Attack on Titan's Ending Rocked!
I liked it...
It’s hard to write a good apocalyptic story. Most of the time, I think they’re super boring. You can’t expect the audience to care about the world they’re being told about without first introducing them to specific characters and their personal lives. Not only that, but it’s hard to think up a notable value that the theme of the story can coordinate from.
On paper, Attack on Titan’s main premise actually sounds like a generic story that lacks anything special. The second half of story could at times be confusing, and, frankly, a drag. But I think in the ways that really matter, it has a very powerful and controversial theme: live for yourself before others.
This message is reflected so many times that I think it is clearly the point of the story. At first glance, it seems as if the point of the story is about fighting for humanity and fighting for others’ survival, which is technically what the heroes do most of the time. But all of the most impactful heroes are really just acting in their own interests above all else.
In some anime, like Demon Slayer, for example, you’re expected to care about the death of the protagonist’s family without even knowing much about the character of any of the relationships he has with his people. It’s almost as if some writers just expect you to care about something like a family’s death solely for the fact that it happened. But that’s not the way people actually think.
The notable difference in Attack on Titan is the fact that the Titan who eats Eren’s mother is smiling as she does, and on top of that, how you’re introduced to the main few characters forms almost a humorous and lighthearted perspective at first. But there’s a lot of meaning in the fact that the Titans have static faces that make them look like perversions of human emotion.
The fact that something that resembles humans looks like it’s laughing as it destroys his family makes the victims feel more than just survival-based fear. It also triggers the desire for revenge. Even though the series doesn’t reveal at first that Titans were all humans originally, Eren always treats the Titans like they’re just another group of people he’s at war against and doesn’t like the thought of them laughing at him for his powerlessness.
Of course, Eren has the Scout Regiment to work with him in order to fight these Titans and protect humanity, but it’s not like they’re fighting in the name of public good. They fight them because of their own personal experiences that lead them to desire it for themselves.
Ymir (not Fritz) was taken off the Marleyan streets and used as a figurehead to make a group of Eldian cultists believe she was a deity of worship. But after they were investigated and then persecuted by the Marleyans, she realized how ingenuine all of the worship was for her and how lonely it made her feel. When she got a chance to be human again, she vowed never to live for others again.
She was attracted to Historia Reiss not only because she found out insider information about her Royal Bloodline, but also because she saw through her altruistic guise. Historia was the only character who at first claimed to join the Scouts out of a service for the public good but later becomes the complete opposite. She was raised to hate herself and believe she had to prove how altruistic she could be in order to be accepted. She inherited the fake name “Krista” partially because she wanted to be like the character from her picture book who always lived for others (who appeared to be based off of Ymir Fritz).
But Ymir inspired her to no longer lie about who she was and allowed Historia to start working with the Scouts to reclaim the throne as the rightful heir to the Reiss family. While that was technically the right thing to do for the people due to the corruption of the fake Royal Government, Historia needed a selfish incentive to do it first.
Erwin Smith led the Scouts, and even though he supported humanity with his courageous actions, he still realized he did so for the sake of his personal desire to learn the truth about the history of humanity. He realized that he may have been responsible for the deaths of many of his comrades, as his own personal desire was the only thing that truly led him to go on as their leader. No matter how many people he may have supported or killed, the origin of his actions came first from his personal desire to prove the truth about the world.
Jean Kirstein spent the whole series talking about how he couldn’t wait to get out of danger’s way and earn the easy-life. However, he found himself turning down every opportunity to do so. He realized that living an easy life like that was never truly where his personal desires led. Human beings don’t live just for comfort; they live for freedom and elevation, which was how he chose to spend his life and find real fulfillment. He even learned to be nice to his mom!
Kenny Ackerman was an interesting case where he was an outlaw and pretty scummy person his whole life, but governed by a desire to understand empathy. He felt inferior to people who were kind and compassionate and was tricked into thinking he could inherit Karl Fritz’s memories in order to understand what appeared to be his peace-loving personality. After he realized that Rod Reiss lied to him, he stopped fighting the Scouts.
Kenny died at the halfway point of the series, where he came to the realization that everybody spends their life “drunk” on something, being a slave to an ideal that makes them feel whole. He realized that Uri (the inheritor of Karl’s memories) was simply being kind out of his self-imposed slavery. He wanted to feel like he brought peace to his people by putting them inside the walls, but that may have been a fake desire that he manifested because he was drunk on a false hope for peace, or perhaps the guilt over the cruelty of his ancestry. But in their relationship, Kenny represented the truth that violence and cruelty were an inevitable part of nature as well.
The Titans themselves all act like an exaggeration of being drunk and lifeless, or being in a “long nightmare,” as Ymir put it. Their urges to eat people probably came from King Fritz’s order to make his daughters eat their mother. So the Titan’s lifeless nature of eating other people symbolized thier subservient and drunk-like state of mind.
I think that Hajime Isayama was trying to say that despite there being both peace and cruelty in the world, what matters is not trying to determine how a collective of people deal with their conflicts, but how one individually acts to fight for their own ideals. After all, the first ending theme is called Beautiful Cruel World (which is also visually referenced in the final ending theme).
It’s very realistic how, throughout the first half of the series, the majority of those inside the walls actually oppose the Scouts and feel their desire to fight the Titans is either foolish or a disruption to their daily lives. For example, in the Battle of Trost District arc, the businessman Dimo Reeves tried to block the gate to Wall Rose in order to preserve the resources he’s carrying.
While what he tried to do was very destructive, he didn’t do it out of selfishness. He did it because he believed was the realistic way to support the people who appear to be safe from the Titans. He didn’t want to allow the currently safe citizens the freedom to risk their lives for the greater goal because he was too attached to his limited perception of helping people. He didn’t believe there was a better option because of his lack of faith in people’s ability to fight for themselves, thus settling for a less humanistic approach. You have to have a certain low opinion of yourself in order to judge other people the same way.
This was the same person who helped stop people from starving later on in the story due to his business operations. He always did what he believed was right.
You see this even more in the Royal Government arc when people are willing to support and believe the words of a corrupt small government despite how the Scouts, now labeled as outlaws, are risking their lives in order to overthrow it. The main origin of the corruption was the Fritz/Reiss family and their desire to comfort humanity in the safe space of the walls, hiding the truth about the world from them for the same delusion of safety Dimo had. It was done with an intent for peace, but only in the sense that Karl Fritz wanted to find a less than satisfactory and inevitably temporary solution to the conflict between Eldians and Marleyans.
The entire concept of the Warriors that caused the conflict within the Walls at the start of the series was due to the Marleyan’s guilt-tripping of the Eldian people. The Warriors were all taught to hate their own kind and want to live in order to prove that they aren’t the “devils” they were taught their people were. As well as people like Zeke, who took it as far as wanting to wipe out his own kind entirely.
And then in the Marley Arc, Willy Tybur announces that he considers Eren’s desire to break the “peace” his ancestor created with Karl Fritz to be a threat to humanity. This is the point in the story where Eren starts to turn out to be what one might consider “evil,” but if you ask me, he is showing the world that when you try to regulate people and take away their freedom, his conflict against them is the inevitable consequence.
The decision to lock the Eldians inside the walls not only led to the Royal Government murdering and silencing citizens who tried an act of freedom against keeping things the same way, but the entire idea of the Eldians having to run to Paradis Island and escape from the Eldian/Marlyan conflict was a weak decision in the first place. If they really wanted to find a solution, then it would’ve been simple: Just stop discriminating against people. The agreement Fritz and Tybur came to was just a cowardly decision in response to not finding a real solution to the problem.
Every problem in the Attack on Titan’s world came from when people thought in terms of what they needed to do in order to accommodate the problems of others, only to inevitably lead themselves to a fate where a guy like Eren comes along, doing what the hell he wants.
When Eren triggered the rumbling and intended to kill all people outside of Paradis, the story made it very clear that he was not happy with what was going on. But that’s what made it all the more powerful. His desire to help himself and his own people was so strong that he didn’t even care as much about the deaths of so many other innocent people. He even had the opportunity at one point to go back in time and stop his mother’s death, yet he decided that he would still rather her die due to how dedicated he became to his desire for individual freedom. After all, the Marleyans had announced they were against him living anyway, so if you ask me, they were just as much at fault.
It was revealed that Eren ended up killing 80% of the human population before he was defeated, which many consider to be a statement that Eren’s desire to protect Paradis is more evil than any discrimination the Marleyans had against them. But I disagree; I think the whole point of Eren’s desire for the rumbling was that, despite how small the number of people on Paradis compared to the rest of the world, it didn’t matter. Just because he was killing a higher number of people didn’t change the fact that, to him personally, the value of the personal relationships he had with people was worth more to him than the entire world.
When the Marleyan general made his speech about their final attempt to fight against Eren and the rumbling, he admitted that it was their fault for the conflict and discrimination they brought against the Eldian people. Despite whatever democratic opinions one might have had on the situation, it didn’t change the fact that one person was able to destroy the whole world. Isayama wasn’t trying to tell you whether Eren was a good person or not, but he was suggesting that no sense of majority rule or societal beliefs can change the natural desire to one fight for itself.
Eren also told the Scouts that he was allowing them to live not because he necessarily cared whether they succeed or not in stopping him, but because he respected their freedom. If he only cared for power, he could have killed them for trying to stop him, but he still supported their own desires to fight him so long as they were really doing what they wanted to. Ironically, the scouts had to awaken all their personal desires in order to kill him; thus, they had to defeat him and save the world by living for themselves.
The future Eren strived for wasn’t a bright one, but perhaps it was an inevitable push to remind people not only that there were consequences for their actions but also that it inspired individuality and freedom in others, even if it was done in a self-destructive way.
The only interesting opposite to this theme is Mikasa. She unconditionally lives for Eren and acts as if she is always wrapped up in a fate to obey him, which Eren points out to her. Mikasa’s love for Eren, of course, is part of what convinces Ymir to end her support of the Titans, as she could relate to the feeling of being in love. However, I believe that even in the case of Ymir being in love with King Fritz, it wasn’t quite as simple as that.
One complaint I heard from people was a valid one. Why would Ymir be in love with such a horrible person? And I believe the answer is that she wasn’t actually in love with him. She just made herself believe she owed her life to him the same way Mikasa felt towards Eren. And that was just because in those ancient times, the mentality of worshipping the king, despite the obvious suffering it caused, was heavily embedded in all people. That point was made very clear when Ymir gained the Founding Titan power yet still chose to use it for the Eldians.
But there’s a reason despite her “love” for the king and Eldia, she let that pig out of the gate and got herself in trouble. It was because no matter how much control was forced upon her and her people, the natural desire for individuality and freedom was in her. She probably just deliberately wanted to break the rules to awaken to that realization, or perhaps she wanted to set the pig free for the same reason.
And it was that act of individuality that led her to the Titan’s power. The only problem was that, even though she obviously had her freedom, she felt no sense of acceptance outside of the realm of pleasing the corrupt king. She probably told herself she was in love, but really she just couldn’t let go of the poisonous altruism that was destroying everyone, as well as wished for acceptance in any desperate form.
And what did Mikasa actually do to the one she was in love with? She killed him. It wasn’t Mikasa’s love for Eren alone that inspired Ymir; it was her strength to go against her altruistic feelings for Eren and fight for herself. That’s why, at the same time, there was a flashback showing the different timeline where Ymir no longer decided to sacrifice herself for King Fritz and let him die.
And if you think about it, it also means that Mikasa had to let go of her altruism for Eren in order to save humanity. So her love for Eren was not what saved the world alone; it was the freedom to go against genetics, fate, and all feelings that would make one feel they had no personal power.
It’s not that Isayama was telling people that love was bad; more so, if you don’t live for yourself, it just ends up breeding hatred. The connection between Ymir and King Fritz, and eventually the one between Eren and Mikasa, would not have been very loving if they had just obeyed their wishes.
Why did the Titans cause generations of havoc in the first place? Because of Ymir’s altruism and “love” for others. If she had just used the powers for herself and not just let the Royal Bloodline tell her what to do, the world would’ve never suffered the harm of the Titans in the first place. It’s this ironic kind of scenario that shows that all the good came from not bowing down to others.
This is, of course, Eren’s signature personality trait. His desire to fight for the people inside the walls and kill the Titans is misunderstood as an altruistic act. Really, he was just “selfish” all along. When they’re at the Coordinate, Ymir listens to his orders instead of Zeke because she is inspired by Eren’s courage to live for himself.
I believe that when Eren told Mikasa that he always hated her for how she always lived for the sake of obedience to him, he was really just trying to push her to live for herself, perhaps implying that he wanted her to have the will to kill him.
But one interesting contradiction in Mikasa’s Ackerman bloodline is that the clan is supposed to have a gene-based urge to protect and serve the Fritz family members. The fact that Mikasa only feels this urge to help Eren instead may have been a hint that Mikasa was strong enough to fight against the fate of her bloodline all along. She was still helping someone else, but it still went against the rules of the bloodline because her individualized love for Eren overpowered the desire to help the Royal Family. Perhaps Eren knew this and was happy to die as long as it was in the name of personal freedom.
The Ackermans were known for being a clan that was forced to serve the Eldians for generations but rebelled against King Fritz in his plan to create the walls. And all of the Ackermans in the story have very tough and cruel personalities. They were also known for having a greedy side, but whether you agree with their behaviors or not, they demonstrated a threat to the king’s desire to control them. They often seemed to be the least “drunk,” as Kenny implied. In fact, Levi was the only one who quite literally didn’t drink the spine-infused alcohol in the War for Paradis arc. Perhaps they were written as a symbol of the story’s theme of freedom.
Grisha Yeager came to the conclusion that the purpose of the Attack Titan was to stop bowing down to others and oppose the regulatory enforcement of the Fritz family. Despite the fact that Ymir created the Titans for the sake of serving the Eldians, her desire for personal freedom was inevitably created to conflict with her servitude. It was the very power that the Royal Family didn’t realize was their own demise, just like the pig Ymir set free.
Even though the Attack on Titan ends with the protagonist turning into the enemy, it doesn’t invalidate all of his intentions and sends a message that is more in favor of Eren’s choices than against them. Regulating and socializing a society in order to avoid conflict just leads to nationalism and destruction. Even when the King went as far as erasing the memories of the truth of the world, it still didn’t stop people from fighting for their elevation and freedom.
Some people thought that the theme was ruined at the end when a new tree was shown and that the Titans might come again. But I disagree; leading up to that moment, you see a montage of how wars and conflicts continue to arise whether the Titans are there or not. It doesn’t matter whether the power of the Titans comes back or not. What mattered in the end were the characters and how many of them accomplished what they wanted to in their lives. Even the Scouts will remain an army after the Titans go, just in a different form. Risking their lives and fighting for what they believed in meant more to them than simply avoiding the cruelty of the world.