Like I said, I still find Eren compelling. Hell, I found him compelling before the time skip, especially during the revelations arc. Eren is absolutely still the main character in the sense that his actions drive the plot forward, but I agree that he's not the protagonist. Where we differ I suppose is that I find that concept interesting; taking our assumption that we would always know Eren's goals and instead make him unreadable not only to his friends but to us as well.
Really, the story is more of an ensemble now, although it's not done in the best way. But Zeke and Eren are absolutely the most important characters in the story. If Eren ends up knowing nothing and it's revealed that Isayama's been completely wasting our time, I'll be right in here with you calling the story irredeemable.
Eren used to be compelling. The problem is that in order for him to continue to be compelling to me, he needs to have clear, focused goals. You do not typically ever, from a storytelling standpoint, keep the motivations of your character hidden for this long unless they're playing someone or the audience. And even then, you have to do this EXTREMELY carefully, or your audience will eat you alive. The problem with Eren is that there's nothing there. And you cannot speculate. Attack on Titan's 'rules' are extremely convoluted, and its violated them many times for author fiat. So we cannot even guess what Eren's goals, motives or how he feels, because we cannot predict them. There are no established rules, its whatever Isayama feels like doing this month. Just look at all the massive speculation for a month on reddit, chans and here about the chapter where Eren gets his head blown off. All the inconsistencies, contrivances, continuity issues seemed to point to a red herring. Nope. It turns out all that was Isayama fucking up and rushing the chapter. How can you even bother predicting or theorizing anymore when the author can't keep his own shit straight? You can't. So to Eren, there's nothing compelling.
He's a plot point that we're waiting for exposition for. The story isn't an ensemble because an ensemble implies that these characters have their own goals, relationships, ideas and ways to move the plot forward. They don't. When I say the story is centered around Eren, it is. Every facet is his. Even Zeke is a slave to Eren because he needs to be united with him. The survey corps are waiting for Eren to make a move because they're in a corner. Marley, ironically, is the only one who can 'move' but most of their characters are dead or uninteresting, and even then they can't affect the story because we know Eren cannot die. Because there would literally be nothing left.
Game of Thrones is an ensemble story because Ned Stark, the protagonist, getting killed allowed the story to move and continue. It allowed for all these characters with their varied goals and motivations propel forward, with their own relationships and emotions furthering the story. Isayama copied Game of Thrones without understanding any of it.
If Eren dies, the story is over. There is no character that could continue. Zeke loses the founding Titan and dies. Eldia loses their Titans and dies. Its simply over.
Woah . So I never really cared about this series beyond being a little annoyed at how much praise it was getting when it came out, people just thought it was the second coming of Ashita no Joe or Berserk. But the only thing that made the series was the overall idea, that was it, it had one cool idea. A dumber but cooler Walking Dead with some Devilman in there.
I can't believe how much of a mess it is now, it was such a simple story with simple characters, just DBZ but more "edgy". I laugh at how hard Isayama tries to make Eren this complex character, I am sorry but being interesting is out of character for Eren. The politics just don't work, they do in ASOIAF or Gundam cause of how multi layered the characters are, that makes it interesting, there are stakes, but in this series? No way. It's just there and it's boring. I think Isayama knew the series was over the moment the characters got to that basement but greed blinded the editorial or Isayama himself.
That PATHS thing? Even Grant Morrison would raise an eyebrown at that shit.
Time will not be kind to this series, after it ends it will get called out. Unless Isayama makes a deal with Satan and makes the remaining chapters make sense.
Its not called out because it makes too much money and its the only 'normie' anime. I look forward to it ending simply to get the normies the fuck out of here. Time won't be kind because this is a fad anime that fucked up massively. It will be remembered like Game of Thrones, the show. If I were the show runners, I'd have ditched Isayama's basement completely. But the Japanese don't tend to do this when they need to, I've noticed. They keep bad decisions in.
And with Ashita no Joe, I highly, HIGHLY recommend the 50th Anniversary Anime 'Megalobox'. Its fucking amazing, beautiful and has a protagonist without a name that has emotion, relatability, goals and a focus you can understand. Not like this trash.
Something just occurred to me. We've speculated a lot in this thread on how and why the series has gotten so bad, and if Isayama has just lost his mind, and this trashfire is the result, and truthfully, I don't think he has. He's just as sane as he's ever been, if that even means anything. He's just written himself into a corner, and facing a problem that in actuality was inevitable for the way he was writing his story.
For you see, if Isayama doesn't at least try to make both sides equally bad, then the entire moral foundation of his story crumbles.
When you really think about it, AoT's most glaring flaw is that its very theme is a lie. AoT is a series that fundamentally believes that one has to give up their humanity in order to save humanity. That is something which is not only not true, it's critically detrimental to the entire original premise of the story.
What's the point of saving humanity if humanity is just as bad as the monsters threatening to destroy it? What's so special about it if you so readily give it up in the first place?
Self-preservation, I guess, but that doesn't make a compelling story. It's also not realistic, and being that AoT is a series that tries to present itself as such, it makes the flaw even more apparent. People, and by extension humanity, are much more complex than that. We're not emotionless, self-serving robots. We're not titans.
People care about each other. People have empathy. People have compassion. People help each other. People have hope. These traits are what makes us human, and they are not weaknesses, nor are they rare. But AoT as of recent, treats them like they are when in the past it didn't, or at least not as much.
As of the KoM arc, every instance of altruism in the series either gets people killed, is regarded as foolish, or just loops back around into unintentional callousness (ie; Sasha's father blaming his daughter for her own death in an attempt to make Gabi feel better).
It didn't used to be like this. Back in the first third, we had acts of genuine compassion that weren't skewed into being something wrong. The best example is when Levi gave his patch, the only thing he had left to remember his old squad, to a grieving soldier. That showed for as much of dick Levi is, he still cares about his fellow soldiers.
...Unfortunately, this is completely ruined when you get to the second biggest problem AoT has, but I will not get into that right now.
Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that AoT cannot work in the way its written, because the theme it was built on is untrue and severely counters its premise. What's the point of saving humanity if you're so ready to give it up? That's what breaks the story. The worst part is that this wouldn't even be a problem if characters in-series were to directly confront it, but they never do. They, and the narrative itself only enforce it, even if that means having to destroy the entire plot in the process.
Now, why doesn't Isayama have his characters develop and try to confront it? Because on top of making everything a huge waste of time, he's also in all likelihood a huge, misanthropic autist that doesn't understand human emotion. He probably also believes that the lie his story is built on is 100% true, and he can't even acknowledge the slightest possibility that it isn't, because if it wasn't his entire perspective on life would be thrown into chaos.
Tl;dr- Why does Isayama have to claim that both sides are equally bad even when that clearly isn't the case? Because not doing so not only makes AoT's moral philosophy collapses like a house of cards, Isayama's entire worldview would do they same. He's also really autistic, and can't understand emotions without his tard wrangler editor being around to help him.
He’s written himself into a corner since the basement arc. It is crystal clear to me that he had no clue what the titans were until the very, very end (or he did and changed it at the last second). Its why he held out for so long about it. Maybe he watched Game of Thrones and was like ‘FUCK YA DUDE’ without really thinking about it. Then he smoked some weed and watched a documentary about WWII and thought it was about WWI but still included the Jews and concentration camps. Then he mixed up his anti-depressants with Thorazine for five years straight so no one has any human emotions anymore.
I mean, the moral foundations of his story are inherently edgy-boi nihilism as a direct result of his incompetence. The whole point of becoming a ‘monster’ to save humanity is that ONE person does it, to sacrifice themselves and their own morality to lift humanity up. Essentially this theme is a bittersweet one, because the ‘hero’ brings themselves down to a level of horror to preserve the identity, compassion and the very definition of humanity. Essentially, it’s a story about sacrifice.
The problem why the theme of ‘becoming a monster’ doesn’t work in AoT is because it relies with us empathizing with Eren, the cast and his people. I’ve already mentioned its impossible to empathize with Eren and the cast. So the theme is emotionally dead, which defeats the point. If you don’t have the emotional resonance to carry this, the theme essentially becomes one of nihilism, which will lead to audience disconnect. We need to know why Eren is doing what he’s doing, what his ultimate motives are. We also need this because we need tension in the story. There’s NO fucking tension in AoT. If we knew Eren was doing this and he could fail, his descent into inhumanity would be all for nothing. The problem is that he’s spent so long with this that there will be no reconnect with Eren. It simply is impossible.
You've also identified the second core problem of 'Becoming a Monster to Save Humanity' in Attack on Titan: There's essentially no humanity in this story. People don't have lovers, only Sasha really had a family, Eren's family was shit, so there's really...what are you saving? I mean, these people are barely friends at this point. We've never seen signs of hope, emotion, anything like that. So you've lost two core components to the thematic elements of your narrative: empathy with the protagonist and empathy with the humans in your story. You need your secondary, tertiary and even your antagonist to be human. To have compassion, mercy, fear, love, things like that. These barely even fucking exist in the narrative. Zeke isn't enough, you need so much more to make this work. You need the first third. Which is now gone. This theme relies heavily on a character focus. The problem is AoT is PLOT focused. That's why this theme doesn't work as well. So you've got three reasons why Isayama's theme doesn't work: A plot focused narrative, no protagonist to empathize with and no other characters or showing of humanity to make yourself invested.
That’s why Eren as a non-protagonist is so fucking boring. Isayama doesn’t understand that if we knew why Eren was doing what he was doing, we could emotionally resonate with him. We could have this profound sadness that he is forced into this position because he’s the only one who can do this, because he has the founding titan and the will to see it through, at any cost. But we don’t have this. We have an empty void of nothing. I mean, you can find that compelling. I think it’s a waste completely.
The reason why Eren is a non-protagonist is very simple: Isayama has no idea what Eren’s goals and motivations are. He does not know where this story is going. If he does, he does not know how to get there. Why have we been in the dark for literal years with no hint? Because Isayama didn’t or doesn’t know. The first third of the narrative was almost certainly planned. I do believe he had an idea for the Titans but impulsively changed it at the last second, which lead to his entire story collapsing (this would not be the first time a writer did something like this. Writers, DO NOT IMPULSIVELY CHANGE SHIT BECAUSE YOU THINK IT LOOKS 'COOL'). That's honestly why it went to shit in my opinion. He did the normal writery things with the first third, planned out the mid act, suddenly changed it, and then the sudden change basically destroyed his plans, hence the time skip. Which leads us to where we are now.
The problem is its far too late to really re-capture any sort of emotional weight. He’s written himself into this ‘Eren’ corner for so long, that there’s nothing to recover. I also do not believe Isayama has the skill to pull off a revelation that will make us magically reconnect with Eren or the story.
The current state of Attack on Titan lacks any stakes, emotion or dramatic tension. Eren will live until his revelation which will work or won’t. Then it will be over. He’s already said he wants to ‘hurt’ the audience, so I believe the revelation will be fucking re.tarded and won’t work, and he’ll have wasted everyone’s time who has invested in this. And I’ll just fucking laugh and thank Isayama for booting the normies out of anime.
Then I’ll go watch JoJo in peace.
EDIT:
I mean, just imagine we know Eren's motivations. His long-shot plan to save humanity, the misery he's putting the people he loves and cares about through and how that hurts him deeply. How he struggles to retain his humanity as he becomes more and more monstrous to save his people. Imagine an antagonist who is more human than Eren. Someone who cares and strives for peace and thinks Eren's ideology is self-defeating. He/She struggles with their decision to fight against Eren, knowing that he might be right in the end, but the price is just too high for them. Eldia dying proudly to the bitter end would be better then them going in the gutter like Marely and Eren's plan.
Eren pushes everyone he loves away, because he wants them to retain their freedom, their independence and their humanity. He embraces traitorous allies and dark people, because they're the only ones he will allow into his struggle because they no longer have their humanity. Even he goes lower than them, because he plans on sacrificing them in the end, because its all or nothing. To his friends and loved ones, he is unabashedly honest with them. He does not keep them in the dark because he doesn't want to hurt them anymore than he has. The lines become blurred and it gets harder and harder to tell who is right and who is wrong. Basically I would have made Marley tertiary to the whole thing and retained a strict focus on this struggle and have it end with no clear answer. Of course, Marley would have to be scum for this to work, but that's a small sacrifice and works towards the blurriness of everything.
That's SO much better than having no antagonist/protagonist, having Eren have a 'sekret plan' and trying to grasp at shadows through Isayama's fuckups. I think that's the saddest thing about this story. It didn't have to be this emotionless husk. Isayama just embraced fucking mystery boxes and shit to sacrifice a compelling, emotional story for cheap tricks.
