After ten years of enjoying this epic anime, it’s finally over. Attack on Titan has reached its conclusion. Between season 4 part 2 and the last two hour-long specials, I broke down and read the manga. So, I already knew how this anime would end. Nevertheless, watching it was an amazing experience to me. I laughed, cried, and cheered. I will always treasure this anime.

Think of this article as an episode review/response that’s a bit longer than usual. There’s a lot to respond to and discuss, so I won’t waste time on a recap of events. I’ve tried to organize my thoughts into a few different sections. Now I’ll stop the preamble and get started with the real content.

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1) The Animalistic Forms of the Titans

One of the most famous twists in the last few manga chapters was Falco’s return as a flying titan. Under his control plus borrowed inspiration from the Beast Titan, the Jaw Titan can become a creature capable of flight. The design of it was strange, but that’s standard for Attack on Titan. It looks no weirder to me than the Cart Titan. In a way, I think it’s actually a little bit pretty – for a giant bird monster.

I like the way the anime special showed Falco rescuing Mikasa and the others. That being said, I’m not a fan of using very cheap 3D CG for any of the titans, including the bird. (The visuals as a whole are undeniably inferior ever since the studio switch to Mappa. But what can you do?) Falco is a great kid, and birds have always been his “thing.” It’s fitting that he be the one to fly.

Falco is not the only titan that’s ever been capable of assuming unusual forms. Many titans throughout the last 2000 years have been able to model their forms around beasts or dinosaurs. One of the weirdest examples is the titan who captures Armin and tries to suffocate him. As Annie pointed out, it looks like an okapi. I happen to know what that is, but it’s an obscure species, so it felt really random. It was also funny to see Mikasa trying to describe it and being at a complete loss for words.

The ability of some titan shifters to take on creative forms with animal features is amazing. I’m not exactly sure of the mechanism, though I understood it in theory at one point in the past. While we’re on the subject of titans, it was really great to see Bert, Ymir, and the others who died coming to help the fight against Eren. Super cool.

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2) Reflections on Mikasa

As one of the three main characters, Mikasa has always been crucial to the story of Attack on Titan. We all knew that she was important, but I don’t think most of realized that she would be so key to saving the world – and freeing the spirit of Ymir the Founder. I have a few different Mikasa scenes and topics to write about, but I want to start with this one: why was the Founder always watching Mikasa? Why did she chose Mikasa as the one to end the power of the titans?

I have a good theory that answers these questions. Long story short, Ymir saw Mikasa as someone very similar to herself, but with one key difference: Mikasa could take that last decisive step to move away from an unhealthy love. As you may recall, Ymir loved King Fritz even though he was a cruel tyrant and a terrible person. Why she loved him is a mystery, but it’s not that different from how Mikasa loves Eren.

Mikasa would never admit that Eren was comparable to Fritz, but in reality, he was infinitely worse. Eren destroyed the world. Yet Mikasa still loved him fiercely. That’s why Ymir took such an interest in her. The Founder could never separate herself from the powerful enslavement of love. She died taking a spear for Fritz, and then continued to serve him in the Eldian afterlife. Mikasa was able to do what Ymir could not. She killed Eren: the tyrant she loved.

It’s still strange to me that early on in the series, I didn’t understand Mikasa’s feelings. I’m an idiot, like Eren. Mikasa’s affection and dedication to Eren has always been romantic in nature. But with her verbal denial and insistence that she only saw him as family, it was hard for me to tell. Mikasa’s act of kissing Eren as she beheaded him was the ultimate proof of her feelings. She loved him “in that way,” and always did.

It was both painful and fascinating to see Mikasa’s intense psychological struggle leading up to killing Eren. Despite being such a strong fighter, she can be so raw and vulnerable in an emotional sense. I thought it was interesting when Mikasa dissociated into a fantasy in her head during the battle. In that world, the rumbling never happened. She and Eren ran away together, living as a couple until Eren finally perished from the titan curse. This fantasy was Mikasa’s ideal world.

At the end of the day, this brave soldier persevered and followed through with killing Eren. It’s probably going to be extremely hard for her to experience love again after so many intense and traumatic experiences. Eren said he wanted Mikasa to find happiness, but his joking comment about how she should pine after him for ten years first was, uh, not very funny. Mikasa will actually be like that. I guess all we can do is hope for her recovery.

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3) Armin, My Beloved!

All three of the main characters are special to me in different ways, but if I had to pick one favorite, it would probably be Armin. He had many good scenes in this final episode that I want to comment on. First there was the scene where he is trapped in the titan’s mouth, being suffocated. We see Armin having an out-of-body experience, leaning over his own still body and begging it to move. He even screams at it, saying it’s useless and always lets him down. You can tell he hates himself.

That part was powerful because it shows Armin still has his own psychological struggles to deal with. He grew up believing he was worthless, and he always felt useless. Even after becoming a soldier in the Survey Corps, he went into shock in his first battle and watched as titans ate everyone else in his squad. Armin’s belief in his inferiority is strong and could take many years to undo. I understand because I believe the same thing about myself.

Being trapped was difficult for Armin, but as usual, he showed extraordinary resilience and resourcefulness as he resolved the situation. Armin used his half-consciousness state to his advantage and connected to the Paths, the sandy plains where all Eldians are bound together through life and death. Here, Armin called on the spirits of fallen titans who were allies – people like Bertholdt, Ymir, and Galliard. They answered the call and joined the fight, helping to free Armin’s body.

While he was at the Paths, Armin also spoke with Zeke. I think it was this conversation that made Zeke decide to show himself to Levi and essentially allow himself to be killed for the greater good. I ended up liking Zeke more than expected during the final season, so I appreciated Armin’s efforts to give him a new perspective. The discussion was extremely interesting, but to put everything in a nutshell, it was about how existentialism versus nihilism, or the objective meaninglessness of life versus its subjective value.

Zeke says the only point in life is to multiply, and that there’s nothing wrong in wanting to be free from a life that feels so devoid of purpose. Armin argues that life can be fulfilling regardless of whether it is objectively productive or purposeful. When he looks at the sand, Armin sees a leaf from his favorite tree back home. But when Zeke looks at it, he sees the baseball he used to play catch with as a kid. The leaf/baseball is a representation of how everyone can find their own personal meaning in life.

The last thing I’ll mention about Armin is that I loved his talk with Eren toward the end. The talk actually happened some time earlier, but Eren temporarily erased Armin’s memories of it. He only remembered it after Eren was defeated. The two best friends had a real heart-to-heart for the first time in a long time. Eren also showed Armin volcanoes, which he had always wanted to see. They talked about Mikasa, the rumbling, and more.

During this talk, Armin said something interesting and mildly surprising: that he could absolutely understand the desire to erase certain people from existence. Sometimes, Armin seems totally innocent, without any dark thoughts. This moment reminded us otherwise. However, Armin is still a much better person than Eren. The people he wanted to erase were probably a handful of bullies and abusers. Eren, on the other hand, created a bloodbath while having nothing against the millions he slaughtered.

Armin still loved Eren even after he started the rumbling. He tried so many times to change Eren’s mind. And regardless of how relatively blameless Armin is compared to Eren, his true desire is to share the burden with his friend. That’s just how amazing of a friend he is toward those he loves. When Armin swore to be with Eren forever in Hell, I nearly cried. Then, when the two men embraced, I actually did cry. It’s impossible to talk about Armin without mentioning his attachment to Eren.

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4) Eren’s Explanation

While talking with Armin, Eren explained why he started the rumbling and why he felt like it was the only choice. He also provided answers to a few other questions, like why he was so cruel to Mikasa and Armin last time the three of them were together. There’s enough content here to write an entire blog post about Eren and the reasons he made his choices. I will eventually write that article, but I’m not going to get into much now.

That being said, I still want to point out something I loved. I didn’t remember it in the manga, so either my memory is crappy, or this little exchange was written just for the anime. Armin demands to know if Eren really thought he was doing all this for the sake of his friends. Eren stays silent for just a moment before saying, “I wanted to level everything. I wanted to see this sight.” He makes this statement while staring at the sea of blood that represents his massacre.

This might sound odd, but I think that was a beautiful moment. It was Eren’s first and only true admission of his lifelong lust for carnage. It must have been freeing for him to finally admit it. Speaking of freedom, it was also fascinating to hear Eren say, “I am a slave to freedom.” Again, unpacking those words is more than I want to commit to right now, but I will eventually write a thorough post about everything Eren says here.

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5) Closing Thoughts

There are so many other cool things in this episode, but I don’t have the patience in me to comment on all of them. So, to close this article, I just want to say that I loved the ending credits of this final episode. The visuals told the story of the seemingly immortal tree under which Eren’s head was buried.

The tree stood and grew throughout many civilizations. It even survived a rain of missiles from the sky. Many years later, the ruins of the nuked city were overgrown with greenery. The tree was still alive. A young traveler and his dog approach the ancient tree. There is now an entrance into a hollow inside it. The tree now looks just like the one that Ymir ran into when she found the titan powers. As the boy and his dog walk toward the opening, the scene fades.

In my opinion, this is the perfect ending. Despite looking so beautiful, it is a truly chilling conclusion. It implies that the power of titans is not dead, but only hibernating. At the place where Eren’s head was buried, the lifeform responsible for titans took root. Then it stayed in the dark for centuries – perhaps millennia – waiting for the next intelligent creature to enter the tree.

I love this ending because it shows perfectly how the cycle of violence will never truly end as long as humans still exist. That may be a dark conclusion, but I cannot disagree with it. The important thing to remember is what Mikasa always said. “This world is cruel … and also very beautiful.” And that was the end of Attack on Titan.

Thanks for reading~

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PATREON