#but if we keep getting flashbacks of this birth 3 seasons in a row

[hopeymchope]

So, I'm trying to understand this, from a person who has next to no knowledge on the series. What exactly is going on with Attack on Titan? And I'm more than willing to read a long rant if it means I get an explanation.

If you’re wondering why the tag for the manga blew up in recent weeks, that’s one specific thing - a character “death” (or at least, character-serious-injury) that’s got fans freaking out.

If you’re wondering why everything has been sucking for like two straight years of manga and people like me keep making very salty posts about it, that’s a whole other topic.

And that’s what I’m gonna cover in this rant: How Attack on Titan has been shitting its own bed for more than a year now.

Basic Setup: Attack on Titan takes place in a world where the remnants of humanity live in a walled city. The city’s walls protect them from gigantic, grotesque “Titans” who attempt to devour people on sight.

…but naturally, as the story went on, it got way more complicated.

Most of the problems with the manga began circa the time-skip (which is also where the Anime is going to catch up to once the current season 3 is finished). Rarely has there ever been a time-skip in fiction that’s been wonderfully received, but the four-year gap between “Return to Shanganshima” and the “Marley” arc has to be one of the worst.

But the whole crash-and-burn kind of starts right before the time-skip, when we first learn the name “Marley,” begin to learn the true origin of Titans, and uncover true enemy opposing our heroes via a forced flashback. For the purposes of this little essay, let’s just put all of the Marley-related information into one big collection - I’m not gonna separate the last couple chapters pre-timeskip from all the tons we’ve had afterwards. All things dealing with the aforementioned “enemy” will just go into one big fuckpile.

SO. The time-skip jumped forward fouryears into an arc that lasted almost a year without letting us see any of our established protagonists. Instead, we follow… the enemy I just mentioned.

And since Attack on Titan begins and goes for most of its duration without any clear enemies outside of “TEH TITANS” and “general assholes within the system,” this is where I have to put a spoiler cut.

A Rant on Titan

So the enemy of the characters we know so far is Marley, the actual source of the titans. The world isn’t destroyed at all, naturally. Our heroes just live in one isolated place on the planet, which is forced to be surrounded by Titans because Marley shoved them into that walled city and then created Titans on the regular.

Marley is a nation of………………

…*SIGH*…

okay, look. I could try to call Marley  a “Nazi Germany allegory,” but the allegory is so thin that they’re basically just incredibly overt Nazis. They’re a military-focused nation of incredible genetic pride where purity is celebrated and where one particular race - a group of both different genetic descendancy than them AND of different religious beliefs - are treated as inferior garbage. The Marley government sees “Eldians” as disposable. They are forced to wear armbands with stars on their arms (YES, REALLY) to identify them in public, and they also make them lived in fenced-off, separate communities.

Marley’s science experiments on Eldians (yup, they tossed that in, too) resulted in the creation of the TITANS. It turns the Eldians into mindless prisoners of their own bodies who grow in size, deform, try to eat people instinctively, and long only for their own deaths.

If they made a third AOT video game, it’d have to be something like this. …. So maybe we shouldn’t.

ANYWAY. During this Marley story arc, we mostly follow child soldiers. They’re of “low birth” because of their race. They chose to enter military service in exchange for having their families treated like regular human beings one day, if they earn their way to become titan-shifters. Nevermind that titan-shifters all die within seven years because of the power of turning into a titan - it’s worth it to raise their family’s status beyond just your regular Jews Eldians, right? Nevermind that they’d never really be seen as equals. Even those who have elevated their own rank by becoming shifters are shown to still be subject to some snark and disdain,but yknow - you were just born that way, so you’re shitty regardless, right?

Through this horrific scenario, we follow a few kids in particular - most notably Falco, who is gradually seeing reality and realizing how they don’t deserve to be treated like shit and that this is all a work - and Gabi, who is becoming increasingly militant and more zealous over time.

RELEVANT SIDE NOTE: Gabi’s character design is based upon a sketch Isayama once did of a gender-shfited Eren Jeager (Eren Jaeger is the main protagonist of the series). For that reason, you might be inclined ot think that Gabi is some kind of alternate/parallel Eren.

Except that’s fucking ridiculous, of course!

Gabi is shown to only care about her own rage against the people within the walls of “Paradis” (the sarcastic name for the walled city where all of our heroes come from) above ALL else. She doesn’t care about her family at all, never noticing her brother’s suicidal tendencies and pain even as Falco is acutely aware of it. The fact that her parents are pained by her following her brother’s dark path to becoming a shifter. She doesn’t notice or care. The more evidence that is put in front of her that the other side might not be as evil as she thinks? That just makes her want to commit murder MORE.

Oh, and she DOES murder people. And try to murder more. A lot. She even successfully murders a fan-favorite character - a character who shows her mercy by pointing a gun at her, seeing she’s only a child, and opting to let her live. Gabi repays this mercy by shooting that character in the back later and boasting excitedly about it to anyone who will listen for multiple chapters in a row.

She then tries to top that by attempting to murder that character’s little adopted sister, who is like, maybe 10 years old, tops? Gabi is then protected from harm by Mikasa and now seems to be on the path towards some kind of “redemption arc” because… uh…………..

………………..because Isayama is shitty?

By contrast, Eren struggles throughout the ENTIRE NARRATIVE to bring harm to people who betray him/those he cares about or those who try to kill him/those he cares about, but often runs into incredible challenges when fighting these douchenozzles. The entire time we followed Eren up until now, he always prioritized his family and friends above EVERYTHING. He would risk ANYTHING to protect them and his comrades in the Paradis military… this was true from when he was a young boy at the start of the story up through him being a young man at this point. And he is ESPECIALLY intense about protecting his closest friends, Armin and Mikasa, who he’s known for nearly his entire life. They grew up together.

That’s set in fucking stone for like 90 chapters, so we’re good. Yeah?

Oh, sweet summer child. Perhaps you were so unprepared for Isayama’s Nazi mallet that you didn’t see his secondary weapon coming?

See, the post-timeskip Eren treats his friends like shit. He lies to them, betrays their trust, runs off and starts a literal war on his OWN, and then tells them how much he hates them. Claims he always hated them.

So in the course of just a couple chapters, he goes from saying this:

To swiftly saying THIS:

Note that devastated look in her eyes. Wonderful.

And yes, he’s GOT to be lying, because I don’t think Isayama would juxtapose those two scenes so closely together in some unwitting fashion. But he’s doing so much damage to them by now that I honestly don’t even know if it matters?

Take Hange.

She’s the intelligent leader of the team, the one who always has a wild, unlikely plan. She’s a science whiz and comes up with longshot plans that always seem to weirdly… work out.

We’re told that, three years ago, she was presented a plan to overthrow Marley by Zeke - a fucking bastard who is clearly a member of the enemy, he’s lived with them his whole life, as a child he betrayed his parents to them and had them executed for being disloyal to Marley, and he’s killed COUNTLESS comrades of our heroes - and Hange decided Zeke’s plan was the only possible option and came up with no alternatives for four years. So she made them ally up with the least trustworthy person IMAGINABLE for a terrible plan,b because Hange’s… a stupid sucker now, I guess.

And why is it a terrible plan — aside from the fact that there is literally zero reason to ever believe anything Zeke says to you, since he’s the most evil fucker in the world? Oh, because it hinges HEAVILY around forcing another member of the team — Historia — into a pregnancy to churn out a baby they intend to use for the country’s gain.

Historia’s big character arc in “Attack on Titan” has been her coming to terms with her own identity and OWNING it. She’s been hiding under another identity or been controlled by other people much of her life. She finally comes out under her true name, declares that she’ll never leave in fear or be maniuplated ever again, and then—

… oh wait.. she’s manipulated into being barefoot and pregnant against her own wishes, because their greatest enemy asked for it.

There’s a lot to hate about the post-”Return to Shinganshima” Attack on Titan, in short. From characters becoming inversions of themselves to full fanatical Nazis being treated like redemption babies to complete destruction of self-actualization of other characters and the fact that, even if this is part of some larger plan being manipulated by multiple players (which seems likely), it still won’t really make up for much of the damage… and for that matter, how plausible would it even be?

But basically, there’s going to have to be quite an 11th-hour ass-pull to make this turn out decently in my eyes by now. And that’s not IMPOSSIBLE.

But it’s looking pretty unlikely.

#anti-gabi braun #attack on titan negativity #shingeki no kyojin negativity #snk negativity #aot negativity #aot spoilers #snk spoilers #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin

[ragnarssons]

Well season finales usually have some emotional moments but I don't know... maybe that line was taken from a hallucination? and then they deadass added it to bait. It would be a dirty move even for them but we'll see.

I don’t know because as some people stated, the line isn’t an accusation against Clarke. It’s more… confusion. It’s as much showing how she cares about him (calling him every day for 2199 days) and how much he feels she doesn’t (leaving him to die in the pits). For example the Blodreina projection was accusing Clarke of “giving up” on Octavia (and Bellamy) totally. It was not something that seemed conflicted about Clarke’s actions and feelings, it was full on something accusing her and hating her. All of Clarke’s thoughts, guilt and self-hatred coming from the mouth of someone she thinks hates her. I mean, we complain about a Bellarke talk missing so far, but I’d also say a Clarke/Octavia talk has been missing ever since ep11. They’ve just reunited after the whole Blodreina vs Wanheda thing, and it needed a convo to deal with it and… kinda bury the hatchet. The fact that it didn’t happen make their relationship lack of something. The point of showing Octavia in Clarke’s mindspace was to highlight her guilt regarding Octavia. But… then they didn’t address it when new!Octavia and Clarke came face to face? *sigh*I mean, are we supposed to be surprised? This show is always alwayyyys about the plot before the characters. It’s plot driven (and I hate it because so many times the characters would need to talk about things, but they don’t!). That’s why I do believe Bellarke will happen, because they’re the characters/relationship that consistently EXISTS with the plot. It is the relationship that evolves and breathes with the story as it goes- as Jroth said, “the spine” of the show. The season where all of this lacked was s5 and yet again, you could argue that it existed, just not in the way we wanted it to exist. And maybe it was natural for Clarke and Bellamy not to work in sync after six years of being apart- the problem is that it would have been more obvious/more understandable if the timejump had been more significant (again, FLASHBACKS, they coulda stole the Arrow formula and gave us glimpses of the past six years during the entire season). I will forever say that, given what they did with it, the end of s4/the time jump and s5 didn’t need to exist. You could erase them of the show, it wouldn’t change a thing. S5 didn’t move anything forward, it wasn’t new, it wasn’t original. Even the Eligius crew that could have changed the dynamic of the group today well… it didn’t, because Diyoza wasn’t part of the group during the season and now she’s dead apparently and we have no explanation and no real “justification” for that either (hence why people think she’ll come back and she’d better otherwise it would be a shitty end to an awesome character tbh). And Shaw died too. So, Eligius didn’t change shit, all the serial killers are in cryo and god knows when they’ll talk about this elephant in the room, ya kno. I think I lost myself. But to me s6 just confirmed how unnecessary and useless s5 was. If I were Jroth I woulda put everyone on a spaceship at the end of s4 and made them leave Earth at that moment. And then maybe have Monty and Harper sacrifice themselves to give birth to Jordan and help the ship go to Eligius. It’s like Jroth found an awesome - better than the 6 years time jump - idea (a new planet), one year too late, so he re-made the whole space thing just to put it in his show, like lmao. Anyway, back to Bellarke-There is a formula with them too. S6 was kinda different because they weren’t physically separated and we did see the lengths Bellamy was willing to go to save Clarke. But again, I have to agree with everyone saying that it was not enough. For all we know, Clarke could HEAR what Bellamy was doing/sharing with Josephine during ep9 and 10. So huh, why wasn’t this addressed? I get the “oh but they have to survive first!” thing, but-… that’s how you pull a cheap trick to delay something that is glaringly obvious. You don’t make Bellamy BEG for Clarke to survive, say he NEEDS her and that he’s NOT gonna let her go, and just be like “oh well they’ll talk about this once they saved their friends”. It’s the same bullshit they’ve been pulling since s4. Like okay before that, the delay was natural. She was with Finn, they were separated by MW, then they reunited but Clarke had just lost Finn and felt too guilty to “settle”. Then there was Lxa and Clarke’s grief. But-… even at the end of s4 it didn’t make sense to address what was already HUGE (excuse me, the List???). But then they separated them for 6 years. And s5 Bellarke had their issues that they didn’t talk about until 6x01 (and idk if anyone thinks this is over, because it SHOULDN’T). How is that normal? Years in the making things (Clarke calling Bellamy every day - EVERY; DAY - for six years) that weren’t addressed because “oh but the plot!” (and a shitty plot on top of that, s5 really sucked tbh). Thing is, if they ever address it, it’ll mend Bellarke so much that there is no escape to canon. So they FORCE them not to address it. And sometimes it’s so obvious that it’s embarrassing. Bellamy not addressing the fact that he put the Flame in Madi’s head? Not natural. Bellamy not responding to Clarke’s apologies on 6x04? Not natural. Bellarke not talking about how Clarke felt when SOMEONE at least was fighting for her when she, herself, in her own mindspace, was so sure that everyone had given up on her? Not natural. I mean, there are a lot of stuff that aren’t addressed as a whole. “For Monty” and all is nice, but the fact that Spa/cekru never explicitely talked about losing TWO members of their “family” is what makes this dynamic even LESS believable. The fact that Abby didn’t notice that her daughter was dead and that her reaction was not explored until right before her death is very telling too. And will Clarke even be ALLOWED to grieve for her mother? Her LAST parent, who got snatched by the same people who tried to kill HER and are torturing her daughter? Every time I think it gets better, it doesn’t, because ultimately, the plot ALWAYS takes over. They keep making Bellarke’s actions for each other more and more significant. But they never make the characters talk about it properly, so it’s just stalling at this point. Just like Bleggo and how INCONSISTENT it is (helloooo same than Bellarke, will they EVER address the lies that lie as a foundation of this relationship???? How DIFFERENT their philosophies are? Why put it in the show if you’re not gonna address it ffs??) is lazy stalling too. “Oh but look Bellamy has a girlfriend even tho we haven’t given them any scene together since ep4!!!” UGH. It’s just ridiculous, I’m gonna be honest, it’s frustrating how it’s handled. I love Bellarke when it’s intense, but the way the writers constantly drop the ball when it gets just THERE, is too obvious.  And it’s so lazily done. And it’s just to have the show going. And I mean, even if Bellarke is meant to be an ENDGAME couple, at some point, it won’t even make sense if that happens, because HOW LONG can they circle around this until it doesn’t mean anything anymore? How long can they do that until it’s just a tired receipe that won’t work at all anymore? It’s been three seasons already, three seasons of back and forth. To me, yeah, it really started going to this “exclusive Bellarke” place from s4 and going, and it’s already a lot. When I say I NEED BELLARKE TO TALK, it’s not “yeh you called me for six years every day let’s just joke about it lel”, it’s TALK. But as I said at the end of s5, talking would mean canon. There is no way around it. If Bellarke were to explore everything they do for each other and WHY, they’d be canon in the same breath. So the writers force them apart, over and over again. We’ll see in the finale, really. I can’t fathom a finale where the two leads don’t interact. And really, if they pull some space separation bullshit again at the end of the season, I might really drop the show. Because 1) it would be three seasons in a row where they do this and… no 2) it would be LAZY like they don’t have other ideas?? 3) I hate it. To me it’s contrary to the idea of the show. They’re NOT supposed to go to space, they’re supposed to find a place on the ground to settle. I was already super mad at the end of s4 where it happened. I was ANGRY that they left Earth at the end of s5. If they do it again with Sanctum/Alpha I might just-… what would be the point of the show anymore, huh? I really hope this quote “you called me every day” and all, was NOT added as bait. Because they’ve never done this and it would be really, a dirty move. They KNOW the radio calls talk (+ left to die in the fighting pits, coming from Bellamy) are two IMMENSELY important talks Bellamy and Clarke need to have. If they just teased it to bait us, then yes, it’s more than dirty, it’s shitty and I don’t want to relay on/trust the kind of people who would do that.

#this got long and ranty #the 100 wank #answered #anonymous