Hell not only is there Zeke's plan, but there are lots of other things that could've been done but Eren preferred to take the Christian Weston Chandler of doing things by shitting his pants and doing nothing while letting the future decide. The fact Eren relied on to see if other things differ from his future vision instead of doing something on his own was really dumb. Hell there was the 50 year plan proposed by Not!Japan which was actually reasonable. The Lelouche plan was dumb and makes me convinced that Eren was the dumbest member of the Survey Corps and probably scored lower than Sasha and Connie on an IQ test.
The main problem is we don't know what his plan is. Its not even shown to us, its told to us in the very last chapter in a single panel. There is no evidnce provided for this take other than Eren just happens to say it and its the only real thing that makes sense Even Eren admits he doesn't know what the fuck he is doing.
This directly contradicts Eren throughout the post-timeskip in its entirety. He seems extremely confident in his plan, having faith that it will work and secure freedom. He even has visions of it, which we are not shown. Eren, before the ending, is completely self assured, confident in what he was doing and believing it to be right.
When we found out that it was full genocide, it basically rendered that self-assuredness pointless, as there were no hints given. We didn't know what Eren was going to do until he actually did it. And that was the day everyone realized Eren was fucking retarded.
Of course it doesn't help the rumbling required very stupid decisions for the sake of plot convenience in order for it to happen (like how after the Warriors were defeated, not a single enemy of Marley bothered to look into the Island for how it defeated them or the Rich Eldian Asshole somehow beloved by everyone never bothered to take diplomacy measures just to not incentivize the very real threat of the rumbling from actually happening). Of course this required Isayama from portraying literally everyone who isn't Eldian/the non-Japanese of being Dhar Mann-tier racist bullies (Note: It would've been fine if it was just Marley and a handful of countries).
But no one would acknowledge this because Attack on Titan's most vocal critics that are known to the public are a bunch of faggots who whined about being denied of kino of Eren literally killing everyone for his blonde waifu and daughter to live a fairy tale ending with the vague notion of Eren feeling bad about it.
The problem with Marley and the external nations is we know so little about them. Their systems of government, their true feelings, what they feel about the Eldians. Maybe its something like a reverse EU, with one big country dictacting to the others (instead of migrants welcome) KILL ALL THE ISLAND DEVILS, and due to its military and economic strength, every other country listens to it. I mean, it'd be a WWII allegory, but the fucking story is already a clearly big one, except this time it'd be Germany vs. Japan, and you can have horrible antagonists in not-Germany, which would be the main enemy.
And you know, Eren wouldn't be isolated and he can have further development with his friends and they can cooperate to take down the war mongers. But Isayama wanted to split the friendship up because....reasons, I guess? Again, there are ways you can do this. He just chose the absolute worst possible way. The fact is the people of Marley are faceless. All we know is that they're basically super racists who cannot be negotiated with because of some fucking parasitic brain infection. Then we see camps and what they do to Eldians and the public support and its very hard to muster a care about it. Which, you know, is really bad if you're trying to paint Eren as the villain.
I mean, for me, I wanted Eren to win because it was the only logical conclusion. At the end, he's literally a God with the Power of God. The rest are just weak titans and Reiner who Eren has beat every time he's faced him. I expected a Deus Ex Machina, which came in the form of random people attacking through time for no specific reason. I mean, there was no way to beat him at that point except for Armin's mystical talk-fu, summoning the dead, a videogame weak spot and Mikasa knowing where Eren's head is and Eren not bothering to stick his nervous system up his ass. The contrivances for Eren to loose were hilarious. I mean, just have the squad get a macguffin. Its not that hard. "THIS IS THE REVERSE TITAN SERUM INHIBITOR DEVELOPED BY GRISHA, IT WILL PURGE THE TITAN FROM EREN'S BODY AND WE CAN KILL IT WHEN ITS WEAK." There, done. You don't need to do incomprehensible things like resurrect the dead or put some random worm that Reiner sumo wrestles naked.
Hell Eren's insanity could've also been from having the memories of others cloud his judgement to show the real consequences of having these powers especially with how his Dad and Kruger both held very deep hatred for Marley from their negative experiences and probably lashed out thinking they can't be forgiven. There are plenty of better ways to make Eren evil or tragic instead of bullshit future vision powers that make no sense. The story could've also gone in a direction of some war shit where it's the Island and various allies against a terrible empire, it's cliché sure but clichés work for a reason. Really the build up for what actually happened could've been handled better if Isayama understood how geopolitics/racism actually worked instead of making everyone who isn't a named character + Eren and his Yaegerist friends retarded.
That's a huge problem, yes. Eren is not portrayed as a villain and Isayama fucking knows this. His whole intent was to pretend to be smarter than his audience and play to that. Hiding Eren's motivation, drawing him in clearly heroic shots. Its a full bait and switch really. Its the JJ Abrams school of mystery boxes, which of course falls the fuck apart. Eren is clearly NOT portrayed as a villain until the very last second when he wants to kill everyone.
An insane Eren would have been fucking AMAZING. A tragic, broken character, made by his situation. Like putting down a mad dog.
Yeah, I posted something like that above. An analogue for Germany where it is the economic and military powerhouse of the mainland and wants to capture all Eldians to experiment on them and develop their own titan army in secret, brainwashing the warriors to do their bidding, pushing propaganda down and bullying all other nations. It would have been a much better way to do things.
AoT likely won't have a sequel if the rumors of Isayama wanting to develop a dark comedy series instead are true (If that's true, that honestly sounds like a better field for him) and I kinda doubt there is much left to do with the story at that point.
That's fucking fine, I think things are completely unsalvageable right now.
My favorite thing about this prior discussion is that you really don't have to change anything in the series for this scenario to work. It's that just easy.
But I've been thinking, and I'm just gonna say it; the last half (third?) of this arc has just been one giant shitpost.
>The Pig Revelation
>Falco can fly
>The Annie pie scene/People forgiving Annie in general
>The leaf baseball thing
>Eren's incel meltdown
>Armin thanking Eren for the global genocide
>Ymir saying she loves her sadist, pedo, enslaver rapist
>Eren turning into a bird
>Eren turns into a tree
>The Fritz death retcon
>Just the sheer amount of Ls dumped on Eren
>Probably a bunch of other stuff I forgot
This is not meant to be taken seriously. This guy has just been trolling for last half this thing. I'm sorry, but when I put it all together, I just can't see how any of it was meant to be taken as anything other than a joke.
I know I change my opinion on Yams like every five pages, but at this point, I just can't see any way this guy just ain't fucking with us.
That's really the most frustrating thing. There are a lot of very easy ways to make the second half work. Its just that none of them are taken for the retarded idea that Eren just fucking fails at everything, nothing is accomplished, no plot points are resolved, and Eren is implied to fucking replace Ymir. Its just so fucking stupid. I think it represents Isayama's earlier drafts of the story where the Titans were bioweapons of a more advanced civilization, so he took that and incorporated it.
I think at some point he just stopped caring. There's just a certain laziness here with these events. Some of it is trolling, the Eren stuff and the extra pages is 100% a fucking troll to embarrass readers who thought this story was super awesome and the cope from the manga ending is quite insane.
I think the Incel meltdown, Eren's Ls, Eren turning into a tree, Paradis getting blown the fuck up, Mikasa and Jean are all him trolling. Annie pie/forgiving Annie is just laziness because he doesn't care enough. Armin thanking Eren is just to reinforce the stupid Ledouche plot. Ymir loving the sadist pedo is again laziness, just a very quick and cheap motivation so he doesn't have to contend with the massive plot holes the ending generates. Fritz death retcon was probably something he legit forgot.
But again, the story is just garbage. It didn't have to be, he genuinely stopped caring and could not figure out how to make Eren the bad guy and was obsessed with mystery boxes with no clear plan, and it ultimately backfired, so he decided to troll.
