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The Path to The Tree on The Hill

The story starts and ends under the tree on the hill.

Why is that so?

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they call them the marleyan warriors… tip jar

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Mikasa’s Destiny and Mikasa’s Choice

This chapter is about Mikasa solving her character arc and it has very interesting similarities with the Lost Girls spinoff.

The spin-off is essentially Mikasa’s dream of how things would have turned out if her parents had not died. She runs in an ideal world where she lives happily with them, but is still given the chance to meet Eren.

However, even if Mikasa can literally control every aspect of that world, she is still not able to save Eren. She disbands the Survey Corps and closes the Walls Doors. Despite all this, Eren keeps trying to go outside and to leave her… and dies trying to fly away.

Here, there is a very similar idea:

Mikasa wants to escape to her “home” and sees an alternative reality, a dream where she and Eren have run away from war and Marley.

They are together, but things are not perfect:

Why can’t Mikasa stay there, but still, why is it important that she had a “long dream” about it?

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The freedom we give to ourselves

How does one find freedom in a cruel and cynical world? What does freedom even mean? What would it feel like? How will we know when we see it? These have been recurring questions throughout this story. We seem to explore attempts at the answer to this question through the perspective of characters.

Kenny Ackerman’s life in pursuit of power led him to realise a truth about himself and the people around him. this idea of being drunk on something. That People need something to believe in to keep them going, to keep them from being broken by life’s suffering. Something that they hope gives each of their lives meaning. Each character’s pursuit towards this idea is what they believe will give them freedom from suffering.

Zeke was no exception to this, he sees the suffering he experienced as a suffering inherent in being an Eldian in this world. He was drunk on the idea that his and the collective suffering would stop if Eldians ceased to exist.

Despite this proposition, Zeke was able to find true freedom not by pursuing his personal mission through to the end but by letting it go. This push to move forward: to explain himself, his life, his suffering. It has brought him only more dissatisfaction and pain. He kept moving forward and when Eren took power from Ymir he was just sitting inert in Paths. It is not until his conversation with Armin that he truly looks back and reflects. Armin talks about a time where he was just having an aimless moment shared between loved ones. Zeke looks within and finds himself playing catch with Xaver. It has no meaning but it is a moment in his life where he’s not suffering but nor is he striving to push forward with some grand purpose. He is simply… existing. Without complication. Without justification. He is just someone who exists in this world because he was born into it. A simple moment with a profound effect: that life has intrinsic value and purpose regardless of how cruel it may seem. Zeke has now found that peace he was looking for his entire life. That feeling stays with him right up to the moments of his death. He can’t take back all the blood he has shed but for a few moments to take in the clear sky of the day. He can just exist.

There has been an exhaustive debate in and out of the story of who or what the true devil of humanity is supposed to be. The devil of all earth that plagues humanity. I don’t believe it is Eren but I do believe he is the person in the story most seduced by it. I put forward that the devil of humanity isn’t a person born once in a generation, it is not a creature or some sort of supernatural force. The devil of humanity is the cycle of violence itself. A tiny glimmer of light or fear of the dark that pushes us into war, into chaos, into hell.

We may believe we see something beyond it. Something we can gain or something we fear will be taken from us if we don’t answer the call: “Do this and your dream will come true, you will be safe, you will be loved, the pain will stop” Just once. Then once again. Then once more. Before you know it, you are gripping the wheel of a sinking ship so heavy you have no hope of turning it on your own. But that may be the very thing that can stop it. Hope. The hope you give yourself in small acts of faith. Kindness. Compassion. Empathy. Seeing beyond the walls that trap your spirit. Not to seek out freedom taken from you but to reconnect with the freedom you always had that never left, your humanity.

If this is Isayama’s message, that freedom is in finding one’s humanity. One finds freedom by reconnecting with their humanity. I put forward that the most free person in this story has been Mr Blouse, Sasha’s father.

Mr Blouse is the person in the story most consistently connected to his own humanity and humanity as a collective whole. He makes it a principle to stay connected to it. So much so that when given a justifiable choice to take revenge on Gabi for killing his daughter. He instead chose to forgive her and console both her and Niccolo showing her the most humane act she had ever received. She did not have to justify her existence as a good Eldian in that moment, she was accepted as another person who deserved to exist even if she’d made mistakes.

From Gabi’s experience and perspective, nothing made more sense than Mr Blouse killing her for what she did. What he decided to do was so simple yet its impact was profound. He reached Gabi because he saw something real beyond answering hate with hate. He sees a precious freedom beyond this cycle, and now thanks to what he did Gabi can see beyond it too and was able to find her humanity.

How does this relate to the main character of the story, Eren. Eren’s case is a very tragic one. No one is more emotionally attached to the idea of freedom than Eren, it has a specific imprint within his psyche. However there also lies the imprint of the wall within his psyche and all the trauma associated with it. From an early age Eren, at his most traumatised, found a resolve to find freedom from this horrific nightmare by destroying those who took his freedom from him at any cost. But in finding this resolve and trusting it above anything else, he had unknowingly damned himself.

The wall is so strongly associated with trauma in Eren’s mind, and now with the release of the wall titans, he is literally weaponizing his trauma and aiming it at the rest of the world. Yams is establishing that humanity is the only real freedom we have and Eren had always expected freedom to be beyond the walls. However, because of Eren’s compounded trauma, humanity is the ultimate enemy. In sacrificing his humanity and wiping all of it from the outside world, he is destroying the freedom he wanted for himself and for everyone in the world.

This happens all in the basement of his old home in Shiganshina. Eren was on the cusp of moving beyond his trauma when suddenly all of that pain, all of those triggers were reformatted, given new context when he learned the truth of his world. Why all of this pain and suffering happened to him. Once he met the formative father of his new world rebirth – Eren Kruger.

Eren has found stability in this turmoil by latching onto Kruger’s mindset, believing Kruger to embody what he needs to be to save those he cares about. In this new large and scary world, Eren sees Kruger as the person he will have to be to exist, to make a change. Eren has assimilated Kruger into his identity, evident from Eren taking Kruger’s name during his time spent in Marley. In how we are introduced to him post time skip, Eren is pursuing action using Kruger’s words to young Grisha about the Zeppelin.

Freedom is hard fought and after fighting tooth and nail and suffering and pushing as hard as he can, he will have his freedom.

Culminating in the Jaeger trio at the Reiss family cave, we finally see how far Eren’s resolve has pushed him. Eren is not the devil but he is the one most seduced by it (pushing forward the cycle of violence). He tells Grisha to do this to justify his own belief that this was necessary. To sacrifice his humanity, the humanity he managed to find in the walls after a life of pain and anger as soldier of revolutionary radicalism. For Eren, sacrificing one’s humanity is what is necessary. But Eren misunderstood what he was supposed to take away from Kruger’s life.

There is an additional meaning behind Kruger’s final words to Grisha – in sacrificing his humanity to get to this point, he has lost everything precious to him. All that exists is the end goal, the zeppelin. Seeing the zeppelin is… all there is. It won’t give you back what you lost or what you have told yourself you need to take back: aka your humanity. Eren’s “sight” is the zeppelin and he believes seeing it will give him back the freedom taken from him. It’s no coincidence that Grisha looks like Eren when he reflects on the day that traumatised him the most.

We see Kruger talking to Grisha further after he is given his mission. As Kruger prepares the serum for Grisha he mentions that he won’t know who will be watching this memory. If we take the ironic nature of this story into consideration, this can also mean that he doesn’t know if whomever is watching these memories will stop watching before he is about to say what he says. It takes place at the end of the chapter after we see Eren finding his new resolve and coming to grips with what he has learned and what he needs to do.  This may be implying that this further discussion between Kruger and Grisha is something that Eren didn’t actually see. Kruger’s final important message to Grisha is to love someone. Be it a wife, a friend, the people around you. In specific terms, treasure your humanity and preserve it no matter what happens. Like Mr. Blouse, treasure the humanity found in others, even in enemies who have wronged you or may wrong you. Because that is what it means to find life intrinsically valuable.  That is the only way to end this cycle of violence and ironically what Kruger has realised after losing so much of his own and now Eren in turn.

So if the path to freedom is to find one’s humanity does this mean that the cycle of violence can be wiped out and the devil of humanity will stop plaguing the world? I don’t think that’s a question Yam’s is capable of answering nor does he intend to. 

However, I think he may propose that if it is possible for the main character of the story, the one who has been the most seduced by the cycle of violence and spilled the most blood is able to give himself back his humanity after willingly sacrificing so much of it. Then there is hope for anyone of us to find true freedom. Not everyone, but anyone. Because not just knowing but realising that we are all human, and valuing that, is what makes us truly free.

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Moving ever forward

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—If it meant getting to play catch with you again, I guess….I wouldn’t mind being born once more after all. So….I suppose I’ll thank you, Dad […] what a beautiful day it is…if only I had realised that earlier….

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This panel from chapter 89 now reads more like a foreshadowing - it’s not just the readers who’re feeling frustrated that Historia, by all appearances, got sidelined and played little part post time-skip; here in her conversation with EMA, Historia also expressed a sort of frustration that she didn’t get a chance to contribute. She hasn’t much substantial political power, and she couldn’t be where the real fighting is, unlike her friends.

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The Forest

In chapter 111, we were introduced to the metaphor of the world as a forest where humanity is lost in a vicious cycle of violence of “kill or be killed”:

In chapter 124, Niccolo reaffirmed this idea, and (very thematically) proposed that humanity needs to find a way out of this forest of endless violence:

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Bystander

I once said that “Bystander” is my favourite SnK chapter, and this hasn’t really changed. I think we all love Carla’s words “He doesn’t need to become great…He’s already great because he was born into this world.” And it’s in this chapter that Eren learned some important lessons about himself: firstly, Eren learned that he isn’t special, that his father is the special one who gave him the power of the titans:

Secondly, upon hearing Shadis’ story and Carla’s words, Eren realized that he doesn’t need to be special. He is allowed to be average, to be normal, and that is enough. Eren doesn’t need to be outstanding and powerful because nobody can carry the burden all alone – people would always need and rely on each other, and great power ultimately comes from the collective, not the individual:

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The new VA's are doing an amazing job. Galliard desperation as Eren uses him as a nutcracker really shined through with the voice acting. Gabi and Falco's cry for Reiner was so on point, they were just kids asking for help. I especially like Gabi's voice, her VA really knows how to portray her emotions throughout the different situations.

Just amazing work overall 🙌🙌

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ngl the warhammer titan kinda hot

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the jaegers have fleas.

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I just realized one thing watching last episode that I didn’t realized when I read the manga. The Panzer Unit, whom Pieck hugged were actually Marleyans.

They don’t wear armbands and they doesn’t even seem to care even if Pieck was an Eldian. They treat her like a normal friend/comrade. It makes me remind of a scene from S04E04 where the Marleyan guards were talking comfortably with the four warrior candidates.

Every one and every nations are the same. There’s going to be people who would piss you off but there are also good people.

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I just wanna say thank you to WIT studios for dropping Attack on Titan. Because as a Tokyo Ghoul fan, we all know what happens when a studio clings to the rights of an anime when they don’t have the resources or manpower to make it. Rushed story, fights that are left out entirely because they cost too much to animate, characters being left out and cut completely... WIT really did the right thing here by sitting down and probably saying: “look we can’t handle this anymore, if we try to make this in a time frame that is a reasonable wait for fans, it won’t be our best.” I think all of the producers and studios involved in Attack on Titan want to give the show a proper ending for the fans. Attack on Titan fans are PAMPERED compared to the treatment other fandoms got with their anime adaptions. If the rest of the anime is garbage from this point forward, I will humbly admit it. But I have to say, my standards are pretty low after witnessing the treatment Tokyo Ghoul re got by a studio that greedily kept the rights and then refused to give their animators what they needed to make it a worthy adaption. I like what MAPPA has done so far. Credit where credit is due.

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YELENA ★

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Baseball AU: Yeager vs Ackerman ⚾