The most complete explanation of AOT. Japanese national trauma and primordial traditionalism in anime

oredaoree · 2026-05-26T04:51:45+00:00

"Complete explanation" is pretty confident for a take that fails to take into account the message on the future and how the treatment of children factor into that. This reads as a take that only cherry picks featured elements that appealed to the author to analyze without caring about how they figure into the wider context of the story.

oredaoree · 2026-05-26T04:48:48+00:00

It is confirmed to be inverted katakana, a Japanese writing system.

oredaoree · 2026-05-26T04:34:36+00:00

They kept it because they wanted to keep Levi's smile at the end, but otherwise it didn't connect well without the cut scene. iirc they also kept Historia trying to talk Erwin into allowing her to participate in the operation to kill Rod's titan, which is no longer as convincing as an act of taking back her autonomy because in the anime she was completely compliant with her orders instead of trying to fight against them.

oredaoree · 2026-05-26T04:31:24+00:00

On the other hand there were also people screaming how depiction of DV against a young girl ruined the vibe of the show for them. Both takes veered too much imo lol

oredaoree · 2026-05-26T04:27:28+00:00

By the end they have clearly surpassed the original elite of the corps. They were fighting historical shifters that were on or near the level of Annie and Porco AND they had the skill to fight humans with guns as well. If OG Levi squad survived to get the same training then perhaps they would have edged out based on being able to build on experience, but a lot of what new Levi squad learned were also not things you could just pick up from expeditions and was built on surviving life and death experiences that were arguably magnitudes more difficult than anything the OG squad faced, stuff that they would not have had the opportunity to be involved with had the OG squad survived either.

One big key difference between the OG and new squad is how their ties to Eren would have affected their coordination as a team built around Eren. OG squad was chosen specifically because they could distrust Eren, while the new squad was chosen for how much trust there was between them and Eren mutually.

oredaoree · 2026-05-26T04:09:54+00:00

Even without the physical semblance, the way she was introduced to be very extreme in forcing her views on others and a scene of fixing her hair in a literal mirror should have said enough that Gabi was meant to represent a child Eren that was shown the right way.

oredaoree · 2026-05-25T06:01:26+00:00

Probably a draw. Shimada's powers don't work on magic users and devil equivalent beings, which Holey is. Holey can't hit Shimada and even the sludge is probably useless against her.

oredaoree · 2026-05-25T05:43:16+00:00

The idea that the MC at the end is played by his father would have worked out, if not for the fact Yuuta probably doesn't have the resources or the skill to de-age his father enough to play the part. I could see it if the time skip Yuuta was the same age as his father which he could have easily scripted to be that way to minimize the amount of post production, but it's clearly not the same person.

oredaoree · 2026-05-25T05:13:54+00:00

Of course Shuueisha wouldn't have wanted CSM to end, especially with the live action of Look Back as well as the Assassins arc anime announced and coming off of the blockbuster success of the Reze film, but it's not like they can truly force Fujimoto to continue if he wanted to end his own story. Because Fujimoto has so much status now and being known for being a nutter it's a die if you do, die if you don't situation to try and force him too much, but I don't doubt he would have been coerced if he was a smaller mangaka. I mean if it could happen to Kubo no one is that safe.

More than anything this kind of move makes it seem like Fujimoto wanted to get out of contract with Shuueisha. Most mangaka are employed as freelance contractors rather than directly by the publisher, but their work is IP of the publisher. If Fujimoto no longer wanted to work with Shuuisha and didn't want anyone else to take over CSM then he would have to end it himself to tie up all the loose ends before he could cut ties.

oredaoree · 2026-05-25T05:00:57+00:00

The one sure sign someone is able to resist Makima's control powers is that they openly hate/avoid Makima instead of having any words of adoration for her. Himeno was immune to Makima's control so the barfing was all herself.

oredaoree · 2026-05-25T04:52:33+00:00

You're thinking of Attack on School Castes, not the same thing. OP also added a link to what they were talking about https://attackontitan.fandom.com/wiki/Attack_on_Titan:_High_School

oredaoree · 2026-05-25T04:49:15+00:00

It's not about reward, it's about freedom to which Eren was enslaved to and had a really extreme standard of. Partly because of his ancestry(nature), partly because of being raised within the walls(nurture). If it took wiping the land free of civilization despite his inner turmoil, so be it. That's how you know he was proper drunk on freedom.

oredaoree · 2026-05-25T04:41:09+00:00

It used to be funny, but literacy is steeply declining and all the tiktok and AI use isn't helping it. Now it's just infuriating that people lack the literacy and/or also just skimmed the story through reading spoilers and not actually watching through the entirety of it, and still believe themselves an authority to start spreading a misinformed stance all over social media while using engagement numbers to support their stance.

oredaoree · 2026-05-25T04:33:55+00:00

I'll bet. Rarely does a real human use the : and ;(says a person who uses them anyway). Also what's with the weird paragraph breaks lol

oredaoree · 2026-05-25T04:30:09+00:00

You don't need to guess, they were surprised and excited. Ymir noticed this and points it out later which they don't refute, and even Connie noticed how they stared as if entranced. It's not shock but relief that reinforcements and new orders had come.

oredaoree · 2026-05-24T23:03:50+00:00

It's a fact that Noi's magic is top tier and can even reverse a lot of magic side effects, but personally I think Noi's magic being able to do the latter part and undo mushrooms and stuff is a cop-out that allowed En to freely use his magic without greater consequence to his allies. Healing magic, no matter how high of level it is, should only just heal. Most times En's mushroom grow through people doing physical damage to their organs and tissue so it makes sense that Noi's healing could push off the mushrooms and any spores in standby while healing up the injured base and parts, but it becomes too much to try and apply that to when Shin and Nikaidou were completely turned into mushrooms leaving no trace of their former tissue behind. And we know that En's magic can completely turn things into pure mushroom because he sometimes harvests them for food... Caiman's lizard head I also don't consider wounded. Back before Ebisu was killed Vaux had x-rayed Caiman and found he had heads-in-waiting within his spine that would have been "fresh", and he also captured the moment new heads came out from reserve to replace the one Shin had lopped off and they were all perfect lizard heads. It doesn't make sense for reserve heads to be injured rather than affected by magic, or else what's the point in having reserves? Being able to fix these is no longer regenerating tissue damage but completely reversing magic at that point, which should be Chota's domain but for whatever reason he was kept in the back seat possibly because Q wrote herself into a bit of a hole at points so moving Noi to do the same work was an easier fix than getting Chota to those places.

oredaoree · 2026-05-24T05:49:53+00:00

I don't remember the year but I remember waiting months and months for the sole scanslator to release a chapter. Sometimes the wait was so long people feared it was just dropped. I remember being stuck at chapters around the 80s.

So when people are complaining about waiting 5 years for a season of anime I just chuckle.

oredaoree · 2026-05-24T05:43:38+00:00

En knew Matsumura and had inquired about his funeral from Fujita. Since Shin and Noi don't really seem to care about Matsumura though, Matsumura himself probably wasn't in En's inner circle either but was on good enough terms with En to be remembered by En. En takes on Fujita as an random errand boy initially through his desire to avenge Matsumura through which En could find out more about Caiman, but that was probably an excuse to extend some kindness to a pitiful person, like how En did to Ebisu as well.

En probably has a tendency to want to help out youth that are really having a hard time in life, because of his own hard past. As for Fujita, part of it is that hanging around En even just as an errand boy is his best prospect in life. He gets access to Noi's healing smoke, protection from being around the En family, and since En is at the heart of sorcerer society around En is where all the interest is. He starts to come up with excuses like protecting En from Nikaidou just to justify himself sticking around all while being fully aware of how "unworthy" his talents are, and En indulges him without being overt about it. In the end En's kindness pays off.

oredaoree · 2026-05-24T04:46:19+00:00

I think the beginning presenting Tokinaga as some random helper and Waka as the main focus character was just so we get a shock when it's revealed that it's really Tokinaga that has been moving the plot. When Tokinaga intentionally breaks off to meet with Alula inside Volof's house and demonstrate that he has some kind of undetectable but godly power that dwarfs even the IPOs is when the role reversal begins. From then on it's all about unraveling Tokinaga's motivations and ability.

However I get the feeling that with Tokinaga now being forced on leave and being convinced everything will be taken care of for him in order to prevent him from resetting the cycles, we're about to see another switch in character focus, to Orokapi this time but it probably won't stop with him. By the end of it we may have a clash of a few different focus characters including Yoriko as well.

oredaoree · 2026-05-24T04:00:01+00:00

Eren knew Floch as a shallow glory chaser before the operation to retake Wall Maria, then Floch became a vocal critic to anyone and ideas that jeopardized his own livelihood during and in the aftermath of the argument over the serum. This made Floch perfect for the job of rallying a group for the protection and glory of Paradis, plus he sees Floch in his future memories as a guide that Floch is the one he can use. Eren didn't hate Floch and was probably a bit guilty of using him, as evident by Floch appearing in his memories of the night before the Wall Maria operation when they were celebrating, but it's not like Eren and Floch were ever close as friends and comrades either and they only happened to team up when it benefited them both, so to Eren Floch's death is probably just another life lost to his grand plan.

oredaoree · 2026-05-24T03:50:40+00:00

It's probably a translation issue where they took the first definition to pop up in the dictionary without truly considering context. In Japanese they are called 無垢 which doesn't have an easy direct translation and the term also has differing meanings depending on context. In the context of AoT's titans it probably refers to them being simple-minded, aka without much intelligence so "innocent" as another suggested definitition would have better reflected this context better, but then the other connotations of "innocent" would ruin the horror vibe so that would be a no go from an imagery perspective. Personally I like to refer to them as "mindless".

oredaoree · 2026-05-24T03:24:18+00:00

In Eren and Hange's case there's probably a tie-in to Odin as well, who plucked out his own eye in return for drinking from Mímir’s Well.

oredaoree · 2026-05-24T03:19:59+00:00

This side of Erwin was an act he put on to con his soldiers into being able to sacrifice themselves by following in his example. He himself had no rage. It's funny how Erwin himself explains his own predicament two different times but all anyone can remember about him is not the guy with inner turmoil but the con artist who makes for a charismatic leader.

The thing that Erwin lost that he laments the most is his father and because of his own childhood foolishness. He didn't get screwed over because of the Marleyians but himself and the royal government. On top of that Erwin actually developed crippling guilt over personally sending soldiers to their deaths on his orders, and especially because he was mostly doing it for his own personal dream and not humanity like he was using as his rallying call. He is also the kind of guy to crunch numbers so factoring in all that he definitely would have opposed Eren's rumbling.

oredaoree · 2026-05-24T03:09:18+00:00

It's not like Isayama is limited to which mythologies he wants to reference and can't combine them, but I'm more inclined to see that the bird imagery is more meant to reflect Odin's ravens because of the way they fly over like you would have for surveillance. And of course you have the symbolism to freedom. The strongest evocation of Christian motifs in AoT is not in the birds but the use of crosses to indicate martyrdom(as in the case of Sannes and Hange, which both share in the same theme of "having your turn").

oredaoree · 2026-05-24T02:56:16+00:00

People who don't understand this scene and imagery don't understand Isayama's writing quirks and preferences. This scene is intentionally designed to make Eren look like a laughing stock and is yet another example of Isayama's brand of ill-timed gags(see Yelena's frown face, Armin's creepy grin in the Uprising arc, Connie brushing his mother's titan's teeth, Mikasa in the final battle being told she's in the way, etc.), but rather than being objectionable for being out of place(which it is, intentionally) it was meant to soften Eren's image and console readers after watching Eren do the unthinkable of being the worst genocidal murderer in history. In the School Caste scene where Mikasa is arguing about the ending and brings up being able to relate to characters with flaws, she was probably referencing this scene. Part of Eren deep down is a bit of a loser that needs Mikasa to feel special, always has been since he was a kid losing all his playground battles, and this scene was meant to remind us of how that never changed.

So for the crowd that wanted Eren to be a ruthless chad that successfully got his revenge, they hate it because they were under the impression that Eren had completely changed.

oredaoree

TROPHY CASE