Light Spoilers for the Attack on Titan Manga

If I am going to be entirely honest, a full retrospective on Attack on Titan would probably take forever. There are so many moving parts in the series to discuss, that to make a satisfying review discussing everything that there is to say would take a million years. So you know what? I am not going to even try to write an all encompassing review of everything that this series accomplished. I don’t even think I am in the right state of mind to analyze the series as a whole, due to how let down I ended up being by the final arc. However, I find it extremely interesting to analyze specifically as to why so many people ended up getting so upset over the final few chapters. I would say that this can be chalked down to how the series generally sets up expectations over the course of its story.

Breaking down Attack on Titan’s best moments, they are always massive payoffs to many chapters or episodes of setup. Attack on Titan is known for its plot twists and payoffs, and for good reason. I bet you that when you were reading or watching Attack on Titan, you have asked the question “how in the world does it get better from here?” only for it then to immediately get even better from the high point that it was already at. Attack on Titan consistently manages to hit the ceiling of its supposed quality level and smashes that ceiling with full confidence. The secret as to how the series is able to consistently do this is in how over the course of the series, the series gets gradually more and more complex. What started as an extremely simplistic story in its earliest stages gradually became a sprawling web of interconnected relationships, story lines, politics, and history by the time we get to the War for Paradis arc. It becomes extremely difficult to not cross reference a wiki when going through these later stages of the story. This general expansion of the complexity is directly tied to how the series manages to surpass any and all expectations that had been set for it. There is only so much that you can do with a simple story, and you will eventually hit a brick wall as to what you can do pretty quickly. For a more complex story, there is a whole lot more wiggle room as to what can be pulled off. The level of how the series can surpass expectations and the complexity of the story are directly related. This direct relationship is the biggest strength of the series, but it also ends up being its downfall.

The main draw of the War for Paradis arc is in how it manages to have sympathetic, yet flawed characters in both Eldia and Marley. There is no real way to end the conflict other than the general concept of peace. Based on what the series had set up for itself at this point in time, most people would naturally expect for there to be yet another jump in complexity going into the Rumbling arc. However, the series makes a move that I don’t think anybody was expecting. It did a complete 180 and ended up simplifying itself. When Eren gained the full potential of the Founding Titan’s powers and started the Rumbling, all of the sympathetic characters from both sides of the conflict decided to team up together to stop Eren. Gabi, Falco, Reiner, Annie, and Pieck team up with Mikasa, Armin, Jean, Connie, Hange, and Levi. On paper, this doesn’t exactly seem like a bad thing, until we take into account the direct relationship at the core of Attack on Titan. The War for Paradis arc was the series at its peak levels of complexity, mainly due to these characters that we have grown attached to being on different sides. In the Rumbling arc, it is pretty obvious which side to root for. While the story from this point onwards isn’t anywhere near Season 1 levels of simple, it may not even reach Season 2 levels, the Rumbling arc simplifies the story just enough so that it is extremely detrimental to the story. Since the story has immediately become less complex, the level of how the series can surpass expectations has also gone down. The wiggle room that the series had to go above and beyond expectations had basically vanished at this point. This is possibly the worst thing that can happen to the story at this point, because the series has conditioned its audience to continually raise its expectations to a point where it just can’t reach. This problem isn’t exactly obvious at first, but it truly comes out in how the story tries to compensate.

At around Chapter 128 or 129, Isayama might have realized that he had written himself into a corner. With one singular story development, he accidentally made it so that he couldn’t reasonably meet the expectations that he had set up for himself. Isayama found himself in a conundrum that he couldn’t exactly solve. However, I respect that he tried to the best of his ability to get himself out of the corner he was trapped in. Isayama’s solution wasn’t exactly the most elegant one though. The bulk of the final chapters of Attack on Titan rely on a lot of what feels like cheap developments that try to reach those impossibly high expectations, but usually just end up feeling rushed, contrived, and unearned. While you can kind of see it happening in Chapters 128 and 129, by the final pages of Chapter 138 and 139, it becomes readily apparent how far gone the quality of the series was at that point. It isn’t all terrible near the end though, Chapter 131 managed to recapture the magic of the best arcs of the series, even though it was pretty disconnected from the main story in the grand scheme of things. Going into detail as to why these developments felt cheap can only be done in a full review of the series, since it would have to go heavily into character arcs, themes, and world building, but as I said in the beginning, it would take a million years to get into all of that stuff. However, the broad strokes reasoning as to why the expectations so many people were disappointed were due to the series being essentially unable to reach them.

Looking back on the experience of watching and reading Attack on Titan for the first time, it was certainly a rollercoaster of emotions in every way. While it was not exactly a ride of positive emotions all the way through, it was certainly a story like no other. Do I hate Isayama as a writer after the ending of the story? No. As hard as I have been on the final arc of the series, I still have heavy amounts of respect for him as an author, and it really stinks to see how his wonderful story went on the trajectory that it went due to one bad decision at the wrong time. While its faults can feel unforgivable to some, we only got so emotionally attached to it because of how much so many of us loved the series in the first place. Our expectations were betrayed only because they were met so many times before. Even though I probably won’t rewatch/reread the earlier parts of the series now, I still will look at them fondly for what they managed to accomplish. Attack on Titan was certainly a fun journey, and its peaks will always live in my heart fondly.

Goodbye Attack on Titan, may everything that you have done be missed.