How Attack on Titan Undermines Its Own Message

Today, I figured I'd put together a little rant I had about Attack on Titan. While it's an anime I enjoyed, I felt the ending was less than satisfying and served to undermine what many believe are its core messages. Let's get into it! My Experience With Attack on Titan While I currently read the source material for most anime these days, I used to exclusively watch anime. In fact, I have a pretty long history of watching anime that goes back to the late 90s with shows like Pokemon and Yu Yu Hakusho. I also got heavily into Yu-Gi-Oh!, Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball Z. Other favorites from that era include Rurouni Kenshin and Azumanga Daioh. As I got older, I didn't really pursue anime as much, but I had some friends who were into it. So, I didn't get seriously back into the medium until Sword Art Online. Then, the show that really sparked my obsession with anime was Steins;Gate. At that point, I began chasing the high that was 10/10 anime. As I went through college in the early to mid 2010s, I got exposed to even more shows as I would attend the weekly anime club meeting on campus. There, I found out about shows like Tokyo Ghoul, Death Parade, and Kids on the Slope. By the time I graduated, I started exploring anime myself. As a I result, I watched a lot of stuff, some good and some bad. For instance, I distinctly recall watching Mirai Nikki in my apartment with my cat. This was around the same time that I discovered Plex and invested in some hard drives. At that point, it was just a matter of downloading as much as I could store and watch. I assume that around that time I finally got into Attack on Titan. Specifically, I think I picked it up when the hype returned as the second season was set to release (so, maybe 2017 or 2018?). At that point, I had some friends who really liked the first season, so I figured I'd give it a try. Like most folks who have seen Attack on Titan, I found the first three seasons to be spectacular works of fiction. There is just something about a story where small elements of a broader mystery are uncovered over time that really feels good to experience. At the start, we're faced with only the concept of titans and that they're disturbing the peace of a small community. You're immediately hooked into this David vs. Goliath narrative, where kids are radicalized into defending their community. Then, little by little, you find that these titans are people and that some of them are special. At a certain point, you even find out that some of the soldiers are spies and can transform into titans themselves. All of this sort of bubbles to the point of uncovering the history of the titans, the suffering they have caused, and what the present-day characters intend to do with the titan power. Ultimately, the main character chooses their role in the story, and the final season culminates in war between two titan factions as well as between the titan race and the world. Overall, I really enjoyed the story up until season 3, but something really felt off as the anime reached its closing season(s). Naturally, it ate away at me for the last couple of months until I decided to actually put these thoughts down on paper. What Is the Central Message of Attack on Titan? Surely, everyone has their own interpretations about what Attack on Titan is about. Personally, I am interested in what the primary takeaway was for most readers, so I turned to Google to ask, "what's the main message of Attack on Titan?" When you do this, you'll primarily be greeted with Reddit threads and a handful of literary critiques. Here's a quick list of what folks think the message is: Racism is bad Revenge is bad (i.e., the cycle of violence) Tribalism is bad War is bad Fascism is bad Life is cruel (i.e., human nature) And surely, most of these are solid messages. I think it would be hard to argue otherwise (except that last one). Yet, I am not sure Attack on Titan is written in a way that actually gets these messages across. They're undermined by the worldbuilding and the narrative itself, and I wanted to take a moment to talk about. A Few Issues With Attack on Titan When I look at the messages in the previous section, I have a hard time taking any of them seriously because the story itself has so many fundamental issues. In this section, I want to point to a few of them. The Racism Problem If we consider one of the key messages to be that "racism is bad," then the story itself was doomed from the start. One other poster referred to this as the "X-men Problem," and I tend to agree. The idea being that to depict racism properly, you need to make the races equals. Yet in both X-Men and Attack on Titan (in fact, this is an incredibly popular trope), the oppressed race is uniquely powerful. Having the oppressed race hold some unique abilities or powers is problematic because you're giving fuel to the racists. Ultimately, Eren does in fact commit a genocide which further fuels the very real concerns that the outside world has about the Eldians. He's essentially proving their point, which is not something that could ever happen with real racism. I can suspend disbelief for many things in anime (e.g., titans, quirks, magic, etc.), but if the central message is that racism is bad, then you really ought to curate a narrative that maps to reality. Otherwise, you're reproducing mythology as a justification for racism. The part that confuses me even more is that Eren initially hates the titans then becomes one. Unlike in other stories that confront this issue (e.g., Tokyo Ghoul), Eren never once reflects on what it means to be the thing he hates. Instead, he immediately adopts the power and uses it to exact revenge (further becoming the thing he hates). There's never a moment where he tries to reconcile his differences with characters like Reiner—who actually does demonstrate growth. He simply has a mission that he never strays from: get revenge. The Human Nature Problem Another issue I see with Attack on Titan is that so many folks point to "human nature" as a central theme. To me, this is one of those takeaway messages that has fascist undertones. Generally, when we point to an issue in society, there are two main ways of interpreting it: either its a systemic problem or its a problem innate to people. If the argument is that the problem is innate, the only real solution is to remove the people (i.e., genocide). Let me give you an example! A lot of right wing folks cite the 13/50 myth—that is that 13% of the population does 50% of the violent crime. Generally, when this stat is cited, it's presented uncritically. It's then up to you, the reader, to make an interpretation. If you are of conservative leaning, you might come to the conclusion that Black people are just more violent. Do you see how this is problematic? You would basically be admitting that a particular race of people are somehow drastically more violent than other races, and it has nothing to do with systemic factors. In essence, you would be calling for genocide (though, often hidden behind "more policing"). Interestingly, when you map this idea back onto Attack on Titan, you can see how the characters actions are then justified. Eren thinks there is something innately wrong with everyone who isn't an Eldian, so he chooses genocide. Everyone else thinks there is something innately wrong with Eldians, so they choose genocide. There is no effort at all in the text to present any systemic critique: life is just cruel. The Fascism Problem Finally, one of the last issues I see with Attack on Titan follows the discourse of whether or not the story is pro-fascism. Largely, you will find people online saying that "media literacy is dead" because anyone would be willing to suggest that Attack on Titan is pro-fascism. While I tend to agree that the author probably intended for the story to be anti-fascist, the story once again undermines that message. Generally, if you want to write a story condemning fascism, you do it by centering the powerless. There are many historical films which center Jews during the holocaust (e.g., Shindler's List, Ida, etc.). It would be difficult to watch one of these films and come away with a pro-fascist interpretation. Even if some of these films aren't perfect, their core message is clearly anti-fascist. And interestingly, Attack on Titan starts the same exact way. We're thrust into a world where people are trapped within walls as protection from these roaming beasts called titans. You're sold on this idea that maybe one day the characters of the story will be free, and that freedom is worth the price of battling these titans. In fact, I would say that anti-fascism (or at least the pursuit of freedom) is the theme for almost three whole seasons. Everything takes an extremely dramatic turn when Eren discovers his "future." The entire narrative flips from conflict between titans to all non-Eldians must die. Regardless of what Eren actually sees, the author leaves us with a choice: genocide or self-genocide. No third option is ever presented. In this case, the audience would argue that because Eren is a bad guy, you're not supposed to think his solution is good. So, are we supposed to side with Zeke who proposes self-genocide? Why does no one in the story propose another option? Or rather, why are all the alternatives presented shut down? Even killing Eren, which is what Gabi tries, would have been a proper step in the right direction. But no, the author ham-fists the time traveling mechanism to sell us on this binary rather than finding a proper resolution to the story. Surely, there are ways to leverage the founding titan to resolve any future risks. It all seemed sort of forced. After all, even the manga frames the story as intentionally willed by Eren, so nothing else even really mattered. Eren got exactly what he wanted. What is the message in that? Not even his friends push back on him after he does a genocide. It's like the entire message is that Eren is bad, but his choices were necessary. It's "might is right" bullshit. Not to mention that Eren half-asses the genocide anyway to somehow win back some empathy for us. Which of course doesn't work because Eren kills his own mom (though some see this as unintentional?) to set his own path forward. This makes the whole anti-fascist argument so silly because it erases the early story of centering Eren as the oppressed. He did it all to himself. He did what right wingers do which is invent a problem that doesn't exist to be mad about—except he had the power to bring it to reality. Not to mention, as one Redditor put it, if the author was planning to demonize Eren's choices, he didn't do a good job. By showing that killing 80% of the world didn't end the suffering of the Eldians, Eren would have been justified in completing his genocide. Mix in Eren wishing to make his friends look like heroes and his friends praising him for his 80% genocide; it's all sort of silly, right? To make matters much worse, the author himself has taken a bit of an apolitical approach to his work—claiming that it's up to the reader to derive their own messages. Because he never comes out and defends one position or the other has me thinking that maybe it's pro-fascism because he's not willing to denounce it. Of course, the average person doesn't think in such terms, so I let that criticism slide. Other Minor Gripes Surely, you can have an evil main character like Eren. After all, he's often characterized like Light from Death Note. However, the difference with Light is that he his never given a justification for his actions (well, only the justification of someone with a God complex and the desire to stay alive). The author doesn't build in possible empathy for him as a character (though some weirdos look at the outcomes of his actions like crime reduction and praise him), so you're never watching him kill people and go "hell yeah." Perhaps you enjoy the cat-and-mouse aspect of the story, so you might root for Light to escape. For instance, it's kind of fun watching him dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole of lies, but you ultimately know he's the bad guy. Meanwhile, with Eren, the morality of his character is blurred until the very end. The story sets him up with about as much justification for his actions as you could possibly want. He watches his mother die to a titan right away. You then watch titans kill various scouts, and you're even shown that other people control titans and want to kill Eldians (i.e., Reiner, Zeke, and Bertholdt). Therefore, every time anyone kills a titan, you're like "hell yeah." The only reason you would turn on Eren is because he suddenly includes humans in his list of "people who should die." This is particularly troubling because once we find out titans are just people, no one confronts this reality. Eren never reflects on his status as a titan, which he should hate. His friends immediately protect his identity as a titan, and none of them question it either. In fact, no one even asks how to turn titans back into humans. Instead, Eren just becomes a weapon of war, and the slaughter continues. Again, even ignoring the points above, if the story is just meant to be about a psychopathic character living as a slave to his revenge, it should feel good watching him die (in the same way it feels good watching Light die). Yet, it doesn't. It doesn't feel good because there's no resolution. A ton of people die, a handful of friends are saved, and the cycle of violence continues. In fact, Eren dying almost feels like the cowards way out. He couldn't face what he had done, so he orchestrated his own suicide. Nothing resolves. No one is punished. Innocent people continue to suffer. At least Light was humiliated in his death. I suspect people like this ending because it's true to the overall theme of the cycle of violence, but it's overall unsatisfying because it perpetuates the idea that this is "human nature." In reality, the cycle of violence is largely perpetuated by nations and not individual actors. To bring this quite close to home, it's nations like the US, Russia, and Israel which radicalize communities and create violent uprisings. These communities don't want war. They fight because they have to. It's the same rationale Eren is given early in the story, which I buy completely. I just can't buy into mass genocide as the appropriate response or even a reasonable one. Bro did that shit for the love of the game. To further this argument, at no point in history (to my knowledge) has an oppressed group ever turned around and committed a counter genocide. When slaves were "freed," slave owners were not eradicated. When World War 2 ended, Jews did not turn around and genocide Germany. There's never been an instance where an oppressed group has ever wanted anything more than to be free. Perhaps there were attempts, but I can't imagine wanting to subject the same amount of suffering on my oppressors. It's not like there are cases of reverse genocide or reverse slavery, right? It's why this whole notion of the cycle of violence is mostly bullshit. All of this is to say that I should probably go back and read the manga. Perhaps with the critical lens I've cultivated in this post, I will see more effort by the author to foreshadow some of its more clunky mechanics. It's interesting too because I still really enjoyed the show. I'm just weirded out by how strangely it ended. It's framed as this human vs. monster story that changes into a political conflict, yet the story ends in a way as to say none of that mattered. Humans are innately violent, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. An Alternate Ending? In the previous sections, I was working through my problems with the story, and I think I've come to the conclusion that my issue is really with just how it ended. Otherwise, I actually think Attack on Titan was incredibly well written with a few minor issues like all other stories. In any case, I got to looking around for an alternate ending that I think I would have been satisfied with, and I think I found it. Specifically, I stumbled upon the Akatsuki no Requiem (AnR) theory, and while I don't think there is one single theory that came out of it, I think there is a specific ending that would have satisfied me. One of the major problems I have with the ending is that Eren doesn't really face the consequences of his actions. Ultimately, I am content with this argument that Eren had no choice to commit a genocide. While I think there might have been other options in the real world, they don't exactly make for a satisfying narrative (regardless, if you want to see my many musings, this section was written after my postscript thoughts below). So, if we assume these are the only two choices (i.e., genocide or euthanasia), then I think Eren made the correct choice. However, as I've said previously, I think the way Eren goes about his death is the cowards way out. He commits a half-assed genocide to frame his friends as the saviors. Not only do I think this wouldn't work, it also rewards Eren for his atrocities. He gets to grant his friends the life he always wanted to give them. Instead, the way I would have preferred to see it end is with Eren suffering (much like the way Light is humiliated in the end). To do that, he needs to commit fully to the genocide, which would cause his friends to be killed in an effort to stop him. In other words, Eren has to lose the only thing he cares about to secure "freedom." He needs to be in his supposed post-war world to see what he truly lost. Instead, he perpetuates the violence while buying his friends some time. Do you think they even enjoyed their remaining years? I can't imagine they did. Ultimately, I wouldn't be so hung up on the dichotomy of genocide or self-genocide if the choice was actually friends or freedom (as one Redditor puts it). Interestingly, after I had this thought about a possible alternate ending, I searched "eren should have killed his friends" and found a Reddit post of folks being extremely upset about the ending. In fact, people seemed so confused in one post that they were even asking "did I misunderstand something?" And I suppose that's where I'm stuck right now. It ends in such a strange way that I spent this entire post grasping at straws to make sense of it, and I'm not alone. This comment from the previous thread really sums up how I feel about the whole piece: You get the point. This ending is the gift that keeps on giving. The more you analyze, the worse it becomes. As you can probably tell Isayama didn't setup for this ending, so he just threw a bunch of shit at the wall and hopes the readers will pick out a reason that will satisfy them. Celiac_Muffins With that said, I think I've done more than enough rambling in this post to form any sort of coherent thought! So, let's just leave it here. Of course, like I said, there are variety of thoughts I had below that I couldn't really figure out how to fit above. They're all very random and sporadic, but they all tie into the story in some way. Feel free to browse, but I wouldn't take any of it too seriously. Turns out this literary critique shit is hard. P.S. I think there is a lot of be said about the conditions that authors are under in Japan, so I don't really blame Isayama for not having the time to properly flesh out his story. I also thought Evangelion wasn't that great, and it seems to have suffered from some time crunches as well. Of course, the general community loves both of these works, and I think it's fine to do so. What I don't love is when the community preaches "media literacy" as some elitist barrier to "getting it." Like I am somehow dumb for thinking the entire story of Evangelion is a jumbled mess (which I am assured doesn't actually matter and is instead a vehicle for the characters), and that whatever message it's intended to convey is buried in unexplained lore and accidental symbolism. Leaving things up to interpretation doesn't make a story inherently good, but so much of the anime community seems to think so. They're so desperate to feel smart. Also, after writing this, I noticed that there are actually a lot of dissenting opinions (i.e., lots of people who disliked the way the story ended). Of note, I saw others say that the ending betrays many of the story's themes, which made me feel somewhat justified in the arguments I made here. P.P.S. Before this article even published, I went back to the manga to give it a read. Right away, the future sight gimmick is shown with Eren crying. Having realized that the seeds of this decision were sown from the very beginning, I realize that the author was definitely intentional with that choice (and not ham-fisted as I said above). With that said, that almost makes me more annoyed with how the story ended up, but I don't really have the words at this time to articulate it. P.P.P.S. Again, before this article published (and I'm going to keep my original thoughts intact even though I'm going to disagree with myself below), I watched Noah Samsen's video on the YouTubers who backed a genocide. One of the parts of the video that was really hard for me was seeing how Israelis view Palestinians. I suppose I had fallen for the somewhat liberal trapping that it's just states fighting each other. This framework works for me because I think of the conflict between US and Canada right now. Personally, I feel Canadians are wildly overreacting to Trump's comments, going as far as to yell at Americans for voting for him (and not, say, democrat leaders for providing absolutely no opposition). But not only did many of us not vote for him, Trump's policies are already hurting Americans. In other words, it felt kind of silly for Canadians to be angry at Americans when Americans are bearing the brunt of the policies. At the time, I was saying things like "Relax! Enjoy your healthcare." After all, I just don't believe Canadians have the same societal issues that Americans do, so I politely ask them to sit this one out. The booing of the anthems feels like such performative protesting. Frankly, I don't think any anthems should be played at sports. Nationalism is just really that silly. Anyway, with that stream of consciousness aside, I was watching Noah's video, and I jokingly thought to myself that maybe Eren was in the right (if I think of him as a Palestinian). When an entire society wants to see you dead, it makes sense to want to wipe them out. I am not sure how you resolve the issue of a settler colonial society that does not see a group of people as human. It's Nazi shit. At the moment, I am sort of at a loss of what to do with Israel, almost in the same way Eren felt about the world. I suppose the difference here being that Israel is not "the world." There are outside actors here that can intervene, provide support to Gaza, withdraw arms from Israel (i.e., BDS), facilitate a ceasefire, etc. The fact that they aren't is frankly disgusting, and ultimately makes retaliation like October 7th seem reasonable. I suppose the other issue being that we can't be certain that all of "the world" in Attack on Titan wants Eldians dead. There's no way Eren could have known that, and surely there were innocent people killed that only served to create a new era of radicalized youth (i.e., the cycle of violence). Perhaps in both the story of Attack on Titan and real life there needs to be a third party that steps up to save the oppressed and punish the oppressors. Surely, that would have been an unsatisfying, Deus Ex Machina type of ending for Attack on Titan, but I really don't know how any of this should resolve otherwise. P.P.P.P.S. Okay, I've also been thinking about possible alternatives to genocide vs. self-genocide in Attack on Titan. Because the world building doesn't really give us a feel for the geography, I have to wonder how hard would it be to escape Paradis (ala Promised Neverland). How hard would it be to hide your identity? It's not like people know an Eldian when they see them. Obviously, this solution is not provided early in the story because of the island being surrounded by titans, but I have to wonder how much of the world is actually hostile to Eldians. The issue of the titans existence would still be an ongoing problem, but the people could possibly disperse into outside communities or even create an entirely new society outside of Paradis. Of course, I would never advocate for the displacement of communities (i.e., forced displacement), but I could see it as a viable non-violent solution from the perspective of an Eldian. There's also this science angle I keep thinking about because the outside world is obviously more technologically advanced. How hard would it be for them to study the power of titans (ala Tokyo Ghoul) and replicate the power? Suddenly the power dynamic is gone, and peace can be achieved through mutually assured destruction (not saying MAD is tenable, but it's currently the only thing preventing Nuclear holocaust). P.P.P.P.P.S. So, I just found out about Akatsuki no Requiem. How deep am I in the rabbit hole? Should I move on? With that said, it's a very strange fan theory (or set of fan theories) based around a music video released by Linked Horizon. In hindsight, it's a bit silly to consider a music video as a possible leak of the true ending, but it seems to have lent itself to some pretty interesting fan theories. For example, a lot of theories seem to be centered around the story being a time loop (maybe as a cage for Eren from which he wishes to be free). Some of which consider the relationship between Eren and Mikasa as the cause of that time loop, where Eren has the opportunity to end the loop by killing Mikasa. Instead, he chooses genocide (grim, but an interesting ending). Other interpretations actually place Armin in the music video, which is another interesting interpretation. Yet another interpretation considers the dying butterflies to be the alliance (i.e., all of Eren's friends like Armin, Mikasa, Jean, etc.). In other words, another possible ending would have been a full genocide, which costs the lives of Eren's friends. Ultimately, there seems to somehow be a cohort of believers around the idea that an AnR ending can still happen. Anyway, I thought all of that was interesting. None of it really contends with my issues with the show, but I would be all for an ending where Eren actually suffers for his actions (i.e., watches his friends die at his hand). That would at least parallel the humiliation that Light received. P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Okay, I know this is getting out of hand, but I started thinking about how you can just look at AoT through the lens of any tragedy. Specifically, I was thinking about Romeo and Juliet and how the characters literally kill themselves. This works as a proper conclusion to the story because the two of them dying resolves the feud between the families. Of course, it's unclear if their deaths actually resolve the feud permanently (and I think the cynical outlook would be that it doesn't), but I am wondering if there would be a way for the Titan curse to end that would lead to the end of the conflict. It's precisely that the conflict doesn't end that makes AoT so unsatisfying in the end. It's all particularly frustrating from me as someone who likes dark and depressing works of fiction like Tokyo Ghoul and Promised Neverland. I've seen all the sad anime that is supposed to make you cry. Your Lie in April is one of my favorite shows of all time. I love Anohana, Clannad, etc. Hell, one of the saddest scenes in anime for me was when Tanjiro thought his sister was going to die in the sun in Attack on Titan. But, these kinds of shows all follow interpersonal relationships and self-exploration. Attack on Titan is a political mystery, but the ending seems to just center characters. I just don't feel like it was ever about the characters. It was about the world and its conflict, yet the ending is reduced to fate and whatever Eren wants. I guess I am still just processing it. Ultimately, I will say that I am still unsatisfied with where Attack on Titan ended (mostly due to the time travel mechanic and the fact that there were likely more solutions with the power of the Founding Titan), but this is the most I've ever thought about a literary work of fiction. So, I have to hand it to Isayama. It got me thinking! I also am somewhat regretting writing this because it exposes so many holes in my own thought processes, but we're in sunk cost fallacy territory. Might as well commit. P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Today, I was watching my usual Hasan stream, and he was watching a Joe Rogan episode with a "historian" named Daryl Cooper. Apparently, the guy had been giving Joe a history lesson about Hitler and his rise to power, and Hasan had a really interesting take. He said something about how he's uncomfortable with giving Hitler a morally ambiguous backstory. In other words, Hasan felt that Daryl was painting young Hitler in a sympathetic light, and that kind felt reaffirming given what I've said in this post about the fascism angle of AoT. If AoT does not endorse fascism, why paint Eren in a sympathetic light at all? Things to think about. P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. It's March 17th, 2025, and I still haven't posted this article. However, I did catch a bit of Hasan who was responding to a chatter calling Kingdom Come: Deliverance II a fascist game. He joked that it wasn't a fascist game, and he argued that even if it was, he would not admit it. In his words, "I don't want fascists to think they can make good art." So, perhaps that'll be my take going forward for AoT!