I've been introducing the show to a friend. We just hit "Hero" and my friend all but exploded with emotion.
The manga's ending isn't exactly the best, but I wouldn't say it's as bad as the Game of Thrones finale or (god forbid) Dexter's. I think that certainly helps me still feel a mountain's worth of tears coming on with this episode, but more so than anything it simply remains A+ television (and its chapter was just as good).
Yeah, there's very little in the conceptualization stage of how that series ended that strikes me as downright stupid. The execution was just utterly botched.
I'll concede that that's not quite the case with Shingeki no Kyojin's ending, but it's still stronger than what Benioff and Weiss actually put to page in GoT scripts.
The problem with AoT's ending is that it's decent, but only decent. And throughout the series, we are trained to expect something amazing. Because the build ups continuously deliver beyond the average.
It's a little too rushed and Ymir being obsessively in love with her abuser, King Fritz, and then paralleling then with Eren & Mikasa and then lionizing Mikasa's love for Eren at the end leaves a bad taste
In contrast, I recently watched Iron Blooded Orphans for the first time and the ending to that was...
So absolutely perfect it elevates the entire show for me :)
The average AoT poster here would probably love it too.
Spoilers if anyone plans on watching it.
So the two main characters start as slaves on Mars, then rebel against their masters, killing them and taking over their PMC and eventually join the Space Yakuza to survive. They do some shady shit and cap some fools, but in the second season they start getting a bit too confident and power hungry.
In the final episodes, the consequences of their actions come full circle. Comrades and named characters are dying left and right. Abd finally, the two 'brothers' both die because they overplayed their hand. One of them get's gunned down like a thug by nobodies, because there is a price on his head. Which is a perfect end for a wannabe yakuza leader who got greedy, but does love his comrades.
The other dies in a mech. Not because of lack of skill, but because the forces that keep law and order literally nuke him from orbit.
Because of his and a few other characters last stand, the rest of the family of rag tag child soldiers manage to escape to earth to start more peacefull lives with new identities.
O yeah, and one of the two brothers made a kid who lives live in a slightly better world (no more chil labour on Mars) than they left it.
So tl'dr
-the main two characters both die after having done some morally abhorent stuff
-a kid from one of them lives on in a slightly better world.
-lot's of named side characters die one by one in the final stretch of episodes.
It works even better in the full context of the show, but even in a vacuum, I spotted a lot of elements that I would have loved to see in Titan.
It 100% needs an ending but the journey has been fantastic. Oda says it's only a few more years so hopefully Luffy accomplishes the goal he set out to do over 20 years ago.
All Oda needs to do to have a good enough ending for One Piece is to have any variation of "World Government got rekt and Luffy became Pirate King, the end".
It 100% needs an ending but the journey has been fantastic. Oda says it's only a few more years so hopefully Luffy accomplishes the goal he set out to do over 20 years ago.
Sure, but the entire thing has been about the journey. If they journey sucked, an ending wouldn't made it great. The same the other way around. Compare that to mystery-box shows and ending focused things. Take for instance The Mist, where an ending elevated a mediocre movie.
Sure, but the entire thing has been about the journey. If they journey sucked, an ending wouldn't made it great. The same the other way around. Compare that to mystery-box shows and ending focused things. Take for instance The Mist, where an ending elevated a mediocre movie.
But the comment I'm replying to specifically has to do with otherwise great stories...with lackluster endings. It's well known One Piece has a great story but how Oda sticks the landing is something everybody is anticipating. It's just something fun to speculate and have high hopes for, is all.
Worst case scenario is he somehow fumbles it and it ends up being as divisive as this thread has been these past 2 months. Lol.
But the comment I'm replying to specifically has to do with otherwise great stories...with lackluster endings. It's well known One Piece has a great story but how Oda sticks the landing is something everybody is anticipating. It's just something fun to speculate and have high hopes for, is all.
Worst case scenario is he somehow fumbles it and it ends up being as divisive as this thread has been these past 2 months. Lol.
In contrast, I recently watched Iron Blooded Orphans for the first time and the ending to that was...
So absolutely perfect it elevates the entire show for me :)
The average AoT poster here would probably love it too.
Spoilers if anyone plans on watching it.
So the two main characters start as slaves on Mars, then rebel against their masters, killing them and taking over their PMC and eventually join the Space Yakuza to survive. They do some shady shit and cap some fools, but in the second season they start getting a bit too confident and power hungry.
In the final episodes, the consequences of their actions come full circle. Comrades and named characters are dying left and right. Abd finally, the two 'brothers' both die because they overplayed their hand. One of them get's gunned down like a thug by nobodies, because there is a price on his head. Which is a perfect end for a wannabe yakuza leader who got greedy, but does love his comrades.
The other dies in a mech. Not because of lack of skill, but because the forces that keep law and order literally nuke him from orbit.
Because of his and a few other characters last stand, the rest of the family of rag tag child soldiers manage to escape to earth to start more peacefull lives with new identities.
O yeah, and one of the two brothers made a kid who lives live in a slightly better world (no more chil labour on Mars) than they left it.
So tl'dr
-the main two characters both die after having done some morally abhorent stuff
-a kid from one of them lives on in a slightly better world.
-lot's of named side characters die one by one in the final stretch of episodes.
It works even better in the full context of the show, but even in a vacuum, I spotted a lot of elements that I would have loved to see in Titan.
It's always interesting to see how endings are perceived in different cultures. From what I've seen, a bad (as in poorly received) ending in Japan isn't really a death sentence for a series. While in the west, it can easily kill any good will a series had (GoT went from a TV darling to being damn near universally hated in the course of a season).
What exactly the "One Piece" is is gonna make or break the series for a lot of people, Oda seems to be aware of this by already ruling out any sort of "cop out" answer to what it will be and saying it will be something substantial.
Though I think AoT faltered mostly because of its rushed nature. Once he committed to doing the Rumbling the story took on a whole new scale, I feel he needed to do more to explore the consequences of it and it's impact on the characters if it wasn't gonna end with all of them dying. Isayama left too much unsaid and vague, like the revelation Eren stopped Dina from eating Bert and maybe pushed her towards his mom. It just pops up in the last chapter and you can't really digest it, that has MANY implications about what else Eren has done and how he reasoned it/made him feel. Like it didn't really need to be revealed at all.
Ehm..to give a good reason why she obeyed the shitty kings order millennia later? You kind of need a heavy psychological trauma for a command to be entrenched this long.
Ymir had an extremely shitty life, so it's understandable that how Fritz treated her is the closest she came to someone caring about her existence.
Ehm..to give a good reason why she obeyed the shitty kings order millennia later? You kind of need a heavy psychological trauma for a command to be entrenched this long.
Ymir had an extremely shitty life, so it's understandable that how Fritz treated her is the closest she came to someone caring about her existence.
Its way too much of a sensitive and nuanced topic to bring it in final chapter of a story and try to justify it as a cheap plot point to explain the majority of things that happened in the story. The plot point was so powerful that this theme overwrote all other important themes for majority of the series. It could be easily written and justified that fritz kept as her a slave and emotionally and physically abused her. But her stockholme syndrome and Mikasa/Eren parallel for it was probably the cringiest asspull i have ever witnessed in a story and i read plenty of shonen stuff. Now people have to justify why the ending does not suck instead of getting a masterpiece like closure like rest of the serial run. How the mighty have fallen.
Its way too much of a sensitive and nuanced topic to bring it in final chapter of a story and try to justify it as a cheap plot point to explain the majority of things that happened in the story. The plot point was so powerful that this theme overwrote all other important themes for majority of the series. It could be easily written and justified that fritz kept as her a slave and emotionally and physically abused her. But her stockholme syndrome and Mikasa/Eren parallel for it was probably the cringiest asspull i have ever witnessed in a story and i read plenty of shonen stuff. Now people have to justify why the ending does not suck instead of getting a masterpiece like closure like rest of the serial run. How the mighty have fallen.
Dunno, her fear of him? or he having some plot device that forces her to? or her slave mentality that protagonist wanted to free her from like everyone thought at earlier chapters? there can be 10 million ways to justify her loyalty and the author chose a very sensitive topic for which he didn't had the skill or time needed to land. And this poorly handled plot device not only used to justify her loyalty but the entire freaking plot.
To be honest not sure why the love revelation was a shocking revelation or even a revelation at all. I assumed she had feelings for him when she sacrificed her life to save him. Dudes still the father of her children and the fact she did that made me think she had Stockholm syndrome.
To be honest not sure why the love revelation was a shocking revelation or even a revelation at all. I assumed she had feelings for him when she sacrificed her life to save him. Dudes still the father of her children and the fact she did that made me think she had Stockholm syndrome.
Dunno, her fear of him? or he having some plot device that forces her to? or her slave mentality that protagonist wanted to free her from like everyone thought at earlier chapters? there can be 10 million ways to justify her loyalty and the author chose a very sensitive topic for which he didn't had the skill or time needed to land. And this poorly handled plot device not only used to justify her loyalty but the entire freaking plot.
I meant an actual motivation. You know, psychological. The reason she is loyal.
To be honest, I don´t get the fuzz. It´s not meant to be explored. It´s meant to be a ´logical´ explanation that makes sense, based on things we can observe in the real world. It´s just there.
I can understand that it can be a sensitive topic for some, but the only thing Yams does is saying ´it happened, that´s why´.
I meant an actual motivation. You know, psychological. The reason she is loyal.
To be honest, I don´t get the fuzz. It´s not meant to be explored. It´s meant to be a ´logical´ explanation that makes sense, based on things we can observe in the real world. It´s just there.
I can understand that it can be a sensitive topic for some, but the only thing Yams does is saying ´it happened, that´s why´.
The first and third one i suggested are psychological too. As the other posters has suggested it can be that she had some lingering attachment or whatever to fritz as he is technically her husband/rapist/torturer/murderer. But making this into a major plot point like she is some kinda masochist is in very poor taste and that relationship is in no way or from parallels eren - mikasa's relationship. At his worst eren just ignored mikasa and behaved like a asshole to her( this gets retconned anyway). So ultimately its a very poor plot point that came off has whole lot of nothing.
A story is there to make a point in service of its themes. Its not plot happens and another plot device gets revealed to explain why it happens. It can be logical but that does not mean it will make thematic sense always. This topic is very nuanced and i doubt yams has much understanding of it as he parallels it with a shonen hero and his simp. And ultimately this topic has no thematic attachment to any other themes through out the story at all. Its just there to explain stuff and it made all the characters post this revelation 10 times more cringy.
I will say this, both Mikasa and Ymir had tons of potential to be something great, but we didn't get that.
The 6 pages improved Mikasa slightly for me. That she went on to get married and became a grandmother was great instead of being this sad woman that is crying for her whole life about Eren. That's the end point I wanted. What I had issue with is that she spent the whole manga going "ereh". She was always tied to Eren's bitch ass when she could have been a great character if Isayama could just let her realize that obsessing over Eren isn't good. He treated her like shit and the fact it took her until the rumbling to understand this was just unsatisfying as hell.
Same goes to Ymir. I had a feeling she was probably stuck in her "slave" mode but the fact this is what her character was instead of being something more satisfying was a let down. She should have realized that Fritz was trash without Mikasa. She ended up basically being this weirdo who was spectating and smiling while Mikasa was kissing Eren's dying head.
Maybe you have an issue if people in your country don't realize genocide is bad, especially when you live in a country known for a couple attempted genocides.
Eh, either way the story doesn't really attempt to justify it. Literally everyone is horrified by it(and the horrifying consequences are literally spelled out and illustrated) except for Eren and his closest followers. It'd be a different story if the Scouts by the end were all "boy Eren did a great job with that whole apocalypse thing." There was never a second thought from them(alright maybe Mikasa struggled with it a little because she has problems) that they had to shut Eren's shit down.
Maybe you have an issue if people in your country don't realize genocide is bad, especially when you live in a country known for a couple attempted genocides.
Eh, either way the story doesn't really attempt to justify it. Literally everyone is horrified by it(and the horrifying consequences are literally spelled out and illustrated) except for Eren and his closest followers. It'd be a different story if the Scouts by the end were all "boy Eren did a great job with that whole apocalypse thing." There was never a second thought from them(alright maybe Mikasa struggled with it a little because she has problems) that they had to shut Eren's shit down.
Nearly (?) all volumes have slight dialogue fixes (although most of them are irrevelant to non-Japanese speakers, admittedly), but those aren't exactly the kind of changes you can expect leakers to spot/upload. We'll have to wait until the volume is out to see.
Okay, so after a cursory glance, I've noticed two changes already: "Karl Fritz" (fortunately) became "King Fritz", and Armin's "I promise I won't let this error go to waste" turned into "I promise I won't let your awful/vile error go to waste" (that's "saiaku", for the Japanese speakers out there).
There might be more, I don't know.
(Sadly, Armin is still drawn with his gear on when he wakes up on the ship after his conversation with Eren, so that continuity error hasn't been fixed... Maybe I should have notified the editor back then. Heh.)
Okay, so after a cursory glance, I've noticed two changes already: "Karl Fritz" (fortunately) became "King Fritz", and Armin's "I promise I won't let this error go to waste" turned into "I promise I won't let your awful/vile error go to waste" (that's "saiaku", for the Japanese speakers out there).
There might be more, I don't know.
(Sadly, Armin is still drawn with his gear on when he wakes up on the ship after his conversation with Eren, so that continuity error hasn't been fixed... Maybe I should have notified the editor back then. Heh.)
Jesus Christ... The series is done, the final volume has been released, but Reddit is still coming up with silly conspiracy theories.
"How weird that the recent interviews and the new exhibition don't cover the new pages! That couldn't possibly be because those are still fairly recent, it has to mean something! I bet it's not really a new ending! It's... er... something else, and Isayama is trolling us! Chances are the TV series won't even adapt those new pages!"
Jesus Christ... The series is done, the final volume has been released, but Reddit is still coming up with silly conspiracy theories.
"How weird that the recent interviews and the new exhibition don't cover the new pages! That couldn't possibly be because those are still fairly recent, it has to mean something! I bet it's not really a new ending! It's... er... something else, and Isayama is trolling us! Chances are the TV series won't even adapt those new pages!"
Jesus Christ... The series is done, the final volume has been released, but Reddit is still coming up with silly conspiracy theories.
"How weird that the recent interviews and the new exhibition don't cover the new pages! That couldn't possibly be because those are still fairly recent, it has to mean something! I bet it's not really a new ending! It's... er... something else, and Isayama is trolling us! Chances are the TV series won't even adapt those new pages!"
