Hello!
As the summary stated, this isn't going to be a traditional story, but something I felt I needed to get off my chest. Namely the problems I have with Attack on Titan's ending. I wasn't sure where else to put it, so here it is.
As some of you may know, my main way of coping with the ending was to write my own version of how I thought the story should have ended. If you're interested you can find it in chapter 12 of my story What If. But I found that that wasn't enough, and I really want to analyze and explain the numerous issues I have with how the manga unraveled toward the end.
Before I start ranting, I'd like to make it clear that if you enjoyed the canon ending, that's fine. I'm genuinely happy that you were able to find satisfaction and closure with the canon ending. However, I (and many other people) were not satisfied with the ending, and I'm going to explain why.
My first big problem was with how the final battle started. Namely, the Founding Titan's ability to summon all the Nine Titans of times past. Now, we already knew that the Founding Titan was extremely overpowered, and it was established in chapter 133 that the only reason why the alliance is even able to fight back is because Eren is allowing them to do so. From this we can infer that while Eren is ruthless enough to go through with the rumbling, and he's not going to just stop because he understands the long term consequences that would have for Paradis, he's still twisted up with guilt inside about the global genocide he's committing, and so wants to leave open the option of him being stopped.
But the Founding Titan being able to summon hundreds if not thousands of powerful Titans on a whim causes massive problems. If Eren wants to give his friends a fighting chance, then why would he do this? Was Ymir the one who summoned them and not Eren? Do Eren and Ymir have the same goals, or are they different? These are good questions that are never adequately answered.
More importantly, though, is that if we take into consideration the rules established in the Attack on Titan world as well as just basic logic and realism, the alliance should have instantly lost against this army of Titans. If they were all pure Titans then maybe the alliance would stand a chance, but they're not, all of them are the Nine Titans of the past, powerful Titans created for the sole purpose of fighting. The fact that the alliance didn't immediately lose, much less without a single casualty, absolutely destroys the narrative tension. It becomes clear that the alliance is staying alive not because of their own skills and abilities, but because the plot won't let them die.
I won't deny that the idea of having to fight an army of all these Titans is kind of awesome. But when you consider what's best for the narrative and keeping things believable, if you want the alliance to win, and if you want the victory to feel earned, you can't have the odds so ludicrously stacked against them that them winning defies all logical reasoning. This is a plot hole that could have easily been avoided by nerfing the Founding Titan even slightly. (And I think I came up with a pretty good alternative in my version of the ending)
But while this is a problem, I still thought chapters 135 and 136 were pretty good, and I might have been willing to give it a pass if the alliance's victory had been due to something compelling or clever.
This, of course, did not happen.
Which leads into the biggest problem I have with chapter 137, the chapter that managed to lose me, a fan who up until that point had defended pretty much every decision Isayama had made in the story. I'm referring of course to all the dead shifters coming back to life and helping the alliance.
This doesn't make sense on so many levels. The most important reason, it was never foreshadowed or hinted at in the slightest, it just comes completely out of left field. It's a Deus Ex Machina, pure and simple. Sure, you can always cry "paths" and explain it away, but that doesn't make it not bad writing. Ymir is the one making the Titan bodies and the one controlling them, so in order for the dead shifters to take control of their Titan bodies to help the alliance, Ymir must be allowing them to do this.
This raises an obvious question: Why is she doing this? Why is the person who was helping Eren and going out of her way to make sure his plan succeeded suddenly helping the alliance? Did she change her mind about the rumbling? Did she sympathize with the alliance? Did Eren tell her to help the alliance? It's never explained, making it another plot development that comes out of nowhere.
Zeke's death is another thing that makes no sense. How exactly did he just magically appear on that pillar? And while some people were happy that Levi was able to keep his promise to Erwin and kill Zeke, I wasn't. Erwin was forced to give up on his dream and die for the greater good, and chapter 136 was heavily implying that Levi would be forced to do the same, giving up his goal of killing Zeke for the greater good. And then chapter 137 just hands him what he wants on a silver platter.
And I don't even know why anyone thinks that Levi killing Zeke is so important. What is that supposed to accomplish at this point? Not only did Zeke's plan fail, but the world is being destroyed and it's entirely his fault for trusting and underestimating Eren. He's suffering a fate worse than death, and if anything Levi killing him is doing him a massive favor.
And why the hell did Zeke's death cause the rumbling to stop? It was established during the paths chapters that the whole reason why Ymir was doing what she was doing was because of her slave mentality. The reason why she deferred to descendants of the royal family and obeyed them wasn't because of some magically binding contract or anything, but because of her slave mentality. Sure, because of the rules she had been obeying Eren needed Zeke to reach the coordinate, but as soon as Eren broke her slave mentality and gave her the freedom to choose, Zeke became entirely superfluous when it came to the Titan powers and the coordinate. So Levi killing Zeke should not have had any effect on the rumbling whatsoever.
And the less said about that Titan worm thing, the better. It makes sense why it appeared when Eren was decapitated, as it's been established that the Titan powers reside in the spine, so it jumped out and latched onto Eren's head in order to keep him alive. But why did blowing up the Founding Titan's head cause it to appear again? It would have been residing in Eren's real head, not the Titan head, so why did it appear? I can't think of a single explanation other than Isayama wanted the Titan worm thing to appear, logic be damned.
And I can't even think of why he wanted it to appear. When 138 first came out I assumed it was so that he would have a reason to turn all the Eldians at the fort into Titans. This was a decision that was utterly baffling to me.
For one, we already did the whole turning people into Titans thing with Zeke's spinal fluid and him screaming at the second battle of Shiganshina. And there it was properly established and built up. But here, it comes right out of nowhere. Was it just to make the climax last longer? It was such a bizarre decision.
But to make things worse, in chapter 139 the Titan worm dies off screen, and everyone goes back to human. I mean...what? As nonsensical and out of nowhere as the Titanization was, I would have had a modicum of respect for this decision if it had had real lasting consequences, namely all the people who got Titanized died.
But no, their attack fails and they all turn back into humans, making the whole thing entirely pointless. Was it done just so that Muller could ask them if they were Titans or humans at the end? Because if so, that's a really clumsy and stupid way of doing it.
And 139...by far the worst part is the conversation between Eren and Armin, where Eren flat out confirms that he knew EVERYTHING in advance. This utterly betrays and destroys his character. It was always heavily implied that while Eren saw the future, he didn't see all of it. It was also heavily implied that if Eren had wanted, he could have chosen a different path, and the only reason he went along with what he had seen in his future memories was because, for various reasons, he felt he had no choice. And chapter 131 strongly implied that that moment, when his Titan was high above the clouds and the Wall Titans were destroying the world, was the furthest moment in the future he'd seen, indicating that he hadn't known ahead of time that his friends would try to stop him. This added even more depth and nuance to his character, as his decision to allow his friends the option to fight back meant that secretly he wanted them to prove him wrong, and that him destroying the world wasn't necessarily how this would all end. He was a slave to what he had seen in his future memories, but he wanted to give his friends the freedom he had denied himself.
But 139 completely destroys this by making it so that Eren knew absolutely everything in advance. This changes Eren's entire character from being a tragic figure forced down a dark path to a passive plot device that just blindly does whatever the story demands of him. Eren knowing some but not all of the future makes him a compelling and nuanced character. Eren knowing ALL of the future, and exactly how things will turn out, and going along with it anyway even though he doesn't really want to, eradicates his agency and makes him a weak willed chump that just meekly surrenders to the whims of fate in complete defiance of his character's defining trait of pursuing freedom.
There are other problems with Eren and Armin's conversation, but the most unforgivable one for me is the complete assassination of Eren's character caused by giving him omniscience.
And I take it back, by far the worst part of the chapter is how the conflict between Paradis and the rest of the world is left completely unresolved. It acknowledges that there's still tension, and the very real possibility of further conflict, but then it has the survivors going to the island to negotiate for peace, and then just wants you to go, eh, I'm sure it'll work out.
Fuck that. It completely ignores the harsh realities of the geopolitical situation. The world was already massively prejudiced against Paradis before the rumbling. First there was the thousands of years of imperialism, conquest, and bloodshed perpetrated by the Eldian empire, which caused a lot of resentment with the rest of the world. Then there was a century of Marleyan propaganda warning the world about the dangers of the island devils. Then there was Willly Tybur's speech giving more specific details about this threat and warning that they needed to rally against Paradis. Then there was the attack on Liberio by Paradis, which in the eyes of the world would have proved Willy Tybur right.
And then you have the rumbling which killed off 80% of the world's population, and would have caused a lot of justified anger and fear amongst the survivors.
Add all of this together, and you honestly think that the world would forgive Paradis and try to make peace just because Eren is dead? Are you insane? Israel and Palestine have a better relationship than Paradis does with the rest of the world, of course it's going to end in bloodshed. So either Paradis will be destroyed, or someone else will have to finish what Eren started. The fact that the manga half acknowledges this grim truth, but tries to skirt around it and leaves the conflict unfinished is absolutely pathetic.
Oh, and let's not forget that the Yeagerists now control Paradis. You know, the group that used post hoc rationalizations to justify Eren's genocide and are depicted as being xenophobic nationalistic fuckheads who engage in tribalism of the worst kind, and actively wanted to bring back the Eldian Empire and make Eldia great again. I'm sure they'll totally be on board with making peace with the world.
There are so many plot holes, nonsensical character moments, and unresolved elements that I find it hard to understand how anyone could like this ending, much less think it's flawless. Attack on Titan as a whole is still amazing. But the overall quality of the writing did decline after 123, and the last three chapters are a dumpster fire of terrible decisions.
The most charitable thing I can say about the ending is that it could have been worse. At least Eren died, and the rumbling did in fact kill off a shit ton of people, so while the ending glosses over a lot of the real consequences that would have happened as a result of the story's events, it does at least acknowledge some of them. And I will say that pretty much everything with Mikasa was pretty good.
But on the whole, I didn't like the ending. Hence why I made my own version, which as I said can be found in chapter 12 of my story What If.
Anyway, that's all I've got. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a nice day.