Attack On Titan Didn't Earn Its Ending

so funny enough I plan to do this video a bit of a while back like several months in fact as they say better late than ever but let's not waste much time and get into why I think Attack on Titan didn't really earn its ending oh [Music] [Music] now Attack on Titans ending is possibly one of the biggest controversies anime wise in recent memory when the manga reached its conclusion a few years back many fans were left split down the middle in regards to who liked the ending and who hated it those who thought it was an odd but fitting into the series and others who saw an asho last moment questions unanswered moments that felt unjustified character decisions that seemed out of place in an overall ending that was not earned I personally fall in the ladder which is very painful for me to say since I have been following this series since the anime first came out back in 2013 seeing these cities entire country sides being defended by these massive walls these weird freaky Titans outside the walls that ate people and a cast of characters that seem to have no plot armor to an extent at least it was a it was dark it was violent and overall it was a very awesome series not to mention the addition and discovery of Titan Shifters and that the world outside the walls was not exactly what we expected shaping the series into something else entirely moving from a Survival action mystery to a more political war series with some Titan shifting sprinkled in some were vocal about the changes to the series that it was leaving its roots but I welcomed it seeing this insane mystery unfold As Time progress was actually pretty awesome and the Revelation that Paradis was not exactly a country but rather just an island that doubled as a prison coupled with the fact that there was a lot more going on than what our characters initially expected with a Time skip even seeing Aaron's progression as a character was also riveting to say at least then that final Arc and that ending I not going to go into too much detail for the sake of brevity mostly because this has been discussed ad nauseum now I won't say to those that enjoy the ending that they are dumb or wrong for liking it in fact I actually Envy them and the fact that they can seemingly ignore all the questions that came throughout the series like which of Aaron's choices was of his own free will is Free Will a thing in his series at all is time fixed and if so was everything inevitable and if everything was inevitable then why didn't Aaron see that Paradis will be attacked again Aaron's mother's death and well many others I will playay many of the questions throughout the series that were simply unanswered because I'm not going to list every single one of them because I didn't want to be here all day but this rather just shows how poor the final Arc overall was as well as the ending and how it turned out again there are multitude of issues with the ending itself but one thing that I will focus on isn't just the unanswered questions or some of the character's decisions but rather the very odd route it took to Segway a little author Brandon Saron has a series of lectures on writing and on a side note they're pretty good I highly recommend them to you if you are interested in writing at all they're really spot on gives you a lot of tips and tricks especially since Brandon has been writing for years now and well just one simple Google and you don't really need me to really explain to you why you really need to listen to him to say that he's a good writer is a bit of an understatement and one lecture that I think that completely illustrated my main gripe with the ending is this um so I'll talk you through a few times where I made improper promises caught it because of good beta readers tweaked the story and it ended up working um so when plot is going wrong I think it is usually at least for me not understanding these three things people go into a story um giving you a certain benefit of the doubt if they weren't giving it to you they would not be opening your story they wouldn't pick that book up and read it some of them might be tougher audiences and tougher cells than others but every one of them has opened that book and started reading they are offering you something they're extending their hand to you in return what they are wanting you to do is quickly give them some promises about what type of story this is and why it's going to be enjoyable all right those promises take several forms um and they work in different ways from the very beginning Attack on Titan has always been a story about over coming what seemed to be Humanity going up against a massive and unending threat even as the narrative shifted the overall theme remained the same that despite parad is revealed to be rather small in a grand scale in comparison to the rest of the world our casted characters were not going to give up and lay down our arms they were actually going to get up and fight the Real Enemy that they didn't even realize existed that regardless of the situation or how the odds seemed if they were going to die they were going to make sure their devs made a difference Humanity's capacity to fight and overcome impossible odds despite how Grim things are is a theme that has resonated with Humanity since the dawn of Storytelling a message that has always made its way into some of the best stories ever told fora [Music] but eama didn't stay true to this theme at all instead we have what was our main character Aaron wipe out 80% of humanity and despite his power of foresight this was the only route he could take there was no other way only for years to pass and the world to come back to paradise and wipe it off the map and we see one scavenger walk to the tree where Aaron's head was buried and we see a cycle of violence and hatred start all over again all that pain and sacrifice every single character went through and dealt with meant nothing in the end and if time is in fact fixed this is nothing but a tragedy that will continue time and time again an endless loop this does not fit at all Attack on Titan is in a grim dark story where we see from the get-go the World characters and narratives are very Bleak there is death suffering Carnage and by the end the world would either stay the same or be in a worse state than it was before the big difference between Attack on Titan and a narrative like Joe Amber crom's first law Trilogy is that from the get-go you knew what you were in for the characters you follow are not exactly good people per se some of them do dark things to other people and it's very apparent that the world is a very Bleak place that's the Wonder and irony of grim Dark Fantasy or Grim dark storytelling in fact I've said this multiple times in this channel sand Dan glocka an Inquisitor who works for the kingdom honestly is not that great of a person but ironically enough he gets the best ending out of the rest of our casted characters as well as the fact that he is a fan favorite among many people mostly down to personality and how he's written but this is not exactly the case for Attack on Titan from the first Arc we are shown that Paradis has a shot and is growing capable against impossible odds but to only reach the final Arc and the series overall conclusion that somehow Aron could see all of time past and future but that all meaning Nothing by the end not only feels like a slap in the face but also a betrayal of what the idea of the overall series was ultimately going to be about so let's detour again and talk about a series that did what Attack on Titan's ending tried to do only and accomplished it over 50 years ago [Music] now I will not dig too deep into Dune as a whole but there will be some spoilers for some of the books if you have not read them or if you have not watched the recent film adaptation by vny vouv all right so if you've only watched the recent movie starring Timothy shalam or read the first book you would assume that this is a epic but familiar Heroes Journey type narrative disgrace Prince evil Emperors a evil grandfa that overthrew him took his name away evil cousins approaching Destiny prophecy a one this goes on and on May thy knife chip and shatter May thy knife chip and shatter but there is more to do than just the spice the families and Paul Rising the ranks being the chosen one lisel G the qux hazak the one that would bring water to oracus Dune and as known by the fman I'm pointing the way slow down D the Fan's own religion was not something that was born to inspire hope it was created by the Benny jesire a Sisterhood that controlled and manipulated the houses of the Imperium to their own devices and a means to control and manipulate the people of arakas as they do to everyone else do you not think I also feel the weight of the prophecy it's not a prophecy it's a story that you keep telling but it's not their story it's yours they deserve to be led by one of their own what your people did to this world is heartbreaking we gave them something to hope for that's not hope Dune is in fact more so a warning a deconstruction of the charismatic leader how blind devotion can lead down a dark path many of the world's greatest dictators didn't just have a following outright they swayed them their respect through their words and Charisma this is what author Frank Herbert was thinking when he wrote this series the man has been very outward and how he did not like Kennedy and was very opposed to the circumstances of the Vietnam War Dune is not a story of a hero Rising it's a tragedy born out of human weakness yes by the end of the first book Paul is Emperor his sister ended the baron all is saved and he is now leel G leader and savior of the fman but after we see something else the fan go across Ross the Galaxy and citing what is known as mu's Jihad a holy war that spreads like a flame entire religions ways of life and cultures are wiped out billions suffered and died Paul was able to have the ability of foresight he has access to every memory in the past so he can access the future or at least possibilities the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experence ience a process that cannot be understood by stopping it we must move with the flow of the process we must join it we must flow with it [Music] that straight and narrow path was not a clean one Paul might be powerful he might be possibly the most powerful Menat at that time but he's still human spreading across the universe like fire you scar I can see it tell me please put you here somebody help me please it's coming I see a LLY War spreading across the universe like I'm quenchable fire a warrior religion that waves the tra's banner in my father's name iCal Legions worshiping at The Shrine of my father's St a war in my name everyone shouting my name Paul Paul TR you are your father's son you are my son you are the Juke call traitor you know who you are now what this have to do with Attack on Titan is that Frank Herber knew what his story was going to be he knew what Paul's ultimate Journey was going to lead to Paul wasn't someone who could see the future flawlessly and out of nowhere things go bad it was established early on his foresight was not perfect he saw possible Futures and even then even after receiving the Waters of life he couldn't prevent what was inevitably going to happen iyama on the other hand granted if you hear from some of his interviews he had the ending in mind which I call to question it's possible rather earlier drafts might have had a tragic ending and as the series had gone on he might have altered it so it could fit into the series he had created at that point sure but that doesn't make it any better and just because it was on his mind from the GetGo doesn't automatically make it good in fact it meant that isama needed to look at where his story was going and should have asked himself was this correct does this fit CU it's clear that well it didn't now I will not say what the ending could or should have been because there are so many other channels that have done that already yeah I have come up with a couple of different endings and routes that could have happened but I don't want to balloon this video and if you want to hear my ideas and concepts for my detailed all ending for Attack on Titan Go ahead and let me know in the comments but here I will go over it a bit of what the ending could have been and to be frank the ending itself isn't the only issue but rather the final Arc the questions were left unanswered in the last bad of chapters were only focusing on the threat at hand rather if the pacing was different the questions could have thoroughly been answered or at least a majority of them I highly doubt that you can answer every single question in this series cuz well there're so many but at least the major ones like the Free Will aspect which honestly is not really explored or at least as thoroughly as much as I wished then you could do the rumbling but here not like how it was originally sure you can have Annie come back and have tensions be high our remaining cast of characters that were there in the beginning arcs not trusting her but only work with her out of desperation which creates tension once the final fight happens and Annie is in her Titan form since the characters don't really well trust her all that much and the event will also be changed and also the rumbling should also be altered to an extent at least the death count should be brought down incredibly so thus the 80% would just be brought down to at least a few thousand more realistic and our heroes stopped them before the damage could be done that way you don't have that much of an issue near the end people won't really have a reason to retaliate over Paradis overall and you won't have this massive plot hole in that well to be honest if 80% of the world was actually wiped out and only in a couple years decades even centuries Humanity may not be able to bounce back the way it did as shown in the ending and then he wrote parodies getting bombed a century afterwards which when you consider how damaging the rumbling was should not be [ __ ] possible yeah like uh aot is in a World War II level World world population at that point was 2 billion something like that if 80% of humanity was killed that would be 400 million people consider the fact that the world has left a hellscape a lot of people stared death outside of parody uh they wouldn't have the resources to even like bounce back let alone grow in technology to where they have [ __ ] missile barges it just it was Dumb and it really sucks because I I like to I like aot a lot and I still do I uh I'm thinking of if I ever get back to making actual videos uh doing a video where I rewrite aot if you really think about that there have been multiple studies of what actually happens after massive well cataclysmic events and massive Wars where there will be massive amounts of poverty starvations etc etc again even after the additions still very rust and very messy ending even as you think about it as time progressed but back to my altercation the final Pages could be human finding a new Solace alliances and new friendships were created Paradise is not an enemy to the open world and we can see as the centuries go by and the buildings are being made and Paradise grows ever so onwards from the ruins of the walls our final shot could be the tree That Grew From Aron's head was buried and a bunch of birds are flying to see flowers and well life Aaron is proven wrong in the end and Humanity overcomes his past hatred new life is formed and the future is bright now this is a quick super summary of of my alternate version of the final Arc and its ending and even though I know I didn't fix everything I am well aware of the abundance of issues that came from the final Arc but I know those final tweaks work better than what we had neverita got before I close this out I just want to say that what a real sad thing about this is I still love the series to an extent the best moments were still amazing the action is still on point some of my favorite characters some of my favorite characters throughout the series are still some of my favorite characters period a lot of scenes are well still iconic the soundtrack my God the soundtrack of the series is still some of the best period Attack on Titan earned its popularity that is a fact it by no means is a Bad series but [ __ ] its Legacy won't be the first time we see Aaron Titan shifted or the female Titan destroying a Scouts Zeke's first appearance the time skip it will actually be the final Arc the ending the unanswered questions the fact that the series ends with everything our characters fought and died for meaning nothing all that fight all that struggle all that death all that Carnage all that for nothing all that to start over again that is its Legacy and yeah it's a shame and we shall see as time progresses whether or not this will be another series that will be in the tarp chart still whether this will be on the level of Y youu Haka show or isama or any of the other greats like ful Alchemist or will this just be another forgotten show that most people talked about at one point like Wolf's Rain or blood plus we shall see as time goes I might talk about this series once again in the future who knows when that D will be regardless yeah I hope you guys liked the vid overall and yeah stay chill

Channel: TheLoneWonderer

Views: 138

Keywords: TheLoneWonderer, LoneWonderer, Decent Descent, The Decent Descent Podcast, Attack On Titan, AOT, Attack on Titan Manga, Attack on Titan anime, Attack On titan ending, Dune, Dune part 2

Id: R6pQn8CvW18

Length: 20min 49sec (1249 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2024