frankly they would have been better. But they would have been totally unacceptable for Eren, and the thing is, AoT is Eren's story. Many writters approach the story by creating a character and then letting that character move according to its own internal logic, even if their actions have tragic or pathetic results, rather than have the author force the character to make the best decisions. They write these types of characters because they are unbalanced in some way, and that makes them interesting to write about. The difference is that they know damn well that these characters are pathological cases, unlike many of their fans, who seek to relate to these characters as if they are their personal friends or something. So AoT is not about what Eren should have done or what Isayama would have done or what the audience should do, but simply about what Eren would do according to what Isayama thinks is the character's unbalanced logic.

Seen from an objective perspective, Zeke had the best solution, except that his solution derived from his pessimistic world-view, which favored a painless death over physical suffering. Something Eren (who btw, does not give a shit about his own physical suffering as exemplified over and over) would never accept. And neither Isayama, I would assume, because it's like saying that we should succumb to despair because life is full of suffering. No matter how rational and sensible Zeke's solution seems, it's was one based one based on a negative mind set. Eren is neither an idealist like his friends, nor a pessimist like Zeke, he is just a cynic.

He could not accept Paradise being destroyed in a war that was one sided, so having the Rumbling level the field for a while seemed more honorable according to his personal philosophy (of course, there's nothing honorable in slaughter, but Imperial Japan for example, seemed to think otherwise). And he could never accept Zeke, because it meant resignation, and his whole philosophy is about going forward no matter what.

So basically if you see the story not as a moralistic one, but essentially as a story about this character called Eren, the ending is good because it fits with the internal logic of the character.

Also, you can't say that Isayama only sees the world as full of hatred, because his other heroes also represent a part of his world view, and those characters fought for the entire humanity at the expense of their own survival and self interest.
My take on the whole thing is that Isayama put into Eren all the worst in him, so he probably shares same common philosophies, but he put the best in him in Armin, so there's some of his philosophies in Armin as well.

So to put in conclusion:
The ending worked because it fit in the internal logic of its protagonist.
Eren's point of view is not the only one through which we should see the whole work.
And Isayama himself probably has no solution of his own to his own thing, but that's one thing they often say about artists: that they are good at pointing out problems, but not at finding solutions to those problems.

I think the ending is meant to show that Eren's solution didn't solved anything about the root cause of the problem, and thus avoid making Eren seem like this brave hero who did what others couldn't. Instead Isayama portrays Eren as someone who can't escape his own traumatised mentality, and drags the whole world, including friends with him in this destructive process. Except Eren himself is caught in all this because of a longer process that wasn't started by him.

What I understand about classic tragedy is that it's essentially about characters who can't escape their own flaws of character, and these flaws eventually lead to their self destruction and cause suffering for others. Yimir and Eren are such characters (compared to the original King Fritz who was a pure sociopath)

The thing with your view on progress is that the world doesn't move just in a straight line towards progress and peace. Sure, today in the Western world, we have more peace, rights and tolerance than anywhere else in history, but this is a path the West started since like the French Revolution, yet... WWII still happened. While the world was on its way towards further progress and humanity, it reversed back to the biggest mass murders in history.

Even now, we have the war in Ukraine, and no one knows how long peace will last in the whole world with how ideological people on each side of the political spectrum have become.
I too had a difficult time with AoT because of all the people who were unironically defending Eren commiting full scale genocide, because *the world declared war on Paradise. The whole world? Including people who hated Marley? Little children? Animals? People who believed Eldians were evil because they were told so but personally had no political influence? All those people and creatures deserved to be killed, because someone something decided by a bunch politicans? This is a prime example of far right racist mentality, exposed by people who either agree or it irl or are sucked into agreeing it in a fictional context because they can't understand that because we can empathise with a character's story it doesn't mean who should sympathise with their action too. I too wondered. Who tf needs this?

But after seeing how the Rumbling was portrayed and its destruction, the actual heroism of those trying to stop it, the point of view of the Eldians and Marleyans fearing together for their lives... Is it really Isayama who is to blame for Eren worship?

So yeah. The ending is definitely on the pessimistic scale of things. When looking at WWII it's easy to see how someone can see history as a long tragedy, with periods of peace that are worth striving for and preserving. I don't think is dishonest, just pessimistic. If the world is as you say, then explain why WWII happened?

Hi. I did felt similarly about the Rumbling arc until I saw the last episode, but the last episode changed my view honestly. The thing with Attack on Titan is that, similarly with shows like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, it was always meant to be a tragedy despite its moments of hope. This does not mean that the anime justifies Eren and his decisions.

Eren calls himself an idiot who got his hands on too much power. Since the Final Season started it felt like Eren was the one choosing a lesser evil because he was the only one pragmatical enough, while his friends were idealistic morons, and his fanboys and fangirls hoped on that train. However, anyone who would still think the same after seeing the Rumbling crushing innocent people, destroying entire cultures, killing children and babies, animals and nature -is frankly a moron or simply edgy.

As I see it now, Eren didn't chose the lesser evil, but the hell that fit him best.Eren could only choose among a few possibilities that were showed in his mind, and they were all hell. You can call this nihilistic, I would call it a tragedy, but it's different than saying the show praises tribalism and war. I think the point is that war is hell no matter how you try to justify it.

Instead of offering a profound commentary on human corruption and violence, it merely suggests that the genocide of innocents is justified so long as you do it in order to protect your friends. It preaches that the end justifies the means.
Eren's choice to protect his friends was selfish, and I don't think even he would deny it, but for him Rumbling was a deterministic inevitability. The thing is that the ending is very open to interpretations, and if Armin or someone else had the possibility of seeing the future, they might have choosen a very different path, but the choice was on Eren, and he couldn't because he was born a cynic, and not an idealist. So basically Eren's mind was stuck in a circle he could never escape, the same way Ymir was.

If people still choose to see him as a tragic hero, instead of fucked up person with too much power on his hands, the issue is solely with them at this point.

Based AOT review.

kawaii profile pic. :>

from what anime is she from?