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iamsosmrt posted:What did people actually want the ending to be? i mean, i know the GoT comparison is maybe worn a bit thin, but from what we see all of Eren's friends seem to have been able to live decent lives after the events of the series in much the same way that all of the Stark kids in GoT basically ended up where they're probably pretty happy
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May 19, 2021 05:12
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Strawberry Pyramid posted:This is still a reasonable response, though. I don't think we in the thread have the personal attachment his friends and the Eren stans have for him compared to all the other characters in the AoT world. More than that, none of the people who stopped Eren where personally in a position to utterly refute him, which is why ultimately talking him out of it wasn't an option. That they could only kill him is part of the tragedy. This is also why none show him hostility after the fact.
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May 19, 2021 05:20
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I think I would have been a lot more satisfied if they were angry at him. If I could change only one thing about the ending we got, I would have Armin say "gently caress you for what you did, Eren. And I'm going to tell Mikasa you wanted her to move on."
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May 19, 2021 05:24
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Reiner was definitely pissed and called him a bastard.
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May 19, 2021 05:30
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iamsosmrt posted:What did people actually want the ending to be? Well, since I was asked... I think the ending has a lot of what I wanted, just executed poorly, and the extra pages had more I liked executed decently. (I think the weirdest thing was how the last chapter tried to act like Mikasa was the lead all along. Her epilogue in the bonus pages works, but the focus from Ymir didn't. Again, felt like there was conflict between Isayama and editorial on that one, and the final result was a compromise that didn't work out.) That said, if I was talking what I expected/wanted from the last chapter, besides "being better"? To kick off, Eren as the father was a pretty heavily foreshadowed plot beat that went nowhere. Giving him and Historia a relationship based on love would be a concrete thing for him to be unwilling to sacrifice, which his friends don't quite work for since, well, Sasha died in this plan while also letting Historia's subplot go somewhere. She allowed Eren to go forward, sacrificing untold innocents for their family, inverting her self-sacrificing Krista act and concluding her arc. (Doesn't make up for sidelining her, but at least there'd be a point to sidelining her.) Eren wouldn't be acting on zero information, just near zero. He saw an image of his child being happy and safe on Paradis, and was just going forward, not knowing what atrocities he'd commit, or if he'd be stopped. Just that if he kept going, he'd reach what he wanted. I'm torn on Eren surviving, but either way, his friends should have had a clearer break with him. What he's done is something they can't forgive, and they've turned their backs on him for good. He's dead in the eyes of the world, and much as Mikasa might regret it, he's dead to her, too. (Him living probably works better for that in some ways. Eren left living with the guilt and the knowledge that he did all of this because he wanted to leaves him in a better position to be noted by the story as a monster. Dead Eren carries a bit much of the martyr to function right for that.) I also felt like the lack of deaths after Hange was kind of a copout, but that's more a problem with the last arc than just 139. Still, the big horror moment with the worm in 138 meaning nothing is kind of a bummer. Oh, and it would have tied in better with the leadup if Reiner had claimed to be the one who killed Eren. He'd be in a better position to negotiate with Marley as one of their officers, and it would pay off the running fake hero thing. Feels kind of fanfic to lay it all out like that, and I apologize, but I really felt like 139 fumbled the ball, and that meant a lot of thinking on what I'd have prefered.
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May 19, 2021 05:59
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TowerofOil posted:the ending is still poo poo nothing is different about it. it may be even more hosed up with the extra pages if its trying to say that violence and genocide are immutable aspects of humanity. loving lol. maybe eren should have used some of his ultimate god powers to attempt to change the world instead of destroy it, and all his friends could stop talking about how cool of a guy he was I mean considering literally the entirety of human history he's probably be right. That aside though AoT seems to be a cautionary tale about the limited utility of violence to solve the problems caused by violence. Eren literally demolished most of the world and the everything is still poo poo. That's why these last few pages make such a difference since they make it clear that Eren was most definitely the bad guy here despite how much his friends still liked him (which, yeah, is kind of weird). Also I rather enjoy the moral ambiguity and lack of a clear "THIS is how you fix the world" message. There's a certain truth in how the series meditates on how there are rarely clear bad and good guys in these sort of situations* and how frustrating it is to change things. *Though the Nazis in this series were unambiguously bad imo and I'm glad they got trampled. It's really hard to buy into the "both sides are bad but ultimately human" when one side feeds kids to dogs because they're an inferior race and dared to leave their ghetto for ten minutes. gently caress them. And yes, the nice Nazis are just as culpable in that poo poo and deserved getting stomped as well. In fact, now that I think about it making the villains Nazis kind of fucks up the message of the show because that's literally the one group in history who pretty much everyone can agree deserved violence and couldn't be reasoned with. readingatwork fucked around with this message at 06:13 on May 19, 2021 |
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May 19, 2021 06:08
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The problem with saying "This ending proves that Eren was wrong and his actions solved nothing" is that the only flaw in Eren's plan was that he didn't go far enough. If Eren had committed a complete genocide of the outside world, Paradis would have survived. In fact, it is the only way in which Paradis would have survived, since if Eren had done absolutely nothing, the world still would have destroyed Paradis after Willy's declaration of war. The message of the series is therefore "Kill all your enemies before they kill you. If you don't follow through, your descendants will suffer the consequences". Yes, Paradis would not suddenly become a utopia if the Rumbling had been completed. Internecine warfare would inevitably still occur. However, the point is that the Paradisians would never be killed just because of their race, which is what the story displays as inevitable, and the cycle of dehumanization would be broken. Would people still find reasons to hate each other based on other traits? Of course. But that's not what the story is about. As is, the cycle continues. People continue to suffer for their ancestors' actions. Children continue to be conscripted. The titans still exist. The ending is somehow bleaker than a complete Rumbling of the outside world.
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May 19, 2021 06:32
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Shingeki no Kyojin: Shippuden when??
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May 19, 2021 06:39
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In It For The Tank posted:The problem with saying "This ending proves that Eren was wrong and his actions solved nothing" is that the only flaw in Eren's plan was that he didn't go far enough. If Eren had committed a complete genocide of the outside world, Paradis would have survived. In fact, it is the only way in which Paradis would have survived, since if Eren had done absolutely nothing, the world still would have destroyed Paradis after Willy's declaration of war. This is pretty much where I am. I'm not sure Attack on Titan had anything worthwhile to say. This just reinforces the feeling I've gotten that all the characters who wanted peace were intentionally painted as ultimately directionless, naive dreamers. What the gently caress was Falco's character arc for?
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May 19, 2021 07:07
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Wasn't there a line at some point where somebody outright said that if the rumbling succeeded they'd just have a smaller world with the exact same issues? Which would make sense considering that the walls weren't exactly a frictionless utopia when everybody assumed humanity was extinct.
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May 19, 2021 07:18
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Viridiant posted:This is pretty much where I am. Not really. Peaceful characters ultimately succeeded in everything they wanted: stopped Eren before he could kill everyone outside Paradis, ended the titan curse, arranged a ceasefire between Eldians and the remnant of humanity, led peaceful and happy lifes. The only thing they didn't get was a permanent solution, because nothing can guarantee you peace forever. In It For The Tank posted:The problem with saying "This ending proves that Eren was wrong and his actions solved nothing" is that the only flaw in Eren's plan was that he didn't go far enough. If Eren had committed a complete genocide of the outside world, Paradis would have survived. In fact, it is the only way in which Paradis would have survived, since if Eren had done absolutely nothing, the world still would have destroyed Paradis after Willy's declaration of war. But Eren's plan wasn't a complete genocide, the entire time it hinged on someone trying to stop him and lifting the Titan curse. This wouldn't have happened if he actually got to kill everyone behind the walls.
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May 19, 2021 09:43
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So who blew up Paradis and when? Because that's unintentionally hilarious that Eren murdered pretty much the whole planet so apparently his friends families could burn to death in a bombing run. Literally any other factions plan would have been a more moral course of action at this point.
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May 19, 2021 09:51
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Was it worth it if it bought a hundred years of peace before the invasion, like the First King's plan? 500? A thousand? It's a bit like blaming the state of modern China being ruled by the CCP solely on the decisions Genghis Khan made. Strawberry Pyramid fucked around with this message at 09:59 on May 19, 2021 |
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May 19, 2021 09:57
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Even Genghis Khan never murdered 80% of the world
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May 19, 2021 10:05
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Im not really convinced the message was "the world is cruel but also beautiful!" cause very little attention was given to beauty through this whole ride. I think the only thing always presented as Good from beginning to the end was friendship. And I guess ultimately the 80% was probably the least amount of humanity Eren could wipe to warrant his friends a good peaceful long life, and that was it I think the added pages made the last chapter less awful but still, it adds very little to the story. And in the end, it dont seems to me AoT really had a message, or a point edit: the bombing obviously takes place centuries after, all our characters are already dead
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May 19, 2021 11:44
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The United States posted:Even Genghis Khan never murdered 80% of the world And the lights, they glow Like I just lost the World War And the scene slips away To the evenness I fake It's a cheat somewhere 'Cause I don't really want you, girl But you can't be free 'Cause I'm selfish, I'm obscene I get a little bit Genghis Khan I don't want you to get it on With nobody else but me With nobody else but me
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May 19, 2021 12:04
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80/20 rule is pretty legit, Eren is a thinking man
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May 19, 2021 13:35
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Messaging aside, there's still a bunch of threads that don't go anywhere or disappeared within plot holes, but five pages were never really going to address the dozens of problems in the ending so, as amused as I am by the idea of Mikasa having children with someone who could be Jean as a middle finger to the shippers, I'm pretty meh on the whole thing. I still want that interview with Isayama though.
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May 19, 2021 14:04
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Imagine working on a series for almost 12 years, having it become the most popular manga and anime of a generation, and not being able to land the ending because it's your first series and you haven't got a handle on pacing or themes. I've seen it happen before with epic fantasy series, though in a lot of cases the author just never publishes the last book(s) and the series remains unfinished. Leaving readers with the ability to believe it could have ended well, but never getting closure. I'm not sure which is better. At least now Isayama can move onto other things.
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May 19, 2021 14:16
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Elias_Maluco posted:Im not really convinced the message was "the world is cruel but also beautiful!" cause very little attention was given to beauty through this whole ride. I think the only thing always presented as Good from beginning to the end was friendship. "The world is cruel but also beautiful" is not exactly the message of this story. It seems to be aligning with Buddhist ethics. Zeke's talk with Armin pins it well: suffering is brought by the qualities that every living thing has: fear of death and attachment. The entire story is about how past atrocities bring inescapable consequences - you can't treat other people like poo poo and think it won't bear fruits in the future. There's even a semblance of reincarnation in the form of Paths and titan memories. From this point of view, trying to bring permanent world peace, especially using violence, is a folly. It will only bring more fear and resentment, which will result in more violence and strife in the future. Eren was wrong, because he was so consumed by fear and anger that he didn't realize he was sowing the seeds of Paradis' destruction. Zeke was wrong, because his death wish and disdain for life not only brought more suffering, but also made him unable to understand people who didn't want to die out. The Scouts were kinda right, as they did neither want to sacrifice other people, nor to willingly die out. Their reward was getting to live the rest of their lifes in peace, even though Eren had already ensured there would be a war in the future. It's important that Mikasa was the person who killed Eren, because she was able to do this completely without anger, malice and get through her attachment. This allowed her to end the Titan curse, which is pretty much karma given shape.
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May 19, 2021 15:14
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chiasaur11 posted:Well, since I was asked... I appreciate the sincere response, and I do agree there were character arcs that could have resolved better/cleaner (especially Historia) but I think realistically, there's so many characters and so many different ways people were looking for this story to go (it's clear from the range of reactions in general) that it was always going to disappoint a lot of people. The Reiner as the hero is a valid take, but Eren compelling Armin to do it is in line with his goals anyway, he wanted his friends to become the saviors of humanity, even if it wasn't the best way to bring about peace. I believe the most crucial thing I see in most negative reactions is that people had a really idealistic way they hoped things would go and the actual ending was a pretty grim, cynical and pragmatic (there's a better wording for this, but I'm struggling this morning) vision of how a flawed and emotionally stunted teenager would actually perform as the so-called savior of the story. I think the biggest issue is around the rumbling is where Isayama should've started cutting down on extra details and side characters and focused on tightening down the story to where it ended. There was a whole lot of bloat over the last 10 or so chapters which I think muddled a whole lot of the bigger picture and where it ended but c'est la vie. Elias_Maluco posted:Im not really convinced the message was "the world is cruel but also beautiful!" cause very little attention was given to beauty through this whole ride. I think the only thing always presented as Good from beginning to the end was friendship. I think it was more like "the world is cruel, but that's life. And life can still be beautiful and worth cherishing when you can."
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May 19, 2021 15:39
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I wonder if Isayama will continue to draw manga. If nothing else, the last chapter affirms how much better he's gotten in terms of composition over the course of its run. There's some really nice imagery.
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May 19, 2021 15:50
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Thanks y'all for the clue in on why Titans will be back, I guess I missed or forgot the Tree part of Ymir's story. I guess thats what I get for reading chapters as they come and not revisiting the earlier stuff. It all kinda washes together and can get lost. Poor future kid Eren your haircut has doomed you to fall into a tree and come out a monster.
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May 19, 2021 16:05
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The Notorious ZSB posted:Thanks y'all for the clue in on why Titans will be back, I guess I missed or forgot the Tree part of Ymir's story. I guess thats what I get for reading chapters as they come and not revisiting the earlier stuff. It all kinda washes together and can get lost. Poor future kid Eren your haircut has doomed you to fall into a tree and come out a monster. Then again, how likely is it that the kid's future remains will be freaking consumed by his descendants to pass down his titan genes?
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May 19, 2021 16:10
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iamsosmrt posted:Then again, how likely is it that the kid's future remains will be freaking consumed by his descendants to pass down his titan genes? Space worms I think make it possible I dunno
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May 19, 2021 16:11
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iamsosmrt posted:Then again, how likely is it that the kid's future remains will be freaking consumed by his descendants to pass down his titan genes? Well, how likely it was for the king to have that idea? I always thought it was amazing that he just went "hey, maybe if my daughters eat their mother they will get the titan thing"
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May 19, 2021 16:34
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assuming the whole world hasn’t reset, technology has advanced far beyond titans at this point.
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May 19, 2021 16:52
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Ok now that I've had a minute for the extra ending bits to sink in a little, I think it hardly even matters what happens in the "epilogue" section. It just helps that there IS an epilogue, cause it helps dilute all the awkward stuff with Eren and Armin. And the really corny forced-feeling stuff with the Warriors all meeting back up with their parents, and everyone turning right back right away from being Titans, and the Ghosts of Survey Past all making cameo appearances, etc. Just having any sense of "ok forget all that dumb poo poo, it's way later now and life went on" is a definite improvement. I like to think that if there is any message to Attack on Titan, it's in the heroic character of the Survey Corps who are consistently shown in the most favourable light. That even if genocide and war and conflict seem like an unavoidable part of the human condition, that's not an excuse to stop fighting it. Fighting the Titans used to seem just as impossible, requiring incredible courage to face up to the sheer terror of them. But the Survey Corps still stood up to that threat, even as they saw it claim so many of their friends' lives. But I don't think Attack on Titan really has any message it clearly stands for in the end. Individual moments like "getting out of the forest" or the Gabi arc suggest that the author does truly have an anti-fascist viewpoint, but with the ending wrapping things up so poorly, those end up just being brief moments instead of taking center stage. So the series feels more like a Rorschach test, where one person can look at the Survey Corps shaped blob and see that stuff I wrote about "the heroism of dedicating your life to fighting a terrifying threat, even against impossible-seeming odds", while another person sees "glorification of militarism". Or you can look at the whole blob of the whole series and see "a Buddhist moral against violence" like a few posts up, or "a cynical justification for violence as a natural and inevitable part of the human condition".
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May 19, 2021 16:55
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bees x1000 posted:assuming the whole world hasn’t reset, technology has advanced far beyond titans at this point. It’s not “I can conquer the world with this” good, but the ability to spontaneously transform into a giant that can only really be killed if hit in one certain spot is still an incredibly dangerous weapon to have. That’s not even including things like the colossal titan’s steam or warhammer titan’s abilities.
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May 19, 2021 17:02
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Bifauxnen posted:
This is about right. Had this series had its full run end by say early 2016, I'd imagine the overall fan reaction (to this extended ending in particular) would've been much less dramatic.
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May 19, 2021 17:40
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Bifauxnen posted:So the series feels more like a Rorschach test, where one person can look at the Survey Corps shaped blob and see that stuff I wrote about "the heroism of dedicating your life to fighting a terrifying threat, even against impossible-seeming odds", while another person sees "glorification of militarism". Or you can look at the whole blob of the whole series and see "a Buddhist moral against violence" like a few posts up, or "a cynical justification for violence as a natural and inevitable part of the human condition". Yeah, this is a good point. Goes back to the idea of the series being incredibly thematically confused.
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May 19, 2021 17:58
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Bifauxnen posted:So the series feels more like a Rorschach test, where one person can look at the Survey Corps shaped blob and see that stuff I wrote about "the heroism of dedicating your life to fighting a terrifying threat, even against impossible-seeming odds", while another person sees "glorification of militarism". Even I am getting tired of sounding like a broken record here, but it feels inaccurate to call it a collection of deliberately meaningless but evocative splashes of ink when there's the whole, you know, unvarnished portrayal of Jewish ghettoes circa the holocaust in there. In a story that climaxes in a global genocide that leaves central characters mildly conflicted. We can debate the politics all we like but it's incredibly poorly written, and I am convinced that many of the finer points people appreciated about Attack on Titan were either flukes, completely unintentional, or simple misunderstandings.
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May 19, 2021 18:09
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One more thing: if we go with Buddhist interpretation, Eren becoming a bird is not a good thing at all. Reincarnating as an animal means you were leading a lovely life. Unless you were a ghost or a demon, then it's actually a promotion for you.
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May 19, 2021 21:14
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LordMune posted:Even I am getting tired of sounding like a broken record here, but it feels inaccurate to call it a collection of deliberately meaningless but evocative splashes of ink when there's the whole, you know, unvarnished portrayal of Jewish ghettoes circa the holocaust in there. In a story that climaxes in a global genocide that leaves central characters mildly conflicted. We can debate the politics all we like but it's incredibly poorly written, and I am convinced that many of the finer points people appreciated about Attack on Titan were either flukes, completely unintentional, or simple misunderstandings. Oh I don't want to imply the series is deliberately meant to be meaningless. I'm more frustrated that what looked like it really was building up to a great complex artwork just finished, and ended up actually being all smudged up. When the Holocaust imagery was first introduced, I gave it the benefit of the doubt because it was being used to portray the Marleyans as unambiguously horrible in how they treated the Eldians. But then, even at the start that was establishing the uncomfortable "superpowered minority". I wonder what the best way to rewrite it would be, though. Just removing the blatant symbols of the armbands wouldn't be enough if they're still functionally equated with Jewish ghettoes. Maybe if the whole Titan superpower dynamic was changed instead? I remember once reading some great speculation in this thread ages ago that maybe it's not even true that only Eldians can become Titans, maybe that's just Marley propoganda since they're the ones in charge of who gets the spinal fluid shots. I thought that was a really cool theory. If it had been actually true, and everything we knew about Eldians being "the devils" was proven to be an outright lie, that might have avoided a lot of the problematic issues from having Eldians directly compared to Jews in the Holocaust. The hallucinogenia is supposed to be some "origin of all life" or something, so it should be connected to all living beings, right? What if absolutely anyone could become a mindless Titan once they get some of that spinal fluid, and the specific powers of the Nine were just passed along to whoever consumed them, not passed on by any aspect of heritage? The whole "passing on to a random Eldian baby" thing would have to go, too. Maybe there could have been some powers historically lost along the way? This fanfic derail is tangential to your real point though, which is that Isayama was never as amazing a writer as we thought. Maybe he was just uncommonly good at foreshadowing some twists he had in mind, far ahead of where they'd get revealed, and that made everything feel like there was a big master plan when there really wasn't.
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May 19, 2021 21:55
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I find it hard to believe that over a hundred chapters were great by sheer luck. Maybe it’s true that the author had no good ideas as to how to pay off some important things but it does seem more likely than not that something wacky happened to give us what we got.
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May 19, 2021 22:20
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I hope we get another 5 pages in a months time to keep this train rolling.
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May 19, 2021 22:23
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Y'know what else that massive tree signifies? The trees in the forest where they fought the female titan was actually a mass grave site. They always talked about how strange those trees were because there was nowhere else with trees that had grown that abnormally large.
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May 20, 2021 00:25
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DaveKap posted:Y'know what else that massive tree signifies? The trees in the forest where they fought the female titan was actually a mass grave site. They always talked about how strange those trees were because there was nowhere else with trees that had grown that abnormally large. Wasn’t that before they discovered the existence of the ocean? Not sure how accurate that is.
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May 20, 2021 00:26
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duckdealer posted:I find it hard to believe that over a hundred chapters were great by sheer luck. Maybe it’s true that the author had no good ideas as to how to pay off some important things but it does seem more likely than not that something wacky happened to give us what we got. Yeah we’re calling potential editorial interference a conspiracy theory, but in the same breath we think the author wrote all these powerful and well written scenes and place it all down to a fluke? You’re telling me stuff like Gabi’s whole arc, written and setup over multiple years was just lucky? That having her confront her own conditioning and overcome it, to show that the cycle can be broken with kindness /understanding was unintentional?Now that’s something no one should be buying into.
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May 20, 2021 00:37
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DaveKap posted:Y'know what else that massive tree signifies? The trees in the forest where they fought the female titan was actually a mass grave site. They always talked about how strange those trees were because there was nowhere else with trees that had grown that abnormally large. Nah they just seem like redwood analogues. It's possible that in the world AoT only regions of Paradis are their habitat - certainly a natural wonder.
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May 20, 2021 00:39
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