#solid mistery well executed

[mikimeiko]

Bodies | Miniseries (2023), Paul Tomalin

[epiphany333]

Shingeki no Kyojin Ending

This was something...

I guess I’ll start with what I liked

1. Levi is alive, he could see his comrades one last time and is in company of Gabi and Falcon, he finally has people on his side who won’t leave him.

2. Armin looks good after the three years.

3. Eren showed the world to Armin, that’s beautiful.

4. Gabi and Falco reuniting and Gabi yeeting him.

And I think that’s it, I’m sorry but I can’t find anything else. I don’t want to hate, instead I’ll give my reasons for disliking the ending and how some of those issues could have been solved. I want to add that I’m not a shipper nor did I have an specific way I wanted the manga to end.

1. If the reveal is that Eren always still was the same person from part 1 and was just putting a front, it isn't character regression (which is a valid way to write a character) it is just a stagnant character who didn’t evolve and didn’t learn anything. It would have been better if we at least got to see this Eren’s inner conflicts and feelings from his pov all this time instead of creating a mistery about his motivations because the way it is now it’s just too jarring, seeing Eren act the opposite way to how he was 1-2 chapters before, and contradicting everything he say or though before that point. that's why people call it character assassination, his development is dropped and didnt exist in the first place and we didnt see anything about the real Eren under the facade. Eren is stagnant character, no character regression, no character development.

2. Eren’s feelings for mikasa came out of nowhere, there weren’t enough hints from Eren’s side, their bond could have been written to be stronger and more intimate, like show us Eren trusting and respecting mikasa, valuing her company, noticing some virtue of hers, remembering the moments he spent with her fondly, instead we got Eren ignoring her and calling her annoying, and being mad for depending on her. Nothing indicated he cared about her in a different manner for her than he did for Armin. People are defending this bringing up the same 4 eremika moments, the majority of which are so subtle they cant even be called subtext, or saying that it was obvious. Why? Because she was the lead female in love with the protagonist? If you have to rely on common tropes instead of an actual development of their relationship to prove that this was bound to happen then the writing of the pairing isn’t that good.

3. Why does romantic love solve a story founded on the themes of war, genocide, racial discrimination, opression and uprising, a philanthropic love for humanity being the answer would have been better thematically. 4. Eren didn’t have any coherent motive or goal because he was resigned to being a slave of fate, it could have been written and executed better. If you’re going down the route of Eren still being the same boy then develop him from his point of view so that the expectator can see it instead of revealing it at last moment for shock value, or you could go down another route, for example post timeskip Eren who tries to evade fate but can’t,  every action takes him closer to the outcome he wanted to evade, that would be a tragic hero slave of his own flaws.

5. Ymir being in love with her torturer being the foundation of all the story is disappointing and stupid, she needed to see a soap opera to let go after 2000 years. And why did she chose Mikasa and Eren? wasn’t there any other person in 2000 that went through the same character arc Mikasa did?  the scale of the things that had to happen for her to rest in peace is too disproportionated, it makes everything we went through just for her to look absurd, are you telling me this was worth eldians being historically oppresed and murdered and 80 percent of the population being killed just so a girl could move on? This makes all the great points of this story and the sacrifices to look pointless in retrospective.

5. Eldia is a glorified fascist state, Historia is a fascist monarch, her character isn’t relevant anymore, we never get to see her point of view so she looks like a genocide supporter.

6. The ending absolves Eren and condemns him at the same time, making him look pathetic yet as a hero who did what nobody else dared to do, he was treated as a one and forgiven by everybody.

7. They didn’t hold anbody accountable, nor Reiner, or Annie or Pieck, nobody. Remember how annie took pleasure on killing and said she didn’t regret anything? Well the other characters don't. At least Reiner and Pieck regret it, which doesn’t mean they should welcome with open arms, that’s not how humans work. We could have the rest of the cast resenting them, or being conflicted about still liking them without having to take revenge nor become friends with them, it would have given a better message this way.

8. The Lelouch ending doesn’t work because Eren is eldian. Lelouch was a britannia monarch, convincing everyone that Britannia was bad,and Zero, the face of the japanese revolution kills him, making everyone see the japanese as the good side. The world hated them for things their ancestors allegedly did, what will they think about eldians now that they lived through Eren’s destruction?His plan doesn’t make sense.

9. Eren didn’t have to be this cringy, we knew he was pathetic but damn, he killed so many people and is whining about Mikasa more than about the lives he took. We still could have had a breakdown, but it toning down so that it doesn’t seem jarring. Armin stated that it was Mikasa’s answer what decided the way Eren would act, and it doesn’t make sense? Eren must have known Mikasa loved him because he repeatedly has shown he can understand romantic love, but even if he didn’t, all that took for Eren to start the rumbling was Mikasa family-zoning him? This breaks his character apart, and looks melodramatic, because now she has to live with that knowledge and feel guilty for it.

10. Turning everyone back was a mistake, it cheepens their death because it was solved so fast. There’s a reason why a writing rule (that almost every writer ignores) is that if youre going to kill a character, you need a solid reason or use for them to come back to life.

11. It doesn’t seem like mikasa moved on. Her doing what had to be done and her moving on are different things, we don’t get a clue if Mikasa found herself and her worth outside of eren, the kind of living she made for herself from were we left, nothing.

12. They made my man Reiner so dirty in just a panel, acting like he was still a teenage soldier after all he went through. you would think that he would approach love in a different way after growing as a character, but no he’s just a simp, and a creepy one.