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The Journey of Eren Jaegar: A Road Map to the Final Season

You know, as messed up as it is, I like the political discussions that Shingeki no Kyojin incitates. Far too often people like to pretend that art can be apolitical (which isn't true at all, as every action is inherently political by its very nature as an action), specially regarding games and manga, so a series that brings such topics to the forefront is really interesting. Even more interesting is just how strong the discourse around the series is, specially given its many controversial narrative decisions. And even if some of those decisions are pretty jarring for an educated person, I really don't think they were made with any ill intent but are mostly the result of someone who didn't know better. Something to be criticized, sure, but not necessarily a proof of strong belief in an ideology.

I, for one, have always considered that, at its heart, Shingeki no Kyojin wants to be pacifist. Specially in the last few seasons and chapters, the series has been very preocuppied with the toll of war in the people who fight and on the civilians that are hurt by it. These positions can often feel pretty cookie cutter and ignore the systemic role of war in many political and ideological systems but they are not intentionally evil.

Eren is a big proof of that and his role in the story is basically to show how the 'unbending hero' that we see in a lot of series can be a pretty bad thing. His single minded desire to protect his friends and destroy his enemies is challenged time and time again and we can see how, by the end of season 3, he's been broken by the realization that if you see everyone as your enemies, there will never be any peace. War, ultimately, will only lead to more war. Again, a somewhat naive position but clearly not something that's borne of bad faith.

This is also one of the reason why I think that the complaints that the series stopped being about 'humans vs titans' fail to realize that this is the point. The conflict was set out as a simple 'us vs them' but is them greyed out. I mean, titans are like, the ultimate manifestation of 'the other', a man-eating, monstrous, uncivilized being from beyond the walls whose existence threatens the life and lifestyle of the poor, innocent people. And then this other gets more and more humanized, first by blurring the barrier between human and titans and then by changing the very nature of what titans are. The only thing I feel sorry for is that it all feels a little too simplistic sometimes and the revolutionary arc, while having a lot of interesting ideas, feels a bit lost. This does get improved on later on the manga but, still... there was a lot o potential there to look into the conveniences of systemic oppersion but sadly the series didn't really go that far in this direction.