Yeah, at least they're all dead so we don't have to worry about a sequel.

>TEN YEARS AT LEAST
>NOT A FUCKIN PEEP

>>286693980
>spend the entire back half of the manga hammering in the point about hatred begetting hatred and violence begetting violence and genocide being bad
>throw that all out the window because you want your story to conclude with epic spectacle and a controversial ending
It's terrible and retroactively soured me on the entire story.

Comically bad writing set on the shoulders of past great writing and good premises does make one think at least emotionally that it isn't that bad
Took me like a month analyzing things to come to hate the ending in the anime

no, its pretty bad
in terms of plot, it's inconsequential
in terms of charactera, it's awful
in terms of themes, it's incoherent

The story is pointless. If having to genocide 80% of the world is the only way to save your people from a situation that their ancestors created then things were fucked from the start. Cool characters though, that's the series strong point.

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1.49 MB JPG

>>286693980
>"We have to kill these innocent and clueless people because I wanna impress daddy Magath and prove I'm a honorary Marleyan even though they call me Eldian scum everyday"
It's a huge narrative failing that you're supposed to think this is a sympathetic motivation

So why was I supposed to think Eren was in the wrong again?

>>286695028
>cringevengers assembling
>jean is mad at magath for directly causing millions of people to die, including many of jean's friends
>magath is mad at jean for being born
>the narrative frames both of these concerns as equally (in)valid and everyone should just move on for the greater good

god everything after the timeskip is so fucking bad it is hard to believe this was printed like that

>>286695082
The rest of the cast being objectively wrong and considerably more stupid than him does not make him right

>>286695095
Kek
>everything after the timeskip is so fucking bad
Declaration of war was kino, Sasha's death was pretty great too
From there on it is pretty shit

>>286695181
libero fight is the only acceptable part of the timeskip because it's a pretty cool fight on its own, we got a new titan, we got new tactics and it was really cool to see the scouts framed as these infamous superheroes, to see marlay soldiers completely shocked any human would even try challenging titans

but that was just one action sequence, it doesnt redeem literally everything else being dogshit. seriously, everything else sucks.

>>286695118
Eren is right because he's the protagonist and you should root for him to make the story coherent. Remember that fiction is not real life and the actions therein are representations of ideas. There are no war crimes in fiction.
>But he could have just bombed the military bases
Would be a fine and realistic argument, except this is fiction and fiction is exaggerated for the cool factor, not what makes "the most sense". It's a clear question of self-assertion vs. self-abegnation

>>286695211
>but that was just one action sequence
The action section is great, but Liberio wasn't just that. It's easy to forget when you have hindsight but we never really saw anything outside of the walls except for Grisha's brief flashback. In Liberio we get a closer look on how life is for the Eldians on the other side of the walls, we get to see Reiner's backstory and personal drama, we get introduced to the shadowy goyish, I mean eldian family ruling things (the Tyburs), we get insight into the whole world and it's geopolitical state, we get Eren's infiltration which by itself was a great thing, but also had lots of emotional value as he reconnected with Reiner, etc
All of this does not redeem everything that comes after it but if you ignore it and pretend like nothing happened past Liberio it's awesome

File: eldi.jpg (1.92 MB, 1729x2623)

1.92 MB JPG

>>286695331
I enjoyed seeing how shitty the Eldian kids got treated

>>286695331
It's forgotten now but the bait-and-switch of Eren acting very empathetic and offering his hand to Reiner made a lot of people, me included, think they would team up to fight against Marley and the Tyburs
Shit was insane back in the day

>>286695331
I didnt really like any of that shit. too many new characters, and all the lore doesnt amount to anything when it ultimately builds up to such a trashfire
the entire marley kids are totally superficial, a very clumsy and blunt attempt to make the reader sympathise with the marley side and to make a very hamfisted and overall boring point about people learning there's more to life than stereotypes. the few times they were plot relevant (flying titan for example) are very lame and again superficial, very easy to imagine a story where they never factor into the plot. basically I would have preferred to learn all this stuff about marley and how it treats its child soldiers with more RBA flashbacks. you know, the characters we already know and potentially even care about.

>>286695459
You're absolutely right with hindsight. If you consider everything that comes after then yeah, it was superficial and lame. The Tyburs amounted to nothing more than a plot device for Eren to meet Zeke, since even the Warhammer he ate he only used the power like once and we never got any flashbacks from it.
But when you let the arc stand on it's own it stands as a great introduction to many concepts which could have been fantastic. I remember it was around this part of the manga when I took a break and only read it again when it was finished, so I distinctively remember over-analyzing it and making theories and whatever

>>286695573
I wasnt super into it at the time either
in large parts because it was a lot of new stuff thrown at you, hard to get invested into any of them. the other part was that this was after the timeskip and, you know, I wanted to know what the fuck happened. where is everyone. why is eren acting so weird? a little more pressing issues than whatshisface tybur talking about ancient history

>>286695603
>The entire story is about how the Eldians are hated by everyone
>Suddenly the bomb drops that it's an Eldian family behind this status quo
>"more pressing issues than whatshisface tybur talking about ancient history"
Anon... Maybe you just couldn't grasp the immediate and second-hand implications of this at the time I suppose. But the other part about wanting to know what happened is obviously (a part of) the point, this was a setup arc. Anyone who is familiar with writing knows that setting things up efficiently is a lot harder, and a lot more important than writing a good pay-off. Isayama was masterfully managing expectations in that arc as he had been in most arcs before that.
Only, there was no pay-off for 90% of the things he wrote in this arc and all that came before of it, and what little had was underwhelming, so people don't really appreciate it

>>286695700
>exposition dump after exposition dump
>masterful managing of expectation and setup
ok man you liked it I get it

>>286695737
>You want to know [thing]
>Author no reveal [thing], create tension
>He reveal [other thing] while jiggling [thing] over your face to keep you paying attention
>Exposition dump no reveal [thing]

>>286693980
CSM's ending was so bad that I feel like I need to reassess the scale that I judge endings by.