Hogan Reviews

Okay, now it’s actually time to talk about the end of Attack on Titan, the final finale! Frankly I don’t know what I was expecting but I should’ve guessed that it wouldn’t be particularly uplifting given all that’s happened leading up to it, but even given that the final montage… wow. Plus did Eren actually stay a villain? Has a protagonist really become an antagonist? All this and more in this final movie-length final special…

Picking up from the previous Final Chapter the remnants of our lead cast, specifically Armin, Mikasa, a severely injured Levi, Reiner, Pieck, Jean and Connie, are all jumping down towards the massive ribcage of the transformed Eren, who thanks to taking on the Founder Titan’s power has unleashed “the Rumbling” and started to wipe out humanity as a counter measure to them trying to wipe out his own people, the Eldians. Our heroes are trying to find the Beast Titan / Zeke as it was his blood that allowed all of this and they quickly find it, Reiner and Pieck using their Titan transformations to pin it down and destroy it, only to find out it was some sort of husk and soon they’re besieged by countless other husks of former Titans, including many unfamiliar to everyone from the past 2000 years’ worth of Titans as they’re being controlled by Ymir, the originator of the Titans who is firmly on board with Eren’s wiping out humanity plan. The main cast switch to plan B which is to have Armin transform into the Colossal Titan and hope the explosion either kills or severely damages Eren but before he can do anything Armin is swallowed by a weird cow-looking Titan and held inside. As everyone tries to free him they’re all battered about the place and Levi is further injured so it all looks pretty bleak.

One last Colossal cameo from our original poster boy.

That is until suddenly a bird-like Titan appears and it’s Falco, with Annie and Gabi on his back. After a quick chin-wag everyone heads back to Eren for round 2 while Armin and Zeke talk in the strange Eldian connected realm place. There Armin finally gets through to him that life is less about blindly multiplying and more about the little moments that give you joy (aww…) and it works! So much so that Zeke intentionally appears as himself on Eren’s back and signals for Levi to finally fulfill his commander’s last order and kill him, which he does despite his injuries. The Rumbling stops and at roughly the same time Armin is saved by the transformed Reiner, Pieck and Annie as well as Mikasa, plus with help from the husks of Titans they knew thanks to Zeke’s influence. Armin tells everyone to get back as he’s about to transform and they do just that, the Colossal Titan’s explosion taking out Eren and allowing the weird proto-organism / Founder Titan… thing to squirm out and head towards everyone. Reiner tries to stop it but it unleashes the gas that transforms people in to mindless Titans (unless you already have a Titan transformation or have Ackerman blood) so Jean, Connie and Gabi all transform alongside every other Eldian at the military base. Meanwhile Eren stands up as his own version of a Colossal Titan and begins to have a Godzilla-sized fist fight with his old friend…

The animation is thankfully very good on top of all this insanity so that combined with the final moments really delivering it’s safe to say I was really happy with this finale. Original creator Hajime Isayama should be proud that although the story went in a really weird direction for its final third he managed to at least stick the ending, which is something so few long running series do.

Overall Thoughts:

Mikasa sprouts wings! (The power of imagery and a good screen grab!)

Attack on Titan was a massive hit when it first aired ten years ago, and although its had its ups and downs and the story ended up going in a very weird direction (or should that be “weirder direction”?) I am happy to say that the show managed to stick the landing, giving an exciting finale with a suitably bittersweet ending.

At the last moment Levi fires a “Thunderspear” at Colossal Eren’s teeth, exposing a hole that Mikasa slips into and she then beheads the real Eren within, right in front of Ymir. We’re told later that Ymir and her curse hung around because despite being abused and used as a tool by the old King she truly loved him and so continued his will but seeing Mikasa kill the person she loved to try and create a better world showed her the error of her ways. This means despite how painful it was Mikasa has indeed saved the world, and in fact all the people who were turned into Titans and indeed anyone with Titan transformations are now freed from the curse and are regular humans again. We are then showed that before the final battle Eren visited all his friends within the weird Eldian dreamscape to tell them his plan before locking away the memories until after the final battle. Armin and Eren’s conversation is shown in full and we find out that once Eren joined with the Founder Titan he could see all the past and future at once and knew that his plan would be stopped by his friends, who would be heralded as heroes and thus could unite Eldians and the rest of humanity… but admits that before this happens he wipes out 80% of humanity, which you know… he feels a tad guilty about. He also breaks down and admits he wishes Mikasa will mourn him for at least a decade before she finds someone else and generally acts like a child, which Armin scolds him for (I assume this was probably done to make sure the man who willing killed off 80% of all humans isn’t seen as a cool badass…) The two friends happily embrace and say they’ll see each other in Hell, which if we’re going by Christianity then yeah, I think they just about make the cut (especially Eren!)

Armin makes peace with the idea of killing Eren at long last.

Back in the real world the survivors of Marley point guns at the Eldians assuming they’ll soon turn into Titans and kill them but they inform them they no longer have the power, and Armin arrives and say he killed Eren and set them all free, fulfilling his old friend’s plan of becoming heroes. Mikasa snuck away with Eren’s head in order to bury it at their favourite tree (and after a special Eldian dream vision of a life with Eren that never was being her visit from Eren that was kept from her) We then flashforward three years where everyone (apart from Mikasa) is heading back to Paradis to talk peace on behalf of the 20% of humanity that survived and see that the Jeagerists actually did take over the island and now have a harsh military regime going on in anticipation of a war of retribution with the rest of the world. That’s where we leave our main cast bar a visit to Eren’s grave, but we then get several flash-forwards, like an old lady version of Mikasa’s funeral (showing she did live a full life like Eren wanted… before his breakdown) and Paradis island growing in technology from regular buildings to skyscrapers to futuristic buildings all while the tree grows and Eren’s grave falls to ruin.

Eren moments away from his long awaited decapitation (or from his point of view, long awaited and already happened ages ago decapitation?).

Then a bunch of missiles come down and wipe out the futuristic Paradis, showing that despite everything war still reigns on Earth all those years later and then many years after that in the ruins of future Paradis a small exhausted child arrives at the tree where a familiar looking entrance way has formed on the bottom of the trunk, mirroring the one that Ymir fell into and gained the Founder Titan, heavily implying that the whole thing is going to repeat again, that humanity will forever destroy each other in war, cause the Titans to appear, get nearly wiped out and then start the cycle again; so everything our main characters did achieved literally nothing. Attack on Titan everybody! *round of applause*