*This review contains spoilers*

Ladies and Gentlemen, Hello. My name is Hajime Isayama and today I'll teach you how to write manga.

I must begin by saying that you should not be discouraged. At first glance, it can be difficult, but you only have to write 90 chapters perfectly tied together, with great characters and mystery to the world and titans, fantastic fights that actually serve a purpose with barely any talk no jutsu moments, and perhaps the single most important thing in all of this, Sasha being alive.

What you ought to do afterward is write a timeskip. This is meant for the end-series so we can have a "where are they now" segment but there is no need to worry about it because another timeskip will occur in the last chapter as we would have the pleasure of seeing in efficiency how terrible Eren's plan was. The first timeskip is primarily meant as a means of showing Eren becoming this evil incarnate that at no point in the series have we gotten hits about such alteration to his character. The second one is instead a quick reminder of how Yams got worse at writing a proper story without contrivance to its characters. Both are meant for Eren as he's convinced that all lives must be taken in order to obtain "freedom" and in doing so he ought to go against his friends causing an artificial conflict between him and the rest of Paradis as well countless third parties in which for entirely redundant reasons will join Paradis side and go against Eren. From this point onwards, you don't have to write anything decent since it will all depend on which character is to your liking the most and you'll always have to make him or her achieve whatever goal they are in need of. In this case, it's Armin. He's mastered the talk no Jutsu, I dare to say it's his strongest technique. Anyone he's talked to has been convinced to help him do whatever he's wanted to and its limits know no bounds.

With the power of friendship, Armin doesn't give up, not for one moment while he and co-venture towards Eren to stop him but first, we must go a bit before all that because you are clearly asking how all those characters have joined the Paradis side. Because of plot device, they ultimately were there because Eren too changed sides and there was no choice but to help their enemies. The two couldn't stay on one side only since that wouldn't make sense, just like it doesn't make any sense for Reiner, Pieck, and others to help Armin and Mikasa, meant solely as an excuse for "redemption" for some of the characters. Armin succeeds because of course, he did, Eren becomes dove because of course, he did, we never learn much about the titans and the few things we get to throw at us are pure nonsense in an asspull way upon the "paths" was introduced into the story which, for all intents and purposes is the main reason why the second arc of the timeskip is this bad. Historia getting sidelined from the story by getting pregnant off of some random farmer we never know anything about, which it's not the fact the child is not Eren's that pissed me off, but rather that she could've done so much that being someone's whore. To top it all, Eren Lelouch'd his ass out of and acts like he did something important or useful when all he did was fight for something he himself committed. I always knew he was going to do that the moment he becomes evil for the greater good but never wanted to believe it as I knew it wouldn't work with the story itself.

All the troubles Eren went through, all the people he killed, were just for his friends to live happily ever after. Instead of removing the titan course and finishing what he initially wanted to, he follows the most bullshit route and makes peace for a few generations... slightly for his friends to live their miserable life in complete serenity and with this in mind, the descendants to be inevitably killed. There is no point in taking so many lives when everything remains the same and what Eren has fought so far becomes useless because his goal was suddenly retconned when he confessed his "love" to Mikasa all of a sudden. Especially when you murdered 80% of the population and would've taken a mere couple of hours to exterminate the rest and finally be free of the burden. Even if Eren had somehow died because of that, it's still a better outcome of what we've got although it needs to once again be mentioned that what led to that would've been abominable regardless. It can't get out of character than this, and it makes no sense either given how Mikasa got to suck Horse's dick anyway. I wonder what Dove-Eren must've felt when he saw Mikasa getting fucked by the only person he didn't want to fuck her. I bet it's not sitting well with him.

"Thank you Eren for turning yourself into a mass-murder for our sake"

If you want more proof that Armin is the most hateful character, here you go. Eren is the worst character, but Armin is someone you would hate the moment he opens his mouth. When Armin mastered the talk-no-Jutsu it was as clear as day that he was going to succeed in convincing all of the previous enemies into joining his side to take down Eren, which he does, and that he had a plan into making Eren stop but think about it, why would Eren stop and how would Armin make that happen? Apparently, Armin never thought about the consequences, and the whole reason why he did all that in the first place was that it was against genocide, that there had to be a better option to put an end to this and in the last chapter he goes "Thank you for killing all them fuckers". What could have possibly happened between his determination to stop Eren and the last chapter that made him accept Eren's behavior and get along with everything he's done? Armin who is not only the brain of the trio, but was always been morally right, and looking back at everything he's always made the right and acceptable decision to put an end to something but in the last chapter he comes across as disingenuous and a piece of shit with virtually no fucking reason that let him to the settlement.

As for tradition, a good lead female in shonen is hard to come by and Mikasa is no exception. You won't certainly hate her as much as Eren and Armin but will sure get on your nerves with her stoic persona throughout. In the early series, she's got something to work with and her strength was admirable so for all the good reasons she was reliable in that department. I always liked her early on but looking back it's clear Yams either didn't care much about her or perhaps wasn't able to give her more stuff to do as the story went on, which I find extremely odd given how in the post timeskip she was suddenly given more importance than before but ended up being a leftover until the last two chapters gaining the determination to do the thing she should have done a long time ago. Mikasa is a bit awesome in her own way, but she has no ambitions of any kind and comes across as Eren's shadow. It is clear that she has had mental issues since she was a kid from the accident she and Eren had and her affection for Eren is due to this, but Yams does not look into this with the possibility that she may recover one day. Eren seemingly hating her was an excuse to make her grow and act on her own rather than following in his footsteps but she does nothing the entire time besides feeling sad at Eren's sentiments towards her because Yams never gave a shit about her.

I haven't talked about the rest of the characters but really, what there is to talk about? They all suck because the writing sucks and the story shifted from average (Marley) to the worst thing (War for Paradis) in a dozen or so chapters and it destroys everyone's solid characterization they once had. The transition from Eren becoming evil and after meeting Ymir was awful and the premise itself was bad, to begin with, because it didn't build up to characters that would eventually join the Paradis side to defeat a common enemy. It does this by assuming that everyone is fine in the first place, while that couldn't be feasible in any way. Yams wanted to give the characters more depth but clearly couldn't work with the way they were presented in the first place and also goes against their characters as previously they wanted to defeat Eren as quickly as possible without taking out everyone and yet waste time for trivial stuff. A "goal" of any of the characters who weren't on Eren's side, vanish because the final moments of the story is them trying to reach and take down Eren and in the midst of all the chaos down there, it's impossible to get any devolvement, and they don't, so Yams had to put Floch as a mini-boss before the final event as a means of showing the "cooperation" of the two sides of which couldn't work but the shitty writing proved me otherwise.

Which is better, the journey or the destination? The answer is both. But can everyone get that luxury? Unfortunately not. What one must do to get near to said luxury? Make the journey be worth the destination. If the AoT story had followed this thought of mine, it would've made sense. What was only needed is a linear thread to follow and find its end without splitting into different directions because you wanted to make it a more compelling approach to your story. You could, but why risk it when you had the answer right in the palm of your hand?

Eren died a virgin. That's all you need to know!

Helpful

read more

Attack of Titan is the prime example of how a story –no matter how good it is– can get completely and absolutely ruined in an amount of just a few chapters.

That is, if you try hard enough, of course.

Attack of Titan doesn’t need any introduction, ever since the anime debut in 2013 it has been one of the most popular and recognizable franchises out there, but in the end, it all boils down to one simple question: is it good? To avoid you all the trouble, the answer is simply no.

I have to admit that I used to like Attack on Titan, and even for a while it was one of my favorite series, and it was for a good reason. What Hajime Isayama initially presented in Attack on Titan wasn’t a run-of-the-mill shounen, but a superb story accompanied with intricate mysteries and world-building, and while Attack on Titan has never been without its issues, those could be overlooked as the good had far outweighed the bad. But what are we seeing now, however, it’s nothing but a hollow, lame and plain uninspired imitation of what AoT used to be.

What happened in Attack on Titan couldn’t be described as anything other than a huge downgrade in writing, showing signs of this as early as chapter 124, but becoming much more apparent in the last 6 chapters, culminating in what in my opinion is one of the worst end of any story I've seen so far. It’s completely nonsensical and contrived without any thematic weight, throwing away any previous build-up or foreshadowing, which it’s not only bad for itself, but also retroactively makes a lot of previous scenes as basically worthless. And not to mention how almost every character in the cast has been replaced by watered-down version of themselves, Eren being one of the worst offenders. While initially not the most developed character (though this is up to debate), Eren had one of the best character arcs in the series, just to be absolutely ruined in the exact amount of two chapters (which also are the last two), making his entire character feel like a bad joke. It's actually quite an accomplishment how much of Eren's character has been destroyed in such a short amount of time. The worst thing about this is that it doesn't only happen to Eren, but to most of the cast.

Armin, for example, is another victim of bad writing. After RtS, he remains completely stagnant and even regresses as a character, as he’s shown without any of the determination or development that took place during that arc, but rather appears as a very passive character, reminiscent of earlier parts of the story. Despite that being bad writing, that wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for how much the story loves his character, despite doing nothing to deserve that. He’s always shown as some kind of messiah that every character loves for no real reason and paradoxically has the most screen time (at the expense of other characters) but the least development. It's insane how much Isayama constantly tries to portray Armin as a genius and a hero just to fails so terribly at it.

Then there’s Mikasa, who doesn’t even has any development or remarkable trait other than "Ereh" (and acting cool I guess), and has been like that for pretty much the entirety of the series. Thankfully though, she finally gets some development... but it’s only in the final two chapters. Which of course means that said development is completely rushed and contrived.

As for the other characters, they are underdeveloped by the lack of screen time due to the sheer amount of characters in the story, so just a few characters get some significant development. Another problem is how the story (and thus its characters) loves Armin, even going as far as ruining characters that aren’t even alive to begin with for the sake of Armin. The only characters that are an exception to this are the character who dares to oppose Armin, who are pretty much next to none outside of Floch (best character) and some non-characters that no one actually bothers to remember.

Anyways, I could go on with the rest of the cast, like how Levi, despite being one of the few decent character remaining, gets very few development or any moment to shine in the final arc due barely having any screen time with his character reduced to muh promise (still like I said before he’s one of better ones), or how Gabi’s characters serves no thematic purpose other than to tell us the exact same thing that Reiner’s character already did just a few chapters ago.

Story-wise, things aren’t much better. Due to what happens in the final arc, a lot (if not all) of the themes that the story initially presented are rendered as worthless. While the earlier parts of the story had been of mostly respectable quality, with a clear foreshadowing of future events and a solid theming, there’s no a reason to care about that now as Isayama didn’t seem to care either when he wrote this ending. It was as if after chapter 123 he was replaced with another writer as there is a clear lack of foresight in the following chapters regarding the development of the plot, especially in comparison with the earlier chapters. However, the worst part of this is the number of possible directions the series could have gone, only to ultimately pick the laziest and most predictable story development that the story could have gone. Laziness in particular is a recurrence during the final arc. The characters face no real threat despite the situation they’re in due to how protected they are by the plot, resulting in a lot of situations devoid of any logic no matter how unlikely these situations are and any tension being basically non-existent. Not much can be said about the ending without getting into some major spoilers, but it did its job of ruining whatever foundation the story previously had.

It’s also worth noting how unsubtle the symbolism and the """"themes""" are during the final arc. I cannot count the number of times a character has said "I am free" or also whenever a bird appears for the gorillionth time representing freedom (such deep symbolism). Like, it’s ok, we get it, but don't shove it in my face for the tenth time in a row, it's exhausting.

As for the art, it’s a mixed bag. The art initially was very mediocre and inconsistent, but with the time it got better and there was a clear improvement, it wasn’t the best of the best, but it was decent. However after a certain point the art got much more inconsistent again with a lack of effort compared to the previous improvements. Said lack of effort coincidentally happens to be reflected in the story, as the best chapters are also those with the best art, while the poorest written chapters have a mediocre art.

To say that the final arc is bad would be an understatement. Other than two chapters, there is little good to see. Any share of consistency or logic is completely erased and the attempt of making something of actual substance is left as an afterthought. It makes any previous emotional investment I had with this manga purposeless and I just can't care about anything related to it now. I think it's obvious by now, but I don't recommend Attack on Titan. If you still plan on reading Attack on Titan, then I recommend to read it until 123, then drop it and make up your own ending, as it would be much more satisfying than the ending we got, otherwise don't bother.

Helpful

read more