If you’re a Eren stan or a fanboy who can’t take criticism don’t bother reading this, and if you feel like attacking/ sending hate just because I have my own opinion, go ahead and do it, you’re the one losing your time. Here I’ll talk, among many things, how SnK ruined itself and romanticized nazism.
I won’t be long talking about the good aspects of the manga, because each one of them vanished after the Marley arc, and the bad aspects overshadow them significantly. I still consider season 1 and 2 really good and season 3 a masterpiece, but after that it’s an entirely different manga. Almost none of the characters resemble their original selves and they seem to be killed and replaced by clones with entirely different personalities during this timeskip.
The most basic example of this is Floch, a character that we got to know only in later season 3. And there he showed to be a very human character, someone unwilling to die for wider ideals, and he hated Eren and his group’s selfishness on saving Armin instead of Erwin. Post-timeskip, his personality is gone and he is Mikasa 2.0, just an edgy minion of Eren who is willing to do anything for his master.
Unfortunately this did not happen only to minor characters, but also to almost everyone. Jean, Armin and Connie, whatever story they have before was discarded just so they could become Eren’s submissive bodyguards. The guy went out on his own to attack Marley, made them do a mass killing of innocents, caused Sasha’s death and imprisoned them. After that they decide that the best thing to do is to protect him and fight Reiner’s group because, suddenly, “Eren is our friend and he has always tried to do what is best for us”.
This is basically pissing on their friend’s grave and on the build up for this characters. Their actions should have an impact on them, I mean Reiner spent seasons regretting his actions and wanting to die after realising what he did by breaking the walls. These are characters that we have followed for three seasons, that have a strong moral compass to do what’s here, and as Hanji obviously says “genocide is wrong”. While Reiner is someone who actually feels that, with these guys it’s just “Oh we did the thing, right? Eh, whatever, let’s stick with Eren he used to be a good friend”.
And this should affect Armin the most, as he was the one to destroy entire neighborhoods with his colossal titan. Armin by himself is one of the manga’s greatest problems: He went from a genius to the dumbest character in the entire series who is also horny for a girl in a coma. Everything about Armin in season 4 is forced, as he is constantly defending a mass murderer lunatic who caused her friend’s death, imprisoned them and abused their best friend since childhood.
This is ridiculous because you think that even if Armin didn’t turn against Eren after doing a mass murder in Liberio (which by itself is already stupid) he will realise the truth at some point. But, well, he doesn’t. Even when Eren and Zeke are attacking Shiganshina and killing a lot of their own people, he is still shouting that this is a plan, that Eren is trying to help them and such. And after that, even when they join the final alliance against him, him and Mikasa are still arguing that they should TALK to Eren so he will stop his plan.
This is the genius that would save humanity and that was chosen to live instead of Erwin, a complete clown, that helps on making the ending of a manga who used to be amazing to look more of a complete joke. Quoting other review, Eren may be the worst character but Armin is the most hateful character. He is forced as a heroic main character who supposedly has ideals of peace and diplomacy and gets a lot of screentime, while defending Eren and treating him like a god.
There is nothing much to say about Mikasa, as she’s always been the way she was in the end. Supposed to be one of the main characters, she never evolves to something more than Eren’s no. 1 bodyguard. People that say she is “best girl” probably want a girlfriend like this: a “badass strong independent woman” who is good at fighting but doesn’t have a will and won’t ever stop being submissive and weak towards the male main character.
Related to it, we also have some romance plots dragged into the story. You see, Isayama had the capability to create and develop a beautiful relationship between Hisu and Ymir in season 2, and the same with Marlo and Hitch, Reiner and Bertholdt, Hanji and Levi, Annie and Hitch and others, but those were put as simple “friendships” when they could mean something more.
What he actually thinks as good romances are Armin and Annie who had nothing to do with each other and Eren and Mikasa (tags: gore, incest, necrophilia, abuse, physical violence). This is just a minor thing among many others, and now with other issues to the story.
After turning a lot of characters into Eren’s minions, there were few good ones left from the previous seasons, like Hanji and Levi. The new ones were great, though, and I really enjoyed most of the marley crew and Niccolo. Still they’re being written by the same guy who paints Eren as a misunderstood hero, so you may guess the result.
Hanji was my favorite character and I quit when she died, and that led to a person in my profile think I quit and gave it a 1 just because of it. It's not the case, but it was a stupid death indeed. It was better than Ymir's flashback death in two frames of course, but the circumstances were plain stupid.
They needed to solve a thing and then escape, and with a giant wave of colossal titans coming, she decided that she would, alone, buy them time (????) by taking down two of the hundreds of titans that were marching there and then dying. This suicidal plan of her made no sense and didn't buy any time for the escape as she didn't stop the gigantic wave that was ready to smash them. It was just a stupid excuse to kill off another character for no reason, and it's really frustrating to see that SnK resorted to this after having delivered well the deaths of Kenny, Hannes, Colt, Galliard and Erwin.
Talking about discarded main characters, I often forget that Hisu used to be one. She was relevant in season 2 and the political arc from season 3 was basically hers. She learned how to be fierceful, independent and stood up against her manipulative father. Then, she became the queen, a great role for one of the strongest and most determined characters of SnK. She had so much potential and so much was expected from her, just so she could have the worst fate possible.
Somehow Isayama decided that the best thing to do was to make her a total puppet with no voice in the government, be impregnated by some random dude she didn’t like and be stuck in a farm until the end of the manga. And yeah she also joined the Eren fandom during this time for whatever reason.
All of this is already frustrating and a huge downgrade from how the story used to be. But the thing that makes SnK exceptionally terrible is, of course, Eren and everything related to him. When I started reading this manga, I found the story really interesting, because it wasn’t just a fight against giant monsters, but a struggle against tyrants, opressive governements and ethnical cleansing. I would not ever think that later the same manga would romanticize nazism.
Eren becoming a genocidal maniac is supposed to be part of his development. And I will say it now, case and point: Eren has NO development; Eren CHANGED. He changed in the same ways as Jean and the others: He was one character before, and then this character was replaced by a different, new one. But his case is the strangest.
Before, Eren was a very empathic guy who cared about the different kinds of people in the world. He wanted to stop the war and free the people from Marley, and this is seen not only in season 3 and before but in the flashbacks we get of him and the crew visiting Marley and meeting a family of refugees, and also saying that he cherishes his friends the most. This, contrasting with the present Eren treating his friends like shit, causing their deaths and wanting to to a genocide.
There is no point on showing this contrast with past Eren, because there is no link between them both, nor a reason for this change on him. It’s just to make clear that the original Eren was replaced by an edgy, psycopath clone, whose concept of freedom is the same as the USA’s in the Middle East.
So, now Eren is planning to do a mass killing and there is a coalition against him. Just like Evangelion, an anime that this one tries so much to be, the world is ending and they all join to stop Eren in a chapter that reminds me of Game of Thrones in therms of characters teleporting to the same place at the same time just so they can meet.
When an Avengers Assemble moment happens like this in a long series it’s often something epic, to make you hyped, and a good example of this is Fullmetal Alchemist: After 50 episodes developing these characters and their journeys, the protagonists, their allies, rivals and former foes all join together with the same goal, to defeat their greatest enemy and stop his doings.
With SnK it’s not like this. First, because most of the characters we see now have nothing to do with their original selves and have no development. One of them is brought in out of the blue just for hype and fanservice and because the author didn’t know what to do after freezing her for seasons. And two of them clearly have different intentions, they’ll still force the idea that this psycopath that is doing a mass genocide is a good guy, and because they have protagonism, just like our poor misunderstood Eren, we know that it’s going to be that way.
The ending was a joke. You don't feel sad that the series is done like you would feel after completing a manga, nor it gives you something to reflect and to praise this story. All we got were memes of Eren becoming a dove and Armin thanking him for trying to destroy the world. In the end, there was no drama nor sadness and happiness for the end of this journey, just an awkward laughter and a regretful feeling for what this manga became.
The ending was terrible but it wasn’t something unexpected for what we’ve seen of the story previously. Eren’s friends are saved by deus ex machinas and they all still love him, well, now even more that he killed millions of people and tried to wipe out the planet. Our over the top genius Armin cries for Eren saying “You became a mass murderer for our sake” and everyone is suddenly GRATEFUL for all the things he caused.
Because that’s how our Hirohito fanboy Isayama feels about his main character. He paints Eren as a tragic hero when he is a mass murderer, says that he is suffering while causing tons of people to suffer more, showing flashbacks of his sad childhood when he is trying to exterminate all the other races of the world. And all of that to say that he is a good guy who is only trying to make everyone live in peace and not a mass murderer villain who fought for ethnic cleasing. Basically, building a character to be the worst villain possible, with clear references to the nazi ideology, to romanticize him.
This manga was a total waste of time and I’m glad that it’s over. Still, it’s sad that many people take the bait to read it because of how amazing it used to be.
