The Bittersweet Duality of Attack on Titan’s Finale
Major Attack on Titan spoilers below!
With Part 2 of Season 4 set to be released on January 9, 2022 and the final arc of Attack on Titan drawing near, I’m sure many AOT manga-readers such as myself are thinking about the heavy ending that we’ll soon be reminded of.
In a very simplified nutshell: Hange dies, Eren massacres 80% of the world with the Rumbling and the power of the Founding Titan, and Mikasa kills and then kisses Eren. Titan powers are purged from the Subjects of Ymir, the Rumbling dissipates, and Eren’s friends inherit a world trampled by colossal Titan feet, but also a chance to make a place for themselves in that world. Oh, yeah–and we discover that, from the very first chapter of the story, Eren has been the one pulling the strings. He sent the Dina Titan to eat his mother, so he would come to hate Titans. He convinced his father to kill the Reiss family. He saw the future four years ago, and, before his death, told his friends how it would all play out, then erased their memories. He is the author, protagonist, antagonist, and audience of this story.
Wow.
That’s quite enough to explode one’s brains. A fantastic, far-fetched, heartbreaking load of information, deaths, and plot twists woven into a many-colored finale — a finale that somehow worked.
Somehow–call it talent or hard work — Hajime Isayama pulled off one of the most mind-blowing, awesome ending feats I have seen in any anime, book, or movie. To this day, I’m still unsteady on my feet thinking about it all.
Out of all the action and shock of the ending, what struck me most was its bittersweet duality. The closure to such a long saga of suffering and hope, mirrored that welding of light and dark perfectly. Every survivor of Paradis will live out a scarred life, filled with memories of war and loss; but, thanks to Eren’s sacrifice, each of them can live a life with the possibility of peace and freedom.
On a more individual level, Mikasa won’t get to grow old with Eren, but her love for him still lives as strong as ever (which is both a comfort and a burden). Armin has lost his best friend and will forever remember the lives he crushed; but he has a chance to be the hope of humanity, and sit by the ocean with freedom. Hange, Sasha and Erwin were lost; but the cause they dedicated their hearts to has come to fruition, after a century of defeats.
One of these combinations of loss and hope stood out as far more important than the rest: Mikasa and her loss of Eren. Only in the last two chapters of the story do we learn how truly integral Mikasa and Eren’s relationship, their love for each other, is to the course of the story. Personally, I didn’t see it coming until I saw Mikasa and Eren share a first and last kiss on the page; but suddenly, somehow, at the end of Chapter 138, the entire story was turned on its head. With chapter 139, we abruptly realize the overarching theme, the backbone of this epic tale, is —
Love.
Wait, what? Attack on Titan, primarily a love story?
Allow me to explain…
How Love Drove the Attack on Titan Plot
We learn in the following and final chapter, 139, that the power of Titans is bound to the world by Ymir Fritz’s spirit, and that she has served the royal family for two thousand years because she is bound to servitude with chains of love. Ymir was in love with King Fritz, despite the horrid person he was, and she couldn’t bring herself to sacrifice his life for the sake of the world; so, she set out destroying the world for him instead. As Kenny once said, we “[are] all slaves to something…”. The Founder Ymir was a slave to love.
Eren informs us during his visit to Armin on the Paths (maybe my favorite scene in the entire manga!) that Mikasa is the key to setting Ymir free and wiping the power of Titans from the earth. Why, he claims, he isn’t sure. Isn’t he, though? The tragic love between him and Mikasa, doomed to end in separation, is a mirror of Ymir’s tragic love for King Fritz. Eren and Mikasa have long loved each other and looked out for one another’s well being, unlike King Fritz; Mikasa especially throughout the story has shown a boundless protectiveness for Eren, treating him as her lifeline, her one and only precious possession. She fights for him, defends him, and kills for him. Ymir must have seen herself in this fierce love. And so, Ymir’s ability to be set free from her chains is dependent on Mikasa’s ability to do what Ymir could not: sacrifice Eren for the sake of the world. And Mikasa does just that: not only for the world’s sake, but for Eren’s. In a heartbreaking goodbye, she sets him free from his rage and his search for the perfect freedom.
Who would have thought the foundation of Attack on Titan — the show about battles, gore, determination, and loss — would actually be a love story? Love began, ended, and carried the story to its finish. It was a cruel love story that brought about the curse of the Titans, and Eren’s subsequent rage 2,000 years later. Our first meeting with Eren, he cries over a long dream he can’t remember — one which ends with Mikasa smiling and saying, “See you later.” Nine years later, as Eren dies and shares a goodbye kiss with Mikasa, we flash to Mikasa’s mind’s eye, where she kisses Eren’s head at the cabin, smiling and saying, “See you later.” We couldn’t see it until Mikasa had lost Eren, and Eren had lost Mikasa and his life; but hidden beneath the fabric of it all was this circular love story between him and Mikasa. The fact that, as a ten-year-old, Eren cried over the dream that Mikasa later experienced as an adult points again to the way Eren is not only the protagonist of his story, but the audience. Though he didn’t remember it, perhaps he saw all that would pass in his lifetime long before Bertolt and Reiner came to destroy his home.
Eren’s Sweet Confession
For me, one of the most satisfying, hilarious, cutest, and tear-worthy scenes of the entire epic was when, for the first time in perhaps the whole series, Eren openly expresses his love for Mikasa to Armin in the Paths. When Armin points out that Mikasa should forget a “heartbreaker” like Eren and move on to another man — and that he thinks she could easily do so and live happily — Eren says “No.” Then he proceeds to burst into hysterics: “I don’t want that!”, “I only want her to have feelings for me!”, “I don’t want her to find another guy…!”, “Even after I die I want her to hold me in her heart for a long time!” Can’t wait to see that animated. Eren then tells Armin that he doesn’t want to die. That he wants to stay here, in this world, with Mikasa and all the rest. But he can’t. Destiny is a cruel master, and not even he can defy it.
Perhaps Armin told Mikasa what Eren said; perhaps not. I have a feeling Armin wouldn’t hesitate to carry out Eren’s last wish and keep quiet. But either way, it certainly is satisfactory to see Eren finally outwardly and wildly reciprocating the affection and dedication Mikasa has for him, pulling their stoyr full circle.
The Bitter Truth
In the end, Mikasa and Eren are separated. They will never spend years together in peace like in Mikasa’s dream-reality; they will never grow old together. But Eren loved Mikasa enough to sacrifice himself for her sake and for the chance of freedom for all Subjects of Ymir, and Mikasa loved Eren enough to stop him. In the end, their love for one another and their friends was greater than their selfish desires to spend what little time they could have had together running from their suffering. And though that sacrifice made for an ending of great grief, it was perhaps the only path to freedom and hope for those who would survive the ordeal, and a valiant path at that.
The Sweet Hope in Eren’s Promise
Let’s not forget that sweet moment at the end of chapter 139, where Mikasa sits by Eren’s grave beneath his napping tree, in the now-free land of Paradis. “You’re happy, right?” she says. And then, tears forming in her eyes: “I wish…I could see you again.” Her scarf slips, and the end of it falls into her lap: that same scarf Eren wrapped around her over twelve years ago because she was cold.
Recall seven years ago, when Eren stood and declared that he would “always wrap [her] scarf around [her], again and again, forever.” As much as she wanted, as many times as she wanted. “That’s a promise.”
Now, Mikasa slumps without Eren to wrap her scarf, without him to speak with, without him to protect like her own soul. But a bird emerges from the sky — one similar to the birds we have seen throughout the story, those symbols of freedom — and wraps her scarf about her neck as she watches, shocked. It would seem that Eren is free now, represented by the form of a bird — and that he is still keeping his promise to Mikasa, and will do so, forever and ever. They cannot grow old together; they cannot share a table or face the world together like they once did. But he will keep this one precious promise to her, even from the grave. Mikasa will never be cold, and he will never leave her side, for as long as she lives. In a much healthier and hopeful way, this mirrors Ymir’s bond to the Fritz family; forever, she was bound to serve them, just like how forever, Eren will keep his promise to Mikasa. Only, Eren’s promise to Mikasa one of mutual love: a choice to keep coming back for her, though the years pass by, just as Mikasa comes back to his resting place to remember him.
Considering all this, Attack on Titan’s ending evidently wasn’t a success because of its amazing animation and illustration alone; nor was it carried just by attractive characters, its mind-blowing plot, or its killer symbolism and themes. It was all of these, and more, woven together expertly by Isayama, that made the closing of the manga into the masterpiece that allowed Attack on Titan to tower over the anime/manga world, and even the wider pop culture world, today. I can think of many names to sum this great story up simply: “The World’s Most Complicated, Cry-Your-Heart-Out Love Story”, “The History of a Suicidal Maniac and More”, “How Humanity Fought for Freedom.” But the truth is, you can never distill the whole essence of this show into a single title. Attack on Titan was a story of countless routes, twists, and beginnings. But no matter which way you choose to look at it, I think we can all agree that it was one heck of a ride that we would gladly experience again.
With that, to the boy who sought freedom,
goodbye —
until January 9, when we live it all over again.
