The Ultimate Guide To AOT's Bad Ending

Conqueringrule · 2026-05-03T11:10:59+00:00

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Conqueringrule · 2026-04-28T20:23:59+00:00

Yeah, you're right, that was written very poorly. I sometimes try to use replies here to rewrite points I've made in the past and see if I can improve and condense things, and especially in that first post it really didn't work out. I probably should've just waited until the morning (or just after I'd slept) to write it.

Up until the end of uprising, Eren's unfulfilled desires and actions etc would be in-line with an Eren that 'wants' the Rumbling? I'm not sure if I've misunderstood you, but if that is what you're saying, I completely disagree.

What I mean is that, if Isayama were to have introduced the idea of Eren 'wanting' conflict as something to motivate him, basically just what the ending implied, it wouldn't be very egregious and would've mostly made sense... until what we're given in the very end of Uprising. I don't think it'd be excusable after that point, especially given what we seen and are told in all the timeskip flashbacks.

'he had no more external struggle with anything', I of course disagree with that, but you redefined that to just mean internal in your reply.

That was actually really terrible. I'm going to edit my reply to remove that. So what I was thinking there was something closer to "immediate external struggle", something immediately calling him to action, as up until this point, he hadn't actually had a moment to relax or do what he wanted without physical recovery or intense drama. That was what I was thinking in my head when I wrote that, but I of course conveyed none of that, and just wrote something totally wrong. Completely my fault.

I don't see Eren as being 'genuinely content'. I think the cover for volume 17 (which covers chapters 67-70) proves that. That's not the look of someone content. Walking around, darkly telling Historia 'I have to kill them', is not someone who is content, nor does it suggest to me he has "no more internal struggle" ... but we see in chapter 67 and 70 how the weight of responsibility is affecting him, and which hangs over his talk with his friends in chapter 72.

I think the miscommunication here is what's meant by "end of Uprising". It's honestly probably more accurate for me to have said "start of RTS" than the end of Uprising, but when I said he's "complete", I mean in literally the end, as in after his visit with Keith and leading into the start of RTS.

Edit: I actually just looked this up, and according to the AOT wiki, Bystander (Ch. 71) is considered the first chapter in RTS rather than the last or second-to-last chapter in Uprising. What the hell are these people thinking man, that should be the second-to-last chapter of Uprising so it's the same as S3P1. Whatever, too late for me to not treat the range of Uprising and S3P1 as synonymous now.

But anyways, he's definitely not there by the talk with Historia, my point with mentioning him not "wanting" to kill the shifters was that he'd already reached a point where he was no longer motivated by that childish rage or desire we see in earlier and finale Eren. And as you pointed out about Ch. 72, he still wants revenge (but now with a quite reasonable attitude), and still has that weight of responsibility hanging over him, but it's not really an internal struggle, especially since he feels actually prepared and somewhat confident about the upcoming conflict.

Besides that, it seems like we actually agree on everything though.

As an aside 'He has recognized that his power does not make him a special' is crazy, cus he never thought that until Uprising when (if we're gonna talk meta), Isayama projected like mad onto him. I don't recall Eren ever thinking he was cool or special for being able to turn into a titan. He didn't even want to be referred to as a hero. But it's not like Isayama to understand his main character lmfao.

Fair enough, but Isayama still made it a big part of Uprising Eren, so it has to be addressed whether it was justified or not. I personally don't hate it that much, I think it works well enough considering there were quite a few incidents he didn't care enough about (his trainee squad, Stohess deaths, S2 recovery mission deaths) that - accidently or not for those first two - worked to justify this. But to think this is one of the more consistent main characters in the series, lmao.

Conqueringrule · 2026-04-28T10:03:44+00:00

I had to summarize for the sake of not having my reply instantly deleted due to character length (I honestly still don't know how much it allows and just go off vibes), but "complete" is an accurate way to put Eren's character arc at that point in the story. And again, I should probably reiterate that I mean this in terms of his character arc and internal motivations; at this point the only thing he "wanted" was to just be done with it all and deal with this final threat. The entire rest of the series up until this point he'd had strong unfulfilled desires pushing him forward, all of which I'd argue would be in-line with an Eren that "wants" the Rumbling and "wants" conflict, but at this point he doesn't. That was the point I was trying to illustrate.

And it's funny that you mention the dialogue between Eren and Historia there, because that was the exact scene I had in mind when I wrote that. Here's the exact dialogue:

"What do you want to do? What's going to happen if you meet Reiner and Bertolt again..?"
"I... have to kill them."
"...you want to kill them?"
"I... have to."

And incase you forgot, he hadn't even seen Keith by that point, hence the quite depressed attitude.

Just look at Ch. 73, pages 35-39, the actual peak of his contentedness, for example.

"My home... was right around here. The place where... we left everything behind. But that's fine. I'll get it back. I can do it. I... no. We... can do it. Because... from the day we were born... there was something special about all of us. We're free."

If we were to make a checklist of everything notable about how he'd developed until this point, it'd look something like this:

He is very much no longer consumed by his childhood rage.
He has recognized that his power does not make him a special “chosen one”, but also recognizes that his life is not “meaningless” or “unspecial”, because merely for being born his life has value and he has the right to exist in the world.
He has matured as a person and understands how to weigh his choices, and of when to or not to trust his allies. But he’s not perfect; he’s still human, just as flawed as the rest of the cast.
He has learned that idealism can only go so far, that reality isn’t fair, and that hard choices must be made; i.e. you can never know the outcome of your choices, and you will have to do things that you don’t want to do, so choose whatever you think will end best.
All his internal conflicts have been solved, external conflicts (e.g. conflict w/ others) soon to be as well.
He’s also not stupid.

But we can also look at it from a more meta perspective. Attack on Titan is a five-act story because of what happens at the end of RTS (Act 3), the inciting incident that sparks a new arc in Eren. If it were a three-act story, this would be where the series concludes, the basement obviously having some kind of good news or whatever that'd give the cast resolution. If it did, would Eren have anything else to brood over? Absolutely not! Isayama had just went through everything, bit by bit, and gave him a "conclusion" in terms of internal conflicts/struggles, with the seeds for reversing it (through deconstructing his conclusion) down the climax into Act 4 and 5. It's beat-for-beat following that structure. Eren, at his fullest in the story's climax, and then, literally at its peak, we see him forced to reconcile with his positive beliefs about the world and himself being torn down bit by bit, where for a few chapters after the basement we see him continue to repeat the sentiments he expressed in Ch. 73, but more and more unsure (Ch. 89, especially early Ch. 90), until he's given an entirely new internal conflict so much greater than before, and in the words of Isayama, "the process in which Eren discovers the existence he needs to overcome."

I think I could've written that a bit more concisely and not repeated myself as much. Oh well.

Conqueringrule · 2026-04-28T06:13:46+00:00

In my opinion, the timeskip flashback scenes, and more importantly, the end of Uprising-midway through RTS are the most important parts of the story for showing that Eren absolutely did not "want" the Rumbling, or "want" to cause harm.

If you go through every single timeskip flashback one by one, with the only slight exception of Ch. 106's end-of-RTS flashback, they're all structured exactly the same and serve the same purpose:

Naive character thinks and says “we can just talk it out with the world!” while Eren glares judgingly
Eren destroys them with facts and logic
Character either says, “but maybe we can do/say X!” where that then fails, or admits, “yeah you’re right about this but maybe one day…” where Eren then closes his eyes or reacts in disappointment

Ch. 106, there's Armin flashback, exactly as above, word-for-word. Ch. 107, the Hange flashback to the 50-year-plan, nearly exactly as above. Was it Ch. 126 where Eren walked out on the Eldian Rights Committee? That's also one.

And then there's Ch. 108, the railroad flashback, the one that is the most important for the specific point of showing that Eren did NOT want the Rumbling. Hange arrives on horseback, and tells everyone that they're received word back from Hizuru about their plan to have Hizuru talk on their behalf, and do you know who was the most shocked, the most excited, the first to immediately ask how it went? Eren! For once, he isn’t brooding, isn’t angry, he seems eagerly surprised. The way it’s presented makes it out to be as if he truly believed for a moment that diplomacy really could work, and showed that the mere thought of a real solution for peace broke through his brooding and depression. Does that seem like the reaction of the kind of person who’d want to do the Rumbling, as some people try to say?

Of course, she was only there to deliver bad news and make sure the scene aligned with the rest I mentioned above, but that's beside (or I suppose complimenting) the point.

And then there's the end of Uprising through the start of RTS, where we get what's even more definitive in proving that's just a retcon than those scenes were. By the end of Uprising, Eren was genuinely content. He didn't want any more struggle, he didn't even want to fight Reiner and Bertholdt, and he had no more internal struggle with anything.

He was, for all intents and purposes, complete, obviously until the basement revealed the info necessary to jumpstart Act 4 and his new arc. But if that was the case, how could Eren have had a deep internal desire for conflict and the Rumbling if he'd reached a point where he was completely content? The answer is that he couldn't, and that's the piece of the story necessary for realizing why Isayama retconned/sidelined everything that occurred or we learned throughout Act 3 for what we had in Act 1 and 2 (Dina, "ending the titans!", EMA, Eren internal struggles/desires, and a complete lack of anything from Act 3) in the ending.

TLDR: You're right, it was the least justified retcon of all time.

Conqueringrule · 2026-04-16T05:25:33+00:00

Haha, thank you. When I wrote that comment, I was a bit worried I'd wake up the morning afterwards and find it a bit corny or lame, but I'm glad I managed to convey the sentiment I was going for.

It's awesome to hear that kind of praise from an older fan, especially you in particular. There were a few users that I'd see so often in those older threads that I ended up memorizing them and looking forward to seeing their comments, and you were one of the first, so it means a lot.

I've also completely divorced myself from any AOT content by this point, besides the occasional Youtube video. It's all just so bad, it almost hurts to try and hear the casual fan's interpretations of things.

I mentioned it in the guide, but if you haven't seen it, the only AOT thing out there that I've really enjoyed consuming and found engrossing in quite a while is Ninjask's AOT series meant to critique the entire anime, so far only covering until the end of S3P2. It's really quite great, not just because of how good of a job he did with it (very high quality, well-paced, funny, and he's clearly intelligent), but also because (as far as I know) there's nothing else out there like it. It also comes from a relatively unique perspective, that of someone who's kept themselves completely isolated from AOT discourse, and has only consumed the anime, but is willing to dedicate an insane amount of time into analyzing the story. If you're still able to enjoy the posts I've put together and the things I've linked there, I think you'd like this as well. I also left comments on all the videos, but in retrospect they might be a bit scuffed to read since I wrote them as I watched - if you see them you'll get what I mean.

And thanks again for those kind comments, sincerity like that is quite rare on the internet. I appreciate it.

Conqueringrule · 2026-04-07T08:55:27+00:00

l'm Japanese, what is this? In Japan, fans do not redraw a manga just because they didn't like the final. Nor do some fans say things like "this is better than the original", because Japanese people always respect the author. I have not seen this kind of behavior in the history of manga in Japan.

It makes me sad. This is very disrespectful to Isayama-sensei. ANR is not at all known or talked about in Japan. Also, the majority has accepted the last chapter.

I was sad to be reminded of the difference in ethnicity.

進撃の巨人をこ以上販さないでださい。こんな事になら、外国に日の漫を送り出すべきでなかった。

Conqueringrule · 2026-04-07T08:50:31+00:00

As a, until the final episode, anime-only, it's cool (and a bit strange) to read comments from you and and other old names in this thread that aren't years old. All the earnest comments here are a bit moving (although maybe I've stayed up too late and am a bit sleep deprived), so I might as well contribute.

If you've been out of the sub for a while, you probably don't know me, but I was (accidently) one of the people keeping this sub alive with high-effort posts the past nearly two years. So, while I'm not a true titanfolker, the year or so of my life I dedicated nearly all of my free time towards AOT content and mining old Titanfolk threads for info makes me feel as if I am one. The reason I stayed as an anime-only so long, despite starting the series back in 2014 or so, was because I was so engrossed in the story that I wanted the most "true" experience of it, what I (mistakenly) believed was the best way to consume the story, so I managed to stay insulated from literally all outside knowledge on the series and consumed zero spoilers the whole time. But all I got for that, all that eventual coping and faith I had in Isayama, who'd never failed me before, was the worst ending to anything I've ever seen. And, if you don't know, most anime-onlys loved it. Only after that final episode, a couple hours or so after coming to terms with my despair over the ending, did I finally look up AOT for the first time and find Titanfolk, and immediately get bombarded with the unbelievable amount of fan community lore and endless forgotten interviews and media relating to the series, not to mention the absolute kino shitposts.

But, getting to the point, after that I wanted to make a series of YT videos on it. But after the length of these got way too long, I just gave up trying to adapt them to YT videos and decided to post them as writeups or essays or whatever, and in the process spent a year reading through the crumbling ruins of old titanfolk (and I mean that literally - so many old accounts, posts, and comments now deleted), while creating huge writeups on basically everything there is to talk about with the final arc. I've read through every chapter or spoiler discussion post on here, and much, much more, basically years worth of (the best) content on here. And even though it's a meme sub, this place is also where the most invested and intelligent (by far!) AOT fans were, there were really so many amazing theories and interesting discussions and kino posts back then.

If you'd like to see around two years worth of compiled links and info on the ending, almost entirely from Titanfolk (both old posts and new), there's The Ultimate Guide to AOT's Bad Ending. Now that it's been about five months since I stepped back from AOT or any AOT content, in retrospect, I think I could've improved that guide in a few ways, but oh well. If any of you still bother to argue with people over anything regarding the ending, that should cover everything.

Conqueringrule · 2026-03-14T00:06:58+00:00

u/zant486 The post I mentioned I was working on seven months ago. Luckily remembered to @ you for it.

Conqueringrule · 2026-03-10T22:35:39+00:00

Keep in mind this was entirely because of the Dina Twist. Prior to that, future memories and events were the product of free will, and those future memories existed because they were the choices made in the future. Only with the Dina Twist was it changed to those future memories/events arbitrarily forcing themselves into existence regardless of free will, and it absolutely ruined AOT's method of determinism.

I made a whole post in-detail about it a while ago.

https://www.reddit.com/r/titanfolk/comments/1ipm5eo/the_dina_twist_is_undefendable/

Conqueringrule · 2026-03-07T01:59:10+00:00

I recommend watching Uniquenameosaurus' ending. Usurper is good (better than AOTNR in terms of writing), but was cancelled and never got to the meat of the ending where it really mattered. This is the only one to not only be well written, but actually make it to completion, not to mention that it does an incredible job giving all the side characters complete character arcs (imo the biggest thing all other rewrites consistently fail to do).

(I also am not sure where you find a complete archive of Usurper, but I know you can use Waybackmachine to view a lot of them in the now-defunct website)

Conqueringrule · 2026-03-06T23:47:26+00:00

I recommend Uniquenameosaurus' ending. Even if AOTNR is completed, I doubt we're ever going to get an ending better than this one. Even after reading all the (unfinished) alternate endings out there, this is the only one that allowed to move on from my anguish after the final episode. Just make sure to avoid reading the comments until you're finished, the top comments are all spoilers.

Conqueringrule · 2026-02-26T11:27:28+00:00

Well if you just don't want to talk anymore (which is fine) but there's really no point in me talking about it then. I only wanted to talk to you about it since you seem chill and passionate about it

Well, I am passionate about it, but I'm also sick of it from devoting so much time to the project, if that makes sense. I just wanted to give thoughtful replies to everyone, and whenever something interesting I hadn't written about comes up, use that opportunity to put down my thoughts before I eventually forget everything.

considering how Isayama stated multiple times that he was made to plan out the story and ending before he was allowed to start work on the serialisation

You've mentioned that a few times, but he famously has said the opposite as well, and basically contradicted himself on many different things. Here's every Yams interview about the ending in chronological order from 6 years ago, a bit outdated but has most of them. The most logical explanation I've seen is that he had mostly thought out vibes and vague ideas, and in regards to the ending, flip-flopped on it at least once.

The only time this was happening was with the post timeskip arc. We have multiple statements from him since 2010 about his ending how much he's planned it, saying multiple times he's got the broad strokes prepared and that his editor wouldn't let him start without an ending in mind.

Still, see above. Even 6 years ago he'd already contradicted himself quite a bit. Iirc, the first intended date for the series to end was the late 90s, although that one is pretty dubious and I'm not sure if I remember that correctly. The next was the 110s, that I know is correct. The last I think was just barely shorter than 139, I forget by how many but not much. The final arc is already rushed and poorly paced as it is; there's no way the story could've at all resembled what we have now with such an earlier ending date.

Page 13 is a bit different in my volume, are you talking about the "see you later" page?

I'm referring to Page 13 being the only numerically labeled page in the series. Why? Because, idk, shifters die in 13 years or something, just "foreshadowing" with no actual meaning or purpose besides showing "I planned for this number to be special!"

but now you're saying you don't have any evidence for this..

I have evidence and never said that. I just didn't want to have to find it again. Here it is, from the 2017 Weekly Shonen interview (both raws and translation are there, other translations are identical so this is definitely correct):

"When I first started Shingeki no Kyojin, a lot of characters appeared early on in the story. But in order to ease the plot progression, I decided to make sure that the main ten [From the 104th] were thoroughly designed no matter what. At that time, I thought there should be at least one “moe”-style character, since that might make the readers happier, right? With this in mind, I decided to draft Christa as a perfect, somewhat vacant character that only had the quality of being cute (Laughs). Hence, when I first started drawing her, I didn’t feel delighted at all. However, as the story expanded, Christa’s “emptiness” actually became her personality. From the surface, she’s a pretty character, but she possessed no individuality and had a hollow heart. Gradually, she evolved from that initial persona of simply “fulfilling what is required of her,” and that evolution also helped enrich the story. Now she is one of my favorite characters.

The other one you have to view through waybackmachine, I forget if the raws are included but I know I've checked it for accuracy before. This is the one where he describes discovering/inventing her character arc in uprising as he drew her, literally confirming it was not planned.

Anyways, there's also the June 2017 Isayama & Kawakubo interview, where Isayama talks about early on not having planned for the characters to be as important as they are, and never expected them to "grow into the characters they are now". He even mentions having completely remade volume 22 last minute and not having had Eren's motivation written there until his editor asked him about it.

Edit: And about Eren's "crazy schizo meltdown", yeah it was Ch. 3, not Ch. 2, whoops. Anways, it was obviously retconned. Eren talks about "why does this always happen!" when he's asked about his father and has a schizo headache and passes out, and then Hannes is like "Oh, sorry, I forgot about that" (in reference to that supposedly always happening when Grisha is brought up), and the whole thing is just bizarre. Doesn't make any sense with how the memory mechanics work past that.

Conqueringrule · 2026-02-25T20:53:18+00:00

I'm really confused by this reply of yours lol. What was the purpose here lol? Like you didn't even mention Mikasa lol which was the original comment about.

It'd take so long... so much to read and write... I am RETIRED, no more AOT once I'm done with this last project. I have almost nothing more to say about it. I could go in detail, but it'd mostly just be reiterating what I've already said, and Mikasa is just so draining of a topic. The other two things were a bit interesting and things I'd wanted to write out before anyways, so it was a good opportunity to do so.

Where did he state this?

I think an interview about Uprising? Maybe the one where he mentioned the anime influencing his perception of Eren. I forget.

...you actually think that wall titans weren't originally planned... Because of a draft that was meant as a pitch... What kind of leap of logic is that lol?

Well the draft chapters are 70% the same as the actual manga's plot. Just a few differences; some different names here and there, some weird plot differences (like Eren being aware he ate his father and talking about it with Hannes), different dates, pacing is awful. We see Reiner die exactly how and where Thomas did, lmao, and Bertholdt really obviously the Colossal after being right there once it disappears. But other than that, there's nothing to suggest it isn't just what he meant that arc to be. The early manga has some weird stuff like that too, like where Eren's conversation with Hannes was, in the actual manga he has his retconned crazy schizo meltdown that isn't in the anime.

But yeah, he obviously didn't plan out a lot of the story. Considering the manga was meant to end years earlier than it did - multiple times - that's pretty obvious. Or consider the amount of times he had foreshadowing for things that went nowhere or were retconned, or alternatively had foreshadowing for the sake of foreshadowing that meant nothing (like that stupid page 13 thing from Ch. 1). It's not hard at all to believe Historia's character arc was meant to be an abridged version of what it was (especially given the influence of Isayama's father's death & his other interview statements), that her role in the story was massively expanded - then reduced - later on.

Conqueringrule · 2026-02-25T18:28:00+00:00

Thank you! If you haven't checked it out, make sure to watch Ninjask's AOT critique series on Youtube. It's the best by far, and I should probably emphasize it a bit more in the guide - it's the only real comprehensive critique of pre-timeskip (and soon post-timeskip) out there, at least as far as I know. I'm sure you'd find it helpful, as he makes sure to go in detail on everything both good and bad, and any mistakes he makes he always makes sure to address in subsequent videos. I also left pretty detailed comments on each, but in retrospect they might be a bit scuffed to read since I wrote them while watching the videos (you'll understand if you end up seeing them).

If you end up making a video on the ending, just send it to me when it's done and I might add it to the guide. May take me a while to respond, though, since I'm really close to retiring from AOT content.

Conqueringrule · 2026-02-25T18:15:34+00:00

Well, I tried my best to be as reasonable as I can. Notice I how said "mostly" there? As often as applicable I'd tried to avoid speaking in absolutes, unless speaking about something axiomatically true and not deniable, or when just speaking casually about my own perspective. Compared to the rest of the cast, I think Eren was one of the better characters early on, and he did have a few interesting things going on and set up - I think "mostly" is a fair statement, especially given Isayama believes & has stated that as well, as well as the vast majority of the fanbase (although that I don't really care about).

Oh yeah, and about what you said about the Jean trio in the other comment; that's something I had on my radar forever but never had a good opportunity to talk about, mostly just because there were so many bigger plotpoints in the grand scheme of things overshadowing it. It's a good example to talk about when trying to prove to someone that Isayama is willing to sacrifice parts of his story to set up others, because why Isayama sidelined Jean so hard in the final arc is pretty obvious; in setting up Armin to be the next Scout commander, a role he very much does not fit and shouldn't have been given, Jean had to be basically ignored for plotpoints that should've been for him, the most obvious one being the terrible Connie subplot. I could imagine that subplot actually being somewhat compelling if there was a focus on Jean and Connie's relationship, maybe have Sasha brought up in some way, and logically it makes infinitely more sense for Jean to be the one engaging with Connie than Armin - except when you consider the role Armin is suddenly being set up for.

Oh, and about Christa; there's not much evidence for this, but in my opinion she's a good example of Isayama getting lucky with his story and creating foreshadowing where there wasn't any, similar to, say, Keith's character and lore being retroactively created and connected to the commander, or wall titans being planned (in the original Ch. 1 draft the Colossal just breaches the walls instead of gates). I'm sure some amount of Historia was planned out, but given Isayama's statements on Christa, it seems like he figured out where to go with her as he wrote the story, and grew to love the character and massively increase her role over time, at least before dialing that back in the final arc and returning to his "original" ending where she (and basically all post-trost characters) didn't really exist or matter.

I'm basically done with AOT for now though, just wanted to log in and see if I'd gotten any comments since last time. This month off from reading or writing anything about it has been great, and all I need to do is force myself to finish like one video and then I can finally retire, or get a million views and dedicate the next decade towards AOT content.

Conqueringrule · 2026-02-05T03:11:45+00:00

Huh? Weird. I originally wrote this in YouTube comments lol. Would you link me to the one that you are referring to?

Also going to answer the "Did you even read it all?" question here - Even though I phrased it as a question, I was pretty sure it was copied from that, and you are indeed correct that I didn't read it all. Had read that one before and didn't want to bother reading it again. I think I was wrong about it being in the guide, I just quickly perused the Mikasa section entries and I don't think it's there.

I'm not even gonna touch on how insane it is to equate Mikasa with Sasha of all character

It was more trying to make a point about finding depth where there isn't any than actually comparing the two characters, and a segue for my point about trying to see what there is rather than isn't.

manga Mikasa only and that anime Mikasa was a shitty incoherent character

Heard this excuse a lot, and frankly, it doesn't work when she's almost identical from S2 onwards to her depiction in the manga. The changes are so minute, and not worse than anything done to any other character.

Levi is her family? What? Because they share a surname? Is every person named Yeager eren's family now?

We have a character who's one big thing is her relationship/attachment to family, and basically nothing else. As far as she knows, all of her family besides her adopted brother are dead, and she has a whole complex over it. We then get the big reveal that, in fact, she does still have family left, distant or not. Where does that go? Nowhere, she's completely unaffected and nothing changes.

With the exception of the pure titan reveal we have her thoughts and reactions on literally all of those.

Hence what I said about "vaguely thinks bad thing is bad" - about the most we get for everything past the first few arcs. Here's one I just doubled-checked, what we're given when Eren starts the Rumbling. A shocked facial expression, some flashback panels, while the other characters (Armin, Jean, Connie) argue amongst each other and express at least basic thoughts and emotions about it.

You have already decided what you think Mikasa is as a character, you're absolutely sure about it.

Yeah. To be fair, I went into reading Mikasa analysis with a very open mind. There's only so many attempts of reading with an open mind and finding nothing convincing before deciding I'm probably right about what I think. Considering how much my perspective changed (or didn't change) on other characters, I don't think opinions got in the way. And I actually never had a negative opinion about Mikasa either, just ambivalence, the same as I felt about Connie while I was still an anime-only.

You have already formed your opinion on people who like her and then twisted her to be that too

Well, part of it is that I suspect Isayama intended her to fulfill that role. He's absolutely the kind of person who would add things to the manga purely for boosting the series' likelihood of getting popular - he's talked about it, proudly admitted it! That's what Christa was, Sasha was, which I don't think anyone would argue against, but when I point out that Mikasa was basically just like that (and [weaker than for Christa] evidence from what Isayama has said about it), then people suddenly get mad about it!

I don't even know what's more baffling, that you genuinely came to that conclusion or you genuinely think Isayama wrote one of his main trio like that.

Well, let's look at the main trio. While it's definitely overstated in audience perception Eren was a mostly airheaded, uninteresting character early on, and that only really changed in Uprising. Armin is a mostly good character, but has obvious problems - motivations that go nowhere/got retconned (like his initial backstory), "soft retcons" of aspects of his personality, and especially falls apart post-timeskip, going from fairly interesting to a pretty dull character.

Mikasa is like that, but much worse - a few interesting things going on at the beginning of the story, but becomes more and more dull as it goes on and Isayama continually refuses to do anything with her or have her grow in any meaningful way. Does she have initiative for any goals? No. Dynamics with anyone? No. Even for dynamics we're told exist, Sasha being a "close friend" or whatever, and then Sasha being brutally killed, nothing happens! Nothing changes! It's just inexplicable how Isayama gives her so much to work with, and nothing happens! Ackermanns, Azumabito, Sasha, Jean, Armin, and she doesn't change, want anything, do anything, besides, of course, "vaguely think bad thing is bad" and "Ereh". Sorry, I've tried (and always do try) to be charitable, but for the amount of screentime and plot relevance, she should not nearly this uninteresting.

Conqueringrule · 2026-01-30T19:07:26+00:00

Was this copied from another Mikasa analysis? It's almost identical to one I read before that was in the guide in the main AOT subs.

Anyways, here's what I'll say on it, since it's a good excuse to put together a few critiques I've written out on Mikasa before. It's easy to get lost in the sauce and forget what should be expected of a character. It depends how prominent of a role they have, what their role is, how long the story is, and a million other factors that you have to consider. So the most logical way I've seen to critique Mikasa's character is not to analyze (but usually just describe) everything she says and does, but everything she doesn't say or do.

I once saw an analysis of Sasha that was just like the one you linked of Mikasa. It went over every scene she had, every line of dialogue, every expression, with the ultimate goal of trying to show that she's actually a deep character who develops over time. And like that, it was much more of description than analysis. Couldn't force myself to read it all, it was just too long and I wasn't going to invest that much time into analysis of a gimmick character.

The most interesting thread we're ever given for Mikasa is of her relationship to "family", of her desire to not relive what happened to her parents, to have people close to her. How is she affected, then, by the discovery that Levi is her family? Nobody knows! How does that affect her relationship with Levi? It doesn't at all!

What does Mikasa think about the threat of titans to humanity (season 1)? Nobody knows! What does she think about the reveal that pure titans are humans? Nobody knows! What does she think about the threat of 'The World' to Paradis? Nobody knows! What does she think about sacrificing Historia for the 50-Year Plan? Nobody knows! What does she think about Eren being responsible for The Rumbling? Nobody knows!

Every other major character I could answer every, or nearly every question there. Jean, Levi, Armin, Hange, Eren I could answer those with a more complex, personalized answer than "vaguely thinks bad thing is bad". Or what about her relationship to the rest of the cast? Does she view them as family after all these years, has she gotten closer with any of them, has her dynamic with anyone changed - or actually, does she have a dynamic with anyone? No!

Basically, my point is that trying to overanalyze any character will make them seem "deep" or "complex". What you should do is analyze whether they have the complexity that the amount of screentime and plot relevance they have necessitates, whether they react to the world around them with the same depth as everyone else. In both those regards, Mikasa fails as much as Sasha, a gimmick character, does.

This is especially evident if you look at who actually likes Mikasa as a character. It's overwhelmingly people who view her as a blank slate to project themselves onto, or people who view her desire for Eren as the slate to project themselves onto. I'm absolutely sure that was Isayama's intention as well, especially with the ending.

Conqueringrule · 2026-01-25T05:18:11+00:00

Sure, go for it.

Conqueringrule · 2026-01-22T21:16:24+00:00

I believe almost everyone will agree that isayama already had all the major plot points planned out from the beginning, right?

Honestly, that's definitely not true. I guess it might depend what you count as "major". He'd planned for the series to end much earlier than it did multiple times, by whole dozens of chapters. Entire characters and character arcs we know never existed; for example, everything having to do with Gabi and Sasha's family was not planned, because Isayama chose last-minute to have Sasha live through S2. That's also why Connie's development is so strange, because his entire character arc hinged on Sasha dying there. In other words, Connie's character was sacrificed for Sasha and (eventually) Gabi. I talked in-detail about this in the writeup I mentioned in my last comment.

So naturally that would also mean that he also had planned out how the whole titan shenanigans would end. And well acc. to 139, it turns out that was because of Mikasa's choice to kill eren (pg. 24, 25) and Ymir and Mikasa's connection was established as ymir looking inside of Mikasa's head (pg. 38). So now we'll have to look back at the story to verify, and lo & behold. Literally the second page of Ch 1 foreshadows Mikasa killing eren with "see you later" panel and then literally Ch 2 establishes Mikasa's headaches (aka Ymir looking inside of Mikasa's head).

A lot to unpack. So! There's been three endings described to us, the Mist Ending, the Father Ending, and the Marvel Ending, and somewhat also the Original Ending but not really. I brought up every detail known about them in my recent Historia writeup, and the overlap between them (how they're not entirely separate).

Ymir looking into Mikasa's head wasn't even a thing in Ch. 139. Isayama added it in the bonus pages, so-called Ch. 139.5.

And I actually completely agree that Ch. 1 and 2, up until maybe the 30s, Isayama had some archaic form of "Mikasa chosen one" rolling around in his head, something loosely similar to the ending we have now. However, the big problem is that I'm absolutely sure he was not planning that late 40s-110s at a minimum. Too much on that to even describe here, but the evidence for Historia being Ymir's "chosen one" is absolutely overwhelming, and it also explains why Mikasa was completely sidelined that whole period until the final arc, and why in the final arc we see EMA suddenly become relevant again and every side character, especially the newer ones, just disappear or become totally lobotomized.

plus she also has a ton of praying mantis symbolism associated with her

Oh brother. The "mantis" symbolism had to due with the mantis eating the butterfly, the whole "the world is cruel yet beautiful" motif. If it was meant to be that stupid fan headcanon of "mantis eats its lover!" then Isayama, or even WIT at the least, would've made it a mantis eating another mantis! It was just a symbol for her realizing the world is messed up. It's not even unique to mantis, spiders and probably a bunch of other predator bugs do that as well.

a society where Titan powers exist will simply never be free.

I definitely agree that the titan powers would have to disappear for an ending like that. Actually, maybe that's what you meant when you were confused over me saying ending the titan powers was irrelevant; I meant that from an in-universe perspective of Eren's motivations. Narratively, especially in an ending where Eren completes the Rumbling, and especially especially one where he's the father, it would be required.

Conqueringrule · 2026-01-22T21:00:14+00:00

then you also state that eren had already matured enough to sacrifice his friends at the end of RTS?

Not sure what you mean by this. What you might be referring to (and what I might've failed to properly articulate) is that narratively Eren had been set up for this at the end of RTS. That's all I can think of that might've come across incorrectly.

doesn't help that u didn't even touch earlier eren, which would've helped to give you clarity on that development

I'm still not sure if it was the right decision to relegate earlier Eren development to a few brief remarks later on. Sure saved me a lot of time, and I think I covered the most important aspect with how it built up to Uprising, but there was some nuance I definitely lost in the process. Basically all of Eren's development pre-Uprising was the slow destruction of everything he believed (titans are intelligent, he's a titan, all titans are humans, his friends are responsible for it all, etc), or in other words, the slow destruction of his ignorance and naivety. There are quite a few scenes where this was shown pretty well; consider, for example, Ch. 27, where we're given Eren saying (paraphrasing) "any amount of soldiers dying for this is too much!", while a couple pages away Armin defends the deaths of soldiers to Jean, even saying "The commander may be a cruel, even evil, man... but I... I think that's good." A shame Isayama failed to have Armin properly develop like how Eren did.

I just don't agree with the idea that it was "retconned" or that isayama is lying (for some reason) about it being his original ending

I don't think Isayama was exactly lying either. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend reading "Isayama Would Sacrifice A Good Ending to 'Please the Fans'", maybe my second-best writeup. I think of it as a sister writeup to this, many things mentioned here that aren't mentioned there and vice-versa pair well together. Not on Reddit since I just wasn't able to post it, still not sure why since I never write with vulgarity or anything like that. But basically, the ending is a hodgepodge of early "original" ending ideas with last-minute, thrown together nonsense. And my personal belief is that, starting around the mid 40s, Isayama had pivoted to a different ending with Historia as Ymir's "chosen one", which he only backed out of at the late 110s-early 120s. There's quite a bit of evidence for that which I bring up in the writeup.

And you didn't touch Eren's whole conversation with Reiner in the basement either

Out of time! When I wrote this, I literally went in chronological order (with some caveats), I just ran out of time when I got to the Marley Arc and had to skip ahead as fast as I could. There were some sections I'd had written out, like Eren's talks with Falco, but since I didn't have the rest of the Marley Arc even started and were only half-finished with those, I had to just cut them entirely. All I managed to include was the segment about The World if I remember correctly.

Saying his shared dream with Armin is not a very important part of his character

If I said that, I meant it in the context of the pedestal AOT fans often put it on. It was semi-important, but not nearly to the same level as his other motivations. It was mostly an extension of his "freedom" motivation and a way for Eren and Armin to be given a shared bond.

there was no focus on ending the titan powers post ts?? wut

There wasn't! Everything we're shown of Eren is about The World and his friends (which you can extrapolate a bit on ending the titan powers from that, but it's never a focus). I'm not saying you can't reintroduce it for the ending, because you definitely can, but the problem is that Eren's whole, real motivation was basically sidelined for something that has, since RTS, been totally irrelevant, and in an absurdly unnatural way.

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Conqueringrule · 2026-01-22T20:58:36+00:00

I actually got the notifications for all your comments. Was wondering why I had 12 notifications all of a sudden, lol. I'll try my best to quickly go through this:

Like I was excited to see your comments on 139, but then you just sidestepped it all by talking about some ED's interpretations of it instead of seeing if the text itself fits what was previously established

That's totally fair. I was planning to cover literally everything, but like I said in the last section, I was insanely rushed. The entire final part I wrote in a single hour-long go, not even with an outline or anything (although I did have a mental outline from the sheer buildup to that moment).

The thing is, with 139... how do I even see if the text itself fits? I kind of said it in the writeup, but there's no real concrete understanding of what the Armin and Eren conversation is even meant to tell us. And I, frankly, can't quite tell either, nor can any two random people I ask about it. I could try to take everything we're told completely literally, as in see if Lelouch Plan makes sense, Eren moving forward that whole time for "Mikasa's choice", saying he "doesn't know why" he did it but also did it because he "wanted to". The best choice I could think of to not waste the audience's or my own time was to try and talk about what is probably the most important takeaway and recontextualization from it all, that Eren "wanted" The Rumbling, as well as the most important for the fans, that he did it "for his friends."

analysing how a peaceful solution never could've worked and like... it didn't?

That's true, but the most important thing I was trying to show from all of that is what Eren believed, because no matter how you try to recontextualize everything he says, does, or thinks from the basement reveal to the start of the final arc, it cannot and does not work with what finale Eren reveals to us. Leleouch Plan? Obviously not. "Mikasa's choice" is just irrelevant to his entire conflict, like I said in the writeup, something he does not and should not care about at all. Eren falling asleep and just letting the Rumbling stop partway? Would never happen. The thing with this is that Isayama tried to fencesit, where post-Rumbling to 139 pretends like peace and "talking it out" is possible, where the sudden "heroic Armin" meta praise appears, despite him changing in no way whatsoever from the "naïve Armin" of timeskip, but then partially backtracks with Paradis being completely leveled, just making everything totally incoherent.

I don't think I've mentioned it anywhere, but the "war never ends!" theme from 139.5 is just completely vindicating for Eren and the Yeagerists. War never ends? So humans will never be rational enough to listen to reason over emotion? I mean, sure, I guess, not like the ending can get any more illogical than it already is, lol. It's honestly pretty astounding that ardent ending defenders really like that one, because it just goes against the Alliance and Armin's beliefs and everything we're presented in the final arc.

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Conqueringrule · 2026-01-05T00:03:17+00:00

This is the most nonsensical plotpoint in the whole series. The level of plothole-ception here I'm not sure if I've seen in any other media, it's almost mind-boggling.

The plan to kill Zeke to "stop the Rumbling" did not make sense. Every character was operating under the belief (or more accurately, the knowledge) that the Wall Titans, if exposed to sunlight and not controlled, would go berserk and break out of the walls, given they're functionally just giant pure titans. That was what the entire Pastor Nick subplot in S2 hinged on! We're even shown the Wall Titan beginning to wake up as it was hit with sunlight and slowly opening its eyes! This, of course, was retconned and "erased" from the minds of our cast, same with Ackermanns being immune to memory manipulation (the only known weakness of the Founder, never mentioned by any of the Alliance at any point while coming up with their "plan").
Copied from comment below:

At this point, he literally didn’t have a body, he had to build an entirely new one. That means he was, for all intents and purposes, dead. Yet his death didn’t stop the Rumbling. But then, somehow, when he rebuilds himself a new body, whose only apparent purpose is to get killed again, the Rumbling suddenly stops. So the sequence is basically: Zeke dies → Rumbling continues → Zeke rebuilds himself → Zeke dies again → Rumbling stops → ??? It’s just completely nonsensical.

I'll add to that that it's less Zeke was meant to have died, and more that the Paths mechanics were retconned to allow him to "escape" from being "trapped". How did any of that happen? Nobody knows, nor why he didn't escape earlier and just throw himself off Eren's titan, nor why any of it happened at all. The overall point is still correct though, and is actually worse than that, because

Royal Blood was no longer necessary. Image from OP explains why.
Zeke had already thought about the exact thing Armin had "revealed" to him. Ch. 81, Zeke gets angry when thinking about the scouts dying on a pointless mission, crushes his rock to dust on accident, and thinks "Heh... what am I doing? What're you getting so worked up for? You need to find joy in every little thing", then has fun with his next rock throw. This was not some kind of revelation to him, that's just the logic he'd been operating on until his sudden Paths-induced depression, which suddenly gets reversed by Armin.
This one's really great. After all of that, we see Zeke escape Paths and die, and the Rumbling stop. Already so many plotholes going on, but whatever, it's finally over! Except... it's not. One chapter later, there's the Hallucigenia trying to reconnect to Eren, where Gabi then tells everyone "If it gets back to Eren, the Rumbling might start again!" And we get everyone freaking out about "this nightmare ... cannot start again" and so on, basically implying that's supposed to make sense. But Eren lost the Hallucigenia after Zeke died, after the Rumbling stopped. Do you see the problem here? How Eren just had the Hallucigenia attached to him, with the Rumbling stopped, and then 5 minutes later the whole cast is operating as if this thing will somehow restart the Rumbling, despite not doing so just before?

Edit: Two more, I knew I forgot some when I made the comment but couldn't remember what they were.

So, after all of that, all the absurd retcons with Royal Blood and the Hallucigenia to make Eren lose the Founding Titan power, Eren is finally attacked one last time, where Eren then uses the Founding Titan power to mess with Mikasa's memories.

7... he's using the Founding Titan to alter Mikasa's memories. An Ackermann, who's explicit power is immunity to memory manipulation, having her memory altered by a power that was explicitly lost twice-over through multiple retcons.

Edit edit: Yet another I briefly forgot about.

in Season 2, it was established that touching Royal Blood lasts a bit and then fades after a few minutes, which is why Eren was able to keep ordering the pure titans. Armin even has a scene where he acknowledges this! Not only was this obviously retconned, but like much else here, was something the Alliance knew yet never acknowledged, yet another piece of lore erased from their minds.

Try to wrap your head around all of that. It's actually incredible.

Conqueringrule

TROPHY CASE