I love Koutetsujou no Kabaneri. Doesn't fuck with the premise plus you have the trains
and I just think its cooler. It doesn't try to be some fucking retarded WWII analogue or GoT, or whatever flavor of the fucking month Isayama was watching. When people go looking for more AoT stuff, that will be there. Plus it looks really purty.
I also thought about the AoT games, sadly this ending sort of fucks them, though there is a sequence in the second AoT game where
if you're baller enough, you can save Petra and the entirety of Levi's squad. So the games don't have to go where this stupid shitpile is going.
That was the original ending? Holy fucking shit. Yeah, the ending we got was so much better. But I don't think we needed an explanation. After all, the Parasytes don't know themselves. But I enjoyed it, even if its flaws.
The problem, with the last third of AoT, is it just becomes Flesh Kaiju's punching each other. And these flesh Kaiju are INCREDIBLY hard to kill. Like the time Reiner stuffed his nervous system up his asshole or Eren's head getting blown off in the absolutely defining moment of the series.
This causes the most important thing the first third had to go down the shitter: Stakes. The stakes are so much lower. Not even Eren's genocide is going to raise them, because he's not going after any of the mains. He's just killing people we don't care about. And the Shifters are going to do most of the fighting unless you've got combat Gods like Mikasa (who STILL doesn't do jack shit) or Levi (who gets blown the fuck up).
And war? Meh. Getting shot is nowhere near as horrifying as slowly being ripped apart and fucking eaten. Fuck, one mortar blast and gunshot and its lights out. You're not getting squeezed and slowly torn apart by this unknowing 'thing'.
Attack on Titan worked because you had these agile, vulnerable people against these horrifying monsters and one mistake and you were likely badly injured or fucking dead. That's completely lost after the basement.
I mean...if you're going to win against overwhelming odds, unless you're a Marvel movie, a lot of people typically fucking die. Most of the main cast even. Look at
Fury, the tank movie with Brad Pitt.
Fucking EVERYONE dies. And the only reason the new guy lives is because a German soldier has had enough death and lets him live. Otherwise the entire fucking cast, dies.
Obviously them winning wouldn't be realistic, but there's been tons of good fiction where futile pushes to the end, no matter the odds, have been done. Heroes knowing they're going to lose, but still, they go out and do their duty to protect others. Which, you know, makes them heroes. And there's been fiction where all the heroes sacrifice themselves, to still go on to cause the villain to have a phyrric victory. The problem is he removed all sort of sympathy and emotion from Eren for him to give a shit enough over killing his friends.
Them falling one by one to Eren in spite of it all would have been a better ending than...whatever the fuck this low stakes trash was.
The only thing that can salvage this is that somehow Eren needed the founder's power and to activate the rumbling and die to break the time loop. Don't ask me how or why, none of this shit needs to make any sense anymore. Because Isayama certainly isn't fucking thinking about it.
The thing is, it was never really the story that made AoT popular.
It was the music and the animation both first. That's what honestly drew me in. The amazing animation, the music, and then the premise. And then season 4 literally loses all of them. It isn't a mystery to me why Season 4 is getting a terrible adaption.
I know 'normies' are enjoying it, but it doesn't fucking matter because their love of AoT has shifted to Demon Slayer and that has like fucking 15 volumes left so we won't be getting rid of them any time soon. That's the only reason I was excited for a collapse for fucking normies to leave. So now the normies have Demon Slayer and that doesn't shit the bed (its actually ended) so we'll have them forever now so fuck.
I'm actually enjoying the 4chan, anime autist melt down of "THIS IS SO FUCKING KINO" to "I want to fucking die, this is the worst shit ever." way more than any normie melt down. Normies will always have shit taste, be fucking retarded and not understand a single fucking thing about narrative. I don't expect them to, because normies are faggots and a cancer on anything half-way decent (I have no fucking clue how any of them are still watching TWD). There will still be cosplay fags and idiots with scout squad merch (Who I will laugh my ass off at).
As for your scenarios:
- I think MAPPA has already shit the bed and is causing everyone who wanted a Chainsaw Man adaption night terrors because of just how fucking awful Attack on Titan is. They basically took everything that was popular about the series and fucked it into the ground. I still can't believe these guys make Jujutsu Kaisen. They must have given AoT season 4's team a buck fifty to animate.
- Not entirely impossible. But that would require something on the level of "OH! THATS A BASEBALL" which has yet to be topped. I don't think it will. Isayama seems bored and wants to end.
- Only possible IMO through timeloop shennanigans which is also the absolute last resort to save this steaming shitpile. Showing that Eren doing the rumbling and killing everyone was one of many possible futures and just basically retcons the last chapters. If he actually makes Eren's genocide win after this, that's on par with "THATS A BASEBALL". I will never stop fucking laughing.
I think you're absolutely right in Isayama is just going to play it safe because he's bored of 'Attack on Titan'. Like I said, we're going to get a shitty Eren monologue in 138, a teary eyed goodybe and an epilogue in 139 and that will finish off the series in the most absolute, basic bitch way. I guess its funny in its own right, but still sad.
God, this could have been so much more.
In memorium, AoT: