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Attack on Titan The Final Season Part 2 - Official Main Trailer

Part 2 of Attack on Titan: The Final Season will premiere on January 9, 2022.

Consistent themes and elments in Attack on Titan

During these few weeks I have been re-reading past SNK volumes, and I have noticed how coherent and overlaying some of the elements and themes of the series are. The ideas and problems presented in the beginning, connect and resonate to the post-basement reveal world. In this post I`d like to talk about some of these consistent things.

As a side note, I have read up till volume 26/chapter 106, so I will construct this post within that context. In here I ramble about the elements that I noticed during the re-reading of past volumes, so it is likely that I have missed some. The structure of this post will be the following one: 

-  Images of monsters 

-  Good or evil - How people are viewed? 

 - David versus Goliath 

- The prevailing current and going against it 

Images of monsters 

In the beginning of the series, one of the things that makes the Titan so scary and such a hard threat to deal with, is the massive gap of knowledge about their true nature. Humanity, or the people of Paradis, have very little knowledge about the origin of the Titans, or what kind of creatures they are. This unknown nature is a perfect breeding ground for fear. Since humanity does not know about the true nature of the Titans, and for a long while did not really possess means or tools to find out, all they had as source material, was the knowledge that Titans are the natural enemy of humanity. 

This is something similar what happens in the outside world, when it comes to the people of Ymir living in Paradis. Since they live in a island, far away from the mainland, no one living in Marley has not really seen any residents of Paradis, and does not really know what they are like. This transforms yet again into something unknown, something that is filled with Marleyan propaganda. When you do not have the means to find out what the supposed “demons of Paradis” are actually like, and you`r head has been filled with enemy propaganda since the day you were born, it is no wonder enemy images manifest themselves.

Both the Titans from Paradis perspective, and the people of Paradis from the perspective of Marley, act as examples of an wonderfully constructed, external enemy, that thrives from unknown factors and propaganda.

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I think this is all quite valid, but I'm quite sure Isayama intended to portray Eren as something "inhuman."

There's the scene in Marley were he speculates that he was born like this.

There's the scene in 121 where he also claims to have been like this since birth.

There's the constant narrative of this being set in stone(Eren's birth is even juxtaposed with "it doesn't matter where" and his child self with "maybe all of this was set in stone from the start"), and even when Eren reflects on why he wanted to do this in 139 there's a shot of him just being born.

There's also the fact that Yams has explicitly addressed the theme of the "innate perpetrator" in two of his interviews as essential to the ending. One in 2017 where he says this:

Ultimately, I don’t think the series passes judgment on what is “right” or “wrong.” For example, when I read Furuya Minoru’s “Himeanole,” I knew society would consider the serial killer in the story unforgivable under social norms. But when I took into account his life and background I still wondered, “If this was his nature, then who is to blame…?” I even thought, “Is it merely coincidence that I wasn’t born as a murderer?” We justify what we absolutely cannot accomplish as “a flaw due to lack of effort,” and there is bitterness within that. On the other hand, for a perpetrator, having the mindset of “It’s not because I lack effort that I became like this” is a form of solace. We cannot deny that under such circumstances, the victims’ feelings are very important. But considering the root of the issue, rather than evaluating “what is right”…to be influenced by various other works and their philosophies, and to truthfully illustrate my exact feelings during those moments - I think that’s what Shingeki no Kyojin’s ending will resemble.

And the other with Arakawa where he draws a connection between his self expression through destruction/"turning things upside down" with the ending and the work of Minoru Furuya(the artist from whom he got the "innate aggressor" theme).

Do you think Eren was forced to do the rumbling because he felt he had no choice? A lot of people are saying that Eren felt compelled to do the rumbling because it was the only way to save paradis. And that sounds wrong to me. He started the war and people don't care about that. A lot of people are mad when we criticise the rumbling or Eren's actions or if we even dare to imply that he did it for selfish purposes. They say that there was no chance for diplomacy at all. What do you think of this?

Hi!

I think that Eren did the rumbling because this was the conclusion that he wanted: to put an end to the Titan curse. I believe that there would have been other ways to save Paradis if that was what Eren wanted, however, those conclusions would not have led to the eradication of the Titans.

The weird complicated part and what I think Isayama was going for, is the kind of time travel that I believe he enacted [wiki]:

The Novikov self-consistency principle, named after Igor Dmitrievich Novikov, states that any actions taken by a time traveler or by an object that travels back in time were part of history all along, and therefore it is impossible for the time traveler to "change" history in any way. The time traveler's actions may be the cause of events in their own past though, which leads to the potential for circular causation, sometimes called a predestination paradox,[81] ontological paradox,[82] or bootstrap paradox.[82][83]

and the so-called time loop is a causal loop [wiki]:

A causal loop is a theoretical proposition in which, by means of either retrocausality or time travel, a sequence of events (actions, information, objects, people)[1][2] is among the causes of another event, which is in turn among the causes of the first-mentioned event.[3][4] Such causally looped events then exist in spacetime, but their origin cannot be determined.

Which means events became fixed and he didn't have a choice because of the decision that he at some point had made. But we are given a glimpse that even if he didn't have a choice, it was still as what he wanted, as per his thoughts in chapter 130.

I'm sorry it is very confusing XS

Was it for selfish purposes? I think that it was a mixture of both, selfish in the sense that he wanted to achieve his own personal aim, but he did still want to achieve freedom for Paradis, by destroying all of their enemies. As with the whole story, it's complicated and not so easy to paint a singular "good/bad" stripe on anything, let alone Eren, which I also believe is the whole point. Plus the fact that I'd said that he believed that he had made the wrong decision in relying on his comrades during the first mission to capture the Female Titan which I believe also led to him choosing to go it alone, which does seem to vaguely imply that there might have been a chance for a different solution if he had brought his friends on board.

I'm going to bring back my thoughts at the ending, because I don't feel like there's been any change in my thinking since then.

I’m going to admit that the reason the ending worked for me is precisely because Eren was shown to have only 2 braincells and failed to use them. He claimed that he loved his friends, but failed to bring them into his decision making and decided to go gungho and do it all by himself. He claimed that they were free to act but his decision in fact took away that freedom from them and forced them down the path he set out for them. He did it this way because he was bull-headed Eren always charging ahead leaving his friends behind. The power of friendship didn’t fix anything either. I feel a sense that there might actually have been a better way, if he wasn’t the way he is. It is a tragedy.

So I do believe that rather than that there was no chance for diplomacy, that diplomacy wasn't given a chance at all, at least not until Eren had achieved his main aim, leaving his friends to clean up the mess.

Thank you for your ask! :)

UwU,, now I want to play otome game for AOT…..

Yeager Brothers at the same age

I don’t care what others says, I love this two girls OwO

What's the theme of Choujin X?

So I've been wondering for a while, what idea does this story revolve around? What's the main conflict of the story? What concept should we pay attention to when reading this story? I can't claim to be 100% right or sure, but now that the story seems to have officially started, I'm going to try to articulate my ideas on this topic. By the way my ideas concerning the topic are heavily inspired by Jung.

Most fundamental to understanding the theme of this story is what exactly a choujin is. We've been given two main definitions, a person who becomes the form they desire, and a person who overcomes the limits of their humanity to use their ability. But why do such a minority of people have the capacity to become them?

The answer lies in the possession of a complex. A complex is a pattern of emotions, behaviours, thoughts and ideas which recur around a particular concept or theme. It's an unconscious way of seeing the world that influences how we act. But the issue is precisely that it's unconscious. The conscious self who wills events isn't aware of the complex that has formed within them, and that's usually the result of repressing a part of you that you don't like, so this complex tends to dominate and negatively affect the psychological well being of people.

Without such a complex one cannot become a choujin. When we combine what we know, we have a choujin as a person with a particular unconscious(at first) way of seeing the world and who tends to act accordingly with such a complex, and is fixated enough on such a theme and desire that they sacrifice their humanity for it. They are people who are governed by and hyperfixate on an idea so much that it is manifested through their capacities and harms their wholeness as a human being. In fact, I think that's what's expressed in the opening words of the story.

So there doesn't seem to be a moral status to being a choujin, but there's definitely something negative enough about it to warrant it being compared to a disease. And I think that's the status of it being a manifestation of a complex. A complex exists in the personal unconscious and exerts influence usually unwanted upon our actions. When one is brought into contact with what Jung calls the autonomous complex(the Shadow) it can possess us. When a complex possesses us we lose sight of who we are and unconscious impulses are brought to light. We lose control. The danger inherent in becoming a choujin is becoming consumed by our complex. When we are consumed by the shadow of this complex our humanity is shed for the continuous growth of the thing within us, and we become monsters. That's the affliction, the constant need to maintain control and humanity because of the tendency of the complex to take hold of us.(Note: Freud's name for the unconscious was the Id which is gotten from the German "It". There's something "other" about it and it fits quite well with the opening words in reference to becoming a choujin and it's relationship to complexes.)

Now I don't think Choujin are condemned or are essentially damned by their transformation, in a way, being a choujin can help one come in contact with their complex and start the journey Jung called individuation to integrate it. Through the dream at the heart of each person, the promptings of the ideal Jung referred to as the Self, people can be called back from despair to reconcile elements of themselves as we saw with Shiozaki. (Note: Chapter 1 of the series is called "Behold the Man" which could very well be a reference to Nietzsche's book of the same title with the subtitle: How one becomes what one is. This fits well with Jung's notion of the Circumbulation of the Self. We gradually become our true selves over time, as we strive to the ideal of the Self.)

So on a general level I believe the theme of the story will center around the integration of the shadow as it is manifested in our complexes. It's awakened, and it could be repressed or it could take over you, but the call of the story will be to overcome and integrate the shadow by finding your purpose in life.

I don’t think it’s fair to characterize Eren in such a way. It should be noted that Eren’s friends had also failed on multiple occasions to show him respect by ignoring blatantly obvious sides of him. At the ocean he questions omnicide and his friends simply ignore it, at the meeting about Zeke he brings up omnicide again and his friends just pretend it didn’t happen, then in Marley he’s obviously sad, scared and disassociating at times and once again they ignore his problems. His friends and the Survey Corps were also way too open to possibilities, it’s precisely because of their idealism that they’re in this situation in the first place. Eren has definitely made mistakes in relying too much on himself, but the SC is just as guilty in their openness to possibilities and their faith in peace, Isayama says so himself, “Peace cannot be achieved by ideals alone, how many sacrifices must be made to pave the path to peace?”. So it’s wrong to characterize them as being so respectful and loving to Eren when they deliberately ignored parts of him that they didn’t want to see.

 On top of this you say Eren overestimates his strength and abilities but with Reiner in the basement he tells Falco that he saved him by delivering  the letter, he genuinely acknowledges that the Raid was impossible without the help of the Survey Corps, and it should be noted in the way he looks at Mikasa that he’s very emotional inside about what he has brought them to do.

 And you’re disregarding the fact that he still had enough faith in his friends to entrust them with the task of stopping him, the destructive side of Eren is a side that can’t be tamed, so Eren antagonizes them later to create enough distance for them to be forced to acknowledge that side of Eren and make the decision to cut it down. He may not trust them as much as he did before, and he should have used a more tame and allied method of sublimating those desires, but at it’s core his faith in his friends still exists and Eren doesn’t overestimate himself so much as what he does is the only way he knows how to act.

Eren the Slave

There’s a common misconception in the fandom that Eren’s turn in the final arc from hero to antagonist is due to character development. This is from a belief that Eren as a character, believes in freedom and therefore has been carrying that idea on his shoulders the entire time. 

There’s a confusion between the narrative which Isayama sets up for Eren which is told from a third point of view and therefore is objective, and Eren’s own personal narrative which is composed of Eren’s own personal thoughts and feelings. Basically in any story these two things will coexist and push and pull against each other, narrative the way the world sees the character and reacts to them and personal narrative the way the character sees themselves. Eren’s conception of himself is a one man army fighting for the freedom, and willing to become the enemy of the whole world in order to do it but just because a character believes that about themselves does not necessarily mean that it is true. 

The following post is a discussion of Narrative Identity that is a theory that postulates individuals for an identiy by integrating their life experiences into an internalize,d evolving story of the self that provides the individual with a sense of unity and purpose in life. The narrative is a story, it has characters, episodes, imagery, a setting, plots and themes which means the events taking place in it have to have meaning. 

Eren is a slave of many things, including narrative, and because of his own personal narrative he cannot change. Eren isn’t a character who has changed, moreas he’s a character we’ve had our perspective of him change as the story progresses and widens it perspective which is still development. All character development requires some kind of change or movement on the character’s part, but it doesn’t mean their characters themselves have to change, because the reader’s perspective on them can be what develops instead. 

So underneath the cut: Eren’s current development is about his failure to change, which makes him the least free character in the manga. I suggest reading my Eren and Reiner meta as a precursor to this. 

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Bessatsu magazine - Q&A with Isayama

Isayama has been answering Q&A in the magazine ever since the Sep issue last year. It’s also the same Q&A where Isayama trolls the fandom by implying Armin is a girl. The Q&A can be found in the first few pages of the Bessatsu Magazine every month.

Translations of the Q&A under the cut.

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