Isayama 'Game of Thrones'd himself. Except this time its in reverse. The anime studio knows whats coming. The money's in the DVDs and Blu-Rays. Just like nobody is going to want a blu-ray of GoT Season 8 or TLJ, nobody is going to fucking want a blu-ray of season 4 of Attack on Titan. I bet money they're pumping that Season 3 Part 2 and Complete Season 3 blu-ray out ASAP.
Its kind of sad that anime studios are so risk averse because profit margins are so thin, that they really couldn't salvage this and typically follow manga adaptions faithfully (except when the Manga isn't finished). In the US, we deviate all the time for dramatic reasons and shit like that. But the problem is they'd have to pen completely new arcs, and I don't think they have the will or the writers for that.
From what I'm seeing, this chapter has basically destroyed the fandom. Nobody is even talking about shipping anymore, just how fucking idiotic this was. I mean, there's one thing to hurt an audience by betraying them. Its another thing for your audience to think your a fucking idiot and abandon you en masse, and instead of any sort of feeling, they remember your story as a terrible joke.
Also its official: I think whoever is writing Attack on Titan: Before the Fall, should be given Attack on Titan wholesale to re-write it. Because that manga is superior in every fucking way to this shit. Its also sad, that spin-off is going to be worthless because nobody is going to give a fuck about AoT after this.
What makes it all the worse is that most people still don't know how bad the series actually is, and how much shit the anime has to fix. Season three got people who didn't like AoT to say that it's good now, and it's painfully ironic that they say just as season four is about to get rolled out.
With the original studio abandoning the series to its fate and pawning it off to shittier one, it really makes me wonder how bad the backlash is gonna be once the final season drops.
Fuck if I know, man. Probably because Eren or another one of the Attack Titans influenced him, or something. I don't know. Nothing makes sense in this series anymore.
You could just explain away anything. Literally anything. Eren could have influenced his father to fuck his mother, hence being the influence for being alive. He is the influence for himself being born. You don't get a bigger time paradox than that.
The story also isn't a time loop, because a time loop implies cause-effect relationships. When you can completely violate space and time, there's no loop. There's complete alteration of the time-line. We have absolutely no idea about anything in the story, because literally every single thing that happened was because of Eren going back in time in Chapter 121. Like I said 'Everything according to plan.'
I'm not going to defend this trainwreck of a chapter but there is one thing I think you guys are getting wrong, which is not your fault, Isayama is horrendous at clarity.
Grisha's PATHS ghost didn't change his mind, what happened was that he saw some time travel bullshit after he killed the Royal family that convinced him that Eren was in the wrong. Then sometime after Grisha somehow hugged Zeke despite Zeke not being physically there, he then saw more time travel bullshit that convinced him AGAIN that Eren was right. You can tell because after Zeke exits the memories, Eren tells Zeke he should see the memory where Grisha injects him.
With that out of the way, there's two big plot holes this chapter introduced, which is pretty small compared to the five thousand that is normally added with every chapter.
Both are about the memory where Grisha kills the Royal family. The first one is Grisha temporarily giving up because he'll have to kill the kids. Not only is this completely out of character for someone as stubborn and dedicated as him, remember, this is the same guy who carried a (completely deserved) grudge against his dad for decades, but giving up wouldn't even save the kids. King Kuck just fucking explained to him that he plans on his kids being killed by Marley, who don't seem to give a shit that their mom just said they deserve to die. Giving up doesn't mean saving those kids, it just means that everyone else goes down with them, something Grisha forgot not even ten minutes after it was explained to him.
The second is that the Uprising arc made it very clear that King Kuck refused to ever tell anyone why he won't stop the Titans. We know Rod wasn't lying when he said that because we saw his memories of his father locking him a cell for asking a question. Yet here King Kuck says why he won't stop the Titans, right in front of his family, including Rod. It's easy to forget but the whole reason why Rod sided with the king was because he assumed he had some knowledge that justified his actions. If he knew that it was just self-hatred, then he wouldn't have sided with him, ergo the Uprising arc would've mercifully never happened.
That's even fucking dumber. So he changed his mind 3 times. First, he's not going to kill them (which as stated, makes no fucking sense. If I found out that the pacifism was really fanatical self loathing, I would have murdered every one of them). Then, Eren tells him to kill them, so he kills them. Then he talks to Zeke, and changes his mind and wants to stop Eren. Then changes his mind AGAIN and injects Eren. Which means Eren HAD to know Grisha told Zeke to stop Eren, because Eren has all of these memories and can alter them at a whim. Isayama is just being a faggot and changed the rules for the sake of another non-cliffhanger. (If Zeke wins, the story is over, so he can't win).
What's hilarious is that you missed something too. Eren specifically told Grisha to spare Rod. So Rod didn't escape by accident. He was let go. Specifically so Historia could become Queen. So Eren set in motion the entire events of the Uprising Arc. lol.
Reminds me of how back when Willy first revealed King Kuck's true reason for creating the walls, I was positive he was lying because it didn't make any sense. If the king wants all the Eldians to die, then why wouldn't he just use his Titan to force them all to kill themselves?
Here we are around 20 chapters later and that's not even close to the most poorly written part since the timeskip.
I think I can explain that. As dumb as it is. King Cuck wanted Eldians to fucking suffer. I mean his self loathing was that intense, he was willing to subject them to total fear and terror for centuries. He was willing to let them be eaten alive. He made them forget, so they could NEVER repent. He not only took away what they did, but their option to be forgiven for it, because he didn't think they deserved to be forgiven. To view him as anything other than an evil monster at this point is impossible. Just because he was a 'pacifist' doesn't make him 'good'. He's a monstrous piece of shit complicit in the suffering of his own people.
I mean, just imagine how shitty a revelation that is.
"Oh, he must know some horrifying secret as to not resist this!"
"Nope, he's just a massively evil fanatic who wants his people to massively suffer and torture them before they die and then they rot in hell."
"....but, they just won a world war and then destroyed themselves through sickness and famine and the world genocided them. Wasn't that enough?"
"Nope. They have to suffer continually and die for all eternity because they're
Jews Eldians and when they conquered the world that single time, even though it didn't last and they suffered major civil wars, disease, famine, the humiliation of defeat, they still needed to suffer more."
"That's fucking re.tarded."
@Bunny Tracks, there's no protagonist, there's no antagonist. This story now, officially, has no fucking characters because none of them have any agency. Gaby blowing Eren's head off was planned. The Uprising and Historia becoming Queen was planned. They have 0 agency themselves. Also think about it. Everyone was a slave to the founding Titan. Now everyone is a slave to Eren's will. In this point, every single character is basically a pawn in a time travel story for Satan. I mean, don't be shocked next chapter if Eren turns Ymir around easily and stops her. He looks to Zeke with a smile and says:
Except you know, Eren's Satan.
