*This is mostly my opinions regarding the whole series of Attack On Titan since I've just finished watching the final episode and have many feelings regarding it. It contains spoilers of the ending and it is pretty much a copy and paste of my review*
I have just finished watching the final episode of Attack On Titan as of five minutes ago, and I am quite literally speechless.
I remember back when I was a 10 year old boy in fifth grade. I was barely beginning to get into the world of anime, and everybody was hyped because the long awaited second season of Attack On Titan, this show that broke the anime community in 2013, was currently airing. Because of this, I decided to give this show a shot. As a 10 year old boy who didn't know better, I went into YouTube and searched "Attack On Titan Episodio 1" on the search-bar. I quickly found one of those videos in 480p, with the image mirrored and a watermark; all in order to avoid copyright. However, all that did not matter, because what I found was a show unlike anything I had seen before.
It was the most violent show that my young eyes had ever seen, and the whole premise was insanely cruel, but intriguing in a certain way. I was really invested in this little boy named Eren who just saw his mom get eaten by these huge man eating monsters, and who now swore to get revenge and kill every single one of them. As I kept watching, I found it insanely cool how the characters fought against the Titans; I loved seeing them flying around with their 3-D gears, and slashing titan's necks with their swords. I quickly became obsessed with this show.
During recess, me and my elementary school friends would play games based on the show. We would be running around and slash imaginary titans, and at home, I would spend my time searching for multitudes of covers, fan-arts, and fun-fact videos on the internet about the show. I really, really loved it.
Eventually, I started growing up, and I wasn't that into anime as I used to be, but Attack On Titan (Or just "Shingeki" as we would call it in Mexico), was the only anime I would still catch up on whenever a new season came out. And the thing is, as I grew older and matured, my understanding of the show and the show itself also started maturing and getting more complex. I saw how the solution to these fictional characters problems wasn't as easy as just "killing all the titans", and how humanity and people in general are way more complex than that.
And all of this leads me to today; almost 8 years later, having seen the last episode of a show that I've had such a personal connection with. Even though these final two episodes had come out about 3 months ago, I was skeptical of watching them. I had heard such bad things about the ending from the manga readers, that I really did not want to ruin myself a show that I held so dearly, but today, however, I finally got enough courage to watch this last episode, and... damn; I really am speechless.
I don't think the show could have had a better ending; this is quite possibly the perfect ending for "Shingeki", and probably the best ending I've seen an anime ever had.
I understood the ending to be as follows:
All throughout the show, Eren always had this theme of trying to pursue liberty. Everything he did, all of his plans, all of his motivations, were done under the name of liberty. However, at the end, it is revealed that no such thing as liberty ever existed for Eren. Pretty much all of his actions, every single thing he did, was manipulated by the original founder of the Titan curse, Ymir. Eren was nothing more than a mere puppet, manipulated by Ymir, just as how we had thought of Grisha, Eren's father, to have been completely manipulated by Eren.
Ymir was this girl full of suffering, who lived a pretty tragic life in which even though she possessed the strongest of powers, could never achieved liberty due to her been unable to get rid of her love for King Fritz, the one who had cause such an intense amount of suffering in her life. Therefore, it was not until Mikassa, 2000 years later, could get rid of a love who had caused her such pain herself, that Ymir was finally able to become free, and put an end to the curse of the Eldian people, letting the world live by itself without any involvement of outside forces; in liberty one might say.
I kind of get why people where disappointed with such an ending. It might feel as if all events in the show were in vain. All the people who died in the rumbling, all of the ideological fights between the different factions, all of the deaths of the most loved characters, were useless since pretty much the solution of every single problem in the show was in the hands of Ymir alone, and might therefore seem as not necessary.
However, I don't see it in this way, and instead see all of this as a beautiful story about what it really means to be free, which was pretty much the main theme of the show all along.
I am insanely grateful to have been part of such an amazing story unfolding in real time, and "Shingeki" might remain as one of my favorite pieces of fiction of all time.
All Comments (2) Comments
I have just finished watching the final episode of Attack On Titan as of five minutes ago, and I am quite literally speechless.
I remember back when I was a 10 year old boy in fifth grade. I was barely beginning to get into the world of anime, and everybody was hyped because the long awaited second season of Attack On Titan, this show that broke the anime community in 2013, was currently airing. Because of this, I decided to give this show a shot. As a 10 year old boy who didn't know better, I went into YouTube and searched "Attack On Titan Episodio 1" on the search-bar. I quickly found one of those videos in 480p, with the image mirrored and a watermark; all in order to avoid copyright. However, all that did not matter, because what I found was a show unlike anything I had seen before.
It was the most violent show that my young eyes had ever seen, and the whole premise was insanely cruel, but intriguing in a certain way. I was really invested in this little boy named Eren who just saw his mom get eaten by these huge man eating monsters, and who now swore to get revenge and kill every single one of them. As I kept watching, I found it insanely cool how the characters fought against the Titans; I loved seeing them flying around with their 3-D gears, and slashing titan's necks with their swords. I quickly became obsessed with this show.
During recess, me and my elementary school friends would play games based on the show. We would be running around and slash imaginary titans, and at home, I would spend my time searching for multitudes of covers, fan-arts, and fun-fact videos on the internet about the show. I really, really loved it.
Eventually, I started growing up, and I wasn't that into anime as I used to be, but Attack On Titan (Or just "Shingeki" as we would call it in Mexico), was the only anime I would still catch up on whenever a new season came out. And the thing is, as I grew older and matured, my understanding of the show and the show itself also started maturing and getting more complex. I saw how the solution to these fictional characters problems wasn't as easy as just "killing all the titans", and how humanity and people in general are way more complex than that.
And all of this leads me to today; almost 8 years later, having seen the last episode of a show that I've had such a personal connection with. Even though these final two episodes had come out about 3 months ago, I was skeptical of watching them. I had heard such bad things about the ending from the manga readers, that I really did not want to ruin myself a show that I held so dearly, but today, however, I finally got enough courage to watch this last episode, and... damn; I really am speechless.
I don't think the show could have had a better ending; this is quite possibly the perfect ending for "Shingeki", and probably the best ending I've seen an anime ever had.
I understood the ending to be as follows:
All throughout the show, Eren always had this theme of trying to pursue liberty. Everything he did, all of his plans, all of his motivations, were done under the name of liberty. However, at the end, it is revealed that no such thing as liberty ever existed for Eren. Pretty much all of his actions, every single thing he did, was manipulated by the original founder of the Titan curse, Ymir. Eren was nothing more than a mere puppet, manipulated by Ymir, just as how we had thought of Grisha, Eren's father, to have been completely manipulated by Eren.
Ymir was this girl full of suffering, who lived a pretty tragic life in which even though she possessed the strongest of powers, could never achieved liberty due to her been unable to get rid of her love for King Fritz, the one who had cause such an intense amount of suffering in her life. Therefore, it was not until Mikassa, 2000 years later, could get rid of a love who had caused her such pain herself, that Ymir was finally able to become free, and put an end to the curse of the Eldian people, letting the world live by itself without any involvement of outside forces; in liberty one might say.
I kind of get why people where disappointed with such an ending. It might feel as if all events in the show were in vain. All the people who died in the rumbling, all of the ideological fights between the different factions, all of the deaths of the most loved characters, were useless since pretty much the solution of every single problem in the show was in the hands of Ymir alone, and might therefore seem as not necessary.
However, I don't see it in this way, and instead see all of this as a beautiful story about what it really means to be free, which was pretty much the main theme of the show all along.
I am insanely grateful to have been part of such an amazing story unfolding in real time, and "Shingeki" might remain as one of my favorite pieces of fiction of all time.