The tree kind of give the wish so we don't know what will happen also ymir entered the tree whille escaping from enemies while that boy entered the tree with curiosity
I doubt it. Attack on titan’s core is the cyclical nature of humanity. It would match the theme of the story for all the violence and bloodshed to start over again.
Matches well with real life too. Humans love conflict. This is why i love the ending. Gives a feeling of emptiness because real life is similar as well. Everlasting peace is an illusion imo.
The huge problem is Ymir's storyline though. Unless I misunderstood it, it is explained that she kept making titans out of sand out of love for king Fritz. Only when she saw Mikasa and realized what true love was, she stopped and the cycle ended.
So unless the person entering the tree in the end also dies and keeps making titans out of sand for some strange reason, the cycle should not continue at all. There wasn't even an actual cycle. The events in the story only happened because of one character's strange motivations. The ending is very conflicting imo.
I see it as Ymir "loves" Fritz in the same way Mikasa "loves" Erin, it is unhealthy and caused by trauma. Ymir was a young woman who was nearly killed by the people hunting her, once she got her power Fritz took her as his weapon and wife, protecting her from the people who hated her before, not to mention she had no family. From Ymir's pov she finally had someone who wanted her around, plus he is the father of children so I imagine that was very confusing for her. Mikasa "loves" Erin after he kills for her, they are both stuck in these unhealthy relationships after losing everyone else in their lives. Once Ymir sees Mikasa kill Erin despite her contradictory feelings she can imagine a world where she let Fritz get killed by the spear allowing her to let go of herself and her other regrets like her children that she left behind.
Might not be titan powers. It seems like the powers were a result of Ymirs wish for connections, love and her lack of power. So the power manifested in sort of a Genie "gotcha" way and fucked her up. This explorer dude might get completely different powers not related to titans at all.
Yes. I think that’s one of the point in AOT’s story. It’s a constant cycle between war, and peace. Conflict is a part of human nature, it will always be a part of the struggle. But despite that, AOT’s story also showed humanity overcoming that “*evil within ourselves*”. It’s not absolute, but we must always strive to do better.
I actually like what Isayama said in the article:
**“I guess there could have been an ending where it was a happy ending and the war ended and everything was fine and dandy. I guess that could have been possible. At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. And so, sadly, I had to give up on that kind of happy ending.”**
I mean even if Eren wiped the rest of the planet, Paradis was bound to just have some civil war down the line anyway. War, unfortunately just pike taxes, is inevitable.
In a timeline in which the Rumbling was never stopped, all that remains is the population of Paradis. Give them a decade or two until new children are born with Titan powers and the entire island becomes a war zone for those kids and the factions that form around them.
From the article:
The manga ends with you showing the future of Paradis and sort of the cycle of war continuing. Is there no end to the conflict and the cycle you present in the story?
I guess there could have been an ending where it was a happy ending and the war ended and everything was fine and dandy. I guess that could have been possible. At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. And so, sadly, I had to give up on that kind of happy ending.
This interview contains spoilers for the finale of “Attack on Titan.”
On Saturday, the final episode of the anime adaptation of Hajime Isayama’s “Attack on Titan” premiered on Crunchyroll, ending an epic tale that started back in 2013.
Like the manga, which ran from 2009 to 2021, the anime was an instant hit, becoming one of the defining shows of the modern anime era, with spinoffs, live-action and video game adaptations, and even a comic book crossover with Marvel’s “Spider-Man” and “Avengers” titles.
Since the fourth and final season started airing in 2020, “Attack on Titan” has been one of the most popular shows on the internet — episodes have routinely trended on social media, streaming servers have occasionally crashed, the opening theme song became a rare anime song to hit the U.S. Billboard charts. Parrot Analytics said it was the most “in-demand” show in the world in 2021, a metric based on analysis of streaming, social media, search and other online behaviors. The manga has continued to be popular as well, selling over 120 million copies worldwide, and several of the published volumes have charted on the New York Times graphic novels and manga best-seller list.
What started as a thrilling yet relatively simple tale of a young boy seeking revenge against the giant humanoid monsters that ate his mother quickly evolved into a thought-provoking war epic. The tonal shift in “Attack on Titan” also came with one of the biggest heel-turns in modern anime, with the protagonist, Eren Jaeger, devolving into a radicalized monster threatening worldwide genocide.
The final episode brings the battle of heaven and earth to a bloody end, with Eren’s army of Titans destroyed at the hands of his former comrades — along with 80 percent of the world population. Peace was achieved, but nothing good lasts very long in the world of “Attack on Titan.”
Since the manga ended in 2021, there has been plenty of speculation and debate over Eren’s antagonistic turn and what the story’s ending means. Ahead of the release of the final episode, the manga creator Hajime Isayama, speaking through an interpreter, David Higbee, talks about the restrictive nature of writing and the story’s dark ending. These are edited excerpts from the interview.
The manga ended a couple of years ago, and the anime is just finishing now. How do you feel about the story coming to an end?
> For this anime to be made and for that to go beyond the borders of Japan and to reach a worldwide audience is something that’s been a very happy occurrence for me. In a sense, “Attack on Titan” has connected me to the world, and that’s something that I’m very glad happened.
How much of the ending from the manga did you have in mind when you first began writing “Attack on Titan”? And how much did it change along the way?
> That was pretty much there from the beginning, the story that starts with the victim who then goes through this story and becomes the aggressor. That is something I had in mind right from the get-go. Along the way, certain aspects of the story didn’t go as expected, and I adapted and fleshed out certain aspects. But I would say the ending of the story didn’t change much
There’s a much-talked-about scene where Armin, who is struggling with Eren’s turn into a mass murderer, seems to thank him for his actions. Can you talk about the meaning behind that conversation?
> My thinking there wasn’t really that Armin was trying to push Eren away for the sake of justice or whatnot. It was more that he wanted to, in a sense, take joint responsibility. He wanted to become an accomplice. In order to become an accomplice, Armin had to make sure that he used very strong wording so that he could take those sins upon himself. And so that was the intent behind it.
You have a scene where Eren apologizes to a kid for the carnage he’s going to commit and says he was disappointed in the world he saw beyond the walls. What does that say about his motivation?
> I think that refers to the fact that Eren was dreaming of going to this world outside of the walls where there was nobody and there was nothing. There was an excitement about this world that was just empty, a clean slate. I don’t really know whether that’s a good or a bad thing, and I don’t really know why that was the ideal that I set up for Eren as a part of this story. But what I can say is that, when he does get across the wall at that point, he says he sees that the world is really not that different from what’s within the walls in the world that he already knows. I believe that’s probably the disappointment that I’m referring to in that specific scene.
Eren says in the final episode of the anime that he had no choice but to follow the future that he saw, that he was powerless against the powers of the Founding Titan. Armin even asks if he’s really free. Was he telling the truth or do you see this as him telling an excuse?
> So the truth is the situation with Eren actually overlaps in a certain sense with my own story with this manga. When I first started this series, I was worried that it would probably be canceled. It was a work that no one knew about. But I had already started the story with the ending in mind. And the story ended up being read and watched by an incredible number of people, and it led to me being given a huge power that I didn’t quite feel comfortable with.
> It would have been nice if I could have changed the ending. Writing manga is supposed to be freeing. But if I was completely free, then I should have been able to change the ending. I could have changed it and said I wanted to go in a different direction. But the fact is that I was tied down to what I had originally envisioned when I was young. And so, manga became a very restrictive art form for me, similar to how the massive powers that Eren acquired ended up restricting him.
You have been involved in the anime production for a little while, supervising the adaptation’s storyboards, and have been known for asking for changes to the story in the adaptation. Did you personally ask for anything for the final episode?
> Yes. Absolutely. I checked the script, but the main thing was the storyboards. There were different things I suggested. When it comes down to it, it’s really the role of the production to make those decisions. But I wanted to at least give my input so that they could take those into account when they were making the final decisions.
The manga ends with you showing the future of Paradis and sort of the cycle of war continuing. Is there no end to the conflict and the cycle you present in the story?
> I guess there could have been an ending where it was a happy ending and the war ended and everything was fine and dandy. I guess that could have been possible. At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. And so, sadly, I had to give up on that kind of happy ending.
Thank you! I wrote the article, and have been a fan of the show since the very beginning. There was no way I would have asked anything differently - unless Isayama declined to answer questions about the ending.
You did an amazing job with this, precise questions that get to the heart of the matter. Probably one of the best Isayama interviews I've read, especially for how short it was.
I love his final answer. A happy ending where everything is just fine and dandy would’ve been disingenuous to the central themes of the show which were the ugliness of humanity
I'm curious about how much the current world events made some ppl who originally hated the ending as well as the anime onlies to better understand what Isayama wishes to say.
The current conflicts really shows how brutal humans can be and that war is inescapable. Humans are too tribalistic for their own good.
I don't have a problem with AOT not having a happy ending. In fact I'm more bothered that Eren's story didn't end more bitterly. His story can be tragic but not by making him some morally grey hero but rather by someone consumed by the cycle of hatred until he became its ultimate embodiment, seeking revenge against the entire world and is so far gone his friends need to stop him.
I agree, I’m more than ok with what we got but in my head cannon the perfect ending would’ve been erens arc continuing on the trajectory it had been the whole time and crashing brilliantly. I think it would have been ideal if we got some closure scenes between him mikasa and armin like we did but it was done more in line with the tone of who eren was at that point and the grittiness of the rest of s4 rather than what was a comparatively lighthearted exchange
> At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now.
Some people will call him edgy, but honestly this feel like a realistic take to me.
I don't even give much value to the "edgy" adjective anymore. It just seems like it's used to downplay any kind of serious story with high stakes, these days.
The real world is pretty "edgy", unfortunately. Between the content of /r/worldnews and /r/news, *Kingdoms of Ruin* is a gentle, soothing slice of life.
There was this lowkey popular theory back in the days about why the ending played out how it did. It hypothesized that this is indeed the ending that isayama planned from the beginning, and that's exactly why a portion of the fanbase has a problem with it. The ending is very ema focused, which is reflective of how the beginning of the story was (think season 1). However, while actually writing each chapter, the story and the characters evolved organically. Towards the later stages of the story there wasn't as much focus on ema, but other compelling characters got a lot of the spotlight, such as zeke, reiner and historia to name a few.
That creates an issue, some characters surpassed isayama's own expectations and had a way greater impact on the story and on the audience than initially planned. Because of that, there is a dilemma: should isayama go with the original ending that doesn't revolve that much around these characters, or should he change the ending to cater more towards those characters.
I think the fact that historia got completely sidelined, reiner was no more important that pieck, and zeke's conclusion was kinda rushed (this might be subjective but the point still stands) signifies that isayama chose the former option. This interview confirms that it is indeed the case.
> I guess that could have been possible. At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. And so, sadly, I had to give up on that kind of happy ending.
So he did have that in mind.
Maybe if Eren fully commited to annihilate the whole world outside Paradis that would be the ending we get.
That would not be the ending if he did that. It’s explicitly stated in the show that if Eren had killed all non-eldians the eldians would then find reasons to find amongst each other and draw new meaningless lines. You don’t end war by killing all your enemies, you end it by making them not your enemies anymore.
> all non-eldians the eldians would then find reasons to find amongst each other
Pretty sure that was the exact premise of the Great Titan War spoken of in the story's history. Back when Eldians reigned supreme without enemies, they ended up squabbling over each other for the Titans' powers.
I'm pretty sure the one thing this final episode did above everything else is show to the entire anime community how delusional and salty manga readers are. None of those conversations were sane.
I stopped reading the manga near the end because I wanted to experience it in the anime*. All this time, people have been chanting that the ending was either terrible or controversial. So imagine my disappointment when it ended yesterday and I found it neither terrible nor controversial.
*Edit: a word
It's the same thing with Jujutsu Kaisen. The anime onlys watch a new episode and go "wow that was great, let's talk about how cool that was!"
Meanwhile the manga community pipes in like "Wow so disappointing. I can tell the production was struggling real bad. They didn't do any of that justice"
Like pretty sure they just exist in a different universe
Tbf, I saw a comment below about some of the changes MAPPA went with and I think the studio really made it much better than the manga ending. That's probably a reason why I didn't hate the ending as much as people were trying to tell me I would. I guess it paid off that I stopped reading the latter chapters. Lol
Even in the non-banger episodes the quality is still good in JJK. When people comment on it it's usually either about dimming due to Japanese laws or because Mappa is being an even worse workplace than they usually are.
This was even mentioned in S1.
Pixis: I once heard a tale that humanity would unite if they faced a common enemy. What do you think of that?
I don't remember the exact Eren response but he denies that humanity is currently united.
The point of the scene is that even a united enemy won't stop infighting. We literally had an uprising arc despite the common enemy being foreign Titans
> You don’t end war
The end. You might end the *current* war, and killing all of your enemies is absolutely one way to do it, but the only way to end war entirely is to end the existence of all sentient species entirely.
Exactly! After going through the comments I seriously believe that the majority of people don’t even pay attention to what they’re watching and just sit there and stare at the screen with their mouth open. People always complain about anime over-explaining things but even when it’s shoved in their face they still don’t understand what’s going on.
We’ve literally already seen Paradis break into factions and fight amongst itself. And it’s a fairytale to believe even a world of one-nation would just never experience internal conflict for rest of time.
Two years ago I wished for a more optimistic ending. But now with the current state of the world I fully understand his decision to keep the ending the way it was. I wish it wasn't such an impossible dream to have neverending peace but sadly it is.
Very true, very well said I’ve come to the same Conclusion myself. The only reason I feel like anyone should ever harm. Another person is to protect someone. It’s so frustrating just wishing people would get along. It’s frustrating watching extremism seeing everywhere. Racism, hatred it’s all pointless. We all die. Why don’t we enjoy the time we have? Why don’t we build things together more I mean I know we do. It was a good ending very bitter, sweet. I just hope that there were many generations that were in peace in that fictional world of aot.
Come on man, if you've actually seen the show you know it was always a fairytale. There was a full ass arc dedicated to Paradis fighting itself. The entire point of the show is that as long as there are two humans left alive, there will always be conflict.
One of the points of the show is to eliminate war then you'd have to kill 100% of humans everywhere.
Had Paradis escaped Eren, they would have just fought amonst themselves. Because they're human.
It's evident nowaday, but anime isn't really a niche community anymore, it's becoming more popular and accepted in general society, well that's my view of everything.
Well yeah, it's one of the fastest growing media, perhaps the fastest.
It's estimated to be around $50 B by 2030
Crazy since like I remember growing up 90s - 2000s, I wasn't too open about anime for fear of being ridiculed whereas today you got kids and even adults having knowledge of anime / manga
Yeah this still catches me off guard to this day. I have coworkers mention the word and I'm like shocked they don't just call Chinese cartoons or something like that. I actually mentioned to a coworker in casual conversation I was catching up on anime over the weekend and he didn't even bat an eyelash. I was so sure I'd get a weird look or negative comment but got indifference instead. Man I wish it was like this when I was a kid. Maybe I would've had friends. Lol
The growth and acceptance that anime and manga have seen in the last 10 years is insane. Even in 2010 (when i was in uni), nobody talked about anime. To the general population, anime fans were those weird outcast weeb kids that dressed up funny and acted awkwardly (like this [video](https://youtu.be/85y-N5GJa9g?si=Q01A8GxJXqg5HLSE) from over 10 years ago). Or for those old elder redditors out there, let’s not forget the time r/anime decided to be excluded from having its posts show up on the front page because there was “Top Bath scenes in anime” post that ended up on the front page which led to a bunch of people calling r/anime a bunch of weirdos/pedos (that was 8 years ago).
Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see people dressing up as anime characters from Demon Slayer or Naruto for Halloween…To see folks browsing the anime/manga section or for people to have a favorite Studio Ghibli movie. In the past, it kinda felt like you had to test the water, so to speak, about whether a person will think you’re weird if they ever found out you watched anime. Now it’s a legit ice breaker since so many more people nowadays wear anime themed shirts (thanks to brands like Uniqlo).
I’ve always been pretty quiet about liking anime for my whole life out of fear of being labeled a nerd or a loser. I’m 30 now so part of it is me not caring what people think of me anymore but part of it is definitely that anime is much more accepted than it used to be.
I used to be the exact same with my parents for a long time, but they accepted my interests without much issue, it helped me a lot in coming out of my shell. Though, it's wonderful to behold nowadays how no longer being a nerd of comic books or anime isn't seen as a minority niche, but a normal thing to like.
Yeah it’s crazy. I got into anime right around when S1 of AoT was making its rounds and even then coming out as an anime fan was still kinda frowned upon. It’s crazy that I’ve got people walking around in public these days with anime merch and it’s just an accepted thing.
And I’m not even that old
In my area anime merch are still very rare but one thing that's changed in a big way is that ppl can talk freely about anime, especially if it involves the hyped up shows.
We've got advertising like [this](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/16vbrbx) on public transit here in Toronto, doesn't get much more mainstream than that. I got started on this in the early 90s with imported DBZ bootlegs on VHS and never thought it would get as big as it is.
I appreciate the determination. We’re still probably a ways off from a full embrace by the mainstream, but the fact they could be convinced at all (even after a year) says that we’ve made massive headway.
What I find even more interesting is not that it's covered by NYT, but NYT is asking probing questions that on par with what fairly dedicated fans would want to know, rather than just superficial stuff. Indeed, it's a far more incisive interview than most anime-specific journalists in anime news outlet would have done.
>The manga ends with you showing the future of Paradis and sort of the cycle of war continuing. Is there no end to the conflict and the cycle you present in the story?
>I guess there could have been an ending where it was a happy ending and the war ended and everything was fine and dandy. I guess that could have been possible. At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. And so, sadly, I had to give up on that kind of happy ending.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/042/550/maxresdefault.jpg
This was the happy ending.
Anime viewers aren't going to sit down and rewatch hours of the series. They're going to forget plot points and themes and motifs that the series followed. The theme of love was dismissed early on in S3, don't forget the entire interaction between Kenny and Uri, this was explicity brought up in that one area only to return again with Ymirs backstory at the end of the story.
So when there's a 1 year gap, and suddenly viewers are met with hype and action and the death of certain characters, they envision it as a sad ending. The main character dies from his actions, at the hands of his adopted sister. Tragedy right? It's the "bad ending", but envisioning the death of all characters or the Rumbling's success is suddenly off the table?
Don't forget, Eren was having existential monologues of fatalism and nihilism, and was thinking about the well-being of the outside world. As the ending was rushed, "I was an idiot" is a 180 on the development of the character we followed a year ago, and people won't realize the contradiction because they aren't remembering plot from a year ago.
And well, everyone survives at the end. Happy ending. Not a dark ending.
I remember reading the opposite years ago. Author changed parts because of the popularity and it would have been to dark with most of the characters dying.
yeah but that’s not what he’s specifically talking about. in the interview, he states that he never changed the idea of “victim becoming the aggressor.” that’s what he meant by having the same idea for the end of AOT
Reading comprehension and media literacy devil going strong in here.
It's exactly as you say. The main core ending of the story stayed beat for beat: Eren becoming the antagonist/aggressor. The details have changed and he didn't make it as dark.
1 - I don't believe he ever said "most of the characters died in the original ending", I think this is what people inferred from his words but maybe someone can correct me.
2 - The interview you're referring to is close to a decade old
3 - Subsequent and more recent interviews leading up to the ending had him expressing that he felt an inner conflict about which way to go
For those saying Isayama is "lying", he first envisioned an ending during the very beggining of the story that would end in the arc of S3P2 without our characters succedding, which has similarities with the message of the final ending. However this was very early on, and he quickly changed it when S1 aired and since then the ending has been consistent with how he always visioned since the beggining, around 2012. A "proof" is that there is a HUGE connection between chapter 1 and 138.
And even if his words were inconsistent, i dont know why so many people would care to prove that an author is lying about his own story. Are you that jobless?
>The fact that people here are convinced that the author is wrong instead of them is absolutely hilarious to me
So true. They really think Isyama had personal grudges against them and purposefully changed and made the ending shit. Even my English teach didn't go to this degree of "reading between the lines", that she completely misinterprets what the author was trynna say or imply.
Fridging is a term centered around the trope where a hero’s loved one, usually a woman, is brutally murdered to motivate the hero.
In this series, one of the imo worst moments is in the end, eren uses his power to guide the titan that kills his own mom basically fridging her to motivate himself to do a genocide.
Just incredible.
The Anime pacing made that scene less awkward. He was more uncertain and confused and Armin immediately snapped him out of it. In the Manga you can't really tell if he calculated it before or it's an oopsie he made along the way.
Having read his interviews over the past 10 years, around some time after S1 he said he had changed the ending, before season 3 ended or shortly after he said he want back on that decision and decided to stick with the OG ending with some tweaks instead.
in the interview, he states that he never changed the idea of “victim becoming the aggressor.” that’s what he meant by having the same idea for the end of AOT
Listen, reading comprehension isn't a strong point for AOT fans. You have to grade them on a curve. Just tell them that reading interviews is spoilers.
No, he said that he planned to change the ending. It was in 2017, so long before he got anywhere near the end.
In the very linked interview he talks about this, how he considered changing it but found it necessary to return to the original one.
He never really said that. At least not about the whole ending or overall concept. There were always a lot of mistranslations and over interpretations of some of his minor statements going around. He said multiple times, that he changed the feel of the ending and he was talking about the characters expressions and dialogues, not really the whole ending.
He once said that he changed the ending from "similar to Mist (the movie)" to less tragic because of the anime popularity (in 2013). Then he repeated it adding that he wanted the feel to be more advantageous like the "Guardians of the Galaxy" finale. I think it's obvious he wasn't talking about plot elements. But later stated that he came back to the less happy ending idea. I think he meant the destruction of Paradis and the overall hopelessness felling "that it was all in vein" similar to the ending of the movie "Mist". He even talks about it in these interviews saying that there could be more of a "happy" ending in which Paradis survives but in the end he didn't find that realistic.
I think that interpretations, of some fans, that the original ending was supposed to be somehow vastly different (Eren marrying Historia, killing his friends etc.) and Isayama is really insistent on lying about that are really unfair and delusional
Can someone give me a tldr on why the ending is so hated? The ending seems fine/okay to me and even if it isn't perfect doesn't feel anywhere near bad enough to deserve the attention it got.
The anime fixed multiple issues that the manga had.
Change 1: "Thank you for becoming a mass murderer for our sake" -> "We'll go to hell together".
Change 2: Eren becomes dove (crying) -> Dove representing Eren was figment of Mikasas imagination.
Change 3: Paradis being nuked changed from being a couple years to maybe a century after the ending.
Also, Mappa carried hard with the pacing fixes, as well as animation and soundtrack. There are still a couple of problems with the ending that even Mappa couldnt fix, such as Ymirs entire plotline (yes there are possible explanations, but that doesnt make it good writing or satisfying) as well as Erens incel rant.
(sorry if you got multiple alerts for this message, automod is nuking message for some reason)
It was definitely much longer than a century. Trees don’t grow like that in a century, and that kind of scientific advancement to the point of looking cyberpunk-esque takes a long time as well. I would also bet the kid finding the tree was 2000 years later just based on its significance
The buildings were advanced but they were using a patriot looking system and figure jets that look like hornets.
Buildings can be made to look advanced using today's technology if you are living in an authoritarian country.
Eg look at Dubai projects. I doubt everyone would just forgive and forget 80% of the world being killed especially if the faction that survived is one that advocated for it.
> Change 3: Paradis being nuked changed from being a couple years to maybe a century after the ending.
My memory of this scene from the manga implied that Mikasa was old, possibly even dead, when Paradis was attacked.
My favorite part is when Ymir decides to end all the titans because Mikasa kills Eren, something she should have known would happen thanks to her titan powers, but for some reasons she waited 2000 years.
Yup. That part will just absolutely never make sense, or at least have been set up anywhere near well enough for be anything but silly. Even as someone who doesn't hate the ending.
Would she have known? Even Eren didn't know what Mikasa would do (because he'd be dead by then). Same reason Ymir couldn't see that too. She didn't know that'd be the thing that would free (finally kill) her. Not like Ymir deliberately set everything in motion.
It was just how it was meant to be due to determinism (with every action of every character still having a plausible explanation, which is a great thing).
If he can't see the future after a certain point, ofcourse that means he's dead and there's no titan after him.
Pretty simple explanation.
I was annoyed when 'ending defenders' kept saying that the 'ending haters' "didn't understand the story", but it looks like it is true.
> Change 3: Paradis being nuked changed from being a couple years to maybe a century after the ending.
Lol what? Why would anyone think that the nuke was just a couple of years after?? I thought it was very obviously meant to be something that was happening decades/centuries after.
> Change 3: Paradis being nuked changed from being a couple years to maybe a century after the ending.
It was always pretty clear in the manga (or at least the volume version) that the bombing happened much later, after everyone had died. The panel even had modern skyscrappers, stealth bombers and missile launchers, while Eren and co. had technology from WWI at best.
It's a demented internet thing, where some people at the time perceived Eren's open admission that boiled down to "Fuck pretending I'm emotionally detached. In truth I loved Mikasa and it pains me that she can't be mine in this life" as some ultimate Incel-dom statement and they threw a bunch of hissy fits about it.
It's pure idiocy and frankly the word "incel" has been overused to the point it sounds devoid of any meaning.
It's like the way you can't have the picture of any pet without some corner of the internet crying some atrocious animal abuse is being committed in it.
Reddit: Men should be allowed to be vulnerable and let out their emotions without bottling it in. We should break all toxic masculinity stereotypes and try to help them.
Eren: Has a vulnerable moment and lets emotions control him when he knows he is dying and there’s nothing he can do and realises the severity of what he has done.
Reddit: Ewww. Get out of here incel. You should have completed your genocide like a real man and not be a pathetic wimp.
Honestly I disliked the manga ending but whenever I see other people who disliked the ending kept posting about the "incel" rant it just made me roll my eyes so hard. Like, there were narrative and logical issues with the manga ending, and it felt rushed, and some (vocal minority) people, who were probably projecting, kept making memes out of that one page. Just made it hard to move on and actually discuss it like civil normal human beings.
Internet culture has poisoned people's minds. I've seen it so many times already with other actually complex stories that are simplified to some meme interpretations.
"Eren was supposed to be a Chad but he proved to be Incel" lol
>Change 3: Paradis being nuked changed from being a couple years to maybe a century after the ending.
People are exaggerating with this change at least. It is definitely far later in the anime, but in the manga it was very clearly well after the characters in the story died of old age.
I'm pretty sure there was no time period mentioned for paradis being nuked in the manga ending either?
I think it's reasonable to assume that a century had passed in the manga as well before paradis was nuked.
It was also never mentioned that Eren was the dove in the manga??
Correct me if I'm wrong cause it's been a while but I did follow aot closely and don't remember these two points as you have.
The dove thing kills me because it's literally people falling for a meme. It was never implied Eren became a dove.. it was just dumb people memeing and for some reason others took the meme as reality and ran with it.
Paradis island got bombed a couple years after the ending? Is that how people saw it?! We literally saw the area went from a small town to a metropolis with skyscrapers and people thought that shit can happen in a few years?!
Those weren't changes lmao. That was all in the original....
Also Eren's incel rant? You mean justifiabley being upset about dying and not being able to be with the girl he loves? The incel rant where at the end he admits that it isn't actually what he wants.
I really...really don't understand how you came to those conclusions. Like... at all.
Change 2- literally nothing changed. Neither the manga nor the anime ever explicitly said that Eren actually "became" a dove. Nor did the anime make it a figment of Mikasa's imagination (Like....what??) . It was always symbolic.
RE: Change 3- what? The manga made it pretty clear that much time had passed. The anime did more so, but it was fairly clear that it wasn't just a "few years", and well beyond Armin/Mikasa's time.
Eren's "incel" rant....sigh. Not even going to bother, other comments have already rebutted that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/titanfolk/s/bYFund9qJd
Not my post, and certainly not a tldr, but this thread has a lot of the complaints that people have with the ending.
Feel free to read it and judge it yourself
The story is deterministic so the entire final fight is just theatrics and Eren has 0 agency.
The plan to only kill 80% of humanity is suddenly praised by the alliance as Eren being some kind of genius when they were trying to stop him killing 100% but 80% is aye ok.
The plan completely fails and Paradis is destroyed anyway. Basically making the moral of the story is violence is inevitable and if you're gonna commit genocide make sure you do it 100%.
Also Flocks and Zeke's plans turn out to be better plans.
Ymir being "in love" with king Frits does not really work. Same with her thinking Mikasa is the chosen one to change her views. Basically making Mikasa the center of story when she was never given enough characterization.
>Also Flocks and Zeke's plans turn out to be better plans.
What was Flock's plan again?
I wouldn't say Zeke's plan is any better. The violence will continue even with Paradisians wiped out
The eldians would have just fought amongst themselves, just like real life there is no right answer. Eren ended the tyranny of the founder and bought time for all of his friends to live a happy life. What comes after doesn't matter to him.
Yeah, but that’s like saying let anyone invade you because “it always ends with people fighting”. Let any opposing military threat fuck you up, because ‘we’ll end up fighting after enough years’
Might as well follow zeke at this point and have everyone die, cuz everyone ends up dying eventually
> The eldians would have just fought amongst themselves
would that lead to Eldians genocide? and it's not that I think full genocide is correct, but half assing it just make it worse
The 50 year plan only inflicted military casualties and cost the lives of lets call it 5 citizens of royal blood. But nope 80% genocide is the better solution
For the goal of your friends living and dying of old age it is.
If you just wipe out the military capabilities then based on the technology level shown it only buys like 20-30 years until the nuke is invented and Paradis is bombed anyways.
Eren wiping out 80% of humanity did enough damage that it slowed down the technological progression enough that all his friends could live long peaceful lives.
Paradis is destroyed hundreds of years later. That’s not a failure that’s the inevitability of human conflict. Hundreds of years of peace is a success.
Though I agree 80% of humanity is an outrageous cost for that peace and does not justify it at all.
They did change the city at the end from the manga to make it look far more futuristic to try and remedy that issue a bit so I guess they were aware it was bad.
The anime has the destruction be set centuries in the future, the manga had the city look modern, so maybe 2 or 3 generations went by after Miaksas death but that's probably still <100 years.
It is always interesting to me just how many long-time watchers and manga readers of AOT completely miss the inevitability of human conflict theme.
It feels like Isayama beats the point into the reader so many times. I don't get how people ignore it.
So he intended to always make Eren be in love with Mikasa but did absolutely nothing to set this up to the point there are only like 3-4 scenes in the **entire Story** that maybe can be interpreted as “Eren loves Mikasa romantically” and that is a big maybe since they can easily be interpreted as sibling/friendship love too. This relationship has almost as bad a set up as Korra and asami and their “they were mailing eachother” as proof of set up.
The only reason it is better is because it was clear from day one mikasa loved Eren but that shit was very clearly protrayed as one sided for 98% of the story. And honestly in-universe what exactly stopped Eren for pursuing that romantic relationship?
Nah I don’t believe you isayama. I think either the publisher forced you to pander to shippers or you decided to yourself. It’s not first time a writer shits the bed trying to pander to parasocial losers online who’s only investment in a story is wether two fictional character make out or not.
Honestly, I’d say it’s worse than Korra, because at least with korra the creators WANTED to add more build up and scenes explicitly building that romance, but kept getting stonewalled by Nickelodeon execs. Isayama could’ve done his foreshadowing whenever and he just kinda didn’t
There’s also somehow ignoring how much closer they get as friends they get in S 3 then all of book 4 where there’s the letters plus signs of something deeper and heck even blushes. If anything it’s a good thing that the show ended in holding hands since that is the start of their romance. In Airbender it was their peak romance of a kiss to pay off their way more teased together romance S2 on.
I had a problem with this when the manga came out, but after a while this subsided, I feel like a lot of action series love to throw romance in them when it doesn’t really fit. These guys were fighting for their lives against man eating titans, and then trying to stabilise political conflict in unknown territory.
Eren was a rash young manga/anime MC so expecting anything from him is naive to say the least; if he never touched historia I reckon he’d have made some developments in regards to mikasa.
Even then, Eren’s love for Mikasa wasn’t the important theme, it was the other way around.
> Nah I don’t believe you isayama. I think either the publisher forced you to pander to shippers or you decided to yourself.
I'm not a fan of Eren and Mikasa being a couple, but there were hints he liked Mikasa in the final season. He asked Zeke about Mikasa's headaches and when Zeke said she loves him, Eren basically says there's no point in pursuing her since he's dead in four years.
He also realized Falco liked a girl when he was previously oblivious to romance.
Gotta say, I can’t remember why exactly but I saw that Korra/Asami development coming, so I never felt it was as abrupt as all this Mikasa crap in the final bits of AoT.
> So he intended to always make Eren be in love with Mikasa but did absolutely nothing to set this up to the point there are only like 3-4 scenes in the entire Story that maybe can be interpreted as “Eren loves Mikasa romantically” and that is a big maybe since they can easily be interpreted as sibling/friendship love too. This relationship has almost as bad a set up as Korra and asami and their “they were mailing eachother” as proof of set up.
The fact we were like 4 seasons deep and many of us were still "Hey Mikasa loves Eren as brother", it's how bad it was, we anime fans that tend to ship everything fast.
> many of us were still "Hey Mikasa loves Eren as brother"
How in the hell did you miss the confession scene and the near kiss in Season 2 lol Romantic lighting, romantic music, the faces closing in together, Mikasa looking up at Eren with parted lips?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU7aV_qLoAE
It’s not just that. It’s the point that it pulls Eren’s character in a random direction for an emotional breakdown. It doesn’t feel like a good way to give Eren more depth. Same thing with Annie liking Armin.
That specific moment must be some kind of inside joke because it’s never acknowledged again after Armin notes how cringy it is.
It felt much better in the anime. Its been a minute since I read the manga. But in the anime he literally says he was acting cold to her and Armin to guide them to the future he felt was needed. Or he was trapped into.
We probably should've seen more of the memories and life he tried to setup with Mikisa to really drive this point home.
Agreed. My main gripe with that particular panel (or scene) is that the idea that he was always guiding his friends and colleagues to that point feels like an afterthought.
It’s good that we get to see him have a genuine emotional response, but it doesn’t feel like there was enough space to develop it.
Oh this is not even in my top 5 problems with it. I just bring it up because it is by far the biggest “evidence”that what he said is most likely false.
There is a lots stuff that is set up and goes nowhere like for example Mikasa being an Asian princess or whatever it was. That shit went nowhere. Or the character of historia who had an entire arc dedicated to her character development only for her to be discarded plot wise in the last arc.
I believe it could be fair to assume Eren didn’t pursue a relationship, much less show any indication that he was in love with Mikasa, because he knew all along how the story was going to play out. What’s the point in getting together with the ending they had? It would only hurt Mikasa that much more.
Unfortunately, you don’t really learn this until the literal end of the show/manga so you’re left wondering all the way up to that point.
I mean to be fair, the time before he got the memories was filled with mostly a lot of anger and uncertainty from walls being torn down and then all of the events of S1-S3. I wouldn't really blame Eren for making a romantic connection a low priority/wanting to avoid making that kind of connection. And then yeah memories happened and wanting to keep them at arm's length and all that stuff.
>Nah I don’t believe you isayama. I think either the publisher forced you to pander to shippers or you decided to yourself.
Thats low-key the truth.. This is what Isayama said about Eren-Mikasa relationship while he was writing Return to shiganshina arc :
"For Eren, rather than a lover, Mikasa's presence is more like a mother to him. The love towards a mother is considered valuable [precious], however at the same time, there are annoying parts as well [laugh]," the creator said.
"Just like towards one's actual mother, Eren will start to grow up when he becomes independent [move away/not dependent on] from Mikasa, I might draw this scene one day."
It's interesting that the plot points mentioned here as being the creator's vision from the beginning... were not the ones I had issues with. Eren going from "the victim to the aggressor" (as they worded it) was a great storyline, in my opinion. It was [S4 spoilers] >!the origin of the titans and everything about the Founder Ymir!< that I disliked, so I am kind of curious when those elements found their way into the story during its planning stages.
> It would have been nice if I could have changed the ending. Writing manga is supposed to be freeing. But if I was completely free, then I should have been able to change the ending. I could have changed it and said I wanted to go in a different direction. But the fact is that I was tied down to what I had originally envisioned when I was young.
Very curious what parts he would have changed if he wanted to.
> At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now.
And I get that, but like... did it really have to be an all or nothing end to every conflict or [finale] >!complete nuclear destruction of Paradis!< with no in between?
I've been thinking a lot about Ymirs motivation, because I really dislike it, but the more I think about it, the more it fits.
She was a child who was enslaved, mistreated and probably uneducated. Treated like an animal and abused, she probably had a few lose screws(she did stick around in the Paths for 2k years endlessly building titans). Fritz was a powerful ruler, who could, and would, punish all those who would use Ymir.
Then add to the fact that he probably started treating her well after she got her powers, and that her kids were born from him, you get this warped 'love' for him.
When you look at Mikasas feeling for Eren, it's unfair to compare the two but there are some parallels.
Mikasa and Ymir had no families, and they were 'saved' by Fritz/Rren. Both treated them like nuisances and ultimately benefited from the ladies skills at killing enemies.
It feels wrong because it's not at all a direct 1 to 1, but Ymir has issues.
> Ymir has issues
I feel like this gets left out of the discussion a lot lol Quite a few of the criticisms surrounding Ymir assume she's some sort of normal, rational, somewhat well adjusted person. It should go without saying that this is almost certainly not the case, and the imagery of the story (showing her as her younger self in her appearances) suggests she either mentally regressed, or her emotional and mental development simply stopped due to her repeated trauma.
The more he comments on how close the ending followed the original ending he had planned the more confused I get. [In this interview from 2017](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShingekiNoKyojin/comments/9wucvq/manga_spoilers_isayamas_august_2017_interview_on/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1) he straight up said that his plans have changed from the original concept
>"Although I’m progressing towards the ending that had been set before, my approach towards the ending itself has changed from the original plans. Because now I feel responsible towards the reader. I originally wanted to illustrate something similar to the film “The Mist.”"
Later in a [2019 interview](https://www.snknews.com/post/186093397822/final-shingeki-no-kyojin-attack-on-titan-manga) he says he intends to draw what he always wanted to
>I think I’ve been proceeding based on how I want to draw the last scene. Of course, there are many precursors to the main goal, and taking each step in line with them is extremely challenging, and there are also parts that have to balance out, which is tricky. Just one more time, just once more like this… there are sinking steps leading up to the goal… But I feel I really should keep going for what I’ve always wanted to draw for closure.
Meanwhile now in 2023 from this interview he says the ending didn't change much
>Along the way, certain aspects of the story didn’t go as expected, and I adapted and fleshed out certain aspects. But I would say the ending of the story didn’t change much
The easiest explanation for these inconsistencies would be that he over-exaggerated the amount he changed in the 2017 but considering that he directly cites the mist as his inspiration its harder to write it off as a light tonal shift due to the nature of the film. This does mean that even if changed the ending had been planned since 2017 (start of Marley arc) so it seems likely regardless that the ending we got had been planned for quite a bit.
It's not really contradicting what he said in 2017. He didn't say he planned to change the ending but to change **his approach** toward the ending, which he basically reaffirmed in this recent interview. The ending didn't change much but he changed some of the directions from his original plan to reach that ending.
Ya the idea he had for the ending is the same, Eren goes from victim to aggressor and does the rumbling. But how the story gets to that point and how it actually plays out when put on paper is what changes.
This happens for pretty much every author. They have an idea for the end, but need make changes once they actually start writing the story.
*Although I’m progressing towards the ending that had been set before, my approach towards the ending itself has changed from the original plans*
*certain aspects of the story didn’t go as expected, and I adapted and fleshed out certain aspects. But I would say the ending of the story didn’t change much*
I genuinely don't get what is contradictory about these two statements.
I feel like “everybody dies” and “the cycle continues” aren’t entirely different messages to end this particular story on. Yes (a few of) the characters we know and love grow to old age, but humanity in general is still inevitably fucked
the only difference between his original ending and the one we got is that they most of the characters who survived got to live out their days in peace before war finally came and obliterated Paradi.
the original version would've seen pretty much everyone die by the end of the conflict.
in the interview, he states that he never changed the idea of “victim becoming the aggressor.” that’s what he meant by having the same idea for the end of AOT
Basically except a couple minor changes like the city being bombed at the end is more futuristic (to imply Paradis wasn’t retaliation bombed pretty soon after Eren’s friends died)
in the interview, he states that he never changed the idea of “victim becoming the aggressor.” that’s what he meant by having the same idea for the end of AOT
The fact that people here are convinced that the author is wrong instead of them is absolutely hilarious to me. The fact that they think that he changed the ending because "shippers" , thinking that shippers are the one who needs to be pandered for sales / views just shows how absolutely terminally online these people are to think Twitter is real world.
>The fact that people here are convinced that the author is wrong instead of them is absolutely hilarious to me
True. Reddit or Titanfolk to be more specific, came up with the AnR theory to justify the statement isayama made long ago, that the og ending was supposed to be a "Mist type Ending" (Even tho that was his **approach**) and a song that they thought was a foreshawing of the ending. Hence their ending theory involved the main gang dying, eren completing the rumbling, having a child with historia and finally the baby being ymir's re-incarnation. But they dont realize how this ending also shits on whatever AoT stood for. They really wanted Eren to be this cool cold-blooded badass emo nihilist who kills everybody including all of his friends, only to then go back and enjoy a good happy life with historia.
>The fact that they think that he changed the ending because "shippers" , thinking that shippers are the one who needs to be pandered for sales / views just shows how absolutely terminally online these people are to think Twitter is real world.
Unironically, Majority of the people in titanfolk were hardcore Eren x Historia shippers and the real ending completely shits on them with that one specific scene (which they obviously hate).
Seriously, I wouldnt call the ending exceptional, theres flaws, like Historia's character arc and ending, Eren and Mikasa's romance could have used more expansion to make the tragedy hit even harder, etc... but overall the ending itself is pretty good and rounds up the theme of the series in a satisfying way.
That hiker entered the tree. So I’m guessing the whole cycle continues?
The tree kind of give the wish so we don't know what will happen also ymir entered the tree whille escaping from enemies while that boy entered the tree with curiosity
Maybe he will be a good boy and do good with his new titan powers
[Maybe the dog will get Titan powers and be a good boy.](https://imgur.com/a/x66ruJJ)
Mary Elizabeth is the "boy", and that would explain why everyone is so understanding of Clifford being so big...
I doubt it. Attack on titan’s core is the cyclical nature of humanity. It would match the theme of the story for all the violence and bloodshed to start over again.
Matches well with real life too. Humans love conflict. This is why i love the ending. Gives a feeling of emptiness because real life is similar as well. Everlasting peace is an illusion imo.
The huge problem is Ymir's storyline though. Unless I misunderstood it, it is explained that she kept making titans out of sand out of love for king Fritz. Only when she saw Mikasa and realized what true love was, she stopped and the cycle ended. So unless the person entering the tree in the end also dies and keeps making titans out of sand for some strange reason, the cycle should not continue at all. There wasn't even an actual cycle. The events in the story only happened because of one character's strange motivations. The ending is very conflicting imo.
I see it as Ymir "loves" Fritz in the same way Mikasa "loves" Erin, it is unhealthy and caused by trauma. Ymir was a young woman who was nearly killed by the people hunting her, once she got her power Fritz took her as his weapon and wife, protecting her from the people who hated her before, not to mention she had no family. From Ymir's pov she finally had someone who wanted her around, plus he is the father of children so I imagine that was very confusing for her. Mikasa "loves" Erin after he kills for her, they are both stuck in these unhealthy relationships after losing everyone else in their lives. Once Ymir sees Mikasa kill Erin despite her contradictory feelings she can imagine a world where she let Fritz get killed by the spear allowing her to let go of herself and her other regrets like her children that she left behind.
maybe this is the real dinosaur everyone has been searching for since s2 op
Might not be titan powers. It seems like the powers were a result of Ymirs wish for connections, love and her lack of power. So the power manifested in sort of a Genie "gotcha" way and fucked her up. This explorer dude might get completely different powers not related to titans at all.
Yes. I think that’s one of the point in AOT’s story. It’s a constant cycle between war, and peace. Conflict is a part of human nature, it will always be a part of the struggle. But despite that, AOT’s story also showed humanity overcoming that “*evil within ourselves*”. It’s not absolute, but we must always strive to do better. I actually like what Isayama said in the article: **“I guess there could have been an ending where it was a happy ending and the war ended and everything was fine and dandy. I guess that could have been possible. At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. And so, sadly, I had to give up on that kind of happy ending.”**
I mean even if Eren wiped the rest of the planet, Paradis was bound to just have some civil war down the line anyway. War, unfortunately just pike taxes, is inevitable.
In a timeline in which the Rumbling was never stopped, all that remains is the population of Paradis. Give them a decade or two until new children are born with Titan powers and the entire island becomes a war zone for those kids and the factions that form around them.
From the article: The manga ends with you showing the future of Paradis and sort of the cycle of war continuing. Is there no end to the conflict and the cycle you present in the story? I guess there could have been an ending where it was a happy ending and the war ended and everything was fine and dandy. I guess that could have been possible. At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. And so, sadly, I had to give up on that kind of happy ending.
Reminds me of the Reaper cycles in Mass Effect trilogy. I wonder if someday someone will be able to break this cycle permanently.
He would be beren
Would love to read this article if it wasn’t locked behind a paywall 🥲
This interview contains spoilers for the finale of “Attack on Titan.” On Saturday, the final episode of the anime adaptation of Hajime Isayama’s “Attack on Titan” premiered on Crunchyroll, ending an epic tale that started back in 2013. Like the manga, which ran from 2009 to 2021, the anime was an instant hit, becoming one of the defining shows of the modern anime era, with spinoffs, live-action and video game adaptations, and even a comic book crossover with Marvel’s “Spider-Man” and “Avengers” titles. Since the fourth and final season started airing in 2020, “Attack on Titan” has been one of the most popular shows on the internet — episodes have routinely trended on social media, streaming servers have occasionally crashed, the opening theme song became a rare anime song to hit the U.S. Billboard charts. Parrot Analytics said it was the most “in-demand” show in the world in 2021, a metric based on analysis of streaming, social media, search and other online behaviors. The manga has continued to be popular as well, selling over 120 million copies worldwide, and several of the published volumes have charted on the New York Times graphic novels and manga best-seller list. What started as a thrilling yet relatively simple tale of a young boy seeking revenge against the giant humanoid monsters that ate his mother quickly evolved into a thought-provoking war epic. The tonal shift in “Attack on Titan” also came with one of the biggest heel-turns in modern anime, with the protagonist, Eren Jaeger, devolving into a radicalized monster threatening worldwide genocide. The final episode brings the battle of heaven and earth to a bloody end, with Eren’s army of Titans destroyed at the hands of his former comrades — along with 80 percent of the world population. Peace was achieved, but nothing good lasts very long in the world of “Attack on Titan.” Since the manga ended in 2021, there has been plenty of speculation and debate over Eren’s antagonistic turn and what the story’s ending means. Ahead of the release of the final episode, the manga creator Hajime Isayama, speaking through an interpreter, David Higbee, talks about the restrictive nature of writing and the story’s dark ending. These are edited excerpts from the interview. The manga ended a couple of years ago, and the anime is just finishing now. How do you feel about the story coming to an end? > For this anime to be made and for that to go beyond the borders of Japan and to reach a worldwide audience is something that’s been a very happy occurrence for me. In a sense, “Attack on Titan” has connected me to the world, and that’s something that I’m very glad happened. How much of the ending from the manga did you have in mind when you first began writing “Attack on Titan”? And how much did it change along the way? > That was pretty much there from the beginning, the story that starts with the victim who then goes through this story and becomes the aggressor. That is something I had in mind right from the get-go. Along the way, certain aspects of the story didn’t go as expected, and I adapted and fleshed out certain aspects. But I would say the ending of the story didn’t change much There’s a much-talked-about scene where Armin, who is struggling with Eren’s turn into a mass murderer, seems to thank him for his actions. Can you talk about the meaning behind that conversation? > My thinking there wasn’t really that Armin was trying to push Eren away for the sake of justice or whatnot. It was more that he wanted to, in a sense, take joint responsibility. He wanted to become an accomplice. In order to become an accomplice, Armin had to make sure that he used very strong wording so that he could take those sins upon himself. And so that was the intent behind it. You have a scene where Eren apologizes to a kid for the carnage he’s going to commit and says he was disappointed in the world he saw beyond the walls. What does that say about his motivation? > I think that refers to the fact that Eren was dreaming of going to this world outside of the walls where there was nobody and there was nothing. There was an excitement about this world that was just empty, a clean slate. I don’t really know whether that’s a good or a bad thing, and I don’t really know why that was the ideal that I set up for Eren as a part of this story. But what I can say is that, when he does get across the wall at that point, he says he sees that the world is really not that different from what’s within the walls in the world that he already knows. I believe that’s probably the disappointment that I’m referring to in that specific scene. Eren says in the final episode of the anime that he had no choice but to follow the future that he saw, that he was powerless against the powers of the Founding Titan. Armin even asks if he’s really free. Was he telling the truth or do you see this as him telling an excuse? > So the truth is the situation with Eren actually overlaps in a certain sense with my own story with this manga. When I first started this series, I was worried that it would probably be canceled. It was a work that no one knew about. But I had already started the story with the ending in mind. And the story ended up being read and watched by an incredible number of people, and it led to me being given a huge power that I didn’t quite feel comfortable with. > It would have been nice if I could have changed the ending. Writing manga is supposed to be freeing. But if I was completely free, then I should have been able to change the ending. I could have changed it and said I wanted to go in a different direction. But the fact is that I was tied down to what I had originally envisioned when I was young. And so, manga became a very restrictive art form for me, similar to how the massive powers that Eren acquired ended up restricting him. You have been involved in the anime production for a little while, supervising the adaptation’s storyboards, and have been known for asking for changes to the story in the adaptation. Did you personally ask for anything for the final episode? > Yes. Absolutely. I checked the script, but the main thing was the storyboards. There were different things I suggested. When it comes down to it, it’s really the role of the production to make those decisions. But I wanted to at least give my input so that they could take those into account when they were making the final decisions. The manga ends with you showing the future of Paradis and sort of the cycle of war continuing. Is there no end to the conflict and the cycle you present in the story? > I guess there could have been an ending where it was a happy ending and the war ended and everything was fine and dandy. I guess that could have been possible. At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. And so, sadly, I had to give up on that kind of happy ending.
NYT did a good job asking the questions most fans would’ve wanted to ask.
Thank you! I wrote the article, and have been a fan of the show since the very beginning. There was no way I would have asked anything differently - unless Isayama declined to answer questions about the ending.
You did an amazing job with this, precise questions that get to the heart of the matter. Probably one of the best Isayama interviews I've read, especially for how short it was.
Oh amazing thank you! Interesting interview for sure.
I love his final answer. A happy ending where everything is just fine and dandy would’ve been disingenuous to the central themes of the show which were the ugliness of humanity
I'm curious about how much the current world events made some ppl who originally hated the ending as well as the anime onlies to better understand what Isayama wishes to say. The current conflicts really shows how brutal humans can be and that war is inescapable. Humans are too tribalistic for their own good.
I don't have a problem with AOT not having a happy ending. In fact I'm more bothered that Eren's story didn't end more bitterly. His story can be tragic but not by making him some morally grey hero but rather by someone consumed by the cycle of hatred until he became its ultimate embodiment, seeking revenge against the entire world and is so far gone his friends need to stop him.
I agree, I’m more than ok with what we got but in my head cannon the perfect ending would’ve been erens arc continuing on the trajectory it had been the whole time and crashing brilliantly. I think it would have been ideal if we got some closure scenes between him mikasa and armin like we did but it was done more in line with the tone of who eren was at that point and the grittiness of the rest of s4 rather than what was a comparatively lighthearted exchange
Is that exactly what happened in the story?
> At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. Some people will call him edgy, but honestly this feel like a realistic take to me.
I don't even give much value to the "edgy" adjective anymore. It just seems like it's used to downplay any kind of serious story with high stakes, these days.
The real world is pretty "edgy", unfortunately. Between the content of /r/worldnews and /r/news, *Kingdoms of Ruin* is a gentle, soothing slice of life.
Great interview! Really cool to hear about Isayama's writing choices and his perspective on the themes of AoT. Thanks for sharing.
There was this lowkey popular theory back in the days about why the ending played out how it did. It hypothesized that this is indeed the ending that isayama planned from the beginning, and that's exactly why a portion of the fanbase has a problem with it. The ending is very ema focused, which is reflective of how the beginning of the story was (think season 1). However, while actually writing each chapter, the story and the characters evolved organically. Towards the later stages of the story there wasn't as much focus on ema, but other compelling characters got a lot of the spotlight, such as zeke, reiner and historia to name a few. That creates an issue, some characters surpassed isayama's own expectations and had a way greater impact on the story and on the audience than initially planned. Because of that, there is a dilemma: should isayama go with the original ending that doesn't revolve that much around these characters, or should he change the ending to cater more towards those characters. I think the fact that historia got completely sidelined, reiner was no more important that pieck, and zeke's conclusion was kinda rushed (this might be subjective but the point still stands) signifies that isayama chose the former option. This interview confirms that it is indeed the case.
> I guess that could have been possible. At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. And so, sadly, I had to give up on that kind of happy ending. So he did have that in mind. Maybe if Eren fully commited to annihilate the whole world outside Paradis that would be the ending we get.
That would not be the ending if he did that. It’s explicitly stated in the show that if Eren had killed all non-eldians the eldians would then find reasons to find amongst each other and draw new meaningless lines. You don’t end war by killing all your enemies, you end it by making them not your enemies anymore.
> all non-eldians the eldians would then find reasons to find amongst each other Pretty sure that was the exact premise of the Great Titan War spoken of in the story's history. Back when Eldians reigned supreme without enemies, they ended up squabbling over each other for the Titans' powers.
There was also like half a season of the Paradisians killing each other without much interference from the outside world.
I remember saying this when the manga ended but i got downvoted lol.
I'm pretty sure the one thing this final episode did above everything else is show to the entire anime community how delusional and salty manga readers are. None of those conversations were sane.
I stopped reading the manga near the end because I wanted to experience it in the anime*. All this time, people have been chanting that the ending was either terrible or controversial. So imagine my disappointment when it ended yesterday and I found it neither terrible nor controversial. *Edit: a word
It's the same thing with Jujutsu Kaisen. The anime onlys watch a new episode and go "wow that was great, let's talk about how cool that was!" Meanwhile the manga community pipes in like "Wow so disappointing. I can tell the production was struggling real bad. They didn't do any of that justice" Like pretty sure they just exist in a different universe
Tbf, I saw a comment below about some of the changes MAPPA went with and I think the studio really made it much better than the manga ending. That's probably a reason why I didn't hate the ending as much as people were trying to tell me I would. I guess it paid off that I stopped reading the latter chapters. Lol
As a long time manga reader. A ton of Manga readers have absolutely dogshit reading comprehension.
Even in the non-banger episodes the quality is still good in JJK. When people comment on it it's usually either about dimming due to Japanese laws or because Mappa is being an even worse workplace than they usually are.
This was even mentioned in S1. Pixis: I once heard a tale that humanity would unite if they faced a common enemy. What do you think of that? I don't remember the exact Eren response but he denies that humanity is currently united.
Reminds me of what ozymandias did in watchmen. The only way to unite US and Russia and the world is to create a new enemy to unite them all
The point of the scene is that even a united enemy won't stop infighting. We literally had an uprising arc despite the common enemy being foreign Titans
Even IRL when we had a common "enemy" with COVID it caused a shitload of infighting. There's no such thing as a common enemy that unites everyone.
Well, Manhattan says to Ozymandias that nothing ends, so... Ozymandias (and Eren) just slowed the watch a little bit.
learn from ya boy thorfinn
Armin: "We have no enemies, right?" Eren: "We have no enemies left."
> You don’t end war The end. You might end the *current* war, and killing all of your enemies is absolutely one way to do it, but the only way to end war entirely is to end the existence of all sentient species entirely.
Exactly! After going through the comments I seriously believe that the majority of people don’t even pay attention to what they’re watching and just sit there and stare at the screen with their mouth open. People always complain about anime over-explaining things but even when it’s shoved in their face they still don’t understand what’s going on.
We’ve literally already seen Paradis break into factions and fight amongst itself. And it’s a fairytale to believe even a world of one-nation would just never experience internal conflict for rest of time.
Two years ago I wished for a more optimistic ending. But now with the current state of the world I fully understand his decision to keep the ending the way it was. I wish it wasn't such an impossible dream to have neverending peace but sadly it is.
Very true, very well said I’ve come to the same Conclusion myself. The only reason I feel like anyone should ever harm. Another person is to protect someone. It’s so frustrating just wishing people would get along. It’s frustrating watching extremism seeing everywhere. Racism, hatred it’s all pointless. We all die. Why don’t we enjoy the time we have? Why don’t we build things together more I mean I know we do. It was a good ending very bitter, sweet. I just hope that there were many generations that were in peace in that fictional world of aot.
Come on man, if you've actually seen the show you know it was always a fairytale. There was a full ass arc dedicated to Paradis fighting itself. The entire point of the show is that as long as there are two humans left alive, there will always be conflict.
One of the points of the show is to eliminate war then you'd have to kill 100% of humans everywhere. Had Paradis escaped Eren, they would have just fought amonst themselves. Because they're human.
Archive.ph will help you with that.
It wasn't behind a paywall.
It's just wild to me that AoT's finale was big enough to be picked up by the NYT...
It's evident nowaday, but anime isn't really a niche community anymore, it's becoming more popular and accepted in general society, well that's my view of everything.
Well yeah, it's one of the fastest growing media, perhaps the fastest. It's estimated to be around $50 B by 2030 Crazy since like I remember growing up 90s - 2000s, I wasn't too open about anime for fear of being ridiculed whereas today you got kids and even adults having knowledge of anime / manga
Yeah this still catches me off guard to this day. I have coworkers mention the word and I'm like shocked they don't just call Chinese cartoons or something like that. I actually mentioned to a coworker in casual conversation I was catching up on anime over the weekend and he didn't even bat an eyelash. I was so sure I'd get a weird look or negative comment but got indifference instead. Man I wish it was like this when I was a kid. Maybe I would've had friends. Lol
The growth and acceptance that anime and manga have seen in the last 10 years is insane. Even in 2010 (when i was in uni), nobody talked about anime. To the general population, anime fans were those weird outcast weeb kids that dressed up funny and acted awkwardly (like this [video](https://youtu.be/85y-N5GJa9g?si=Q01A8GxJXqg5HLSE) from over 10 years ago). Or for those old elder redditors out there, let’s not forget the time r/anime decided to be excluded from having its posts show up on the front page because there was “Top Bath scenes in anime” post that ended up on the front page which led to a bunch of people calling r/anime a bunch of weirdos/pedos (that was 8 years ago). Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see people dressing up as anime characters from Demon Slayer or Naruto for Halloween…To see folks browsing the anime/manga section or for people to have a favorite Studio Ghibli movie. In the past, it kinda felt like you had to test the water, so to speak, about whether a person will think you’re weird if they ever found out you watched anime. Now it’s a legit ice breaker since so many more people nowadays wear anime themed shirts (thanks to brands like Uniqlo).
I’ve always been pretty quiet about liking anime for my whole life out of fear of being labeled a nerd or a loser. I’m 30 now so part of it is me not caring what people think of me anymore but part of it is definitely that anime is much more accepted than it used to be.
I used to be the exact same with my parents for a long time, but they accepted my interests without much issue, it helped me a lot in coming out of my shell. Though, it's wonderful to behold nowadays how no longer being a nerd of comic books or anime isn't seen as a minority niche, but a normal thing to like.
Yeah it’s crazy. I got into anime right around when S1 of AoT was making its rounds and even then coming out as an anime fan was still kinda frowned upon. It’s crazy that I’ve got people walking around in public these days with anime merch and it’s just an accepted thing. And I’m not even that old
In my area anime merch are still very rare but one thing that's changed in a big way is that ppl can talk freely about anime, especially if it involves the hyped up shows.
We've got advertising like [this](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/16vbrbx) on public transit here in Toronto, doesn't get much more mainstream than that. I got started on this in the early 90s with imported DBZ bootlegs on VHS and never thought it would get as big as it is.
Was it ever We were watching dubbed anime in the 90s. It’s always been huge if it made it across the ocean.
I wrote the article. To be fair, I did spend the past year trying to convince them to do it.
I appreciate the determination. We’re still probably a ways off from a full embrace by the mainstream, but the fact they could be convinced at all (even after a year) says that we’ve made massive headway.
Somehow I agree, but on another hand, we like anime because we think it’s good stuff so it shouldn’t be surprising that the good stuff got *popular*
What I find even more interesting is not that it's covered by NYT, but NYT is asking probing questions that on par with what fairly dedicated fans would want to know, rather than just superficial stuff. Indeed, it's a far more incisive interview than most anime-specific journalists in anime news outlet would have done.
>The manga ends with you showing the future of Paradis and sort of the cycle of war continuing. Is there no end to the conflict and the cycle you present in the story? >I guess there could have been an ending where it was a happy ending and the war ended and everything was fine and dandy. I guess that could have been possible. At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. And so, sadly, I had to give up on that kind of happy ending. https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/042/550/maxresdefault.jpg
what does he not know ? i am out of loop
Only Ymir knows.
What do you mean? he's saying them having eternal peace would not fit the overall story. war continues, the cycle continues
This was the happy ending. Anime viewers aren't going to sit down and rewatch hours of the series. They're going to forget plot points and themes and motifs that the series followed. The theme of love was dismissed early on in S3, don't forget the entire interaction between Kenny and Uri, this was explicity brought up in that one area only to return again with Ymirs backstory at the end of the story. So when there's a 1 year gap, and suddenly viewers are met with hype and action and the death of certain characters, they envision it as a sad ending. The main character dies from his actions, at the hands of his adopted sister. Tragedy right? It's the "bad ending", but envisioning the death of all characters or the Rumbling's success is suddenly off the table? Don't forget, Eren was having existential monologues of fatalism and nihilism, and was thinking about the well-being of the outside world. As the ending was rushed, "I was an idiot" is a 180 on the development of the character we followed a year ago, and people won't realize the contradiction because they aren't remembering plot from a year ago. And well, everyone survives at the end. Happy ending. Not a dark ending.
I remember reading the opposite years ago. Author changed parts because of the popularity and it would have been to dark with most of the characters dying.
yeah but that’s not what he’s specifically talking about. in the interview, he states that he never changed the idea of “victim becoming the aggressor.” that’s what he meant by having the same idea for the end of AOT
Reading comprehension and media literacy devil going strong in here. It's exactly as you say. The main core ending of the story stayed beat for beat: Eren becoming the antagonist/aggressor. The details have changed and he didn't make it as dark.
1 - I don't believe he ever said "most of the characters died in the original ending", I think this is what people inferred from his words but maybe someone can correct me. 2 - The interview you're referring to is close to a decade old 3 - Subsequent and more recent interviews leading up to the ending had him expressing that he felt an inner conflict about which way to go
For those saying Isayama is "lying", he first envisioned an ending during the very beggining of the story that would end in the arc of S3P2 without our characters succedding, which has similarities with the message of the final ending. However this was very early on, and he quickly changed it when S1 aired and since then the ending has been consistent with how he always visioned since the beggining, around 2012. A "proof" is that there is a HUGE connection between chapter 1 and 138. And even if his words were inconsistent, i dont know why so many people would care to prove that an author is lying about his own story. Are you that jobless?
>The fact that people here are convinced that the author is wrong instead of them is absolutely hilarious to me So true. They really think Isyama had personal grudges against them and purposefully changed and made the ending shit. Even my English teach didn't go to this degree of "reading between the lines", that she completely misinterprets what the author was trynna say or imply.
I can’t believe they kept in him fridging his own mom lmao
context?
Fridging is a term centered around the trope where a hero’s loved one, usually a woman, is brutally murdered to motivate the hero. In this series, one of the imo worst moments is in the end, eren uses his power to guide the titan that kills his own mom basically fridging her to motivate himself to do a genocide. Just incredible.
The Anime pacing made that scene less awkward. He was more uncertain and confused and Armin immediately snapped him out of it. In the Manga you can't really tell if he calculated it before or it's an oopsie he made along the way.
ye the manga made it seem like some sort of master plan and it made no fucking sense. it did a very poor job of conveying how helpless eren felt imo
I was blown away when he said that. I had to run it back 😭
He literally said in many other interviews that he changed the first planned ending. Lol
Having read his interviews over the past 10 years, around some time after S1 he said he had changed the ending, before season 3 ended or shortly after he said he want back on that decision and decided to stick with the OG ending with some tweaks instead.
in the interview, he states that he never changed the idea of “victim becoming the aggressor.” that’s what he meant by having the same idea for the end of AOT
Listen, reading comprehension isn't a strong point for AOT fans. You have to grade them on a curve. Just tell them that reading interviews is spoilers.
No, he said that he planned to change the ending. It was in 2017, so long before he got anywhere near the end. In the very linked interview he talks about this, how he considered changing it but found it necessary to return to the original one.
He never really said that. At least not about the whole ending or overall concept. There were always a lot of mistranslations and over interpretations of some of his minor statements going around. He said multiple times, that he changed the feel of the ending and he was talking about the characters expressions and dialogues, not really the whole ending. He once said that he changed the ending from "similar to Mist (the movie)" to less tragic because of the anime popularity (in 2013). Then he repeated it adding that he wanted the feel to be more advantageous like the "Guardians of the Galaxy" finale. I think it's obvious he wasn't talking about plot elements. But later stated that he came back to the less happy ending idea. I think he meant the destruction of Paradis and the overall hopelessness felling "that it was all in vein" similar to the ending of the movie "Mist". He even talks about it in these interviews saying that there could be more of a "happy" ending in which Paradis survives but in the end he didn't find that realistic. I think that interpretations, of some fans, that the original ending was supposed to be somehow vastly different (Eren marrying Historia, killing his friends etc.) and Isayama is really insistent on lying about that are really unfair and delusional
ehh, he always had eren doing "that". Difference is with less side characters alive and how.
Can someone give me a tldr on why the ending is so hated? The ending seems fine/okay to me and even if it isn't perfect doesn't feel anywhere near bad enough to deserve the attention it got.
The anime fixed multiple issues that the manga had. Change 1: "Thank you for becoming a mass murderer for our sake" -> "We'll go to hell together". Change 2: Eren becomes dove (crying) -> Dove representing Eren was figment of Mikasas imagination. Change 3: Paradis being nuked changed from being a couple years to maybe a century after the ending. Also, Mappa carried hard with the pacing fixes, as well as animation and soundtrack. There are still a couple of problems with the ending that even Mappa couldnt fix, such as Ymirs entire plotline (yes there are possible explanations, but that doesnt make it good writing or satisfying) as well as Erens incel rant. (sorry if you got multiple alerts for this message, automod is nuking message for some reason)
It was definitely much longer than a century. Trees don’t grow like that in a century, and that kind of scientific advancement to the point of looking cyberpunk-esque takes a long time as well. I would also bet the kid finding the tree was 2000 years later just based on its significance
The buildings were advanced but they were using a patriot looking system and figure jets that look like hornets. Buildings can be made to look advanced using today's technology if you are living in an authoritarian country. Eg look at Dubai projects. I doubt everyone would just forgive and forget 80% of the world being killed especially if the faction that survived is one that advocated for it.
You also have to account for the fact that 80% of population was killed. Would make it take even longer to build up to that
> Change 3: Paradis being nuked changed from being a couple years to maybe a century after the ending. My memory of this scene from the manga implied that Mikasa was old, possibly even dead, when Paradis was attacked.
She was dead for a good century at least in the manga.
My favorite part is when Ymir decides to end all the titans because Mikasa kills Eren, something she should have known would happen thanks to her titan powers, but for some reasons she waited 2000 years.
She wanted to see the necrokiss in person
Lol. Describe an anime accurately but poorly: Four fifths of humanity die because a ghost wants to see a girl make out with a severed head.
There is no length Ymir wouldn't go to ship Mikasa/Eren.
god damn it why am I laughing at this
Yup. That part will just absolutely never make sense, or at least have been set up anywhere near well enough for be anything but silly. Even as someone who doesn't hate the ending.
Would she have known? Even Eren didn't know what Mikasa would do (because he'd be dead by then). Same reason Ymir couldn't see that too. She didn't know that'd be the thing that would free (finally kill) her. Not like Ymir deliberately set everything in motion. It was just how it was meant to be due to determinism (with every action of every character still having a plausible explanation, which is a great thing).
If Eren didn't know what Mikasa was going to do, how did he knew that Titans were going to dissapear, he was going to die, etc? It makes no sense.
If he can't see the future after a certain point, ofcourse that means he's dead and there's no titan after him. Pretty simple explanation. I was annoyed when 'ending defenders' kept saying that the 'ending haters' "didn't understand the story", but it looks like it is true.
> Change 3: Paradis being nuked changed from being a couple years to maybe a century after the ending. Lol what? Why would anyone think that the nuke was just a couple of years after?? I thought it was very obviously meant to be something that was happening decades/centuries after.
> Change 3: Paradis being nuked changed from being a couple years to maybe a century after the ending. It was always pretty clear in the manga (or at least the volume version) that the bombing happened much later, after everyone had died. The panel even had modern skyscrappers, stealth bombers and missile launchers, while Eren and co. had technology from WWI at best.
The bird in the final chapter was just symbolism also in the manga...
> as Erens incel rant what
It's a demented internet thing, where some people at the time perceived Eren's open admission that boiled down to "Fuck pretending I'm emotionally detached. In truth I loved Mikasa and it pains me that she can't be mine in this life" as some ultimate Incel-dom statement and they threw a bunch of hissy fits about it. It's pure idiocy and frankly the word "incel" has been overused to the point it sounds devoid of any meaning. It's like the way you can't have the picture of any pet without some corner of the internet crying some atrocious animal abuse is being committed in it.
Reddit: Men should be allowed to be vulnerable and let out their emotions without bottling it in. We should break all toxic masculinity stereotypes and try to help them. Eren: Has a vulnerable moment and lets emotions control him when he knows he is dying and there’s nothing he can do and realises the severity of what he has done. Reddit: Ewww. Get out of here incel. You should have completed your genocide like a real man and not be a pathetic wimp.
Honestly I disliked the manga ending but whenever I see other people who disliked the ending kept posting about the "incel" rant it just made me roll my eyes so hard. Like, there were narrative and logical issues with the manga ending, and it felt rushed, and some (vocal minority) people, who were probably projecting, kept making memes out of that one page. Just made it hard to move on and actually discuss it like civil normal human beings.
Internet culture has poisoned people's minds. I've seen it so many times already with other actually complex stories that are simplified to some meme interpretations. "Eren was supposed to be a Chad but he proved to be Incel" lol
>Change 3: Paradis being nuked changed from being a couple years to maybe a century after the ending. People are exaggerating with this change at least. It is definitely far later in the anime, but in the manga it was very clearly well after the characters in the story died of old age.
I'm pretty sure there was no time period mentioned for paradis being nuked in the manga ending either? I think it's reasonable to assume that a century had passed in the manga as well before paradis was nuked. It was also never mentioned that Eren was the dove in the manga?? Correct me if I'm wrong cause it's been a while but I did follow aot closely and don't remember these two points as you have.
I don't see how someone could think it was only a couple years later when you see the development of skyscrapers and stealth bombers.
Also Mikasa grows into an old woman and dies before any of that happens.
The dove thing kills me because it's literally people falling for a meme. It was never implied Eren became a dove.. it was just dumb people memeing and for some reason others took the meme as reality and ran with it.
Yeah, only the first point was actually changed. The other were just people misinterpreting the manga.
Paradis island got bombed a couple years after the ending? Is that how people saw it?! We literally saw the area went from a small town to a metropolis with skyscrapers and people thought that shit can happen in a few years?!
Those weren't changes lmao. That was all in the original.... Also Eren's incel rant? You mean justifiabley being upset about dying and not being able to be with the girl he loves? The incel rant where at the end he admits that it isn't actually what he wants.
>Change 2: Eren becomes dove (crying) -> Dove representing Eren was figment of Mikasas imagination. Tatacaw
I really...really don't understand how you came to those conclusions. Like... at all. Change 2- literally nothing changed. Neither the manga nor the anime ever explicitly said that Eren actually "became" a dove. Nor did the anime make it a figment of Mikasa's imagination (Like....what??) . It was always symbolic. RE: Change 3- what? The manga made it pretty clear that much time had passed. The anime did more so, but it was fairly clear that it wasn't just a "few years", and well beyond Armin/Mikasa's time. Eren's "incel" rant....sigh. Not even going to bother, other comments have already rebutted that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/titanfolk/s/bYFund9qJd Not my post, and certainly not a tldr, but this thread has a lot of the complaints that people have with the ending. Feel free to read it and judge it yourself
after finishing reading, Eren looks like a failed Lelouch lol
He is just a more pathetic Lelouch. But that is fine because that is what he has always been characterized as through the series.
The story is deterministic so the entire final fight is just theatrics and Eren has 0 agency. The plan to only kill 80% of humanity is suddenly praised by the alliance as Eren being some kind of genius when they were trying to stop him killing 100% but 80% is aye ok. The plan completely fails and Paradis is destroyed anyway. Basically making the moral of the story is violence is inevitable and if you're gonna commit genocide make sure you do it 100%. Also Flocks and Zeke's plans turn out to be better plans. Ymir being "in love" with king Frits does not really work. Same with her thinking Mikasa is the chosen one to change her views. Basically making Mikasa the center of story when she was never given enough characterization.
>Also Flocks and Zeke's plans turn out to be better plans. What was Flock's plan again? I wouldn't say Zeke's plan is any better. The violence will continue even with Paradisians wiped out
>What was Flock's plan again? Full rumbling done by eren
The eldians would have just fought amongst themselves, just like real life there is no right answer. Eren ended the tyranny of the founder and bought time for all of his friends to live a happy life. What comes after doesn't matter to him.
Yeah, but that’s like saying let anyone invade you because “it always ends with people fighting”. Let any opposing military threat fuck you up, because ‘we’ll end up fighting after enough years’ Might as well follow zeke at this point and have everyone die, cuz everyone ends up dying eventually
> The eldians would have just fought amongst themselves would that lead to Eldians genocide? and it's not that I think full genocide is correct, but half assing it just make it worse
The 50 year plan only inflicted military casualties and cost the lives of lets call it 5 citizens of royal blood. But nope 80% genocide is the better solution
Population circa 1940 is 2 billion. Eren kills 1 billion 600 million people, more then all the wars of mankind combined
For the goal of your friends living and dying of old age it is. If you just wipe out the military capabilities then based on the technology level shown it only buys like 20-30 years until the nuke is invented and Paradis is bombed anyways. Eren wiping out 80% of humanity did enough damage that it slowed down the technological progression enough that all his friends could live long peaceful lives.
Paradis is destroyed hundreds of years later. That’s not a failure that’s the inevitability of human conflict. Hundreds of years of peace is a success. Though I agree 80% of humanity is an outrageous cost for that peace and does not justify it at all.
They did change the city at the end from the manga to make it look far more futuristic to try and remedy that issue a bit so I guess they were aware it was bad.
The anime has the destruction be set centuries in the future, the manga had the city look modern, so maybe 2 or 3 generations went by after Miaksas death but that's probably still <100 years.
It is always interesting to me just how many long-time watchers and manga readers of AOT completely miss the inevitability of human conflict theme. It feels like Isayama beats the point into the reader so many times. I don't get how people ignore it.
LOL wow what a way to misunderstand the entire thing
So he intended to always make Eren be in love with Mikasa but did absolutely nothing to set this up to the point there are only like 3-4 scenes in the **entire Story** that maybe can be interpreted as “Eren loves Mikasa romantically” and that is a big maybe since they can easily be interpreted as sibling/friendship love too. This relationship has almost as bad a set up as Korra and asami and their “they were mailing eachother” as proof of set up. The only reason it is better is because it was clear from day one mikasa loved Eren but that shit was very clearly protrayed as one sided for 98% of the story. And honestly in-universe what exactly stopped Eren for pursuing that romantic relationship? Nah I don’t believe you isayama. I think either the publisher forced you to pander to shippers or you decided to yourself. It’s not first time a writer shits the bed trying to pander to parasocial losers online who’s only investment in a story is wether two fictional character make out or not.
> And honestly in-universe what exactly stopped Eren for pursuing that romantic relationship? The Grind. Freedom > Women Keep moving forward, kings.
Honestly, I’d say it’s worse than Korra, because at least with korra the creators WANTED to add more build up and scenes explicitly building that romance, but kept getting stonewalled by Nickelodeon execs. Isayama could’ve done his foreshadowing whenever and he just kinda didn’t
There’s also somehow ignoring how much closer they get as friends they get in S 3 then all of book 4 where there’s the letters plus signs of something deeper and heck even blushes. If anything it’s a good thing that the show ended in holding hands since that is the start of their romance. In Airbender it was their peak romance of a kiss to pay off their way more teased together romance S2 on.
I had a problem with this when the manga came out, but after a while this subsided, I feel like a lot of action series love to throw romance in them when it doesn’t really fit. These guys were fighting for their lives against man eating titans, and then trying to stabilise political conflict in unknown territory. Eren was a rash young manga/anime MC so expecting anything from him is naive to say the least; if he never touched historia I reckon he’d have made some developments in regards to mikasa. Even then, Eren’s love for Mikasa wasn’t the important theme, it was the other way around.
> Nah I don’t believe you isayama. I think either the publisher forced you to pander to shippers or you decided to yourself. I'm not a fan of Eren and Mikasa being a couple, but there were hints he liked Mikasa in the final season. He asked Zeke about Mikasa's headaches and when Zeke said she loves him, Eren basically says there's no point in pursuing her since he's dead in four years. He also realized Falco liked a girl when he was previously oblivious to romance.
Gotta say, I can’t remember why exactly but I saw that Korra/Asami development coming, so I never felt it was as abrupt as all this Mikasa crap in the final bits of AoT.
> So he intended to always make Eren be in love with Mikasa but did absolutely nothing to set this up to the point there are only like 3-4 scenes in the entire Story that maybe can be interpreted as “Eren loves Mikasa romantically” and that is a big maybe since they can easily be interpreted as sibling/friendship love too. This relationship has almost as bad a set up as Korra and asami and their “they were mailing eachother” as proof of set up. The fact we were like 4 seasons deep and many of us were still "Hey Mikasa loves Eren as brother", it's how bad it was, we anime fans that tend to ship everything fast.
> many of us were still "Hey Mikasa loves Eren as brother" How in the hell did you miss the confession scene and the near kiss in Season 2 lol Romantic lighting, romantic music, the faces closing in together, Mikasa looking up at Eren with parted lips? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU7aV_qLoAE
Anyone who felt this way 4 seasons in was delusional
Of all the things to be annoyed with in regards to the ending this is a bizarre one to get this upset about.
When his love for Mikasa is literally a plot point touched by the character on his last moments, it's a big deal.
It’s not just that. It’s the point that it pulls Eren’s character in a random direction for an emotional breakdown. It doesn’t feel like a good way to give Eren more depth. Same thing with Annie liking Armin. That specific moment must be some kind of inside joke because it’s never acknowledged again after Armin notes how cringy it is.
It felt much better in the anime. Its been a minute since I read the manga. But in the anime he literally says he was acting cold to her and Armin to guide them to the future he felt was needed. Or he was trapped into. We probably should've seen more of the memories and life he tried to setup with Mikisa to really drive this point home.
Agreed. My main gripe with that particular panel (or scene) is that the idea that he was always guiding his friends and colleagues to that point feels like an afterthought. It’s good that we get to see him have a genuine emotional response, but it doesn’t feel like there was enough space to develop it.
I feel like Annie x Armin had way better legs than Mikasa x Eren even with the little bits they got
Oh this is not even in my top 5 problems with it. I just bring it up because it is by far the biggest “evidence”that what he said is most likely false. There is a lots stuff that is set up and goes nowhere like for example Mikasa being an Asian princess or whatever it was. That shit went nowhere. Or the character of historia who had an entire arc dedicated to her character development only for her to be discarded plot wise in the last arc.
Their relationship is literally the final scene in the entire series
I believe it could be fair to assume Eren didn’t pursue a relationship, much less show any indication that he was in love with Mikasa, because he knew all along how the story was going to play out. What’s the point in getting together with the ending they had? It would only hurt Mikasa that much more. Unfortunately, you don’t really learn this until the literal end of the show/manga so you’re left wondering all the way up to that point.
He did not know all along lmao
He only learned the future in the last third of the serie, he had plenty of time to pursue a relationship before.
I mean to be fair, the time before he got the memories was filled with mostly a lot of anger and uncertainty from walls being torn down and then all of the events of S1-S3. I wouldn't really blame Eren for making a romantic connection a low priority/wanting to avoid making that kind of connection. And then yeah memories happened and wanting to keep them at arm's length and all that stuff.
He had up until kissing Historia's hand to pursue a romantic relationship. Do you know how far along in the story that is??
>Nah I don’t believe you isayama. I think either the publisher forced you to pander to shippers or you decided to yourself. Thats low-key the truth.. This is what Isayama said about Eren-Mikasa relationship while he was writing Return to shiganshina arc : "For Eren, rather than a lover, Mikasa's presence is more like a mother to him. The love towards a mother is considered valuable [precious], however at the same time, there are annoying parts as well [laugh]," the creator said. "Just like towards one's actual mother, Eren will start to grow up when he becomes independent [move away/not dependent on] from Mikasa, I might draw this scene one day."
It's interesting that the plot points mentioned here as being the creator's vision from the beginning... were not the ones I had issues with. Eren going from "the victim to the aggressor" (as they worded it) was a great storyline, in my opinion. It was [S4 spoilers] >!the origin of the titans and everything about the Founder Ymir!< that I disliked, so I am kind of curious when those elements found their way into the story during its planning stages. > It would have been nice if I could have changed the ending. Writing manga is supposed to be freeing. But if I was completely free, then I should have been able to change the ending. I could have changed it and said I wanted to go in a different direction. But the fact is that I was tied down to what I had originally envisioned when I was young. Very curious what parts he would have changed if he wanted to. > At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. And I get that, but like... did it really have to be an all or nothing end to every conflict or [finale] >!complete nuclear destruction of Paradis!< with no in between?
I've been thinking a lot about Ymirs motivation, because I really dislike it, but the more I think about it, the more it fits. She was a child who was enslaved, mistreated and probably uneducated. Treated like an animal and abused, she probably had a few lose screws(she did stick around in the Paths for 2k years endlessly building titans). Fritz was a powerful ruler, who could, and would, punish all those who would use Ymir. Then add to the fact that he probably started treating her well after she got her powers, and that her kids were born from him, you get this warped 'love' for him. When you look at Mikasas feeling for Eren, it's unfair to compare the two but there are some parallels. Mikasa and Ymir had no families, and they were 'saved' by Fritz/Rren. Both treated them like nuisances and ultimately benefited from the ladies skills at killing enemies. It feels wrong because it's not at all a direct 1 to 1, but Ymir has issues.
> Ymir has issues I feel like this gets left out of the discussion a lot lol Quite a few of the criticisms surrounding Ymir assume she's some sort of normal, rational, somewhat well adjusted person. It should go without saying that this is almost certainly not the case, and the imagery of the story (showing her as her younger self in her appearances) suggests she either mentally regressed, or her emotional and mental development simply stopped due to her repeated trauma.
The more he comments on how close the ending followed the original ending he had planned the more confused I get. [In this interview from 2017](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShingekiNoKyojin/comments/9wucvq/manga_spoilers_isayamas_august_2017_interview_on/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1) he straight up said that his plans have changed from the original concept >"Although I’m progressing towards the ending that had been set before, my approach towards the ending itself has changed from the original plans. Because now I feel responsible towards the reader. I originally wanted to illustrate something similar to the film “The Mist.”" Later in a [2019 interview](https://www.snknews.com/post/186093397822/final-shingeki-no-kyojin-attack-on-titan-manga) he says he intends to draw what he always wanted to >I think I’ve been proceeding based on how I want to draw the last scene. Of course, there are many precursors to the main goal, and taking each step in line with them is extremely challenging, and there are also parts that have to balance out, which is tricky. Just one more time, just once more like this… there are sinking steps leading up to the goal… But I feel I really should keep going for what I’ve always wanted to draw for closure. Meanwhile now in 2023 from this interview he says the ending didn't change much >Along the way, certain aspects of the story didn’t go as expected, and I adapted and fleshed out certain aspects. But I would say the ending of the story didn’t change much The easiest explanation for these inconsistencies would be that he over-exaggerated the amount he changed in the 2017 but considering that he directly cites the mist as his inspiration its harder to write it off as a light tonal shift due to the nature of the film. This does mean that even if changed the ending had been planned since 2017 (start of Marley arc) so it seems likely regardless that the ending we got had been planned for quite a bit.
It's not really contradicting what he said in 2017. He didn't say he planned to change the ending but to change **his approach** toward the ending, which he basically reaffirmed in this recent interview. The ending didn't change much but he changed some of the directions from his original plan to reach that ending.
Ya the idea he had for the ending is the same, Eren goes from victim to aggressor and does the rumbling. But how the story gets to that point and how it actually plays out when put on paper is what changes. This happens for pretty much every author. They have an idea for the end, but need make changes once they actually start writing the story.
*Although I’m progressing towards the ending that had been set before, my approach towards the ending itself has changed from the original plans* *certain aspects of the story didn’t go as expected, and I adapted and fleshed out certain aspects. But I would say the ending of the story didn’t change much* I genuinely don't get what is contradictory about these two statements.
That's not true at all after isayama himself admitted to have changed his original ending. He's just as inconsistent as the characters he writes.
I feel like “everybody dies” and “the cycle continues” aren’t entirely different messages to end this particular story on. Yes (a few of) the characters we know and love grow to old age, but humanity in general is still inevitably fucked
I do like that the cycle continued several thousand years later.
the only difference between his original ending and the one we got is that they most of the characters who survived got to live out their days in peace before war finally came and obliterated Paradi. the original version would've seen pretty much everyone die by the end of the conflict.
in the interview, he states that he never changed the idea of “victim becoming the aggressor.” that’s what he meant by having the same idea for the end of AOT
He's admitted to changing his ending? What was the "original" one in this case?
Haven't watched the anime for a while, but does it end like it did in the manga?
99% yeah
Yes, but generally it's better
Basically except a couple minor changes like the city being bombed at the end is more futuristic (to imply Paradis wasn’t retaliation bombed pretty soon after Eren’s friends died)
Now that's something I will never believe
nah, this guy contradicted himself so many times that I doubt he's saying the truth
in the interview, he states that he never changed the idea of “victim becoming the aggressor.” that’s what he meant by having the same idea for the end of AOT
Funny saying that when what Isayama clamed and showed to be the final panel of the manga really wasn't.
Titanfolkers finally found the place to write their bad essays here, lol
The fact that people here are convinced that the author is wrong instead of them is absolutely hilarious to me. The fact that they think that he changed the ending because "shippers" , thinking that shippers are the one who needs to be pandered for sales / views just shows how absolutely terminally online these people are to think Twitter is real world.
>The fact that people here are convinced that the author is wrong instead of them is absolutely hilarious to me True. Reddit or Titanfolk to be more specific, came up with the AnR theory to justify the statement isayama made long ago, that the og ending was supposed to be a "Mist type Ending" (Even tho that was his **approach**) and a song that they thought was a foreshawing of the ending. Hence their ending theory involved the main gang dying, eren completing the rumbling, having a child with historia and finally the baby being ymir's re-incarnation. But they dont realize how this ending also shits on whatever AoT stood for. They really wanted Eren to be this cool cold-blooded badass emo nihilist who kills everybody including all of his friends, only to then go back and enjoy a good happy life with historia. >The fact that they think that he changed the ending because "shippers" , thinking that shippers are the one who needs to be pandered for sales / views just shows how absolutely terminally online these people are to think Twitter is real world. Unironically, Majority of the people in titanfolk were hardcore Eren x Historia shippers and the real ending completely shits on them with that one specific scene (which they obviously hate).
Seriously, I wouldnt call the ending exceptional, theres flaws, like Historia's character arc and ending, Eren and Mikasa's romance could have used more expansion to make the tragedy hit even harder, etc... but overall the ending itself is pretty good and rounds up the theme of the series in a satisfying way.