Reviews

A long time ago, AOT used to be an excuse for the industry’s greatest legends to come together and flex their talent. Shamelessly flex. They could have made a decent action show with a decent soundtrack that most would forget about in a couple of months. If that had been the case, I would’ve laughed my ass off at this ending and promptly moved on. But unfortunately that isn’t what happened. Tetsuro Araki had to direct the show with the most excessive camerawork, Hiroyuki Sawano had to imbue the show with the most heart-thumping soundtrack, and WIT Studio had to animate the show with some of the most technically competent 3DCG models to date. It’s honestly their fault for making me this upset over a bad ending to some work of fiction.

Let’s face the truth: MAPPA doesn’t care. They never did. The fact they were the only studio willing to take on this project under Pony Canyon and Kodansha’s inhumane production schedule is the very proof of that. They were in for the bucks, and the bucks they got. WIT Studio’s AOT was borderline indulgent in how awe-inspiring it tried to be with every important scene. In MAPPA’s AOT, everything just happens, scene after scene after scene, with the bare minimum amount of passion. The action scenes are alright, the soundtrack is alright, everything is just barely good enough to be watchable. This wouldn’t have been a problem for any other anime, but AOT is special. AOT used to be the defining masterpiece of our generation, and seeing it receive this kind of treatment is really tragic.

But let’s not pretend that this ending would’ve been any better had it still been under the geniuses that originally made AOT the behemoth it is today. Because the main architect of this downright depressing trainwreck is none other than the original author. The basement reveal turned the whole story on its head and everyone and everyone’s actions became morally ambiguous, so in order to achieve a satisfactory ending, Isayama had to chuck any semblance of motivation and logic our characters had out of the window. Levi has no qualms working alongside Annie while he continues to obsess over killing Zeke when they both did the exact same thing, Armin gets all chubby with her because blond & blonde, the parents of Reiner & Annie get redeemed because they’re oh so teary-eyed, Eren goes all “I want her to think about me for at least 10 more years!!!” for a girl he couldn’t care less about for 99% of the story, Ymir loves the pedophile King Fritz because who the hell knows why. The last arc makes negative sense, and absolutely nothing gets resolved. Hell, the last scene even hints at the revival of the Titans when we’ve just spent the entirety of the manga hating them. I just don’t understand the point behind anything.

Most people I know either hated AOT from the beginning or have loved it till the end. But being in this weird minority where you absolutely loved the show for a long time only to be given this ugly, contrived nonsense of a conclusion is genuinely traumatic. Nothing less.

Thank you for reading.