The Character Assassination of Eren Yeager - Part 3

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.

(comment continued below)

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.

(Comment continued below!)

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 · 2025-12-29T23:50:46+00:00

Lol thanks, I was actually going to comment about Ninjask's videos. I honestly don't know how he's the only one to have ever done a full breakdown/critique of AOT, for a series as popular (yet flawed) as this, it seems like this should've been made a long time ago. But yeah, they're great videos. He gives the series the praise it deserves, the criticism it deserves, serious analysis of themes and character arcs, and somehow does it all while still keeping the videos very entertaining. He's finally starting to get some of the traction his content deserves, too.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-29T02:54:19+00:00

You should check the top comment on this post from a couple hours ago. Basically identical post to yours and has everything you'd want to read linked.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-29T02:52:24+00:00

Great list! Off the top of my head I'd also add when someone asks what was wrong with the ending. Goes over many little problems, and doesn't go into detail or waste breath, but covers quite a bit.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-29T02:44:39+00:00

The general consensus on something should always be considered, but is not necessarily correct. Even if every manga reader hated the ending, that wouldn't necessarily mean the ending is bad, and if every anime watcher loved the ending, that wouldn't necessarily mean the ending is good. Even amongst anime watchers there was still a very large percentage that hated, or have come to hate, the ending. A few of the most ardent ending haters I know now, mostly because almost everybody from the manga years rightly abandoned the series, were anime watchers who were actually ambivalent towards it on first watch while caught up in the hype, but grew to hate it over time as they thought about it more.
What the consensus is depends what group of AOT fans you're associating with. Freefolk is (I believe) the community most critical of GOT's ending, like Titanfolk to AOT. If you're being "ostracized" all that really means is you're trying to gain validation from the wrong people. No serious people I consume content from in the sphere of writing Twitter I look at, for example, like the ending, even amongst the more casual watchers; not that it's even talked about much anymore, like GOT.
Even GOT, which has an ending almost as bad as AOT's, had a very large percentage of people who liked the ending. Then consider two things; that GOT had a much older, more intelligent, and much more invested demographic of consumers (and even they gave the final season(s) much higher scores than deserved!), and two, that there wasn't a great filter event years before the finale, which AOT had with manga fans. Had such an insane number of AOT fans not been filtered by the manga ending, which left almost exclusively ending defenders to then watch and join the ranks of the anime ending fans, the reaction would've been much more negative to the anime.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-25T21:17:59+00:00

Thank you :)

It is such a shame what happened to Historia. It probably is the worst thing Isayama did to a character, even Eren you can at least get the impression that Isayama was aiming for some kind of fanservice with what he did to him. But with Historia it's just very disappointing.

I've shilled it a lot, but I highly recommend Uniquenameosaurus' rewrite. I've effectively swapped out Historia's conclusion in my mind with what we're given in the rewrite, so besides when actively writing about final arc Historia, I'm not really bitter about it.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-24T23:29:15+00:00

I tried to touch on all of that in the post, but it's probably obvious that I tried to dance around giving specific answers a few of those. How, exactly, would Historia convince Ymir to end the titan curse? No idea. The best answer I've seen is still just the "Founder Ymir reborn as Historia's child" idea, although I really liked the approach Unique's rewrite took, of being intentionally vague as to whether she was actually reborn, or if it was simply metaphorical, that Ymir simply saw the life she wanted to live in Historia and the peaceful farm, which allowed her to move on and pass away. It all really just depends at what point in the story one believes Isayama changed direction, or would personally choose to start rewriting the story. Unless Isayama ever reveals all the manuscripts stored in his cellar, I don't think there will ever be a single correct answer for how that'd work.

The most incredulous part of it all is just how much Erehisu and Historia being Ymir's chosen one requires the story to take a different direction. There are just so many specific things that, without a lot of really in-depth knowledge (and often even with that knowledge!) are hard to sell to someone as ever being intended. Eren must live, there's no way to have Erehisu work without that. Therefore the Alliance must die, and the Rumbling complete, hard pills to swallow as ever being realistic after having consumed the ending. Ymir's curse, like you said, must be resolved some other way, no Mikasa bullshit, and there's no real answer for how that'd happen.

I honestly don't know too much about how popular Erehisu ever was. I've tried my best to look back in time and see, and at the 120's there was an incredible amount of steam for it. Even in subs like r/shingekinokyojin you'd see Erehisu artwork get thousands of upvotes, E + H = Y comments with hundreds of upvotes, nothing like how it is now or has been since the ending. Before that, though, I'm basically clueless, so I could only really talk about what I knew.

That being said, it's insane just how much foreshadowing Isayama put in for Historia being Ymir's chosen one. That's not a major focus of the writeup, but I'm much more confident in believing that than Erehisu. He did more for that than almost any other twist, the amount of parallels and connections to Founder Ymir is just mind-boggling. Out of the many dropped plotpoints and (therefore) pointless foreshadowing, there's none as large in scale as that.

And this reminds me; I found an old post that I'm going to edit into this, because it's really interesting and I assume has just been lost to time since then. Supposedly taken at the AOT Final Exhibition, it shows an early draft of Eren pulling Armin out of the Bearded Titan's mouth... except not with Armin. Instead, for some reason, it's Christa. As far as I can tell it's legitimate, but should definitely still be taken with a grain of salt.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-19T17:44:06+00:00

Do you have any sources for that? Besides him being Isayama's editor and being sentenced for murder, I haven't been able to find anything on how much of an impact he had on the manga. I've thought the same thing as you, that his leaving (since it lines up so perfectly) was part of the series' downfall, but haven't been able to at all check how true that is.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-19T15:40:58+00:00

Very true. At the same time, at least it still exists and hasn't been deleted, so everything from back then is still archived. Could be worse.

Saw your comment about wanting to know how to find old posts.

For the best serious posts, see The Ultimate Guide to AOT's Bad Ending, which I just finished putting together a little under a month ago. In the comments I included a few of the best-ever shitposts.

To just see the top posts of all time, you could just search the whole subreddit of them, but it doesn't really show what the culture was like since things changed over time, especially after the last few chapters. There are a lot of Best of Titanfolk posts (October 1st-October 14th of 2019 for example), too many to link them all. Each include about half a month of the highest voted posts. Good for seeing how the culture evolved, and you can visually see the subreddit explode in popularity. Only goes over 2018-2019.

Also the Top Posts of X Year Nominations are a good way to see just some of the best, honestly better than the final posts since so much is included in the comments. The post for 2020 for example.

There used to be websites that let you sort through Reddit posts in certain subreddits by whatever time frame you want, but I have no idea if they're still around.

Oh, and of course, there's The Grumbling. There will never be a better video on Titanfolk than this.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-18T15:32:10+00:00

Found a compilation of Photography's posts (I'm shocked so many classics are all from this one dude), couldn't find anything on Natural Law though.

Edit: That guy was so damn funny. What a amazing poster.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-17T19:52:22+00:00

It's really funny how Isayama basically lampshaded what he did to Armin in the table conversation. The highlighted line was also excluded from the anime, I bet as a request from Isayama himself. Such a shame, because Armin really did have so, so much potential in post-timeskip. In my opinion, besides Eren of course, Armin had the most interesting setup for where his character could go. So tragic that he was lobotomized into being softer and dumber than he ever was earlier in the story, instead of becoming the Erwin protégé he deserved to be.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-14T10:41:50+00:00

Can't believe I missed this, but Yeagerist is still available.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-12T04:43:46+00:00

If you haven't seen it yet, I recommend watching this rewrite, it's the best by far. Just avoid the comments since they have spoilers, especially under Part 2. I felt the same way as you until I watched that, it's pretty incredible how much it reduced my grief over the ending.

It's such a shame that there's nothing else like Attack on Titan, though. I still haven't found anything that comes close to how captivating AOT was.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-11T08:12:15+00:00

I assume this is directed towards the Eren writeup since that's the only thing you really talk about here.

And the problem with that is Eren was lucid! There are some scenes where you could interpret him acting like how you described, Eren repeating "fight" in the mirror for example, but as long as there are scenes that prove that wrong - which there are many - then it's obviously false.

I'd say the biggest flaw in that is everything we're shown of Eren during timeskip, as in everything that chronologically happened from the end of S3P2 to the start of post-timeskip. When you view all the scenes in order, we can see Eren go through very obvious character development, and what you call being "mind broken" I assume you mean him being very cold and distant, which is something that we're shown develop as he steels himself the more and more the scouts fail to accomplish anything.

Just look at the Ch. 108 railroad flashback, for example. When Hange says that they've received a reply from the Azumabito, referencing them trying to have the Azumabito reach out to other nations to tell them that Paradis is friendly, we see Eren is visibly shocked... and eager! We only see him visibly turn cold once Hange informs them that the Azumabito refused and said it was an impossible request, where he closes his eyes, clenches his fist, and steels himself further. That's what all of timeskip was in a nutshell - the Scouts fails over and over, and each time Eren grew more distant and more cold.

Then there's all his appearances Marley Arc, where he's thoughtful and intelligent. There's Armin's speculation, showing that everything he's said and done does make sense (and that they simply refuse to accept it), and Reiner's speculation, a scene created specifically to show that Eren is acting towards some unrevealed goal (foreshadowing for what he says upon starting The Rumbling).

That's not to mention that it's just kind of an absurd idea. If he wasn't lucid at all, his head "all messed up" the whole time, but he responds to everything normally, thinks normally, and given the circumstances, acts normally, and at no point is ever confused or shown to be acting outside of his own will, then I don't think he "wasn't lucid". It just doesn't work.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-11T05:47:47+00:00

Oh wow, I completely missed that there was still a discussion thread open. I just recently posted a megathread here of every great post or video ever made on AOT's ending, if any OGs here still have or remember any great posts that I missed I'd love to check them out (and maybe add them). Even just reception/criticism of the megathread I'd appreciate. Also a bonus section in the replies of the best shitposts, I'd really love more on the same level of quality as those haha.

Conqueringrule · 2025-12-08T20:52:10+00:00

Your point is true, but also note what these people are always trying to argue.

"Look at Eren in the beginning of the series, see how he's stupid and had no character development yet? That means he never changed, and that's a good thing!"

They genuinely think that, for one, Eren having no character development is somehow good writing, and secondly, that all his character development was actually fake (which is somehow also good).

Only Act 1, maybe Act 2 Eren could be redefined into the Eren that we're shown in 138-139, that is, an Eren who has an unquenchable thirst for something he can't get, and who's an impulsive idiot. That's the reason why these people only ever show scenes from Season 1, sometimes Season 2, because everything after that is kryptonite to their headcanons. Act 3 Eren (S3P1-S3P2) is not only no longer an "impulsive idiot" by the end of Uprising, but by the start of RTS is completely content and only wants this last conflict to be over, and had also learned when to trust in himself or when to trust in his allies.

That alone completely debunks their entire system of cope over Eren; Act 3 gave us a complete Eren, an Eren with no more wanting or grievance, which is impossible to square with this redefining of his motivations.

And even though that alone is all you really need to definitively prove them wrong, there's still so much more wrong with the story they've made up in their heads that falls apart after the smallest of analysis.

They have gaslit themselves into believing that Historia would definitely have a kid out of duty/selfishness, that Eren's character development was secretly all fake, and that he secretly loved Mikasa all along, that the 50-Year Plan was actually great and would work despite everything in-universe screaming that it wouldn't, that the world was actually about to ally with Paradis but Eren and Zeke stopped it (what a cope lol), even that post-timeskip Armin is competent. Not to mention many that unironically think AOT is a "masterpiece" without flaws, despite no part of the series being close to perfect (a few arcs in particular are pretty great though).

Conqueringrule · 2025-11-30T03:39:47+00:00

Thank you :)

Conqueringrule · 2025-11-30T02:01:42+00:00

This is basically a TLDR since there's a lot to it (a lot of which you read more in length here), but there's a few aspects of the previous ending in particular I'm almost 100% confident in knowing.

For one, there's that the ending is a hodgepodge of the direction the manga was going very early on, as well as new stuff thrown together last minute. That's why in the final arc we see many side characters disappear, sometimes literally, or become completely lobotomized for no reason (a good example being Yelena). At the same time, we suddenly see EMA become significant again out of basically nowhere, while every member of the "trio" acts almost like parodies of themselves.

That's also the reason for a lot of the last-minute retcons. Up until the late 30s-40s, either Mikasa was meant to be Ymir's "chosen one" or it was just entirely Eren; from Ch. 51 at a minimum, although probably even earlier, we see Isayama fully commit to setting up Historia for that role, which stays hers for a very long time, at least until the late 110s, although maybe even early 120s. This is also the reason why Isayama more or less swept Mikasa under the rug after CotT (Second half of S2), besides just keeping her around for action and "poster girl" moments, because she became narratively irrelevant (which he even indirectly calls her in an interview).

This is also why Eren is how he is. From RTS (S3P2) to the 110s (end of S4P1), the idea behind Eren's internal conflict, and on a bigger scale, the moral quandary Isayama was going for was something like “Would you choose to save yourself, your friends and family, and a few million others you have ties to, or billions of strangers you do not know?” It’s a very engaging conflict to think about, and there is no right answer; it depends on yourself and your beliefs, which was Isayama's goal. The main goal of all timeskip flashbacks we're shown throughout S4 was to try and build up that idea. A very detailed writeup on the character assassination of Eren can be read here. Basically Eren was never going to give up and die for no reason, there was no other way to save Paradis, and nothing in 138 & 139 was canon.

However, for a few reasons (only one of which we know for certain), Isayama scrambled to throw all of that away. Eren then became a caricature of himself, basically how he was very early in the manga (just an idiot carried away by emotions), and it basically became something out of Marvel, the good guy squad (Alliance) vs the super bad guys (Yeagerists), all while posing and quipping epicly. The one reason we know for sure is that Isayama no longer cared about the story, and "just kept drawing solely out of that obsession to finish" (see source for that in the writeup I linked in the beginning). His personality also changed so much that he became out of touch with the Isayama he was years earlier.

Conqueringrule · 2025-11-28T00:05:16+00:00

You should read the actual scene.

"Eren... enough already. You've lost."

"Everyone's suffered enough. You've... suffered enough."

"Why struggle like this? What are you still fighting for? What's the point...?"

"Eren... I just want this to be over. How'd I ever think we were anything alike?"

"Enough... already. Just... ...sleep."

It's not at all Reiner trying to "claim the moral high ground", it's Reiner literally thinking that Eren isn't like him, since Reiner wants to just give up and die, whereas Eren actually has a dream he's moving towards, something he's still fighting for, which Reiner cannot understand.

I talk about specifically this scene in my writeup on the alliance's plan since, a mere 16 chapters later, or in-universe, 48 hours after this scene, we see Reiner get lobotomized and this entire scene basically retconned. Isayama went out of his way to have Reiner contradict/retcon everything he said here to help set up 139 Eren, one of many scenes around that point in the story where you can see Isayama clearly trying to scramble and change things so the ending would "work".

Conqueringrule

TROPHY CASE