Review of Attack on Titan: Final Season - The Final Chapters
This will go over the last arc of the show. What did people expect, really? Too many expectations from season 1 of the show, over a decade ago chain the admittedly--not the greatest finale--but a suitable one. First off is the character development. Everyone is divided on "uh oh, people join avengers alliance for no reason." Well, what did you want the story to happen? Spend hundreds of chapters going through the monologue of every character, main and side? The fact that the story focuses on third person narration and minimal monologue tells you the direction that it's trying to go. Figure it out yourselves! It's notlike a character has an entirely predictable personality. People saying that "this character contradicts itself because they did THIS," and "this character did that, wtf such a big personality shift." Let's be honest here, characters like Connie, Jean, Mikasa and the rest of the crew could have had many different branching paths that they could feasibly have taken. The ones taken in this movie are believable. I choose to respect the author's writing, and that in the end, his finale never really contradicted any character. All the characters suffer mental turmoil when making hard choices, but who is to say that it was the right choice?
*spoilers onward from here:
The ending is fitting. We see an alternate reality where Eren gives up his role as a massacre machine for humanity and lives out the rest of his short four years with Mikasa. Is that really a good ending? In my opinion, the fact that he goes with the best outcome that he thought possible with the different futures that he was shown makes sense.
Why did Eren massacre in the first place? Well, because, in his own words, "an idiot." He wanted to level everything to the ground. The only outcome that was even remotely favorable was the ending that he chose. As Historia notes, this isn't the best outcome, and it certainly isn't a world that Eren would have wanted to entrust his friends with. However, with all of the possible choices, Eren's included, this could have been the best outcome yet.
Again, what I love the most about the show is the focus on the theme of the cycle of revenge and war. Again, what I love the most about the show is the focus on the theme of the cycle of revenge and war. I go to extreme depth on this topic on my review on the previous season, but to summarize: it's not easy. How can you sympathize with people that have oppressed you, killed your loved ones, and make peace? The fact that most stories revolving around "stopping war," and it actually gets amiably resolved is absolute BS and as fictitious as the story itself. There's no weight to it at all. In this story, it tries, and succeeds brilliantly in trying to frame a moral conflict in something that might not have a solution, which is trying to find peace in a world where violence is the only answer.
Sure, would Mikasa marrying Eren and the ending be just that the evil bad titans be killed be an ending that many people would be satisfied with? Yes. But this ending is much more emotionally charged. People actually have stances to take. It's not a hero's journey end where the hero successfully slays the dragon and the town parades him around.
It would have been nice to not have as much fighting, but in the end, it is a shounen show. There NEEDS to be fighting, even if it is irrelevant. I, along with a lot of people, would have liked more character development, but to take away from the theme of the show, which started off with mindlessly killing titans for revenge also doesn't make sense. Worst of all, the fighting didn't even really matter. It's just there to create tension and go through the motions that Eren envisions.
An excessively ambitious story that does sacrifice character development to an extent to create a climatic finale with proper pacing. Yet, like I said, the path this story took was completely viable. Objective third person narration worked in this finale.