Quick reminder before you read my review: Are you reading/re-reading the manga? Do yourself a huge favor and listen to this playlist on Spotify while you're reading. The soundtracks are fucking amazing and match perfectly with the story. If you want to fully immerse yourself in the story, especially during the emotional and battle scenes, then listen to the soundtracks. Trust me on this.
After almost a decade, Attack on Titan is finally over. Despite all the debates regarding the ending, this series is undeniably a classic.
The story starts with humanity vs titans. Good vs bad, simple as that. But as you start going deeper into the story, the lines between good and bad, moral and immoral, become increasingly blurred. Everyone has their own reason for doing the things they do, for giving their lives for their ideologies and beliefs, for fighting tooth and nail to protect their homelands and the people they love, regardless of what the outcome might be.
The whole point of Attack on Titan is that nobody is just good or evil. Everyone is just trying to survive the cruelty of this world, the cruelty that we are all different, and that these differences will ultimately always result in conflict. The cycle of hate and distrust inevitably repeats itself, because it's human nature.
When I reached the ending of this series, I stopped and watched some of the early episodes of the anime. It hit me like a ton of bricks just how much these characters from the 104th Squad have changed. They're no longer the kids getting yelled at by Instructor Shadis during military training, no longer kids feeling helpless by their own powerlessness. They're fearless warriors now, who have gone through their own personal hell, and would go through another one if it meant saving their comrades. Idk man. Seeing their growth had me crying like a baby.
I'm satisfied with the ending. Yes, it's not perfect, and there should've been two or three more chapters explaining things in greater detail. Overall, though? I think it was realistic and brilliant. I can't wait to watch all this shit unfold in Season 4 Part 2, with the soundtracks and all that. Prepare tissues because we're gonna cry all over again fam. Hopefully Isayama would add more details in the anime.
Now, time for spoilers! I've also gathered a few comments from Reddit to explain the ending of AoT:
1. Levi:
Yes, I just had to talk about this man first.
I saw a quote that says the worst part about being the strongest man alive is that you watch everyone else die. Levi lost his best friends, his uncle, the rest of his squad, Erwin, and now Hange. In the end, Levi is the only one left.
I thought it would've been better if he had died, because at least then he would've been happy and reunited with everyone else, but then I remembered that Levi is humanity's strongest, and the words "give up" simply do not exist in his dictionary. So he keeps on going. He gets back up every single time to fight again, regardless of his pain and injuries, to honor his comrades, his friends. Mad fucking respect for this man.
And when all's said and done, when titans are truly gone from the world, Levi sheds a tear as he gives his final salute to his fallen comrades. He dedicates his heart one last time to the Survey Corps.
This scene absolutely broke me yo. I had to stop reading for a while and just concentrate on slowly breathing because I was this 👌 close to weeping. So Ist Es Immer was playing in the background too. Fucking hell.
I'm so happy he finally got to relax and travel the world with the little brats lol. I'm curious how that happened.
He's undoubtedly one of the best characters I've ever read in any manga, and I hope he finds happiness. I hope he gets to open a tea shop just like he's always wanted, and gets to order the brats to clean it every hour or something because he's that much of a clean freak. I hope the rest of the gang comes to his shop every week to catch up on life while Levi complains about having to endure the torture of seeing their ugly faces all the time but secretly loves it bc they're basically his kids and he misses them. And they all know it, really, but no one dares say a word lest Levi poison their tea.
Whatever it is, I hope he's happy. He deserves it.
P.S. If you've never listened to So Ist Es Immer, click this link. It's the perfect song for Levi and his comrades.
2. Eren, Mikasa, and the Founder Ymir:
Everything Eren did—the genocide, being a jerk to everyone, was to get Mikasa to kill him. THAT is what saved the world.
Mikasa and Eren somewhat mirror Ymir and Fritz. Not perfectly, but there is a parallel. Much like Ymir always protected Fritz and did his bidding, Mikasa did the same for Eren. No, Eren wasn’t an utter asshat like Fritz, but you see the similarity. Fritz says “Ymir, my slave” just like Eren says “You’re a slave, Mikasa.”
In both relationships, there is a “master-slave” connection.
Ok so now that we’ve established that, we need to talk about Ymir. She has this god-like power, but she has no ability to use her free will. She currently lives to serve Fritz’s will, so she just does her thing in paths and observes. She has the power, but not the will to stop it.
Eren, through his attack Titan abilities, sees that the only way to get Ymir to stop building Titans in the paths dimension is to make her realize that SHE has the power to stop obeying Fritz. He shows her how to do this by showing her Mikasa’s story.
Mikasa spends basically her whole life protecting Eren, but finally has to give up her own love of Eren to do the right thing and kill him. Who is there watching, smiling when Mikasa kills him? Ymir. Ymir realizes at this point that if Mikasa could break free of her desire to protect Eren, she could do the same with her desire to protect Fritz. So she finally dispels the paths dimension and Halluchan with it. In doing so, Ymir goes into the afterlife and Titans are no more.
So you see, Eren HAD to do everything to make the story end up this way. Hence, sending Dina to eat his own mother. Had Eren not done something SO INSANELY DRASTIC, Mikasa would never have killed him and shown Ymir how to move on. Then Titans would never have been destroyed.
Eren is not a bad guy, he did not want to do the rumbling. He literally had to. He was on a path, and in a true tragic sense, he was the slave. He had to kill his own mother and sacrifice comrades and kill innocents to finally rid the world of Titans.
The true beauty of it was that this was his initial desire...to destroy every last Titan. He just kept moving forward.
(Original comment).
Another great explanation:
So I think the idea behind Ymir "choosing" Mikasa was that Ymir wanted to be shown true freedom. Like Kenny said, everyone's a slave to something, and Ymir was a slave to her "love" for Fritz, after gaining the power of the titans. Eren himself was a slave to his fate, and thus couldn't show Ymir true freedom. But if you look at Mikasa, what Mikasa would be a "slave" to, more than anything, is her feelings towards Eren. In the end, Mikasa was able to move past them and kill Eren, severing herself from her attachment to him and proving that she was free.
Basically, Mikasa proved that despite all of her feelings for Eren, she was still able to move past them and choose for herself to kill Eren, thus demonstrating her freedom. Which is why Ymir, a slave to her own feelings of "love", chose her. This might not be the best interpretation but it's the one that immediately comes to mind for me.
(Original comment).
Mikasa basically showed Ymir that no matter how much you love someone, you still can, should, have to do the right thing.
3. Eren's confession:
People's biggest complaint is Eren's 180 at the end. Him having a mental breakdown and confessing his love for Mikasa is 'out of character', which isn't the case at all. The issue with Eren's character is that we, as a reader, are made to think he went through a major character development. When in fact Eren was putting up a front of this big tough guy who's out to commit mass genocide. He never wanted any of this. Which is why he broke down infront of Armin. He has been repressing his feelings for the majority of the chapters and finally snapped. He isn't an incel or a simp for doing that, the dude is just sick of it all. The guilt of killing people, pushing away his friends, and hurting the one he loves. Eren has always been like this, we just placed him on a pedestal that he never wanted in the first place. Eren has always been true to himself right at the very end.
(Original comment).
Eren sacrificed almost everything and would never even be able reap the benefits of those sacrifices. He would never be able to live the rest of his life with the people that he loves. Upon realizing this, all his walls came crashing down and what we saw at the end was someone that was scared and broken. I can see how people might be mad that Eren lost his “chadness” and became a “simp”, but I found the end of his arc to be incredibly human and heartbreaking.
4. Mikasa's feelings:
Eren asked Mikasa once, "What am I to you?" And here we get the answer.
The epitaph on Eren’s gravestone is just katakana upside down.
(...)
In grammatical order: ここで永遠に / 居眠りにつく / 最愛の / あなた / 854
OP on Twitter gives a more literal translation, but here’s how I interpret it:
“Here lies my dearly beloved, the love of my life, forever drifting off into sleep.
Note 1: The “anata” used here—at least when I hear it—is how a wife refers to her husband when talking to him. “Saiai” is used for people who you care about very deeply (can be children, family, significant others, etc.) “Saiai no anata” is a gut-wrenching double-whammy that finally puts into words how deeply Mikasa loved Eren. This part was the hardest for me to interpret and do justice, especially considering their relationship throughout the whole series.
(Original comment).
I still have so much more to say about the other characters, but my comment is long enough as it is. So I'll end my essay here, with a conversation between Mikasa and Eren which never fails to make me emotional:
"And you... you wrapped this scarf around me. Thank you."
"I'll wrap that around you, as many times as you want. Now and forever.. as much as you want."
But you couldn't keep that promise, could you, Eren? :')
Thank you, Mr. Isayama, it has been an absolutely incredible journey. Shinzou wo Sasageyo.
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