Can we all just agree on one thing?

I’ve been going over the ending in my head for a while now, and I think whether you like it or hate it, we can all agree that one chapter was never going to be enough time to wrap all that up right?

Like they’re trying to reframe Eren’s motivations and character and explain the inconsistencies in his character that have accumulated throughout the series, and not only did they have 1 chapter, the manga condensed it to once scene.

I think this also is to blame for a lot of the clunky writing. Lines like “thank you for becoming a mass murderer for our sake” could’ve actually fit in the scene if it had time to breath. Say a chapter alone is dedicated to the Eren-Armin scene, the context of that could’ve evolved into armin potentially not agreeing with Eren, but saying that line to put him to peace, so his friend, someone he went through hell with, wouldn’t have to feel like he died for nothing. There was actual room for those events to unfold in a way that didn’t feel awkward, but a single scene wasn’t going to do that.

Likewise, hand waving away all of the buildup around Ymir seems to also suffer from not having enough space to breathe. I don’t agree with the “why did she have to be a simp tho???” angle entirely. I think framing the “curse of the titans” as the result of abuse outliving the abuser, and trying to mold that into something symbolic, it didn’t have to be bad. Mikasa killing eren sort of symbolically completes that arc in a narratively satisfying way, at least theoretically. What we got was a couple pages. Like. Not really anything enough to reframe the events of the story in any adequate way.

The chapter before the last one ends with eren dying. The follow up to that, could not have been anything short of underwhelming. The events leading up to the end really made it seem like at least from a storytelling standpoint, eren was not going to come out on top. The last many chapters all seemed to be pointing in the direction that thing would end on a low note, and the chapters leading to the end also didn’t do a good job preparing for that impact. And it didn’t have to be as poor as it ended up being, but the last chapter being underwhelming, in my opinion, was 95% due to the fact that it didn’t have to time to explain its ideas and themes, especially with the build up

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.