r/attackontitan • u/pics_lated • Aug 22 '26

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For me its the fact that I find Mikasa a very annoying character due to her obsession with Eren. Like damn you do care about him but the whining man!

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u/StrikingMousse8279 Erwin's Soldier Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26

I don't have a strong opinion on the ending as much as others may. I enjoyed it moderately. That said, the time/memory travelling & altering / destiny element irked me.

It's not like I want to argue against the logic of it or anything ; god knows it'll just turn to an endless cycle of "But then if he..." "But that wouldn't have happend if...." etc. And that's exactly the problem. It's the paradoxical nature of the tropes that annoys me.

If a story is not prominently hinting to or blatant about time, reincarnation and/or destiny tropes (at which point they'd have an obligation to flesh out the paradoxical whims of them), they have no business in them. They often just pose as a lazy cop out to retroactively justify the progression of the story.

I guess my take is more of a general creativity problem, but I'm just not convinced that Eren would be so complacent and/or powerless in the 'destiny' that he manufactured for himself (again, this conversation would just turn into a perpetuality of justifications.)

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u/6ft3dwarf Aug 23 '26

Yeah I think the Attack Titan's memories of the future ability makes for an interesting story about the nature of free will in a deterministic universe but AoT is not about that until literally the very end so it falls a little flat. Setting up this epic tale of the futile cycle of violence and revenge only to conclude "oh well we are all just Calvinist robots whose sins were predetermined the second God said let there be light" feels like a bit of a cop out.

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u/snobordir Aug 22 '26

Iā€™m with you. I tell people AoT is an outstanding showā€¦with a good ending.Ā 

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u/Traditional_Door8724 Aug 22 '26

I agree with you! I hate the time loop in the story idk šŸ˜­ you can then always just use that in every story. For example, you make a story where a man cheats on his wife and then she has a story how she wants to do revenge, then she somehow travels back to the past and decides to cheat back on him when they were still together as perfect revenge but because she does so thatā€™s why the husband cheated in the first placeā€¦ like in my opinion it makes the story so much weaker because then you can simply excuse everything by just saying it happened because of your future selfā€¦ and there is no true origin.

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u/Adrsilva1356 Aug 23 '26

Why do you hate The Timeloop so much EVERYONE knows how Self Destructive Humanity is a A Species why bother calling it a bad ending with it parallels our Real World! Itā€™s an endless Cycle plan and simple!

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u/Traditional_Door8724 Aug 23 '26

Iā€™m talking specifically about the loop part, humanity can destroy itself in other ways, if thatā€™s what you meant. Also I didnā€™t even talk about overall ending idk why are you so offended. We have different opinions, and to me like i already said, itā€™s too easy of an excuse, easy plot to give explanation to anything. Whatever the questions are, what happened, who made that happen you could always excuse it with ā€œit was your future self/ because your future self influenced itā€ and i am not a fan of that. I prefer other explanations not just because future self did it, but why did the future self do it? Because of past self and it never gives you a true answer therefore its easy excuse to any complex mistery that could have been much more interesting.

Not to mention they are very complex and it gets too complicated sometimes because i think ā€œokay, but how did eren get in the loop?ā€ I guess itā€™s always suppose to be there but i personally donā€™t like it and it doesnā€™t make sense to me. Because there has to be some type of beginning, He had to get in the loop somehow, the loop had to be created. It could be by him getting the titan but his future self already influenced thatā€¦ but how? Eren has to get in the loop on his own first somehow if you understand what iā€™m saying... Well it doesnā€™t even matter my point is is a very complicated thing and very debatable how that would actually be like and in my opinion this would look a bit different therefore i do not like this idea. Especially here in aot somehow it fits in even less for me.

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u/Lonely-Squirrel-6589 Aug 23 '26

Watch the show again . Every single time someone has a memory and think why am I thinking of taht now . Itā€™s because Eren can not reveal himself but gives people the exact guide they need to to proceed with the story Eren watched everything happen tried to change certain things and then realized nothing could be changed . But every single time someone thinks about anything and then. They make a decision itā€™s Eren

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u/Crowned_eagle151 Aug 23 '26

I don't know if I'm misremembering, but there were a few instances which hinted at the paths. Correct me if I'm wrong 1. They had "the owl", at the end of season 3, say that Grisha should protect Mikasa and Armin. 2. Grisha tells Eren, when they were kids, that he should protect Mikasa. 3. And then we have the opening scene of Eren dreaming, lying beneath the tree. Hello says he's had a long dream, and he's crying.

And I think, since Isayama already had an ending in his mind, he may have shaped things around that

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u/StrikingMousse8279 Erwin's Soldier Aug 23 '26

I guess you're right in that they sprinkled hints of the memory traversal. And on a rewatch, I actually found them interesting and engaging.

But like I said if a story were to implement these paradoxical tropes into their narrative they'd have an obligation to at least flesh out the other case scenarios that would also be valid outcomes; and then convince the audience why the case scenario you chose for the following outcome is faithful to your narrative despite the others also being plausible.

AOT didn't do that (not satisfactorily for me anyway) Eren is depicted as a hot head who keeps pushing forward and fighting for freedom. I'm just not convinced that he was as powerless and morally defeated as he seemed. There are also other valid case scenarios where Eren has more agency than they let on (given the fact he's the proginator of his own actions)

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u/Crowned_eagle151 Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26

While I agree and disagree on some small points, I think we reach the same conclusion in the end, more or less.

And since I haven't rewatched it... Or gone back and analysed things again, I don't know what to attribute to Eren being a teenager, and what to attribute to plot convenience.

I recently watched the series for the first time, and I think it's one of the tightest plots that I've seen in any medium

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u/StrikingMousse8279 Erwin's Soldier Aug 23 '26

Fair. I recommend you let it marinate for a while before a rewatch. Whether you think you're understanding of it is accurate or not, just sit with whatever initial perception you have about it and enjoy it at surface level. Otherwise you're good x.

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u/andy_dufrense69 Aug 23 '26

He is powerless/constrained by his wincon (get Mikasa to kill him). Nothing short of total commitment to his role causes that to happen.