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.
