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S3 Ep280: Attack on Titan - The Final Chapters (Part 2)
85 Plays2 years ago
FULL SPOILERS: Attack on Titan (the anime)
Join Dave, Jake and special guest and resident manga reader Mango as they dig into the legacy left by the final Attack on Titan anime episode!
Intro:
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Join Dave, Jake and special guest and resident manga reader Mango as they dig into the legacy left by the final Attack on Titan anime episode!
Intro:
- Shinsei Kamattechan - My War
- Yuko Ando - Shock
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and banter about caffeine
00:00:26
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? I'm perpetually sleepy. How's it going tonight? Mango. I'm also perpetually sleepy. Yeah.
00:00:44
Speaker
I mean, not actually. Yeah, it's this is a lifestyle choice at this point. It's a little bit in public like Walmart. It's fair to appreciate being in the same club, even if that club is like a recovery club for something, right? You can still get camaraderie there. I have so much sleep inertia. It just carries between days now. That's a lot. It's pretty rough.
00:01:14
Speaker
That's what caffeine's for, though. Just take chemical additives. Here's the thing, though. I don't know if I have a tolerance to it or if I'm just getting reverse effects, but it can be okay in the morning. I do notice I'll get a little jittery closer to lunch, but I just had some caffeine with dinner because that's the only carbonated beverage I had, and I don't feel more awake. In fact, I've yawned four times before this call, and I don't know what's up.
00:01:43
Speaker
That's just any time I take caffeine. If I need to sleep, I could take 200 milligrams of caffeine and be like, ow. It'd be the best nap ever. I would wake up feeling god awful though. I don't fully understand that, but I know that that's the ADHD thing, right? Yeah. It flips the effect for some people.
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah, because it gives you dopamine and dopamine tells your brain, hey, just chill out. We're good. And I'm like, God, you're right. I can't chill out. Go to sleep.
00:02:17
Speaker
Maybe I've developed more of that in my older age than when I was like 22. Because I used to be like my get up and go. It was my cure all for everything. Oh, are you a party last night? Have an energy drink. Oh, you're good forever now. Cool. Right. This is the pep that you put in your step. Dr. Pep. This is medicine. Tastes like it.
00:02:44
Speaker
Well, hopefully we can all stay awake long enough to record another esteemed episode. This is a rare occasion for us that we come in with a specific area we want to talk about for a
Guest introduction and Attack on Titan's finale discussion
00:03:00
Speaker
guest episode. But just to throw out any sense of preparation, we'll just describe what we were talking about in advance of this, I guess.
00:03:09
Speaker
We brought on our Attack on Titan expert. I cannot promise the entire episode would be about Attack on Titan because I don't know if we have that much supporting expertise. I don't want to undersell Dave. Maybe he's also. I know the term's not understudy. This came up recently. Not no one's going to die.
00:03:34
Speaker
unless you're really going to provide a tremendous amount of critique. This might not go the full hour and it might just evolve into us talking about other things, but that's okay. We're all friends here. They could also just become less reciting, hey, remember this part of the show? How cool was that? Yeah.
00:03:51
Speaker
But enough time has passed. That was the courtesy time. I mean, obviously everyone will have seen the conclusion to the Attack on Titan anime at this point. I mean, if not, like, what are you, poor? Like, can you not afford subscriptions? So thanks for having me.
00:04:08
Speaker
What are they, stupid? Yeah. At all. That's your final warning. If you do not want to listen to a podcast where we talk about the Attack on Titan finale and a retrospective for the entire season and the rumors behind the creator of the manga and some of the personal pictures we took, was it your time to tap out?
00:04:38
Speaker
that's it I get it wrong to what is that a time that for the people who paid no attention to any of that spoil it so those were not familiar with Shinkeki no Kyojin the only gun attack on site is basically a shonen anime that came out there must be like a decade ago now
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah, so the anime is a decade old. The manga's been out for however long. It's been over for three years. Mango is up to date on the manga. Yeah, the manga ended like two to three years ago. Yeah. She's been up on what's been going on and how everything ended for so long and also I would like more meme sent to me please.
00:05:33
Speaker
now that we can't really be spoiled. But this is something that really took the world by storm out of how violent it was. Because it starts off very quickly with Titans come in and start ravaging and eating people. And you go, holy shit, it's really violent and terrible. And it had a crazy cool opener. And it was a very fun, exciting anime. And people were very much bored of it.
00:06:00
Speaker
And then the release cadence became weirdly slow and slow. And finally, they released the third part of the final season, which they're kind of doing is like movie-like feature things.
Disappointment with Attack on Titan's ending
00:06:15
Speaker
And the show, I loved. I loved it so much. It was so cool. And then the ending blows. It blows so hard. Like, boom away. I'm really disappointed with how it ended.
00:06:30
Speaker
And I think everyone here is kind of of a similar mindset. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Like the show hated the ending. Yeah. Yeah. Hated how the ending was executed. Yeah. I think that's an important way to put it. Yeah. Like it ended in a way where it's like, if I just look at that, it's like, okay, cool. Was not a fan of how they actually executed it though. Yeah.
00:06:59
Speaker
So we pretty much wanted to have like a dedicated episode to talk about this because it's been a huge part of our anime for a long time. I think for me at least it is my number one anime. I think it even beats Code Gas. For like most liked or what do you mean by number one anime? Like this is my favorite anime to watch as far as...
00:07:25
Speaker
things going on in it, the animation, the story and character arcs, for me. Interesting, interesting.
00:07:36
Speaker
I don't watch a lot of anime. I feel like I got to judge Dave for that one though. I don't know. So, the reason for this is because Dave and I both were on the Code Geass train. Like Dave, I got into anime pretty much around Code Geass. I saw some other things before that. I think like Elf and Light and crap. Like Mango and I watched some of that stuff together. But like Code Geass was the big opener and I was just like, dang, this is freaking awesome. I'm not gonna talk Code Geass spoilers because not enough time has passed for that one yet.
00:08:05
Speaker
for Attack on Titan. I don't know really like so I love I really like the some of the drama the action sequences it definitely has some of that action sequence anime stuff but then it also felt like there were certain seasons that had just a bunch of downtime. I mean I didn't
00:08:24
Speaker
mind the downtime stuff because there was still like political intrigue or mysterious stuff happening. So it never felt like there was an episode without tension. Gotcha. We got to bring Mango back into this. I was going to say it probably doesn't help that. They took a long time between everything, which on one hand
00:08:49
Speaker
is like, what are y'all doing? But on the other hand, it's like, oh, maybe the animators get to go home and see their families more often than someone who's pumping out content nonstop.
00:09:04
Speaker
I mean, that's fair, but as the consumer, I don't care. No, I'm just kidding. But like, Mango, where do you land on this as far as anime stuff? Is it in your top list? Is it not even close? Or is it set for you? I feel like if I had a top list, I don't even know what they would be. There's others that I like way more. But I feel like if it was like a top 10 situation, it would be like low top 10.
00:09:35
Speaker
low top 10. Yeah. I don't know what exactly that top 10 is, but Tokyo Ghoul, I'm not counting the anime. That doesn't count. Just the manga. Season one was great. Too bad there were no other ones. That one's my number one.
00:09:51
Speaker
I'm imagining how disruptive or how frustrating it would be to actually watch a top 10 video where people are like, they just put Attack on Titan, they're like, number eight, what is going on here? And then like you count down and then like the top spot, you're like, it's a manga. It's not even an anime, right? Like just infuriate the internet. Yeah, I'd love to. Yeah. Attack, not Attack on Titan. Tokyo Ghoul manga, number one anime.
00:10:17
Speaker
They just do it as a flip book instead. It's a very short season. So I'm going to ask, because we did mention that the manga completed three years ahead of the anime being completed. Was the release cadence a lot more scheduled and standard for the manga compared to the anime, or did it still pretty much take forever to get done? I mean, it was once a month, which is, I think, the standard.
00:10:45
Speaker
It also depends on the author itself. I would assume that something like Naruto might have been every week because they're feral, but I have no idea. I'm pretty sure Attack on Titan was once a month. That's like the usual that I'm used to.
00:11:08
Speaker
I think Naruto is every day at midnight.
Comparing Attack on Titan and Game of Thrones endings
00:11:13
Speaker
I guess that's kind of a reverse Game of Thrones. I'm going to make Game of Thrones comparisons here because you have to. So I guess.
00:11:26
Speaker
I don't know if we're going to spoil specific things that happen in Game of Thrones, but I'll mention that the ending was very controversial. Not for the books, obviously, for the show. And a lot of people disliked it.
00:11:44
Speaker
They kind of had the reverse problem, right? Where it was the books, the source material ran out really early, and then the shows just had to veer off into nowhere, making a bunch of stuff up. True. Compared to Attack on Titan, but my understanding is George RR had like a, hey, here's the kind of direction where things are going. And I guess we don't know for sure if that's entirely what he intended.
00:12:14
Speaker
But a lot of the choices they made for characters did not make sense, so I'm willing to lean that it was not the case. They kind of just veered off.
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean like, but you could also provide, if you're the author and you're advising a show, you could be like, oh yeah, in the final episode, the last chapter, all the heroes Voltron together and they form some giant Viking and that's the person that kills all the dragons and saves the world or whatever, right? But as a show, you're not going to have any other context to actually piece that together to make it make sense.
00:12:49
Speaker
So you might like do a right angle out of nowhere for no reason with no actual earned change, but To its credit we're gonna probably tear into the attack on Titan anime, but like I didn't feel like that happens necessarily I didn't get whiplash at any point in the ending. No It wasn't whiplash for me as much as it was
00:13:12
Speaker
so I wanna say that the show ads so many good questions early on like what was in the basement right the initial tack happens we find out that the basins very important has something very key to the plots and you'll get back to until season three the end of season three so the whole time like what's going on
00:13:39
Speaker
but then they actually have satisfying answers for things they have explanations for character motivations as things go on so the story arc and the character arcs feel complete like they're asking questions and setting things up and then answering them later right right and then at the very end it felt like their answers for some things were that just did not align with the show up until that point
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah, I'm curious, what was your perspective on that on that manga for how things came together at the end compared to the character development earlier in the anime? Well, I think it was a case of the author wrote in so many complex plot things that even he himself admitted he wrote himself into a corner and he's like, I don't really know where to go from here.
00:14:41
Speaker
because there's five million different concepts that are all very cool, but he didn't know how to make them all actually work in a satisfying way. Just like I'm gonna- Not to put you on the spot. Could you pick an example of like a concept like that, like a concrete, something that happened maybe in the finale that exploded out but couldn't contract down into a satisfying manner? Why did Aaron do it?
00:15:12
Speaker
all of that. Just that. Because it could how much can I say? How much are we? Okay, because he's like, I'm just a dumb kid with power. And it's like, what? What happened to the whole keep moving forward thing that you were so gung ho about, like, since episode one?
00:15:38
Speaker
Like, he said it back then, like, why is he doing this? To destroy Titans and to protect his friends. And then he's like, I don't know why I did it. I'm like, excuse me. What happened? Yeah.
00:15:55
Speaker
that are really starts because like the whole time like you see
00:16:18
Speaker
And he was very like, this is the plan, this is what we're doing. And then it just, it makes no sense for him to just veer off into the, I don't know. Yeah. And I know they're going... Sorry, go ahead.
00:16:33
Speaker
Oh, I was just going to say, there was a touchstone moment, I think, early on in the anime. One of the only scenes that I really went back and rewatched, it was like the clip to rewatch on YouTube. Just like the opening for Mob Psycho 100. You just go back and you rewatch the clip because it's cool. But it's Eren's first transformation into the Attack Titan.
00:16:50
Speaker
It's like that is the quintessential goosebumps on the arms. This kid is no longer being beaten up anymore. He's going to kill all titans like he this is his his his life's purpose, right? Completely abandoned. Yeah, it's just kind of sort of earned a little bit, but it undercuts that a lot, right?
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah, and I know I feel like they were trying to go for the all of his friends have grown up. But Aaron is still the emotional, impulsive child aspect, which is why there was the whole I'm just a dumb kid who got power. And it's like, but throughout the series, you've shown like complex problem solving. You've done some pretty
00:17:46
Speaker
uncomfortable things that would be like a mature decision like I don't want my friends to associate with me so I'm going to strategically push them further away and then it's like I feel like that shows some kind of emotional growth if that's what they were going for that he's still just a kid and never grew up they didn't do a very good job at it
00:18:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a conflicting theme there. Because you can't be Ocean's 11, plan it all out and be like, he's the mastermind, right? He's the mastermind trope. He has it all in control. And then you turn around to the end and you're like, he's an idiot. He never had any idea what was going on. That's not satisfying. But they tried to play the mastermind card, I think. What would you think about that, dude?
00:18:37
Speaker
I mean, yeah. Arounds, what is it, season four? They kind of introduce, hey, here's what the Attack Titans power actually is. Because they really don't talk about it in the show. They'd be like, oh, the Female Titan, she can strategically harden. Which PS, I feel like everybody can do that. But, um, right. This is Female Titan. She's female. We know that much. She's got some knockers on her.
00:19:01
Speaker
That's it. It's actually funny because it's visually different than all of the other Titans too. So you could say like, oh, she has knockers on her. That actually kind of is a tell, literally. It's just called the female Titan, right? I think so, yeah. What a name.
00:19:22
Speaker
you got the
00:19:44
Speaker
Oh my gosh, yeah it is. It's just a female Titan. It's not a good name. It's a bad name. We got the colossal, the attack, the founding. What in the world? Female. It's like, okay. I guess the Redditors made these. Isn't she, wasn't like the female Titan, she could kind of do a little of everything? She can inherit abilities much more easily than any other Titans.
00:20:13
Speaker
I feel like you could have summoned pure titans with its scream. I feel like you could have. Is it supposed to be like a mom? Mom's yelling at her kids. I feel like you could have given the Kool-Aid name. I feel like there's some overlap with some other titan abilities on, but the attack titan's actual ability is to, is it received the memories of all future inheritors of the attack titan?
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah. It's basically like to be able to see the future in the past. The past, present, future. Which is pretty strong. I think are all, you know it all. Yeah. Which, now seeing the present's not actually that much of a superpower, I would say though. Most people do that by being awake. I know. I mean, most of the characters in the show are blind, we should have mentioned. Uh-huh. Yeah.
00:21:07
Speaker
If you're giving somebody a power that is that strong of, I basically have premonition, I have knowledge of all things in time, you essentially get to determine fate.
00:21:22
Speaker
which is literally you have control over everything because you know everything that can happen, right? And then for them to be like, oh, well, you know, eh. It's like, no, no, no. In season four, when, like, we found out that you were the one who told your dad to kill that family, to get revenge for his sister who was, like, eaten by dogs from the Marleyan soldiers, like, that was a powerful fucking moment, right? And then later you're like,
00:21:48
Speaker
the only that looks as a mess around as you don't know what you mean because again it was like that push for thing that you're saying that go like it was following that narrative and it made sense and it was cool and impactful when those things happen and they still have an appeal of the act like
00:22:16
Speaker
That's another thing. Did he say, like, Reiner would have been attacked if not his mom, I guess. And he needed Reiner. So here's the thing, though. Why? Why could it not have been any other person? How else would you guess, like, Reiner? Yeah, and couldn't Reiner, like, literally have defended himself as a literal Titan inheritor?
00:22:38
Speaker
So maybe at that point, he couldn't really give away his incognito role. So that might have been a possibility. But it's just one of those things, if you have knowledge of all things and all choices, why would you do these stupid ones? But yeah, introducing something like that into a show just makes it for like, here are all the possible plot holes with messing with timelines. Yeah.
00:23:08
Speaker
Yeah. Time is, it's wibbly wobbly nonsense. It's a trope. I'm not a big fan of some anime can pull it off. Steins gate choice. Excellent use of time. It's so good. But like.
00:23:25
Speaker
It's a double-edged sword. It's a sword that's entirely made of edges, like the cross guard, the hilt, the pommel, all of it. It's 100% edge. And it's so easy to mess up, right? Because you could try to tell your audience, hey, the reason Aaron did all this stuff is because of butterfly effect. But you're like, but yeah, why does the butterfly only fly into active fans, right? Like it seems like something else should happen at some point.
00:23:51
Speaker
Why is it that the best possible outcome is everything went wrong the entire time? Yes. Yes. Because the show is not like a happy one. It's not like at the end of a given episode, like, hey, we're all having, you know, cake and tea and hanging out. It's like there's always some shit going down. There's always like, oh, three people died this episode. Like it's always very grave stakes for everybody. Mm hmm.
Character reactions and story believability
00:24:20
Speaker
I do feel you should hand it back to Mango for a second. What were the things you particularly found dissatisfying about the final episode? I should have wrote this down. There's a list. Okay. You don't have to list everything, but enough to, you know, keep the conversation going.
00:24:40
Speaker
I'll put down three. I'll start with the first one. It's not really the ending, but it's just one that I think about a lot and it's Annie and how she was crystallized for three years, right? And, you know, she was considered a traitor to the people on the island because, you know, she tried to kill everyone. How come no one talked about it when
00:25:08
Speaker
She was uncrystallized and like, they just kind of were like, oh, that's okay. And then she just got a boyfriend out of it. So that's one that it's not really like I have a problem with it, but it's like, hey, what happened here? Are we not going to talk about it?
00:25:30
Speaker
Yeah, that one did feel a little bit odd. If I'm going to play devil's advocate, I think it's because they're eventually realizing like, Hey, we have to stop this cycle of who started the fight here. And then people are just, you know, taking turns getting revenge type thing. And so like, Hey, we get it. It wasn't you. You're just following orders type thing.
00:25:56
Speaker
That's what I assume. It's just no one ever brings it up. Yeah. Yeah, which is funny. And I'm like, it's fine. It's not that important. But it was kind of like a big deal at the time. So it's like, yeah, okay, we're just not gonna touch fine.
00:26:11
Speaker
It's like a shifting of importance, right? That's the reason it feels dissatisfying is because it was something the show said was important. But then with the velocity going into the finale, they're like, we're not gonna we're not gonna address this. We're just just pretend they're like high school students, like just dramatically trauma. Oh, there is a high school a you
00:26:36
Speaker
Or alternate universe. Oh, Australian universe. For people who don't go on Tumblr. Yeah, there's a high school alternate universe. Yeah, Attack on Titan as a slice of life anime would change it a little bit, I think. All right, I'm going to go with number two. Sure. A little more important. And it's everyone loves air.
00:27:06
Speaker
in the sense that, you know, they're appropriately upset and sad, but they're sad because, oh, my bestest buddy is dead. And not, wow, my childhood, like friend, compatriot, soldier, child soldier, just did a genocide of most of the world.
00:27:35
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, I don't like that. Yeah. It does feel kind of weird for them to be like, what our friend. And meanwhile, 80% of the world's population fucking gone. Reiner's like, what a man you are. And it's like, what does that mean, Reiner? What does that mean?
00:28:01
Speaker
Aaron's actively eating babies in the background is they're like, we can save them. Like, I don't know about that one. I can change him. I can change him. I can fix that boy. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't like that. It just felt disappointing. Where it's like, do these people learn anything? Do they experience complex emotions at all?
00:28:28
Speaker
Yeah. So it's not believable, right? It kind of ruins their similitude in the anime, right? Because it's like how many war crimes would your would your best friend need to make before you would be like, maybe they should go to prison? If we can't do that, maybe the death sentence, right? How many times? How many of your other friends? For anyone who didn't read the manga, some of the anime when Armin
00:28:57
Speaker
and Aaron are talking in brain space. And, you know, he's sitting on the ground crying like, I don't know why I did it. In the anime, Aaron says, you know, we're gonna go to hell together, which is significantly better. Yeah, Armin says that, which is significantly better than what Armin said in the manga.
00:29:25
Speaker
Which is, thanks for becoming a mass murderer for our sake. And it's so bad. It feels like one of those...
00:29:39
Speaker
like trolley questions that got out of hand. Would you touch the trolley? If you don't do anything, your three best friends, or maybe five best friends, are going to die. If you do touch the trolley switch, 80% of the world's population will die. And you're like, oh, well, I of course moved the trolley to save my friends. And that's just how it played out. And then the arm is like, oh, thank you. The fuck?
00:30:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's just another sense. It's just another part of the It just it doesn't feel genuine I don't know it feels it feels just all wrong Like if one of my very close friends Committed genocide I would be sad in the sense that it's like wow this person I thought I knew I
00:30:33
Speaker
has just committed an atrocity and not, oh no, my friend's gonna go to jail now. I guess I won't get to talk to him anymore. I'll move on to my number one.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah, I just want to interject real quick here that like, it's also not only does it feel like an unrealistic human emotion to react to your friend going full Rambo like that. Like, it actually undermines later in the episode when they're finally like, okay, let's kill them.
00:31:11
Speaker
like, all right, we're not going to pull any punches anymore. We literally have no more mans to die. All right. Although, like, no one dies in the finale, which doesn't make any sense. But like. Even when they resolve to kill them, it's like it's so undercut by like, well, yeah, that that work item was due two years ago. All right. Why? Why did you not do this? Right. Oh.
00:31:41
Speaker
I keep finding these freshly dug graves for the neighborhood cats in Aaron's backyard. He keeps writing these awfully disturbing things in his diary.
00:32:02
Speaker
That's weird, right? That's probably fine. Yeah. Maybe we should hang out more. I mean, I haven't talked to him lately. Aaron's like, stay on parody island tomorrow. Don't come to school. Don't come to Morley. The whole thing just felt so weird. Yeah, I actually didn't notice that. Yeah, I guess nobody actually died in that final piece, which is crazy because I really enjoyed how they had an ending for Hanshi.
00:32:33
Speaker
than the previous part of the final episodes. It was like she went out taking down like colossal titans, which is insane. Um, she took out several of them and she eventually just burned up because they're colossal titans, but she bought enough time to like help them get out and it was like an important thing. And she had already done a lot up until that point. Um, and then everyone else is like, we'll
Zeke's role and anime narrative choices
00:33:00
Speaker
be okay. Right.
00:33:03
Speaker
What if we just removed all of that gravitas for the finale? And what if none of that existed? And people are just functionally immortal, even though they're up against literal bone clones of all of the titans before them. Nobody dies during that sequence somehow. Yeah, they get the crap beat out of them, but they're not gods. They're not supposed to be better than any of those other titans. Oh, I have a question.
00:33:31
Speaker
why did Zeke not leave the brain space because he was only like there because he was depressed right and then Armin shows up he's like hey do you want to get out of here it's like oh yeah let me leave and call some friends what did I did I misunderstand any of that is that exactly how it played out
00:33:55
Speaker
I'm trying to remember why he was there in the first place. Did he die? Oh yeah, he did. Wasn't he just like a head? Well, Zeke got trapped in there when him and Eren initially like held hands. Touch tips. So it was the merging of the founding titan and the attack titan. And then they met in that brain space thing, which I think is called the paths. Yeah.
00:34:20
Speaker
he was trying to like locked air in there until he you know went through the use of slow euthanasia plan are just not allowing them to have any descendants on an errands like all but a twist and then he locks Zeke in there so Zeke's technically trapped in there but then Army comes in and he's like do you want to just leave
00:34:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think in the anime at least they don't really imply that he's locked there so much as he has no more faith in his plan. And then beyond that, he's not like he so he's not even doing the euthanasia plan anymore. He's just like Aaron is so much more capable. But also he has no reason to leave in the anime. He's just like, there's nothing out there for me. And then Armin's like, I showed you my leaf, please, you know, whatever. I showed you my leaf, please respond. Is this a baseball?
00:35:15
Speaker
I mean, like, no, no, it's not. But yeah, I don't know. It's. I don't hate the trope of that, of like, oh, we've we found a way to motivate the person who was downtrodden. It's not a bad trope, but you need to have more, more noss, more fuel. You can actually like inject there to make it meaningful because some blonde hair kid who like is just
00:35:45
Speaker
way too positive, uncomfortably positive. He works at Chick-fil-A. That's who Armin is. He's not really a justified reason to wake up the bad guy and make him fight for the good guys in the grand finale.
00:36:07
Speaker
I am loving the negativity. I do want to
The basement reveal and pacing frustrations
00:36:10
Speaker
spend some time focusing on some earlier parts of the show. Was there like a standout moment or something you thought was really either awesome, a very cool reveal, super well animated, or just like a moment that stands out for you, where it's like, oh shit. It's probably the basement. So that's the only reason I read the manga.
00:36:35
Speaker
because they took a million years to get there. And I'm like, I don't have to wait. I could just go read a book. Right. Find out myself. That was pretty hype. If something makes you read a book, you know, it's you know, it's got its its talents in you, right? Yeah, I was so mad. Because they teased it. And then
00:37:02
Speaker
That season came along and they still didn't go in the basement. So I was extra mad because the first time they teased it, I'm like, I'm just gonna read. And then I never got around to reading the manga. Then that season that the teaser was in, they didn't go in the basement yet. So I was like, I'm extra mad now. I was promised a basement. So I actually read the manga then.
00:37:30
Speaker
I know Dave said like, hey, we're being really negative. Let's focus on some of the other things. But it's gonna keep the negativity going for a second. I kind of have the feeling in the world building for the basement, any time that there's a question that's introduced, like well in advance, and it's a very foreground question, right? It's like, if it's like in your top three list of questions about whatever type of media you're consuming, in this case, the basement, right? Very, lot of intrigue, what's going on there?
00:37:58
Speaker
But then anytime you don't really touch on it for an extended period of time in the fiction, I start to get this inkling suspicion that you also do not know what's in the basement, right? That you will find out at some point and then will find out, but you don't know yet. So you're just riding that question, right? Yeah. Do you guys think that was maybe at play for some elements of Attack on Titan?
00:38:24
Speaker
I want to say no. I think that'd be more likely for something like the show Lost, where they were clearly lost on where the show was going. That wasn't even supposed to be the name. That's just what the writers reacted to. And they're like, where are we at? Lost. Oh, yeah. Ship it. I mean, there's always two seasons.
00:38:53
Speaker
I think they had a manga to go off of. I think they were just real slow about it. Oh yeah. I guess I'm just saying not just for the anime, but also for the manga. Because this anime, for good and ill, pretty much did track the manga, right? Oh yeah. It was pretty spot on. Yeah. Which I mean...
00:39:19
Speaker
it's a decision from but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but
00:39:47
Speaker
this is the entire scope you have of the world in this anime is this island, and then you find out all there is a larger world and it's just modern society, so I think it was well planned out and it did a cool reveal of it, so I liked it personally, but I would agree that was pretty nice
00:40:13
Speaker
That's the way that you keep people interested in a story where the point is questions are being asked and answers are being provided is you continue to expand the scope of the questions. These are just kids.
00:40:26
Speaker
They're assaulted by titans. The walls are made of titans. These are just kids. Some of them are titans. And they just keep going bigger and bigger and bigger. It's not an island. It's the world. It's not a lake. It's an ocean, whatever. And then you get to the point of, how do we take this grand epic scale? Because they have a cosmology going on at the end of this. You're talking about the paths.
00:40:54
Speaker
the founding Titan, Ymir, right? And all of these larger than life characters and you're like, somehow this needs to relate to something that we can actually put a nice little bow on and be like, that is Attack on Titan.
00:41:14
Speaker
But like everything leading up until the point where that bow actually was put on and you're like, this boat was made of poop. Why? Why'd you use a poop bow for this? I think any weirdness could partially be explained with the author had an original ending in mind for the anime and
Speculation on alternate endings due to popularity
00:41:41
Speaker
the manga.
00:41:44
Speaker
But then he saw how popular it had gotten, and he changed it. Because his first pass with the ending was meant to be like, I want to hurt my audience and be real sad, be real tragic. And he changed it. Because he's like, I don't want to riot.
00:42:08
Speaker
to come to my house because I've upset him. He doesn't want this to be his last manga. He was afraid of like making the ending bad or like ups. He became afraid of like upsetting people. So he changed it. So like some weirdness along the way can probably be because of that, which is unfortunate. I want to know the real ending.
00:42:37
Speaker
are about the original year I agree there I feel like it just all I feel like one of the messages leaned in one direction even if it was the wrong direction
00:43:02
Speaker
Like, specifically, just to call it specifically what was going on there, the final episode really tries to, and at least the theming, to redeem Eren. Oh yeah. And it's completely undeserved. Yes. Like, it makes no sense. It's a tonal shift that is absolute absurdity to go to, like, birds and butterflies and scenic vistas and stuff like that after everything he has done.
00:43:27
Speaker
like if you just do it like hey, all that shit is finally over it was absolutely horrible and hey now we're trying to rebuild the world
00:43:51
Speaker
What do you think? Was it Necrokis? Yeah. That's what he said it was. Necrokis. Yeah, it was Necrokis. And when you think about it, she's on like the other side of the world. So, girl, how'd you get there so fast? It's just ocean apart. Yeah. I forgot that the finale didn't take place on like Paradiso. Yeah, no, they they had taken a boat. They took Birdchild.
00:44:18
Speaker
And Mikasa's like... That was another surprise. Yeah, she's like, I'm gonna go bury this head, if y'all don't mind. And everyone's like, oh my god, yes, please take care of the boy. Take the time. It's like, just listen. What? But yeah, they did give hints that the kid would be able to fly. Did they?
00:44:47
Speaker
Yeah, you notice the uptick in birds and shutters around the kids. It was the BPM. I didn't know it was the bird's permit. The bird's permit increased substantially, although there's a lot of general bird references, but because of freedom, et cetera. I'm blind to certain things. I'm not like explicitly looking for it. So I probably should put it over my head. I didn't see it either. Like a burger.
00:45:16
Speaker
Yeah, otherwise it is pretty random like, I can fly mom. It's like, why are you a bird? For me, it's just without that context. It felt like last episode. Oh, we need this to happen. They're flying in a bird now. I'm like, okay. Yeah, it's still kind of was apiary. There's bees. Those are bees aren't they? What's the what would be the bird word for birds?
00:45:43
Speaker
Aviary? Deus Ex-Aviary. There you go. That's the type of fray I am, is a Deus Ex-Aviary. I'm up for those godburns. I want those birds that dies in seven years. That's a lot of birds. Oh my god, you're right. Oh my god, birds are titans. Oh no. They consume other birds. Checks out.
00:46:30
Speaker
If they didn't have the finale, it would have been a lot better in my opinion, but yeah. I mean, I already named probably one of the big standouts for me is like the attack on, the actual attack titan transformation is pretty much gonna go down as like one of the coolest things. I think the other scene for me that was like, cause I'm an edgelord and I thought it was gonna mean more at the time was like when Eren basically did his heal turn and was like,
00:46:35
Speaker
Some of them, too.
00:46:58
Speaker
What is it? Is it face heel turn something like whatever wrestling terminology good guy becomes bad guy and he starts just like Killing people in Marley and They're not even like the bad people anymore It's very clear that he just doesn't care and he's just pursuing his goal Because you're like what could drive Aaron to do this?
00:47:23
Speaker
Like, it has to be some powerful reason. And that's another big question. Only Ymir knows. Only Ymir knows. It's literally his answer. I guess what? Ymir don't know nothing. I just wanted to see a necro, please. She's a freak. She is a freak, yeah. Yeah. Also, that's my number one problem with the engine.
00:47:49
Speaker
The whole thing. I hate it. It makes me angry. Not even irrationally angry. This is rational anger.
00:47:58
Speaker
I thought she was like a really cool character and especially when they like fleshed out her backstory and you get to see all those details at that point is like Ymir's concept, love it, very cool and then through like, oh hey, she was in love with King Fritz and you're like, but why? Like it just, that stuff doesn't track. Yeah, and then people are like, no, no, she was in love with him.
00:48:26
Speaker
And it's like, this girl was literally immortal. She didn't have to die, but she chose to die, to like, no longer have to deal with this dude.
00:48:39
Speaker
I don't like being the person who ever brings up a Bechdel test, but I think the show struggles passing it for a lot of these female characters Annie being one of them where she's like, well you have a bear tolls memories and I kinda like you, because this whole thing is just for air. You talk to me a lot of people when I was in a coma. Yeah. I wanna talk about what else you did while I was in a coma.
00:49:09
Speaker
this of this crystal is awfully useful as she was in a protect off really clean the the the the the the the the the the the the
00:49:54
Speaker
the reveal and Marley heart because when they started season four was a bomb
00:49:58
Speaker
And I was like, oh, shit. And he just erupts from the ground just as murdering people. Yeah. That is one thing that they have been good at. And it's, oh, I didn't see that coming at all. They're very, they're very good at it. Yeah, until the ending, like all of the twists, I
Final critique on power scaling and survival
00:50:20
Speaker
felt like, or at least most of the twists felt pretty, pretty well placed in the universe and also like very engaging.
00:50:29
Speaker
like it was very rarely something where I was like that was a twist but I don't care it was a twist instead it was like dang guess I'm watching next season in five years when it comes out part one yeah part one of the next season how do you guys feel about the the power scaling
00:50:53
Speaker
doing like cycling the fights that are going on are yet so tight like in season one like a lot of the people you're following are new to their ODM gear outside of Levi who's always been a god um but they struggle fight facing even just like normal titans and then as it goes like they are flying around shooting missiles into Titan X um we're taking out colossal titans like it's NBD you know
00:51:24
Speaker
Yeah. I'm going to be a loser and I'm going to say the ODM gear is also like, it doesn't make any sense. It uses Spider-Man logic, right? Like if you could fire out little cables to like swing on, you would not have the mobility that these people have. So it's really funny when they're just fighting like with a Titan in the open and they're coming in from like all of these angles and stuff. I'm like, are you attaching to clouds? Like what's going on here? But it looks cool.
00:51:52
Speaker
It looks cool, that's the only thing that really matters, I guess. But you're right, it does culminate in them fighting literally all past titans in bone form, so it doesn't get much more power scaling than that. I actually think it goes too far, though.
00:52:09
Speaker
Titans are kind of supposed to be a threat. And by the end of it, like these people are fighting the best Titans that have ever lived in swarms and not actually in that much danger. To be fair, 80% of the world was destroyed. Yeah, but I mean, most of the people suck compared to like the actual scouts.
00:52:35
Speaker
That's the thing, though, that the difference in disparity between what the scouts are capable of doing and what everyone else is capable of doing is absolutely absurd. Well, I mean, to be fair, everyone else is not training to fight Titans their entire life. That is true. But they probably do have nukes. Because they're, I think the rest of the world is like 50 years ahead in technology. Hmm.
00:53:00
Speaker
than the island was. See, they would have had nukes, but they found out that the Colossal Titan was basically a nuke, so they never even had the impetus to develop that technology. He's the one that gets all big and he literally can have a nuclear explosion, right? Yeah. They use that fact to take out a fleet.
00:53:28
Speaker
I want to give you a little bit of opportunity because I know that you mentioned that Ymir was your number one. What specifically about the interactions with Ymir? Did you find this favorable, Mingo? Everything about the final episode. Every single thing about the final episode is so bad. Her whole thing, when Erin breaks her free,
00:53:57
Speaker
is she's angry. And Erin's like, you can, you're free, you can do whatever you want. You can take revenge. You can, you can murder. And she's like, I'm freaking out, I'm angry. And then the ending is, oh, she needed to see Mikasa kiss her love interests dead, like head knowing, because the whole thing was, even if you love someone,
00:54:27
Speaker
Could you kill them? Like, can you kill someone and care about them at the same time? Because she's like, I guess I love my abuser, who ripped my eyes out, cut out my tongue, and abused me.
00:54:49
Speaker
And then had her children cannibalize her. Don't forget about that. Yeah. Which also in terms of endings, that ending that explained the Titan history was my favorite one. It's so good. It's like a storybook. But yet, and then to be like, but she loved him. Don't worry, she loved him. And that's why she's happy. Because we cost something and I'm like,
00:55:17
Speaker
She was, and even like in the final episode, they're like, oh, you know, Aaron's goal is rumbling. He doesn't care what's going on back here. So this must be, yeah, like this must be Ymir, like flashing out, attacking us. It's like, okay, cool. We're sticking to it. And then all of a sudden it's, she was, she's just a girl in love with her boyfriend.
00:55:45
Speaker
from 2,000 years ago. And it's like, no. You've ruined your mirror. Fort Mikasa didn't stand a chance. Her character's been absolutely ruined for a while now. And it doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense to me. Yeah. It's not to bring up the Bechtel test again, but like,
00:56:29
Speaker
she's a
00:56:42
Speaker
But we will, that's where we're at.
00:56:50
Speaker
all she's a separate at all times and that's our whole thing really OK and that's the subject of feels a little depleting at the end of the act is like all the characters and show all the main ones are so fucking cool and even as a character like I'm all are really big on this
00:57:14
Speaker
and then you see Ymir's backstory and you're like, oh shit, they're actually a really cool character. Like, they do a good job of justifying characters and why they make their actions in the show, um, what their motivations are, everything. And then some of them are just like, eh. I'm like, oh, okay.
00:57:34
Speaker
Specifically for Mikasa, they made a big deal about her being an Ackerman and how that meant that she was bound, essentially, to assist Eren. And they infused the finale with none of that. That felt like that was going to be her entire arc.
00:57:51
Speaker
was breaking free of that and it never really happened even though she kills him so you could make the argument in a literal sense it happened that context wasn't present in the finale there was no buildup for that and then she ultimately just kissed him which would have undermined the moment anyways so like
00:58:08
Speaker
They brought up the whole thing with the Ackerman tattoo on her wrist, and how it's like, you're a literal royal bloodline, and it never comes up again. It's like, you're immune to the Titan's powers, which I think was their explanation. I forgot about that. Because they never bring it up again. And I think that was the explanation for her headaches, was
00:58:30
Speaker
I don't know if this was a fan theory or somehow meant to be implied, but I had read that her headaches were him trying to erase memories, but it doesn't work, so she just gets headaches. Dada was supposed to be Ymir messing with her head, because at the end, she's like, that
Series impact and ending reflections
00:58:50
Speaker
was you in my head. What? Ymir was assuming direct control. You're going to kiss the dead boy.
00:58:59
Speaker
And you're going to carry his head and put it under a tree and then cry about it every year when you go to visit. Redhead Redemption. Yeah. Animation was good though. Was good. I like the music. Oh yeah. Excellent intros and outros like across the entire board. I will say the animation was a little bit weird in... was it either season two or three?
00:59:30
Speaker
just a little bit of the old sword art kind of art. Oh, yeah. It's not a bit of an art style shift throughout the season. Yes. But I still really like it. I do want to go back and rewatch the entire thing again. And then maybe skip the finale.
00:59:51
Speaker
Yeah. But just to rewatch it knowing some of the context of what's going to happen and what hints they leave. But I really like the story arc and how everything goes. It is very cool. It is very hyped in my eyes. I just feel like the ending was kind of just hot glued together or like mass welded. So that part's unfortunate.
01:00:15
Speaker
It would also take like a weekend, maybe like two weekends to watch the whole thing. And it took a literal decade from when the anime started for us to get to this point. 10 years, just a third of our lives gone wasted to the wind. That's pretty good though, I guess. That's good music. I think it was the season two outro. Is that the one I'm thinking? What are the outros?
01:00:45
Speaker
Um, explains the whole history of the Titans. And when you're watching it, you're like, I don't get it. Like you kind of get it, but like, you don't understand the context. And then you're like, I know now. That is cool. And I will say it with all of the negativity, I mean, like almost all the negativity I have for the show is just because of the finale. Yeah. Without that, like.
01:01:15
Speaker
It's still it's still a really good show to watch. Right? I'm only upset because it was so good. And then it just kind of farted all over the place. Just gassy. And it's just like, Oh, I don't know if I want to be here for this. Yeah, I'm only upset because I care.
01:01:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a slightly positive way to think about it, right? The ending would not be nearly so disappointing if the rest of it were not so good. Yeah, it was so good. And then it just... Yeah, if you want to hear me complain about the show Velma.
01:01:58
Speaker
are sorry the new school is not worth the effort on yet because I don't care about I wasn't invested but when we talk about this in the games as well and the reason we want to critique and criticize is because we want the best version of something that we really care about on
01:02:28
Speaker
Right. That's what it's a game I hate anyway. There's no point in talking about it. That's true. I'm not invested. Yeah. We're not up here spending an extensive amount of time critiquing like Fallout 76 or something like that, right? It's not worth the time. I could have thought of a better game, but I was like, what is like the absolute... Oh, Redfall. Redfall. There you go.
01:02:53
Speaker
We don't talk about all the problems in Redfall. Nobody cares. There's a certain amount of honor that you lose when you kick someone when they're down, which means you would lose exponentially more honor if you're kicking them while they're dead.
01:03:13
Speaker
But hopefully we've successfully dissected the final episode enough. I would say I think we got more out of this than I thought we were going to. I didn't know it was going to take the full time. Yeah, there's more to say honestly. It's hard to know. We didn't even touch on his story.
01:03:31
Speaker
That's the thing, though, I feel like most of this was actually the finale. Like, we talked about some other things and how it wrapped together. But now I understand why some people have shows where it's like, let's talk about this episode, right? Like, it's doable. Yeah, we didn't even talk about history. Spanish history.
01:03:52
Speaker
her story. Yeah, her story didn't actually have that much to do with the finale either. So that's fine. No, but they kind of ditched that plot line real fast. Which is a shame. Let's make her have a baby. Cut away, cut away.
01:04:09
Speaker
Why was she pregnant again? I don't know. I don't know. Oh. She had sex, I guess. She won't die. I'm very... Got it. Oh, my mouth. Like Aaron. Way better. Way better than Scout from TF2.
01:04:30
Speaker
Anyways, thank you for coming on once more, Jenny. Appreciate it. Jenny, Mango, whatever you go by, I don't know. We're only married. So, yeah, I mean, the show would have been significantly less. We'd have a lot less expertise and clout without you here, so we appreciate that. Thank you. I've been waiting two and a half years to talk about this with people.
01:04:56
Speaker
I've had a lot of opinions for a long time. And I'm so glad that everyone got to experience what I thought was one of the biggest disappointments. I can attest to this after we were done watching the anime, she immediately went to Titan Folk and was like, we're just looking at the top memes over the last three years. I can share memes. I'm so happy.
01:05:23
Speaker
Yeah, kudos for sitting on that for that long, cause I'm not a patient, man. Um, that would drive me crazy. Oh yeah. Listen, when I buy gifts for people, like I did this with Ian, I got him a present and I immediately sent him a picture. Like I got you a gift. So I've really been working on that. Yeah, no, appreciate it. Um,
01:05:48
Speaker
If you guys out there have requests for the episodes that you want us to cover, feel free to send those requests in. Pretty much all of Star Trek's already taken, I'll say that, but there's a lot of other stuff out there. Send those requests in to soapstonepodcast at gmail.com, or you can join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night. I'll see you next week, wink.
01:06:37
Speaker
Oh