Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Attack on Titan The Final Season Part 3
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Jeff Bauersfeld
Posts: 109 |
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Maybe I've gotten old or my politics have changed, but these sorts of sentimental musings on human nature and the existential causes of war don't hit as hard as they used to. The ending was fine, I guess. It felt contrived plot-wise, including the fatalistic nature of Eren's plan, but the thematic summation felt naive. And not in an endearing way. We've long since understood there are real reasons for war that offer us real solutions instead of a completely unsolvable human nature problem, so I've lately been exasperated with the (many) anime endings that lay society-spanning problems at the feet of vague notions of fear, hate, love, etc. I'm much more accepting of such explanations in interpersonal stories.
My complaints with the themes of the ending are likely with anime in general at this point. AoT is simply the prime example given that it defined a decade. |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2464 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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Maybe having a generation learn media literacy and criticism from YouTube shoutmen was not the best idea ever. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11454 |
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I managed to remain unspoiled until the end. So I guess I'm still at a loss as to what people were so "This ending ruins everything! Grrrr! Mad!!!" about, since I haven't read any of that discussion. All I can say is the only thing that really made me give it the side-eye was Eren's insistence that he tried to change things and not do the genocide, but was helpless against fate. But even that was kind of saved by his admission that he really did want to burn the world to the ground.
I'm going to have to rewatch some scenes that confused me before I say something really duh (ok, that's as inevitable as Eren says his rampage was), but I thought it was a pretty great ending for a truly epic series. |
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Sam1198777
Posts: 5 |
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Absolutely phenomenal
I don’t see why it’s so hated by the manga readers. As an anime-only, it was pretty satisfying to watch (minus the mikasa snub- she def could have had more airtime but armin ate that up) Great ending though. 9/10 solidd |
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MyMasterMatthew
Posts: 144 |
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I've heard this criticism before, but I never understood it. My takeaway is literally the exact opposite. Why do you think Isayama supports fascism? You're talking about the Yeagerists, right? From what I watched, they were never portrayed in a positive light. |
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Nev999
Posts: 138 |
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I stopped keeping up with AOT around the time I realized Isayama didn't really care about his characters beyond them being chess pieces he could move around for to enable his muddled themes, but as someone who read the last chapter when it was released to see what the fuss was about, the reason everyone was mad was because that chapter literally did not include the end where the cycle of war continued. There was some vague aside about peace being up in the air, but then it ended on Mikasa being fine years later, so the only takeaway you could have was Eren's plan ultimately worked, and the last pages of the manga are dedicated to a loved one mourning for him like a fallen hero. Which is not gonna sit well, because it was such a ridic plan.
Isayama included the page where war continued or whatever at least a month later, when the manga volume came out, likely in response to the criticism, and it sounded like that was expanded on in the anime. So no, I don't think people were idiots or media illiterate for taking away "Eren's plan worked, peace was reached, gosh that genocide really did work out for them" when that's the impression the manga chapter gave and Isayama just added more later. |
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killjoy_the
 Posts: 2463 |
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I think that would've worked better as an argument if people had stopped complaining when the volume release came out or expanded their rhetoric with "but then he fixed it", but at least I never saw anyone say that. The anime for AoT always, always made the underlying material better, and I didn't really have much doubts that it would've done the same for this portion of the story. The few dialogue changes in Armin's and Eren's conversation helps wonders. |
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flamemasterelan
Posts: 471 |
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I don't think tacking on an ending chapter after your ending chapter when you sell the volume counts as "fixing it." It's almost like having a bad ending in a video game, getting a negative response, and then releasing DLC to expand on and fix the ending. People aren't out there talking about how great Mass Effect 3 or Fallout 3's endings were based on the DLC version of it. |
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Everlasting Coconut
 Posts: 302 |
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Yeah, this was the thing most people made a big deal out of, the “thank you for becoming a genocidal maniac” part. I admit that I thought the dialogue in the manga was clunky and left a bad taste in my mouth when I first read it, but the message in Armin’s dialogue is clear (he even describes Eren’s actions as a “mistake”), and at worst, it’s just that, clunky dialogue. I still think the anime version is clunky, but I guess now no one can say it’s somehow justifying genocide. People also complained about the fact that humanity kept waging wars in the future, supposedly making our characters' struggle pointless in the end. Personally, I don't think I've ever seen a better example of astronomically missing the point of a story. Of course humans kept waging wars in the future. That is human nature. Erwin said it himself, humans will continue to fight one another until the day there's one human or less. Still, human nature is also about trying to understand one another. It’s a never ending cycle that’s represented by the dynamic between Eren and Armin. And to those who say that Eren's wish for his friends to live long lives was in vain... Well, I’m not sure how you reached that conclusion considering Mikasa lived long enough to marry, have kids, and die of old age peacefully. Another big complaint was the reveal that Ymir loved the king. I admit my jaw hit the floor when I first got to this part as I could not understand how Isayama could make such a tone-deaf statement about an abusive relationship. But then you see how the characters describe Ymir’s love as a “nightmare” and “agonizing,” and it’s clear that it’s not literal love, but a traumatic bond born from Ymir having to rely on this abusive figure in order to fulfill her most basic, emotional needs. It’s reinforcing what we already knew back when her backstory was first revealed, i.e., that all agency was taken from her, and that she had no choice but to stay with her abuser. I will say I don’t think the parallels between Eren and King Fritz hold up in the long run, since Eren is a complex character who commits atrocities for the sake of the people he holds dear, while King Fritz is just a power-hungry asshole. Their respective relationships with Mikasa and Ymir couldn't be more different, particularly the nature of Mikasa and Ymir's commitment. But overall, I do like how Mikasa was the one who freed Ymir by finally finding the resolve to kill Eren. The one thing I really don’t like and comes close to ruining the ending for me is the twist that Eren killed his own mother. This is one of those twists that adds nothing to the story, is only there for shock value, and also manages to damage the characters and themes. The scene where Eren sees his mother die is one of the most iconic moments of the show. It’s the moment that defines Eren as a character and sets him on his journey of hatred and revenge. It’s the moment that tells you straight to your face, “See? War is bad and now this kid is traumatized forever.” Eren is stuck in that moment and thus is never really able to grow up. …but then it turns out that war wasn’t what caused Carla’s death. It was Eren all along! War didn’t traumatize Eren. Eren traumatized himself! Why? Just why? This is tone deaf. Then there’s the reveal that everything was set in stone from the start and none of these events were the result of the characters’ will and actions. Eren does say destruction is what he himself always wanted, but still, it’s always annoying when the element of fate is shoehorned in so late into a story. As for the anime adaptation, most of my complaints have to do with the technical side of things. Conceptually speaking, everything about this fight is creative and chaotic. Our characters are fighting on top of this gigantic eldritch abomination made out of bones against all the previous titan holders (it was cool seeing all their different designs). And when that fight is over, they have to fight against Colossal Titan Eren and the hallucigenia itself, which is this ancient, all powerful being who’s desperately trying to cling on to life. Sadly, I don’t think the animators were able to keep up with the sheer scale of things. At times it was really hard to follow, partly because of the storyboards and partly because there was just so much smoke everywhere all the time. The pacing was also off, particularly from the moment Armin found Zeke onwards. I don’t think it has anything to do with the runtime or the source material, but the editing. There was just no moment to breathe between both lines and scenes. Lastly, the animation and off-characters models made some scenes a little too cringy for me, to the point I had to pause the episode for a bit before moving on. There was one moment at the end of Eren and Armin’s conversation where I swear it looked like they were going to kiss 
Overall, I’d say the ending was good, but it was shaping up to be transcendent, and it did not deliver. Also, the matricide was dumb. Last edited by Everlasting Coconut on Mon Nov 06, 2023 1:35 am; edited 2 times in total |
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db999
Posts: 306 |
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Personally I never really understood why people didn't like the ending. I guess we just completely interpreted the ending differently. I never saw it as excusing Erens actions, and I always thought that the ending we got was inevitable. Like after Eren went into the paths with Zeke there was no other possible ending we could've gotten other than having Eren succeed in wiping out all of humanity outside the walls. Could some of it have been executed better, absolutely. The conversation between Eren and Armin at the end always felt kind of weird and having Ymir being in love with the king who enslaved her and cut out her tongue feels really gross from a storytelling perspective. But the interpretation that Eren was right all along and did the right thing never felt like that was what Iseyama was trying to say. Obviously the comparison between him and Lelouch from Code Geass is a parallel, but I never got the sense that Iseyama was trying to absolve Eren of his sins, that take always seemed like a misinterpretation of the ending. Still I really like it and the epilogue made me love the ending even more because it's a perfect thematic coda for the story.
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jr240483
 Posts: 4390 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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its no surprise that manga readers hated it. hell when i read it, i hoped the outcry would force the author to do a retcon for it was seriously messed up. all of that effort and their island as well as the entire eldian people STILL got wiped off the face of existence even after when some of them in the last ep swore to change while staring in the face of death! if there were an epilogue story, i would wager that if the surviving scouts were there when the rest of the world decided to burn their island into the ground, some if not all of them would be starting to regret in their decision on stopping eren from completing the rumble when bombs start raining down on their heads!
speaking of which, it felt like the author completely droppped the ball on that one once the rumbling began! for NO ONE, whether your a manga reader or an anime reader SERIOUSLY buys in the storyline of historia having a child with some random orphan in her farm that she rarely knows let alone fell in love with considering that every manga reader knew that the only persons she ever truly loved were ymir and eren! |
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5464 Location: Iscandar |
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I only gave 4 stars to the last episode because it felt uneven to me. But overall I am satisfied with how it concluded. It has been a great 10 years ride.
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11454 |
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These two points were what I was going to write about before, but I wanted to check why Berthold was in danger in the first place. But even so, why sic her on his mother instead of just diverting her away from Berthold? I'd had this head-canon since the reveal of who that Titan was, that some tiny remnant of her original self was still in there, and that she deliberately targeted Grisha's new wife out of revenge/jealousy, which fit the themes of the show.  Oh well, scrap that.
And I too was annoyed that Eren was unable to choose any other path. But admitting that he actually did want it kind of softens that, perhaps implying that he couldn't change it, not because of immutable Fate, but because he didn't really want to change it. But no, these things didn't ruin anything for me. Maybe because all the anti-ending hate made me expect some really radical departure from the story, like an invasion by the alien centipede's race invading Earth and turning everyone into Titans, or Eren gleefully killing all his friends and becoming Hitler II. Didn't get anything approaching that, so I'm basically fine with it.
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Gem-Bug
 Posts: 1252 |
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As a manga reader, I've been satisfied with the ending we got, though I do like the changed dialogue here. Even though the story has been over for me a couple years now, it was hard no to be emotional for this last stretch animated. Really well done adaption.
Great review, James. Sorry that this is out during such an awful time in history. The parallels weren't lost on me as I was watching. If I may point out one thing:
This meeting actually happened during the last part, way back on the boat, likely in a fraction of a second while Armin stared off into space. |
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Covnam
 Posts: 3743 |
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Just finished and enjoyed the watch.
I thought it was fine having Ymir just never get out of the slave mindset being why she still obeyed the king, but I don't have a problem with it being love either. Unfortunately people can love the person who hurts them the most. I wonder if that was done just to have the Mikasa connection though. It's certainly something to have the entire plan be done just to force Mikasa to kill Eren so Ymir could emulate her and "kill" the king to get rid of the titan power (for now at least). It was weird that the titans created from the bone still bled and had the same weakness... I get what they were going for with the timing of Historia's childbirth with the explosion, but it didn't work for me. It felt random and was so brief it's like they forgot about it and just had to stick it in somewhere (it was earlier in the manga and maybe worked better in that format) |
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