AoT: Junior High had better story and animation. Season 4 was already dead before it even aired.
Also Koutetsujou no Kabaneri is the better AoT. The MC can be based or retarded on a flip of a switch and a half-zombie waifu? easily coomer material. ALSO trains > gay ass walls.
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.
Well we did get a couple possibilities elaborated on. In particular that it's either the start of an alien invasion that kills the dominant species but maintain the infrastructure, or a domestic species that was is hibernation possibly reacting to a large number of humans worldwide. I don't think it was really necessary to go into a full arc about their origins or anything, I liked them just being part of the world and seeing them, and the main characters react to it and each other. The characters had their arcs, it told the story it wanted to tell, and mc went back to living his life. Though a chapter or two towards the end where they show scientists explaining more about them would have been neat. Like the part of Hunter x Hunter where they show off and explain the calamities in a secret lab. Maybe it could be framed as a briefing for the soldiers (cops? idr) who took on Goto towards the end before that happened.
I'm just glad he didn't go with the original ending where the mc lets Goto live. The version we did get where he makes a final decision in favor of the human race over Goto's "right to live" was rational, impactful, and delivered in a matter of fact way I enjoyed.
I thought this was gonna be a good action arc until I realized he's just drawing titans punching each other while the story happens and not actually writing or choreographing a battle. There's a few cool-looking moments and the titan designs are cool as hell on their own, but it's like he thought cool monsters would carry the whole arc. It doesn't feel tense or dangerous, Zeke's assault on Shiganshina with two shifters and a comparatively small unit of pure titans was more overwhelming than this literal army of shifters, and the scouts actually had an idea of what was coming before the Shiganshina battle started. They have a couple extra shifters here but their weapons and skills are basically the same. Hell this was the first time any of them besides Levi fought a mob of titans in years but they mowed through them with zero casualties.
This was a perfunctory series of events leading to the climax. Actually no that was the fight over the plane prior to this. This was a level of Dynasty Warriors. Not one of the good ones either. Which really sucks cause I love the idea of this final battle. But making it realistic would be impossible with the numbers they have. Plus Isayama might think good guys have to win harder than usual because this is the end, so somehow nobody has died.
The author even said he was worried it's going to look like a less good Dorohedoro or Jujutsu Kaisen.
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.
Honestly I feel like everyone hyping themselves up for a GOT Season 8 style meltdown are going to just set themselves up for disappointment. Since Attack on Titan's western fanbase (don't know much about the Eastern fanbase and 2ch is not the most accurate representation afaik) is mostly made up of normies who are enjoying every bit of this as despite the GOT influences, AOT's fanbase is very similar to the Walking Dead TV fanbase since that too is mostly enjoyed by normies while there are jaded fans who hate the current state of the series and actively make fun of it while the normies eat everything up.
The GOT meltdown also happened since the story was mostly D&D's own failure whereas the TV series was good prior when they had stuff to adapt as then D&D did their own thing (after having nothing left to adapt) and actively just went to fuck off from GOT despite HBO even offering to fund future seasons which D&D didn't want due to wanting to leave the show and work for Disney on Star Wars. This resulted in a purposefully rushed and poorly baked story that lazily resolved things in the dumbest way possible and it didn't help that there was a larger attachment to Game of Thrones as there were 8 straight years worth of attachment and extreme mainstream attention compared to most popular live action series as Game of Thrones ending on a strong note could've made itself culturally important as Lord of the Rings or Star Wars' original trilogy, that is how huge the show was.
In comparison, Attack on Titan didn't get as much mainstream attention in the west after Season 1 ended and seemed to have no content (anime-wise) for 4 years with it being seen as a good show with a nice chunk of people calling it mediocre/overrated, and it didn't get much major hype that it currently has until Season 3 Part 2 which was further amplified by the "final season" coming out but it wasn't to the same level as Game of Thrones.
However, a GOT-level meltdown could possibly happen but not to the same extent if one of the following happen:
- MAPPA shits the bed with the series and decides to adapt the remaining content (if the 16 episode season idea is true since there are no official statements beyond the amount of episodes on the DVD/Blue-ray) into a movie format or veer offscript in the dumbest way possible
- Isayama throws a curveball that makes the ending extremely dumb that pisses off everybody in a way that would unleash a large amount of anger that can not even be salvaged by the anime.
- Isayama makes Eren win somehow which will come out of nowhere and piss off the normie fanbase while the Erenfags cheer on how much of a genius Isayama is.
As it currently stands (since I could be proven wrong), Isayama will likely play the ending safe where the normies will be satisfied while only the Erenfags will seethe that genocide didn't happen and try to cope hard in the dumbest ways possible.
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:
Is this episode finally the one where the production bottleneck was encountered?
