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Steve Yun posted:What were the problems with the manga ending?
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Nov 5, 2023 08:12
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Steve Yun posted:What were the problems with the manga ending? Sockser posted:Spoilerssss:
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Nov 5, 2023 08:44
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Sindai posted:It was nearly the same except the final conversation with Armin had some really, really bad dialog in it. It's already been posted in the other thread if you want to see it. Not just that. The bit with the epilogue and Ymir envisioning a world where she let Fritz die were later additions for the volume release, and there were a few new scenes for the epilogue. There was also different emphasis between the versions, making the bad parts more obnoxious in the original release, with the volume release doing less to mitigate the damage than the anime. My favorite bit from the bonus pages, which is harder to see in the anime than the manga, is that Mikasa is pretty strongly implied to have married Jean in the years after the series, since she's shown with a family after going to Eren's grave with only a very tall man for company. Now part of that is just because it's nice that she and Jean get a happy life after the series, but the main thing is that it lets Mikasa finish her own arc on her own terms. She defies Eren twice over. First, of course, she doesn't give him the ten years of mourning he wanted, but she also doesn't obey his instructions to forget him. He was her first love, her only family, her savior when she needed it most, and he doesn't just get to discard that. She'll always remember him, even as she lives a happy, normal life. After the manga's final chapter, I felt like the whole story went to crap, with Levi as the only one who still had some dignity. After the bonus pages, I felt like the story finished well thematically and that Mikasa had finished her arc pretty well, but Armin's final chapters should have been a bit better and Eren completely faceplanted at the last minute. With the anime, Armin and Eren's last scene together was actually good, which played off the things the anime does well by default to make for a really solid finale. The Historia stuff still wasn't good, but it's minimized here, so it's just the rubble of what had to be discarded earlier plans, rather than an active distraction.
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Nov 5, 2023 09:55
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Yeah everyone else pretty much nailed how I felt about it. Also: I remember reading the manga and feeling like the entire last sequence was way too rushed. I think the way the anime did the two part mega-finale really did a good job in fixing the pacing as well. edit: I also remember (spoilers for the last 10 minutes) Mikasa kissing Eren's severed head being ridiculed alot online as well. I'm curious how anime onlys felt about that one. DaiJiaTeng fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Nov 5, 2023 |
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Nov 5, 2023 10:05
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Did they cut out the stuff with Falcao transforming into a bird? I thought there was at least some pages about him talking it through with Annie and the Azumabitos but i could entirely have made that up. He just shows up here in a frankly amazing scene but still.
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Nov 5, 2023 11:11
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Teek posted:Hahah, true. Well they greatly extended Armin and Eren’s convo and had Armin tearing into Eren’s rear end for a few minutes. So I would say, yeah, Isayama acknowledged he dropped the ball there. lol So no thank you for your genocide?
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Nov 5, 2023 11:54
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serious gaylord posted:Did they cut out the stuff with Falcao transforming into a bird? I thought there was at least some pages about him talking it through with Annie and the Azumabitos but i could entirely have made that up. That was in the previous episode. Elias_Maluco posted:So no thank you for your genocide? Nope, that's gone. I feel like the new scene captures what I always assumed the intent of the original was, but man it is soooo much better written now, and the entire final battle flows so much better. It's insane how the broad strokes of the ending are the same, but the little details, character dialogue, and editing really give it a whole new feeling. I think they measured the criticisms of the manga ending and took the same idea to turn into something workable. I like the anime ending. Feels good, man.
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Nov 5, 2023 12:50
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One thing that does kind of annoy me is that they kept the "if Eren and that glowing thing come into contact, it might start the Rumbling again." And like.....how? Literally, how? The Rumbling stopping had nothing to do with separating Eren from his giant Founding Titan body or the big worm. Zeke is dead. Eren doesn't have a titan with royal blood anymore, which apparently was necessary to control the Wall Titans. It just feels like a half-hearted attempt to keep the stakes as high as possible but like. The main tension, "will the Rumbling destroy the world" is kinda resolved as soon as Levi kills Zeke. I dunno how you square this in the overall story while still keeping the tension up, because the rules kinda just are what they are, but I would've appreciated it if they had at least just not done that line in the anime. They cut out Gabi's line where she warned them about the worm for some reason (which is really weird, cause that line actually does matter a lot -- Gabi warns them about the worm so Reiner is ready for it when it comes out), so you might as well just cut that one out too. Gabi's role as Worm Authority has been significantly diluted by this adaptation!!!!! 
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Nov 5, 2023 16:34
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Should have cut out the worm entirely imo. Not sure why I hate is as much as I do but it just feels extremely dumb to me that it exists and just dies when Eren does. Guess they needed to give Mikasa a reason to kill Eren and worm pressure was what he went with
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Nov 5, 2023 16:38
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Did it even die on screen if so I missed it
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Nov 5, 2023 16:47
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hatty posted:Should have cut out the worm entirely imo. Not sure why I hate is as much as I do but it just feels extremely dumb to me that it exists and just dies when Eren does. Guess they needed to give Mikasa a reason to kill Eren and worm pressure was what he went with Doesn't the final shot with the tree and the guy walking in disprove it though? Like the cycle was about to repeat
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Nov 5, 2023 16:47
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MJeff posted:lol Armin Arlert posted:Issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding Eren Jaeger. You do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to him".
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Nov 5, 2023 16:51
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hatty posted:Should have cut out the worm entirely imo. Not sure why I hate is as much as I do but it just feels extremely dumb to me that it exists and just dies when Eren does. Guess they needed to give Mikasa a reason to kill Eren and worm pressure was what he went with Yeah, there needs to be multiple threats happening simultaneously and every single other person that could kill Eren needs to be off the board and the situation needs to be at its absolute bleakest so Mikasa has absolutely no choice. I understand that and I'm fine with that. The story just pulls a bit of sleight of hand at the end there because the worst case scenario is "Mikasa doesn't kill Eren, the Warriors can't stop the worm, it reunites with Eren.", that....puts him back in his big Founding Titan body, I guess? It doesn't let him restart the Rumbling, cause that was Zeke. I don't even think it lets him do the Titan clones thing again, cause that was Ymir. And we know he's not gonna, for example, feed a Titan to Historia or her baby (the only two people left on the planet with royal blood) because his refusal to abide by that is the whole reason we're in this situation. The only possible way Eren could start the Rumbling again is if Historia's baby inherited the Beast Titan from the dead Zeke as it was born and Eren came in contact with that baby. who the gently caress is scraeming "TATAKE" at my house.
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Nov 5, 2023 16:56
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The baby bee beast titan fake leak still makes me laugh. That would have been a hoot
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Nov 5, 2023 16:59
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In all seriousness though, I think I was most disappointed with not seeing Goth Mikasa and Nerd Armin hanging out with Slice of Life Anime Protagonist Eren in that movie theater. Oh well, there's always hope for a spinoff series.
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Nov 5, 2023 17:17
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MJeff posted:
Does the royal family member need to be titanized for it to work? He kissed Historia on the hand that kick started everything with his memories and she's definitely never been a titan. I assume he could just kidnap the baby and be able to use the Founder powers that way
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Nov 5, 2023 17:41
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Mecca-Benghazi posted:Does the royal family member need to be titanized for it to work? He kissed Historia on the hand that kick started everything with his memories and she's definitely never been a titan. I assume he could just kidnap the baby and be able to use the Founder powers that way It explicitly needed to be someone who was a Titan, that's why it had to be Zeke Touching Historia gave him vision into his future, but he didn't have actual access into the paths without Zeke
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Nov 5, 2023 18:05
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I laughed when zeke gave Levi the Mentos smile and Levi immediately decapitated him
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Nov 5, 2023 19:02
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Theoretically the Beast titan did pass to Historia's kid as Zeke dies without passing it along through consumption, and the next Eldian child born is Historia's kid born moments later. But none of that matters because the story ends immediately afterward with Mikasa killing Eren. Also, lol that there is still a lone poster refusing to give up the Historia/Eren theory even though a 3rd (and much improved!) version of the ending still definitively shows no sign of that kid being Eren's.
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Nov 6, 2023 08:56
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Anonymous Zebra posted:Theoretically the Beast titan did pass to Historia's kid as Zeke dies without passing it along through consumption, and the next Eldian child born is Historia's kid born moments later. But none of that matters because the story ends immediately afterward with Mikasa killing Eren. If you're referring to me, then I probably should clarify something, just for the record. I agree that the kid isn't Eren's in the final manga, let alone the anime. All I think is that there probably was a point where Isayama was planning to go that way, judging by how pointless that whole plotline wound up. The way the anime minimizes that plot only increases how much it feels like residue from an earlier draft, rather than a coherent part of the final narrative.
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Nov 7, 2023 06:11
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I mean, we know that the ending underwent significant changes at some point. Wasn't an earlier draft of the ending Eren telling his kid "You are free." or something?
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Nov 7, 2023 06:29
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MJeff posted:Wasn't an earlier draft of the ending Eren telling his kid "You are free." or something? No. There was a preview image of a baby with the text "You are free" overlayed on it, and people assumed it was Eren talking to his kid, when in fact it was Grisha talking to baby Eren. It was just a misinterpretation based on people seeing the Eren/Historia connection everywhere. The ending was changed, yes. Originally the ending was much darker, and then Isayama decided to lighten it up a bit. My personal belief is that the characters transformed by the worm in the end did not turn back, but all titans simply died without releasing the people inside. There's absolutely no indication there was ever a relationship between Eren and Historia. Anonymous Zebra fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Nov 7, 2023 |
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Nov 7, 2023 06:38
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The manga did focus a lot on Historia's pregnancy in a weird way and it never really got much focus in the anime, so there was at least something going on there that got scrapped.
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Nov 7, 2023 06:42
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I shouldn't have watched those last two episodes. This series always left a bad taste in my mouth despite how good the tension and art was. Just so bleak and the credits imply even worse poo poo. Time passes, Eren's grave is there, Mikasa gets older, maybe married, maybe has a kid or two, gets buried there as well (?). Time passes humanity moves on, gets more technologically advanced, future cyber punk stuff, Paradis gets blown to poo poo, then gets NUKED, tree survives during those various time periods, same with headstone. Cut to post nuclear apocalypse, tree is massive and unnatural looking, also a nook has opened up just like the Titan progenitor story, and poo poo is implied to start all over again. What's Isayama trying to say? We're just hosed? The T2 thing of John looking at the two kids realizing that humanity is hosed because two kids are shooting at each other with toy guns? I dunno it's probably because of Russia's war with Ukraine, and Israel trying to exact revenge on Palestinians, that this affected me more than I thought it would.
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Nov 7, 2023 06:53
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Jiro posted:I shouldn't have watched those last two episodes. This series always left a bad taste in my mouth despite how good the tension and art was. I assume, based off the new ending, that it is more akin to "You can't actually solve your problems by killing everyone who you blame for them, any atrocity you try to self-justify isn't going to be the end of the story, just the next step in a cycle of oppression and hatred." You can't really solve problems by killing, you just create new problems down the line.
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Nov 7, 2023 07:04
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Anonymous Zebra posted:No. There was a preview image of a baby with the text "You are free" overlayed on it, and people assumed it was Eren talking to his kid, when in fact it was Grisha talking to baby Eren. It was just a misinterpretation based on people seeing the Eren/Historia connection everywhere. It was also advertised as the final panel, while it was just a random panel in the final chapter. Further, the eyelashes in the initial drawing were different, more like how Isayama draws girl babies than like prior or later pictures of Eren. It's one of those cases where things are weirder if there wasn't a change.
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Nov 7, 2023 07:07
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I'm certain Eren was intended to be the baby daddy at some point, but Isayama got cold feet on it since it'd land too close to justifying the genocide play, and the ensuing rejiggering meant Historia ended up all but entirely excised from the final arc.
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Nov 7, 2023 07:33
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Conspiratiorist posted:I'm certain Eren was intended to be the baby daddy at some point, but Isayama got cold feet on it since it'd land too close to justifying the genocide play, and the ensuing rejiggering meant Historia ended up all but entirely excised from the final arc. If I may be so cynical, I think that undermining Eren and Mikasa would be a similarly big factor. With how much the show emphasized it, going "Eren never wanted to gently caress Mikasa, he's hooking up with the short blonde girl. No, the other one." would risk even more fan outrage than the manga picked up with the ending we had. (I also suspect that panel might have been from a "We did it!" style ending, but I'm less confidant in that. That is, the general situation is similar to the ending we got, but Eren lives, all his surviving friends and everyone else outside of Paradis can't forgive him, and he's left trapped by the weight of his own sins, left with nothing except sharing them with Historia, and leaving his daughter a world where she can be free, like he never was. But again, the balance for that is even more difficult, both in keeping from feeling like Eren was 'justified', and in that it would be abandoning the relationships among the core cast that people care about, dynamics ironically preserved with the actual ending. In death, Eren's friends might not forgive him, but hey can still honor their history together. In life, he'd have no such escape.)
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Nov 7, 2023 08:17
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Conspiratiorist posted:I'm certain Eren was intended to be the baby daddy at some point, but Isayama got cold feet on it since it'd land too close to justifying the genocide play, and the ensuing rejiggering meant Historia ended up all but entirely excised from the final arc. Yes, there are way too many irregularities in the manga surrounding Historia's character for me not to think that Eren was the father at one point. Among other things, it solidifies the pronatalist theme that was apparent in the story, which ended up being quietly dropped in the ultimate ending. I'm not sure exactly when the change would have occurred exactly; sometime after Chapter 130/131, I suppose. I haven't watched the final episode yet and I'm not sure if I ever will. The ending of AOT is still something that sticks in my craw two years later, and I don't feel a need to relive the frustration of watching one of my favorite series collapse so spectacularly at the final hurdle, even with the promise of sweet action scenes and music and what not. I've heard there's minor changes in the anime to try to smooth over the worst aspect of the manga ending but I don't think you can paint over the rot in the foundation. None of the changes I've seen discussed do anything to make the incongruity of the ending versus everything that came before it more palatable for me. Maybe I'm just too bitter.
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Nov 7, 2023 08:31
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In It For The Tank posted:Yes, there are way too many irregularities in the manga surrounding Historia's character for me not to think that Eren was the father at one point. Among other things, it solidifies the pronatalist theme that was apparent in the story, which ended up being quietly dropped in the ultimate ending. I'm not sure exactly when the change would have occurred exactly; sometime after Chapter 130/131, I suppose. I can't make any promises, but speaking just for myself, I felt like the ending in the manga was terrible, with the volume release doing enough damage control to make me able to live with it... But the ending in the anime was actually good. The small changes had a lot of impact, and the presentation is some of the best in the series. It's not perfect, the Historia stuff still feels really vestigial, the bit with Carla is a mess, and the political state of Paradise is incomplete, but the things that had to work are changed just enough to save them. Eren's motives aren't quite as clean as I think they were in an earlier draft, but it at least fits together now, with the pathetic side of things not erasing the side of things where he's acting knowing that he'll achieve his goals at a terrible price, despite his attempts to do anything else, rather than the chapter's dialogue kind of sounding like he was just flailing like an idiot. (Of course, the show also has him outright admit he's kind of an idiot, but that worked for me as well in the context.) Up to you if you think it sounds like it could be worth the try, but I was at least left much more content with the anime than I was with the initial manga.
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Nov 7, 2023 10:43
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While addressing certain things happening over in another manga, that being One Piece, I described the situation as 'sort of like the ending of Attack On Titan' (the manga) Though I suspect Oda will be considerably kinder in how that manga's plot went about addressing THAT.' Which I then described as such, based on not wholly reading it but picking up bits and pieces along the way. "Basically there's an ethnicity in the AOT world that is SO hated and despised beyond any point of reason that it seems like it's become imprinted in the human species at large's DNA and that they will NEVER be able to stop feeling murderous rancor towards these people...so the main character initiates an attempt to basically kill the entire world except that ethnicity. He almost succeeds. Then the last pages of the last chapter suggest that after hundreds of years have passed, it was pointless and humanity just rebuilt from the ashes and never stopped hating and are still trying to exterminate this ethnicity and the events that drove the series are about to be rediscovered and the whole thing will start over again with the world having not only learned nothing, but almost reacting with visceral contempt at the concept of learning anything." I then said "If I'm full of poo poo, correct me.", someone said I was at least somewhere between 'extremely misleading by omission' and 'completely factually wrong', and then they said "Okay, this is the One Piece thread, move the discussion elsewhere'. So. Just how accurate is my assessment at large, not considering stuff like personal character arcs and all that, but more this general theme of 'Humanity cannot change, does not want to change, and when they've tasted the sweet, easy fruit of dehumanization, it will never stop and humans don't want it to' over the full plot revelations and the ending pages?
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Nov 17, 2023 06:57
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One of the reasons I thought the epilogue was more bitter in the manga was because it did kind of imply that the second the rest of the world was able to rebuild and create a feasible military structure again, they sought retribution against Paradis and bombed the poo poo out of it. But the anime, by extending that timeline out considerably into a far more futuristic state, did make it feel more like a more general commentary on humanity's proclivity towards conflict, not a direct result of the plot of the story we had just read. Also, quote:the events that drove the series are about to be rediscovered and the whole thing will start over again I've always kind of disagreed with this. The Power of the Titans came about in a very specific way, because a very specific person wanted a very specific thing and then once she had that thing, she and multiple other people made very specific choices that led to the story we read. There is certainly the potential for that kid to walk into that tree and unleash something terrible, some kind of a weapon that ruins the world as badly as the Titans did, but I don't think it's a guarantee, because that kid could simply make different choices than that girl did.
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Nov 17, 2023 07:16
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The final episode of the anime also adds a series of lines from Armin when he's telling Eren how much of a loving dumbass he is. This kind of hammers home a belief that better things were possible, but people will take the worst lessons from these atrocities: "Eren, it's true that there's no end in sight for this conflict, and I'm sure the hell we went through has happened over and over. But we need to think that despite it all, one day, we can eventually come to understand one another... And now no one will have any faith, not even in something as small as that! The only lesson they'll be left with... is that they must kill, or be killed. That's all." It's a tragedy, and I view it as cautionary (obviously the fantastical elements don't apply in a real world context, but you can easily substitute the Rumbling for nukes or wars of extermination or revanchism or even climate change). I'd say it's more convincing to write a story about what not to do than to write a misguided Manual for how to Achieve World Peace. The war depicted in the epilogue could represent a conflict unrelated to past grudges - Paradis is said to be abundant in fossil fuels, which is real reason Marley sought to invade it at the beginning of the series. Or it could be provoked by the fascist government that takes power from Eren's coup. Or it could be a civil war, as characters were already foreshadowing that further divisions were arising among the people of the island, and that the fascist Jaegerists would just keep killing until their circles got smaller and smaller. Or it could be a direct retaliation to Eren's omnicidal efforts, resulting from hatred needlessly sewn against a similarly oppressed people (the Marleyans were shown to be warring with everyone - camps of displaced Arab-coded refugees are shown in detail). We don't actually know, and when the world is in ruins and countless innocents are dead, the impetus and justification for war become less relevant. What is clear is that both the Rumbling and the bombings, as well as all of the history beforehand, are characterized as unjust atrocities, and as humans, we must continuously strive to free ourselves from the forest. Attack on Titan doesn't depict an ending with a world escaping from its cycles of violence, because the world and the characters didn't actually achieve that in the main story. Whether you think this doomerism is a warning or a candid diagnosis of real life sorta depends on your worldview. In either case, the takeaway from the ending is, "Maaaan... gently caress."
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Nov 17, 2023 07:45
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Cornwind Evil posted:While addressing certain things happening over in another manga, that being One Piece, I described the situation as 'sort of like the ending of Attack On Titan' (the manga) Though I suspect Oda will be considerably kinder in how that manga's plot went about addressing THAT.' Well, first the Eldians aren't that hated. (Which is kind of impressive seeing how hated they are in the manga. Beating that takes work.) Most of them outside of one family are despised because they were the dominant ethnicity in an empire that ruled the world with an iron fist and because they've got this whole Titan thing. (Basically, almost every Eldian can be turned into a sleeper agent who turns into a giant monster with the right signal. Worse, the power of the Founder can rewrite their memories and even their genetics to, say, make them immune to diseases that are killing everyone else in a nation. The only exceptions are the eight Titan Shifters and the Ackermen.) But one family, the Tyburs, is seen as the heroes of the world and they're pretty much universally beloved, and in recent years more Marleyians have been coming around. (One of the shifters has her entire squad of Marleyian soldiers crushing on her.) Sure, the political group fighting for their rights is seen as something of a joke, but it still exists. It's the island the protagonists are on that's really loathed, but even they have people like Onyankopon and (eventually) Nikolo who work for their benefit because they're people in need of help. The series ends, before the epilogue, with a general talking about how everyone earned this with the evils of prejudice before making peace with the Survey Corp survivors. The final war isn't about the old prejudice, but new conflicts.
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Nov 17, 2023 11:27
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Cornwind Evil posted:"Basically there's an ethnicity in the AOT world that is SO hated and despised beyond any point of reason that it seems like it's become imprinted in the human species at large's DNA and that they will NEVER be able to stop feeling murderous rancor towards these people...so the main character initiates an attempt to basically kill the entire world except that ethnicity. He almost succeeds. Then the last pages of the last chapter suggest that after hundreds of years have passed, it was pointless and humanity just rebuilt from the ashes and never stopped hating and are still trying to exterminate this ethnicity and the events that drove the series are about to be rediscovered and the whole thing will start over again with the world having not only learned nothing, but almost reacting with visceral contempt at the concept of learning anything." There's nothing in the manga about "the human species" hating the Eldians on a DNA level; it's all an outgrowth of politics and nationalism (which is informed by the threat the titans represent). This is something the manga is very clear on, the hatred against the Eldians is something that we're shown has to be actively reinforced. There's no indication that this particular prejudice persists endless into the future, only that a failure to renounce war will eventually lead to further atrocity. There's a lot I object to in the manga's ending, but you're mistaken on the details.
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Nov 17, 2023 15:20
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I think it's worth noting that something does change about the cycle - consider how Ymir found the tree, versus how the child in the credits did. Fear and pain as she's hunted alone, while the child has calm curiosity with a friend. Something is different this time, and maybe hold hope that means things can be better.
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Nov 19, 2023 12:39
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Pyrotoad posted:I think it's worth noting that something does change about the cycle - consider how Ymir found the tree, versus how the child in the credits did. Fear and pain as she's hunted alone, while the child has calm curiosity with a friend. Something is different this time, and maybe hold hope that means things can be better. 
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Nov 19, 2023 19:48
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Attack On Dog would've been a superior anime but instead of killing titans they had to get them to sit.
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Nov 19, 2023 20:58
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I always just assumed that the Eldians just turned on each other anyway, went to war with themselves. That it was commentary on the dangers of populist/nationalist rhetoric inevitably leading to fascism and that the use of 'The Other' as a tool to blame all of societal ills on, which inevitbly ends in self destruction when they run out of others to blame and look inwards. Civil War essentially.
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Nov 20, 2023 22:44
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serious gaylord posted:I always just assumed that the Eldians just turned on each other anyway, went to war with themselves. That it was commentary on the dangers of populist/nationalist rhetoric inevitably leading to fascism and that the use of 'The Other' as a tool to blame all of societal ills on, which inevitbly ends in self destruction when they run out of others to blame and look inwards. Civil War essentially. I do like this reading. And for basically the entire series, the most serious threat to Eldians has always been other Eldians. Hell, most of the manga is about the Scout Regiment doing a loving coup d'etat
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Nov 21, 2023 22:08
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