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NEWS: Attack on Titan Finale Leads to Magazine Issue Selling Out & Getting 2nd Printing

spoiler[ 3. Why was Mikasa the one that had to stop everything? The only explanation we got was "Only Ymir will ever know" and I don't really like that from a narrative standpoint. You don't really want to end your story with leaving your readers with hanging questions.] besides all that though, I don't think it was a BAD ending. It definitely wasn't perfect, and it could have been better too.

Too much positivity in here. I personally thought that the ending was dogshit lmao. Anyway, AoT was never such a deep story as people were making it out to be so who cares.

There is no way I can count it, but from what I've seen online these past few days, I think most people's impression of the ending of AoT was something like: "ok it's not the best ending that could have been, but it operated under some certain logic, it could be much worse, so let's just move on with our lives" which is a healthy attitude so I'm glad about that.

Personally, I don't think of AoT's finale as something similar to GoT's finale, but as more similar to the "How I Met Your Mother"' one. It was certainly an idea that was thought of from the start, but during the course of a decade with a myriad other more important themes and moral lessons the series tried to tackle and with much greater writing, the focus had been shifted and this type of ending felt out of place at best and a downgrade at worst. It would have fitted perfectly maybe if the series had ended in the first couple of years of its run, not now though.

My biggest problems with it are: 1) spoiler[Eren being reduced to a pawn with no real self-agency - and him knowing about it. It adds tragedy to the character but actually makes him less relatable and takes away more of him than it would have been acceptable. (We already knew that he cared about his friends and that he was a normal boy. That's not the issue. The issue is that he was never in control in the slightest, and that takes away from him the responsibility for his atrocities in order to justify his actions to the audience at the last minute, which effectively backfired.)] And mainly, and most importantly: spoiler[2) The logical fallacy of how Ymir's curse was broken and Mikasa's entire journey. Ymir wanted to be free of her love of her abuser, of loving a man who didn't love her, so Mikasa killing a man who did love her makes no sense in satisfying Ymir and breaking the curse. Also, Mikasa never actually "broke free" of Eren and never moved forward away from him emotionally and the series really stresses this point with her never taking off the scarf and presents it as something romantic, while in reality it goes against everything the series had tried to teach us so far, and voids her choices and any type of development she could have had. And let's just not talk about the horrible implications against women empowerment here for the sake of "love". To say that stings would be an understatement. I feel like the entire series was trying to make a point in favor of it, and it was going well, until those last dreaded panels. How difficult would it have been to see Mikasa finally leaving her scarf behind and living her own life and finding her own happiness? If you're not a woman, you probably have no idea how liberating and empowering that would have been, and I honestly don't think that anyone would have minded it, regardless of gender. That doesn't mean she would have disrespected Eren's memory. But no. Years later she is still stuck with him, according to his wishes, and this is presented as beautiful instead of horrible. Yes it makes sense in a way, yes it's still horrible and nullifies her efforts in becoming a complete person by her own. (not that she ever tried to be) And yes, the point is that your love doesn't make you a slave, and that you are allowed to hang on to things you think of as precious, but now that this is over and the future is ahead, it is equally as important to also show us that you can, and that you are allowed to move forward. Otherwise, why did you end it in the first place, what was it all for? Yes, the greater good, yes, freeing Eren... still you do nothing for yourself. And that is too sad and not in the good way. ]

For those reasons I believe that the ending was bad. And saying this means absolutely no disrespect to the author who kept us entertained for over a decade, nor do I believe that it nullifies all the other good stuff about racism and war and everything else AoT had been showing us all those years. It just... really stings that he spoiler[didn't manage to quite land the female empowerment thing that he was (probably?) going for in my opinion, though he did try.] But oh well. After a week of fuming about it, I'm still happy I got to be involved with this series. It has been mostly a fun ride. The ending stung but nothing that can be done about that now. Moving on.