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Maera Sior posted:Here's a third option: Destroy the armies and major bases, leave the civilians alone. Eren could have broken their ability to fight without doing the associated war crimes. It doesn't matter what the other countries want if they don't have the soldiers, ships, or planes. This is where I'm at. You can send the message that "you don't want to try and wipe us out" without slaughtering billions. As much of a band-aid as it is, fraught with uncertainty, it's something that isn't genocide one way or the other. e: also thinking about how, when showing the ongoing rumbling destroying entire cultures, the show kept focusing on one colossal whose eyes were closed. Symbolism! a seagull fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Nov 7, 2023 |
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Nov 7, 2023 06:04
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Maera Sior posted:Here's a third option: Destroy the armies and major bases, leave the civilians alone. Eren could have broken their ability to fight without doing the associated war crimes. It doesn't matter what the other countries want if they don't have the soldiers, ships, or planes. Oh yeah, I mean Eren even states he would've killed the entire population if he could. He was clearly driven by hate for the rest of the world (and perhaps seeing the world's hatred for the Eldians). I wonder though if he could have controlled the Rumbling to this extent. It seemed pretty set in how it worked, as in it was designed for a group of titans to just march and trample anything in their way. Not using the Rumbling would have been too risky (to Eren's friends) with all the anti-titan tech that had been developed by that point by nations other than Marley. I also feel like, looking from Eren's perspective, the risk for retaliation was still too high, especially since Paradis would still be vastly outnumbered. And I mean, Eren, having lived within these walls for his entire life, only ever really dreamed of what lies beyond. Only to find out him and his people had been imprisoned all this time, that people outside of the island were living much better lives with better technology, and that these same people were treating Eldians as second-class citizens and punishing them by turning them into titans to be murdered by the Eldians on the island, including Eren... It's not really a surprise this situation created at least one monster. rkd_ fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Nov 7, 2023 |
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Nov 7, 2023 07:41
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MJeff posted:There is no valhalla in this world. There is no good death and no glorious afterlife. Death is horrifying and to be avoided at all costs, the manga is very unflinching about that the entire time. Eren even at the end cries and admit he doesn't want to die because he's just plain scared of it. Very very VERY few characters die in this story without being stripped of all dignity and being reduced to nothing more than their fear, pain and regret. There is a glorious afterlife, though. (Well, a good afterlife, at least. Glory is a more complicated question.) We actually see it, and several of the characters do too. This episode has Sasha return to say goodbye to Jean and Connie, confirming that Levi's ghosts aren't just hallucination, but an acknowledgement from those who left him behind. As for the bit before that, one thing that I find interesting about the last arc is the characters finally seeing, to quote the soundtrack, "how to die with honor and dignity". Starting with (of all people) Porco, characters start going on with eyes open and heads high. Hange, Keith, and Theo all die well. We even see the same thing from Jean, Reiner, and Connie when they have their near misses. They're Survey Corps. This is the way things were always going to end. Levi living on isn't necessarily worse, but it is certainly harder. The living carry the will of the dead until they pass it on. And Levi is left alone to build a world worthy of all that sacrifice.
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Nov 7, 2023 08:08
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By the way, the ends of the volumes of manga almost always had gag panels that were fake previews of what was supposed to happen in the next volume. Since these aren't usually accessible to most anime-only watchers (I think some have been animated into some of the OVA's), I thought people might appreciate the one that was put at the end of the final volume. Imagine seeing right after the end credits scene. (The context for this is that this was a conclusion to a running gag of the characters taking place in a low stakes (?) story in an American high school.) Oh, and manga is read from right-to-left.   Right after the final scene where the boy finds the tree. What a goddamn wonderful troll. 
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Nov 7, 2023 08:54
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Lmao. That needs to be a blu-ray extra or something
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Nov 7, 2023 09:05
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To be honest I regard the online freakout about the ending as the last in a long line of borderline dishonest misreadings of the manga intended to push a narrative that Attack on Titan is fascist propaganda - in each case future events from the manga would be presented in a highly misleading way to try and suggest some horrible message was intended, relying on anime viewers not yet having other context that explained said developments. We had it for the season 4 twist ("titans are Jews!"), we had it as Eren arranged and started the rumbling ("Eren is doing a fascist coup and genocide and we're clearly meant to support it!"), we had it relating to Zeke's euthanasia plan and we had it for the ending. In every case after the reading presented by certain manga readers turned out to be obviously incorrect once we had the full context of each twist (almost every character we care about is from the oppressed Eldian race, not just the titans; Eren very clearly switches roles to the villain in season 4; Zeke is also very clearly not presented as correct, with the narrative frequently pausing to highlight the inherent value of human life). In the case of the ending you can at least point to the rushed nature of the final chapter and the poorly chosen wording of that one line from Armin, but I still think overall it must have been very, very obvious that the Alliance was in the right when they set out to stop Eren. It's funny how the complaint in that meta-joke comic above is that the ending was, if anything, too predictable and safe, given how it was presented as this insanely controversial and evil concept in some English-speaking circles.
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Nov 7, 2023 13:46
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Irony Be My Shield posted:To be honest I regard the online freakout about the ending as the last in a long line of borderline dishonest misreadings of the manga intended to push a narrative that Attack on Titan is fascist propaganda - in each case future events from the manga would be presented in a highly misleading way to try and suggest some horrible message was intended, relying on anime viewers not yet having other context that explained said developments. We had it for the season 4 twist ("titans are Jews!"), we had it as Eren arranged and started the rumbling ("Eren is doing a fascist coup and genocide and we're clearly meant to support it!"), we had it relating to Zeke's euthanasia plan and we had it for the ending. In every case after the reading presented by certain manga readers turned out to be obviously incorrect once we had the full context of each twist (almost every character we care about is from the oppressed Eldian race, not just the titans; Eren very clearly switches roles to the villain in season 4; Zeke is also very clearly not presented as correct, with the narrative frequently pausing to highlight the inherent value of human life). Yeah, basically. I still see people cite that awful article from polygon (or kotaku? I forget which lol) that asserted that some random twitter user who drew AoT fanart is actually the authors secret alt account made to spread fascist propaganda. The amount of willful misinformation around this series in the west has really been nuts.
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Nov 7, 2023 13:51
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The "it's fascist!” thing started in season one, since obviously the Titans are just going to be an inherently evil Other and having soldiers fight monsters is an inherently fascist trope
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Nov 7, 2023 13:54
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Hahaha Marco's there too
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Nov 7, 2023 14:02
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P-Mack posted:The "it's fascist!” thing started in season one, since obviously the Titans are just going to be an inherently evil Other and having soldiers fight monsters is an inherently fascist trope At first I thought the titans were a metaphor for western political and media influences mindlessly wrecking their way through other cultures!
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Nov 7, 2023 14:29
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P-Mack posted:The "it's fascist!” thing started in season one, since obviously the Titans are just going to be an inherently evil Other and having soldiers fight monsters is an inherently fascist trope Irony Be My Shield fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Nov 7, 2023 |
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Nov 7, 2023 14:30
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Irony Be My Shield posted:I think there was some genuine ambiguity there honestly - presenting what would turn out to be the origin story of a fascist villain as what at times appeared to be a straightforward heroic story was a pretty out-there choice (and one of the most interesting things AoT did imo). But then the s4 twist heavily challenged that interpretation, the Jaegerists being obviously evil made it extremely tenuous and then the loving Titan Avengers came together to stop him and come on Don't forget the part where they're literally kin and a lot of the titans at the present time are political prisoners.
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Nov 7, 2023 14:33
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Quote posted:Hahaha Marco's there too Read the whole thing, there's an incredible punchline involving Marco. Here's an imgur album with the whole thing but also, support the manga if you have the chance.  Catalina posted:By the way, the ends of the volumes of manga almost always had gag panels that were fake previews of what was supposed to happen in the next volume. Armin being the one bitching about the ending being unsatisfying was always the funniest poo poo in the world to me.
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Nov 7, 2023 15:02
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Idk I was onboard with the way the manga was ending until the official translation had Armin saying “thank you for doing a genocide” that was basically my issue and it seems they fixed that and made some rushed moments a bit less rushed
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Nov 7, 2023 15:21
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So the after party is happening for the next few days: https://party.shingeki.tv/ I'd been on for a couple of hours and the amount of content is insane, and the presentations haven't even started yet. So, in the most Japanese thing ever, your little avatar wanders around a cruise ship and interacts with things. There are messages from the cast and crew, full-length videos of each character (the Hange one got me), and dozens of special audio dramas of conversations we never saw from the show. It's all English subs, too. It's about $20 but if you're a fan, this is good stuff.
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Nov 7, 2023 15:39
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Irony Be My Shield posted:To be honest I regard the online freakout about the ending as the last in a long line of borderline dishonest misreadings of the manga intended to push a narrative that Attack on Titan is fascist propaganda Bread Set Jettison posted:Idk I was onboard with the way the manga was ending until the official translation had Armin saying “thank you for doing a genocide” IMO the real sin of the late 10's media scrupulousity that swept through social media (not just that one article about AoT, but also super hero movies, children's cartoons, etc) is that it poisoned the well against actual discussion. Like, we should be talking about fascism in relation to AoT, this story about how a group of children enlist after a heinous and cataclysmic trauma is engaging with that topic. It's worth investigating how well or how poorly it does so, but it's hard to do so when every depiction of something bad happening is taken as enthused endorsement by an audience that's conditioned themselves to take a paranoid reading of everything.
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Nov 7, 2023 15:52
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Schwarzwald posted:IMO the real sin of the late 10's media scrupulousity that swept through social media (not just that one article about AoT, but also super hero movies, children's cartoons, etc) is that it poisoned the well against actual discussion. Like, we should be talking about fascism in relation to AoT, this story about how a group of children enlist after a heinous and cataclysmic trauma is engaging with that topic. It's worth investigating how well or how poorly it does so, but it's hard to do so when every depiction of something bad happening is taken as enthused endorsement by an audience that's conditioned themselves to take a paranoid reading of everything. Yeah the whole “depiction means endorsement” reading of basically any piece of media sucks and AoT was one of many things that happened too. It didn’t happen for no reason, it was a weird time in media. I know it was annoying but It was an important discussion to have. I remember lots of “edgy-ness” being used as a smoke screen while the alt-right began to form. That combined with the historical context of japan’s fascist/colonial history complicated authorial intent at the time too. I was a big defender of AoT saying how it’s literally about fascism and how it can warp a hero into monster. It really was a cool examination of fascisms viewing “the other”, and the fact that no one is safe from propaganda. Then the final chapter came out and that chapter made me frustrated I had ever defended it. I think Connie being like “he did a genocide for us!!!” Set me off too. AoT will always be interesting to think about, and thematically complicated, and I think that’s why I like it. Glad the main issue I had with the ending was rewritten (or localized better or a mix of both). Bread Set Jettison fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Nov 7, 2023 |
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Nov 7, 2023 16:39
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This stuff helped me develop a new personal rule where I don't spread readings/opinions about media that I don't engage with firsthand - and if I do, I always clarify that I haven't consumed it myself. This also applies to echoing someone else's opinion if a conversation is dogpiling something, etc. I'll bitch and whine about poo poo I hate, or stuff that I find ideologically problematic, but I'll only do it if I truly engaged with it in good faith - not cuz some Youtube or Twitter jerk told me Thing Bad. It's tough to avoid those kind of influences, and impossible to do so perfectly, but I think it's worth trying. Beefstew fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Nov 7, 2023 |
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Nov 7, 2023 16:51
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The funniest part of that poo poo was someone on twitter or resetera or maybe even here going on and on about Isayama drawing bigoted jewish caricatures and their evidence was like an Eldian in Grisha's flashback who had a slightly bulbous nose. At some point you're telling on yourself more than the author of the work in question
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Nov 7, 2023 18:02
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Someone on here bought me a custom title cos I was saying AoT was so clearly NOT fascist/anti-Semitic at all (it was Albert Einstein or something? I thought it was a spoiler at first lol), so the brain worms were strong everywhere
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Nov 7, 2023 18:31
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That edit was absolutely a spoiler and I resent that people posted it in the anime thread years before the conclusion was animated. e: with that said can someone please edit it so that Einstein is telling Hitler they're going to hell together Irony Be My Shield fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Nov 7, 2023 |
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Nov 7, 2023 18:33
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Anonymous Zebra posted:Nah, one of the kernels the story is built around is Isayama basically trying to figure out how a Japanese man born in the 1980's should feel about the actions of the Imperial Japanese Army in WW2. He dresses it up in early 20th century central European aesthetics, but the story really is about Japan and its relationship with its closest Asian neighbors who were brutalized during WW2 by the Japanese. Paradis is an island nation without an army, surrounded by mainland nations that it legitimately exploited and brutalized during its imperial conquests OH
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Nov 7, 2023 19:24
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I've wondered if the multi-pointed star could also be a reference to a stylized sun, ie the imperial flag.
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Nov 7, 2023 19:30
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Irony Be My Shield posted:That edit was absolutely a spoiler and I resent that people posted it in the anime thread years before the conclusion was animated. I don't remember Einstein showing up?
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Nov 7, 2023 19:40
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Irony Be My Shield posted:That edit was absolutely a spoiler and I resent that people posted it in the anime thread years before the conclusion was animated. I saw that and was expecting Einstein and Hitler to pop up in the anime this episode and they never did. Did I fake spoil myself
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Nov 7, 2023 19:40
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Alan_Shore posted:I don't remember Einstein showing up? It's an edit of a page from Billy Bat, one of the greatest manga of all time.
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Nov 7, 2023 19:46
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Alan_Shore posted:I don't remember Einstein showing up? Eren and Armin talk, colorized 
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Nov 7, 2023 19:50
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Alan_Shore posted:So the after party is happening for the next few days: https://party.shingeki.tv/ If it offered something after it ended I'd probably get it.
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Nov 7, 2023 20:09
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Bread Set Jettison posted:Yeah the whole “depiction means endorsement” reading of basically any piece of media sucks and AoT was one of many things that happened too. I want to push back on this — the social media witch hunt against problematic media only ever served as a tool of self-flagellation or as a weapon. It didn't uncover a strain of hidden secret fascist ideology, it promoted a lens of interpretation so paranoid as to silence writers like Isabel Fall and 14-year-old fan artists. You do not have to hand it to them. Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Nov 8, 2023 |
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Nov 7, 2023 20:24
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Anime only watcher who dodged spoilers for years. Wow, what an ending. Really was expecting worse after discussion that came up when the manga concluded. Can't believe it's over, what a ride.
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Nov 8, 2023 06:48
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THIS_IS_FINE posted:Anime only watcher who dodged spoilers for years. Wow, what an ending. Really was expecting worse after discussion that came up when the manga concluded. Can't believe it's over, what a ride. One thing that I noticed comparing reactions to the manga and the anime ending? More than there being fewer people complaining (and most of them being manga readers who hated the ending already) is how much better the positive reactions are. With the manga, the best responses you saw were generally "It was good, I liked it, nice to see an ending for the characters who we got so attached to". Nobody was saying that the ending was a classic itself. It was just, in the eyes of it defenders, as good as you were likely to get from a long running series like this. The anime ending? People love the anime ending. Fans talk about it like Felina or Person to Person. It's loved as an episode, not just as a part of something people loved already. Pretty good turnaround from when it was being compared to the ending of Game of Thrones.
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Nov 8, 2023 07:49
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Haven't opened this thread since May 2023 andAlternateNu posted:Time for a classic. and having been spoiled but not reading the manga I agree with this post, THIS_IS_FINE posted:Anime only watcher who dodged spoilers for years. Wow, what an ending. Really was expecting worse after discussion that came up when the manga concluded. Can't believe it's over, what a ride.
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Nov 8, 2023 10:16
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chiasaur11 posted:One thing that I noticed comparing reactions to the manga and the anime ending? I've always been an Ending Respecter, but I'm in the extremely weird and probably extremely small subset of fans who hopped in after the manga was over, before the anime was over. So I watched the entire anime, then read volumes 33 and 34, which also means, obviously, that my first experience with the ending was the bonus pages. But even then, it was more of a feeling of....I liked and respected the ending, I liked that Mikasa, my favorite character, had gone on this journey to become the hero of the story at the end, I really liked the way the stakes and the tension were weaved throughout the final arc, Reiner has this moment where he's like "What the gently caress else do we have to do, here?!" and it feels totally earned, Isayama did a really good job of making everything feels like it's at its absolute bleakest at the most important moment (although I still feel a little ehhhhhhh about the sleight of hand he pulls with the "it might restart the Rumbling!" line) , I liked the philosophy being exchanged between two characters like Zeke and Armin. There were a couple things that dug at me, but I was just generally satisfied with it. The anime fixed the two things I had a problem with, the Eren/Armin conversation and the epilogue and besides that, the production value was just....off the charts. In the manga, Mikasa says "I'm sorry. I can't do that." and then four pages later, Eren is dead. Levi and Mikasa's approach on Eren is a few panels and doesn't feel particularly dramatic, it just feels like they jumped off Falco and got there pretty easily. The big kaiju fight between Eren and Armin's Colossal Titans is...a few panels, and it's mostly just Eren punching the gently caress out of Armin a couple times and it doesn't feel like Armin really meaningfully affects the outcome of the fight. In the anime it's this absolutely gorgeous 90 second sequence where you can see everybody pushing themselves to the limit to help contribute. It all feels so much more earned. Just the shots, the animation, the music, the voice acting, the loving colors, the way they use color in these two specials is so goddamn amazing. It's hard not to love. Even setting aside the improvements they made in the writing and the story, it really feels like they went all out to make it as dramatic and beautiful as they possibly could.
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Nov 8, 2023 17:40
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https://www.tiktok.com/embed/7293189507468365063
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Nov 8, 2023 18:37
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Anyway, now that the last episode has aired and the dust has settled, can we all agree that Pieck is the best for being the only sane, well-adjusted character in the entire show?
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Nov 8, 2023 19:03
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Mordja posted:Anyway, now that the last episode has aired and the dust has settled, can we all agree that Pieck is the best for being the only sane, well-adjusted character in the entire show? She has the best character arc of anybody in the show. First appearance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHHyGGapQ54 Last appearance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS2UXb5o8sQ
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Nov 8, 2023 19:07
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Mordja posted:Anyway, now that the last episode has aired and the dust has settled, can we all agree that Pieck is the best for being the only sane, well-adjusted character in the entire show?  A very good late addition to the cast.
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Nov 8, 2023 19:10
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Mordja posted:Anyway, now that the last episode has aired and the dust has settled, can we all agree that Pieck is the best for being the only sane, well-adjusted character in the entire show? No, because that's Hitch! Haha absolutely brilliant. Finished the After Party, and it was really fun! All the music videos they made for the characters were fantastic (I might have downloaded some...), and the stories with the crew were informative. It's no wonder the anime turned out so well, as everyone who worked on the show loved the manga and worked INCREDIBLY hard to make it as good as they could. The director said he wished this last part was a 2 1/2 hour movie instead of being split up, hopefully they'll recut it down the line for a cinema release. The video of Mikasa's VA recording her last line, crying, and being comforted by Eren and Armin's VAs got me too. drat I'll be thinking about this show for years
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Nov 8, 2023 20:57
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The part of the manga thread where the ending dropped was very chaotic, and would be pretty funny to read in retrospect. That includes my posts. The original chapter was much shorter and IIRC, ended with bird Eren adjusting Mikasa’s scarf. There was no real elaboration as to why Ymir needed to see Mikasa kill Eren for her to be free. I honestly think Armin only said, “thank you for being a mass murderer” without even the mentioning the part about it being a deplorable mistake. In the thread, first there were leaks, then people saw the earliest of fan translations, which were terrible for obvious reasons. I wouldn’t say goons were hysterical, but the general sentiment was a very strong “What the gently caress just happened?”, along with some anger, which is what we argued back and forth with. The ending was very bare bones and the rushed nature and spaced constraints made it so a LOT of intent was simply not conveyed in an ending that’s already pretty ambiguous with answers. Shown: Reiner creepily sniffing Historia’s letter after some fan translations had him saying earlier, “Eren. What a guy!” Not shown: The cultural symbolism for a human being being reincarnated by a bird (TL;DR: you have done hosed up and now are in reincarnation jail). Only shown visually: the bird is a parasite jaegar. I dearly remember one goon put it best when he said something like, “If a man bowls three perfect games, then has his bowling ball bounce out of the alley, tear through the entire salad bar, and hit the audience in the face, people are going to want to speculate on why it happened.” The extra pages were released a bit later and included the bit with what happened through Mikasa’s life, and to Eldia in the years afterward, as well as some other stuff, but of course it didn’t fix the pacing and resolutions that could only be confined to one or two panels. There was more arguing, but I think the general goon sentiment was one of confused acceptance as a stage of grief. I also dearly remember one goon posting a link to a video clip of …I forget the name, but a movie that ends with basically, “What the hell just happened? I don’t know, do you know? All I know is, let’s never do it again. Yes, whatever it what is that we did. Whatever it was.” My reaction to the ending was, “it was okay overall, but holy poo poo when it was bad it was bad. How disappointing for a series I loved so much, the writing most of all.” I’ve been holding hope in my heart for two and a half years that the anime ending would take the material and improve on it, and I am so happy that not only were they able to do that, they made it back into a story that I loved from beginning to end.
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Nov 8, 2023 23:08
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Catalina posted:I also dearly remember one goon posting a link to a video clip of …I forget the name, but a movie that ends with basically, Burn After Reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6VjPM5CeWs
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Nov 9, 2023 02:39
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