Attack on Titan Griefing Thread - >tfw even your VA thinks that you're a loser

[armoreddinnerjacket]

Also with the Armin getting shot thing, its kind of irrelevant since he can just regen that out of titan form anyway, but really, Attack on Titan is probably the only media I can think of where a God that defies time and space about to commit an apocolyptic genocide is actually fucking boring.

The edge has been overplayed, so we simply stop caring.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

I think what makes me so annoyed about the whole Yeagerist thing is that they're so insignificant compared to the literal apocalypse that's happening.

It's basically like if Godzilla, and a bunch of other monsters were about to attack NYC, but the military was more concerned about what the Manson family were up to.

 

[The Great Chandler]

I think what makes me so annoyed about the whole Yeagerist thing is that they're so insignificant compared to the literal apocalypse that's happening.

It's basically like if Godzilla, and a bunch of other monsters were about to attack NYC, but the military was more concerned about what the Manson family were up to.

"Mr.President, we are reporting that Godzilla and several other MUTOS are now fifty nautical miles off of New York Harbor. We have to decide on evacuating the residents and fortifying our defenses. Any suggestions?"

"Uhh...yeah! Sounds like an iffy situation y'know-very bad, but I wanna see what the Charles Manson guys are up to. I say we nuke the Godzillas, after we deal with the Mansons. Sounds good?"

 

[Uranus Pink]

Truth be told I have seen that story setup done before and done well. Usual variation is the Godzilla monsters are distractions created by the Mansons to draw attention away from true goal. Legends of Tomorrow use it during the "Crisis of Infinite Earth" crossover. Another variation is the monsters are vulnerable only thru their Manson creator

 

[Bunny Tracks]

Forgive me, this is incredibly off-topic, but I just found this piece of hilariously stupid fanart that has literally reduced me to tears because I can't stop laughing at it.

Spoiler: original caption: i can fight

I know I've said this many times before, but if this happens, not only will I forgive Isayama for everything he has done, I'll forgive his editors, his publishers, everyone involved with this dumpster fire of a series.

 

[Secret Asshole]

The edge has been overplayed, so we simply stop caring.

There's no edge left, unless Eren rapes Mikasa to death on a skyscraper penis or something equally fucking stupid.

I think what makes me so annoyed about the whole Yeagerist thing is that they're so insignificant compared to the literal apocalypse that's happening.

It's basically like if Godzilla, and a bunch of other monsters were about to attack NYC, but the military was more concerned about what the Manson family were up to.

Its worse. Its like if there was a Godzilla who could bend dimensions and predict the future and was coming to destroy the whole of the United States, but you really were more interested in ANTIFA burning a trash can on a side street and throwing a brick through the window of a starbucks that's been out of bushiness for a year. Its really just that bad.

 

[Trashfire Garbagefuck]

Its worse. Its like if there was a Godzilla who could bend dimensions and predict the future and was coming to destroy the whole of the United States, but you really were more interested in ANTIFA burning a trash can on a side street and throwing a brick through the window of a starbucks that's been out of bushiness for a year. Its really just that bad.

this is the best description of the yeagerists I've ever heard. though it's not like they can just ignore the yeagerists at this point. they've got the only existing plane and the main crew need that to get close enough to eren that they could, I dunno, parachute down to wherever he is on the dinosaur titan? and from a narrative standpoint isayama has already wasted too much time building them up as a problem. it's either they face floch and his army of dumbasses now for one last bit of traditional 3dmg action before the big confrontation with eren, it ends up being something tacked on after the climax like the scouring of the shire but with floch instead of saruman, or it's glossed over entirely. I just hope it's done within the next two chapters and floch does something entertaining before it's over.

 

[CapeKnight]

To be fair to Isayama, a lot of the "GoT, Nazi, Time Travel" complaints are kinda foreshadowed and set up from the start. When Eren trained to become a soldier, the way they were all incited to "offer their hearts" was already pretty similar. From the start, it's always been about offering millions of lives to fight for a cause, a cause in which, the benefactors are the few compared to the rest. The Time Travel aspect was something I suspected since the whole "To You, From 2,000" years shit once we found out it was year 800 something. Plus, the Titans shifting ability heavily hints at it coming from an extra dimension above us, with how it's summoned, and Hange's observation on Eren when she was experimenting with him about how the Titan arm was light in weight and melted away.

I didn't mind the reveal of what came after the Basement, it's actually a good paradigm shift in a way. I think the problem people have is that it went from "show of Humans vs Titans", which was the appeal, to "Turns out Titans were Humans", which was acceptable and shocking to some, to "it has to do with race", which, given the politically charged climate in today's world, I don't blame people being turned off by it. I assume that had this come out during a decade ago, people would be thinking of it quite differently.

The tonal shift is a bit off though, but I think that's the point. If anything, Isayama weighed himself down with certain characters in the cast and relying on the gimmicks that arise out of their respective archetypes a bit too much.

Personally, I think he could still salvage this. I'm just hoping he doesn't pull a Tokyo Ghoul:re styled ending and just abruptly ends shit.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

To be fair to Isayama, a lot of the "GoT, Nazi, Time Travel" complaints are kinda foreshadowed and set up from the start. When Eren trained to become a soldier, the way they were all incited to "offer their hearts" was already pretty similar. From the start, it's always been about offering millions of lives to fight for a cause, a cause in which, the benefactors are the few compared to the rest. The Time Travel aspect was something I suspected since the whole "To You, From 2,000" years shit once we found out it was year 800 something. Plus, the Titans shifting ability heavily hints at it coming from an extra dimension above us, with how it's summoned, and Hange's observation on Eren when she was experimenting with him about how the Titan arm was light in weight and melted away.

I didn't mind the reveal of what came after the Basement, it's actually a good paradigm shift in a way. I think the problem people have is that it went from "show of Humans vs Titans", which was the appeal, to "Turns out Titans were Humans", which was acceptable and shocking to some, to "it has to do with race", which, given the politically charged climate in today's world, I don't blame people being turned off by it. I assume that had this come out during a decade ago, people would be thinking of it quite differently.

The tonal shift is a bit off though, but I think that's the point. If anything, Isayama weighed himself down with certain characters in the cast and relying on the gimmicks that arise out of their respective archetypes a bit too much.

Personally, I think he could still salvage this. I'm just hoping he doesn't pull a Tokyo Ghoul:re styled ending and just abruptly ends shit.

I do agree with some of your points. I do think that at least some of the more current outlandish events and powers were foreshadowed, although I do still think that most of the foreshadowing was still vague enough to be literally anything.

My problem with the vast majority of these events, and powers is that they're just so poorly executed.

Humans being the real monsters? Let's make them Nazi analogs while trying to portray them as sympathetic by trying to argue that they have lives just as horrid as the Paradisers.

19040s-esque tech exists? Let's make it wildly inconsistent by having them also be able to tell what you are by just taking a blood test* which even out modern tech can't due, among other things.

Time-travel exists? Let's make it the most confusing, vague, OP, deus ex machina power ever to the point that its entire existence causes an innumerable number of plotholes.

Making this all about racism? Instead of having a nuanced, "understandable" reason as to why the Marleyans hate the Eldians so much, let's make it because a little girl accidentally let out some pigs literally two-thousand years ago*. Oh, and let's also have the entire damn world be just as bigoted against this race for this exact same reason, and not only have them condone a literal holocaust of this race, let's also have them be gun-ho for another one, and be more than willing to help. Also, let's have racism literally never be touched upon before, and have the best cases for it ever appearing prior to the KoM reveal was Mikasa, and her mother almost being sex-trafficked because they were the last Asians, and the royal family hunting down all the Ackermans.

Eren becoming the villain? Great idea actually, and one that was actually properly foreshadowed. Let's ruin it by including all of the above problems, a fuckton of pacing issues, god awful art, characters that are dumb, and have almost no impact on the plot, and have Eren's entire plan basically boil down to "ending racism by killing every other race".

I've said this before like five times, the biggest problem with current AoT is that Isayama had a bunch of cool ideas that had pretty much nothing to do with his story, even if you take all the other "foreshadowing" things into account, and then managed to execute them in the stupidest ways possible.

*I have the feeling that these are gonna turn out to be fucking lies, given how stupid they are even compared to everything else, but I'm not saying it's for certain. Just saying I wouldn't be surprised if they were.

 

[CapeKnight]

I do agree with some of your points. I do think that at least some of the more current outlandish events and powers were foreshadowed, although I do still think that most of the foreshadowing was still vague enough to be literally anything.

My problem is that the vast majority of these events, and powers is that they're just so poorly executed.

Humans being the real monsters? Let's make them Nazi analogues while trying to portray them sympathetic by trying to argue that they have lives just as horrid as the Paradisers.

19040s-esque tech exists? Let's make it wildly inconsistent by having them also be able to tell what you are by just taking a blood test* which even out modern tech can't due, among other things.

Time-travel exists? Let's make it the most confusing, vague, OP, deus ex machina power ever to the point that its entire existence causes an innumerable number of plotholes.

Making this all about racism? Instead of having a nuanced, "understandable" reason as to why the Marleyans hate the Eldians so much, let's make it because a little girl accidentally let out some pigs literally two-thousand years ago*. Oh, and let's also have the entire damn world be just as bigoted against this race for this exact same reason, and not only have them condone a literal holocaust of this race, let's also have them be gun-ho for another one, and be more than willing to help. Also, let's have racism literally never be touched upon before, and have the best cases for it ever appearing prior to the KoM reveal was Miksa, and her mother almost being sex-trafficked because they were the last Asians, and the royal family hunting down all the Ackermans.

Eren becoming the villain? Great idea actually, and one that was actually properly foreshadowed. Let's ruin it by including all of the above problems, a fuckton of pacing issues, god awful art, characters that are dumb, and have almost no impact on the plot, and have Eren's entire plan basically boil down to "ending racism by killing every other race".

I've said this before like five times, the biggest problem with current AoT is that Isayama had a bunch of cool ideas that had pretty much nothing to do with his story, even if you take all the other "foreshadowing" things into account, and then managed to execute them in the stupidest way possible.

*I have the feeling that these are gonna turn out to be fucking lies, given how stupid they are even compared to everything else, but I'm not saying it's for certain. Just saying I wouldn't be surprised if they were.

All valid points, I could try to dissect it a bit more and offer a little more balance to it, but it's kinda pointless because I generally feel and think the same way (maybe I'm not as mad or disappointed at it, or maybe I've just become desensitized to writers fucking up their stories at this point that I kinda expect them to at this point).

the tech part, I can "kind off" shrug off since we're talking about a fictional world, maybe they discovered one or two things we didn't, but that should also affect a bunch of other innovations in the world, like for example, if I discovered a way to capture photos from my airconditioner, then people should be considering the mechanics of how that works and if anything assembled in wind-power or electricity could potentially capture their pictures as well in the world (bad analogy, I know). The thing is, Isayama doesn't entrench a lot of his great ideas into the world as much as he should, and uses too much historical analogues to jump back on to highlight his points.

Time-travel on the other hand, I can't really agree or disagree, even our brightest minds have trouble agreeing on how it works considering how theoretical physics and that entire community all hold a variety of views that are clashing at each other often. It's another one of those "fiction tried to reason it" things I'm willing to suspend my disbelief over.

His cool ideas could have been worked into the story much more, IF he had more cool, smaller ideas in between them to connect the bigger cool ideas all together. The way I look at it, Attack on Titan could have been a modern classic had he spent more time researching shit that's not in his field of interests, which is something a lot of writers/artists don't do. It's impressive that he manages to include a bunch of shit into his story to almost weave a successful story, but not impressive enough because he fumbled the ball on his way to a perfect dunk.

It's a trend I notice with manga authors. A lot of them are crippled by their lack of advanced knowledge, the schedule to crank out chapters rather than work at their own pace, and completely perfect, almost rehearsed and revised final scripts before even lifting up a pencil to start drawing. Especially for Isayama, since his series became a world-wide phenomenon thanks the anime for a bit, which might have had an incentive on his more lazy attributes. It tends to happen to mangakas who get an anime adaptation that becomes a success. They start loosing the hunger and strive to perfect their craft in a more profound and transformative way, especially in recent years.

The pig thing though, too much of an on the nose metaphor that humans are greedy and self centered, therefore violence. I understand what he was trying to do with the pig analogy, and I assume the reaction might have been opposite, had he only tightened up his scripts. The pig thing seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

To bring it back to the current chapter, I just wanna remind everyone that Daz was the guy who was scared shitless of the titans and was about to desert the military until Pixis inspired him to stay behind, and fight for his family.

This just makes Connie killing him even worse.

 

[CapeKnight]

To bring it back to the current chapter, I just wanna remind everyone that Daz was the guy who was scared shitless of the titans and was about to desert the military until Pixis inspired him to stay behind, and fight for his family.

This just makes Connie killing him even worse.

This is precisely the problem. It's that Isayama tried to "give hope" in a hopeless world. But the hope he tried to give was essentially false hope, so he bait and switched people by turning side characters like Connie into lunatics. And we're to believe they're gonna be the ones who are gonna save the world from Eren? I mean, again, I get the angle. Morally-grey to completely corrupt individuals are going to be the one who are gonna oppose the main character that turns into the final villain.

The problem with this is that you have to had like a lot of these side characters. They needed more redeeming qualities to them, other than just exceptionally bad traits to combat Eren who, might have always been destined to turn out like this (which is another point to why this is breaking the story a bit. It's one thing to make a character you've been following turn out to be a monster all along, and have the rest of your cast take them down, it's another to portray him as having even tried to walk the fine line in morality from time to time, but you find out it was a cheap shock factor to set him up as the villain). The thing is, the ultimate thesis that's gonna come out of this is "humans bad", because if these are the types of guys who are gonna take down Eren, the world's gonna be left in a much more confusing place than it was before.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

The thing is, the ultimate thesis that's gonna come out of this is "humans bad", because if these are the types of guys who are gonna take down Eren, the world's gonna be left in a much more confusing place than it was before.

The entire world of AoT has always been confusing, and it only got a fuckton worse after the KoM reveal, and it got me thinking about how truly fucked up some of the implications of this story are.

You know how the original end goal of this series was to see the ocean and by extension the world, and other people? And now apparently achieving that goal was the worst mistake ever, and everyone and everything would've been a million times better off if they had just stayed where they were after they killed all the titans, because literally the entire world hates their race because of something fucking stupid that happened literally two thousand years ago.

What I'm getting at here is that the overall hopefully unintentional moral here seems to be that being completely isolated from the outside world is a good thing because literally the entire rest of the world completely hates you, and is racist towards you, and your people for things that were completely out of your control, and happened a longass time ago.

I'm not saying this is what Isayama had intended, but if it is, hoo boy...

 

[CapeKnight]

The entire world of AoT has always been confusing, and it only got a fuckton worse after the KoM reveal, and it got me thinking about how truly fucked up some of the implications of this story are.

You know how the original end goal of this series was to see the ocean and by extension the world, and other people? And now apparently achieving that goal was the worst mistake ever, and everyone and everything would've been a million times better off if they had just stayed where they were after they killed all the titans, because literally the entire world hates their race because of something fucking stupid that happened literally two thousand years ago.

What I'm getting at here is that overall hopefully unintentional moral here seems to be that being completely isolated from the outside world is a good thing because literally the entire rest of the world completely hates you, and is racist towards you, and your people for things that were completely out of your control, and happened a longass time ago.

I'm not saying this is what Isayama had intended, but if it is, hoo boy...

In a sense, it's almost advocating for freedom, most particularly, the freedom to remain ignorant. Which would put it against everything characters like Erwin stood for.

I don't mind that achieving the goal to see the ocean was the worst mistake ever for Eren, if it isn't for other characters like Armin and such (having diamtetrically opposing views could have resulted in a great Greek tragedy in terms of how Eren's character turned out), the problem comes in this late hour attempts at nuanced developments for the side characters, that's why we're getting stuck in these chapters about them at such a crucial point in the endgame, which means that Isayama didn't develop other characters enough for any of this to even hold as much weight as Eren's status as a final antagonist. How many parallels does Eren have with other characters? Jean, Levi, Armin, Reiner, Zeke, and so on. The problem is the same problem that happened in a typical Shonen like Naruto (who was portrayed as having so many parallels with so many characters), meanwhile, other characters were stuck being compared to him as the "unsuccessful Narutos" or the "Sasuke that never went full Sasuke". Isayama handles this problem better than Kishimoto did for Naruto, mostly because the more Seinen elements forced his writing to at least have some more consistency, maturity and understanding, but it's still not enough. Using parallels in a story is only good when you have a significant enough endgoal for all the characters that hold equal weight to one another. Isayama probably thought of Eren has needing to turn out to be the final villain, so it doesn't matter what happens to other characters along the way if they aren't either Mikasa or Armin, but even they don't have a proper visualized endgoal, because they're written to be reactionary to Eren's plot development, as if they don't have any agency on their own to pursue their own endgoals. It's one of the main problems with writing a story as a whole. Often, when asked if someone as an ending in mind, and if they answer yes, it most likely means they've visualized where their main character is going to end up and began working backwards from there, but they don't consider anything else about how their side characters should be getting along as well.

If you compare it to stories like Hunter x Hunter, which can have arcs with shifting main characters to secondary roles and vice versa, or JoJo, which constantly changes it's protagonist on each part, then you can see that Isayama hasn't got a clue on how to perfectly immerse people into characters because he doesn't have an endgoal for them planned out. Floch ending up a Yeagerist was something I felt a bit iffy about. The only characters I felt were fully conceptualized was either Erwin or Levi, and Eren doesn't really get that treatment because we have to see him come into his own through a mandatory "growing up" phase before he even arrives at a fully conceptualized state of where Erwin and Levi even stands on once they're introduced, and on top of that, he needs to go through further development to get him here where we are. I think my point is that you have to write secondary and side characters as if they were the main character of their own story within this larger story that they happen to be a part of as well. That's the only way Isayama could have pressured himself to come up with a much better thesis than he has to offer right now, because he'd actually have to think about both cases of the argument and the situation, instead of only solely pushing things to make Eren a villain.

EDIT: If the unintentional moral of the story here is what you propose, then that's almost ironic considering Japan's history of xenophobic attitude.

EDIT 2: Well, I guess we can chalk it up AoT being a cautionary tale of pathological ignorance.

 

[The Great Chandler]

You know, I was talking with a friend about this. We were thinking what would happen if Eren was omitted from AOT. So we thought of this:

Spoiler: What autism we came up with

The main characters are Armin and Mikasa

The siege of Shinganshina occurs, showcasing the ongoing misery of the walled people

A Rogue Titan appears on the Trost arc and kicks ass!

It begins to develop a heart for the people within the walls, especially for Armin and Mikasa

Turn out, it's an escaped titan experiment from a more advanced nation-state outside the walls. It so happens to develop a mind of its own and not a shifter

Titans you see are earlier bioweapons as a result of alchemy and necromancy

Titanshifters become the next evolution of titans as bioweaponry. They are not only invading the walls, they are also going after the Rogue Titan for possessing a mind of its own

They eventually travel outside the walls to work with other nation-states that have been invaded and other stuff.

Any thoughts?

 

[Bunny Tracks]

You know, I was talking with a friend about this. We were thinking what would happen if Eren was omitted from AOT. So we though of this:

Spoiler: What autism we came up with

The main characters are Armin and Mikasa

The siege of Shinganshina occurs, showcasing the ongoing misery of the walled people

A Rogue Titan appears on the Trost arc kicks ass

It begins to develop a heart for the people within the walls, especially for Armin and Mikasa

Turn out, it's an escaped titan experiment from a more advanced nation-state outside the walls. It so happens to develop a mind of its own and not a shifter

Titans you see are earlier bioweapons as a result of alchemy and necromancy

Titanshifters become the next evolution of titans as bioweaponry. They are not only invading the walls, they are also going after the Rogue Titan for possessing a mind of its own

They eventually travel outside the walls to work with other more-or-less nation-states that have been invaded and other stuff.

Any thoughts?

I really like it. The idea of titans being bioweapons makes a lot more sense and having the Rogue Titan wanting to protect the people within the walls after a while is oddly wholesome and kinda cute.

 

[CapeKnight]

You know, I was talking with a friend about this. We were thinking what would happen if Eren was omitted from AOT. So we thought of this:

Spoiler: What autism we came up with

The main characters are Armin and Mikasa

The siege of Shinganshina occurs, showcasing the ongoing misery of the walled people

A Rogue Titan appears on the Trost arc and kicks ass!

It begins to develop a heart for the people within the walls, especially for Armin and Mikasa

Turn out, it's an escaped titan experiment from a more advanced nation-state outside the walls. It so happens to develop a mind of its own and not a shifter

Titans you see are earlier bioweapons as a result of alchemy and necromancy

Titanshifters become the next evolution of titans as bioweaponry. They are not only invading the walls, they are also going after the Rogue Titan for possessing a mind of its own

They eventually travel outside the walls to work with other nation-states that have been invaded and other stuff.

Any thoughts?

This is precisely what I was talking about when I said Isayama doesn't take time to entrench his ideas into his world, and to create more ideas to cement his bigger ones together.

There is almost no in between with these fantasy/sci fi stories these days if it's something like becoming a monster i.e. Ghouls, Titans, Demons, Vampires, Werewolves, etc. A total lack of cosmic horror in a sense, or a lack of ability to execute the unknown "other" well enough.

The fact that they didn't know everything about Titans yet was one point that gave them mystery. Finding out that they're all just humans that got turned into monsters destroys a lot of the mystery for the sake of some literary analogy and visual metaphor, and you're left with a vague and made up scientific explanation that is their cause which takes away a lot of the mythological epic aura it was emanating. Keeping the Titans a separate race and the Titanshifters as an in-between connection of the human race and the Titans would have done wonders for AoT. Tokyo Ghoul tried this (and it did pretty well for it's first part, not so much the second where it had the same problems with cramming too much late into the game, but at least it had an overall sense of what it was going to do and the the poetry in it is much more rich, which makes it's failure much more disappointing).

Good idea though, you could actually take this and try to formulate your own story. I'd love to read that.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

Off-topic, but I've been rereading this thread, and I found one of my old posts from around the time Eren just got 360 Degree No Scoped asking where the plot could even go from there, and I'm now just sitting here laughing at how genuinely insane, incredibly random and utterly nonsensical the plot has become now ever since then.

Oh, it went places, old Bunny. Places that in a million years you never could've seen coming. You could've sat down and written thousands of your own versions of this shitshow, and you never would've come up with any of this. No joke here, you coming up with this series turning into a space opera and having the SC go to the moon would've been made more sense than any of this shit.

...they're actually gonna go to the moon now, aren't they?

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Off-topic, but I've been rereading this thread, and I found one of my old posts from around the time Eren just got 360 Degree No Scoped asking where the plot could even go from there, and I'm now just sitting here laughing at how genuinely insane, incredibly random and utterly nonsensical the plot has become now ever since then.

Oh, it went places, old Bunny. Places that in a million years you never could've seen coming. You could've sat down and written thousands of your own versions of this shitshow, and you never would've come up with any of this. No joke here, you coming up with this series turning into a space opera and having the SC go to the moon would've been made more sense than any of this shit.

...they're actually gonna go to the moon now, aren't they?

To me it seems like a bad copy paste job of Claymore (the plot being a small part of a greater conflict), Berserk (shocking bloody start only to have the main characters have plot armor, reducing any danger only to side characters) and Evangelion (bullshit religious overtones). All of them are old and well known anime. Even the "it was WW2" was done in the FMA film.

 

[Aria]