Parallel world Manga Artist

Chapter 331 331: End of Season Two

Attack on Titan had been airing across two seasons now, spring through autumn, spanning nearly forty episodes.

In most other anime, the protagonist would have entered an invincible phase by this point in the story. The power curve would have been clearly ascending. The audience would be watching Eren grow from someone who struggled to someone who dominated.

For Attack on Titan, the situation was different.

Eren had participated in six or seven actual battles across all those episodes. He had genuinely won one or two of them. As a protagonist experience, the self-insertion quality for Titan fans was several orders of magnitude worse than what the Demon Slayer fans next door were experiencing with Tanjiro.

This was almost certainly part of why the fan base for Attack on Titan, both in Japan and in Rei's previous life, had always been slightly narrower than Demon Slayer's. The critical reputation before the final arc was stronger. The audience breadth was smaller.

But by the end of the second season, the vast majority of viewers who had stayed were deeply embedded in the world. Captain Levi and Commander Erwin had surpassed Eren in recent character popularity polls, holding the top positions firmly, their merchandise selling out within minutes of pre-order links going live.

The world had swallowed its audience even if the protagonist had not given them the self-insertion satisfaction that battle anime usually provided.

When Thursday arrived, the fan conversation turned back to Eren with a quality of collective hope.

"It is already the final episode of the second season. Eren has to rise up at least once."

"When he fought Reiner he was doing fine. He was blindsided by Bertholdt's sneak attack. You cannot dismiss what he accomplished in that fight just because of how it ended."

"In the first season, the Female Titan came alone against Eren and the entire Survey Corps and speed-ran through him in two minutes and Captain Levi and Mikasa had to save him.

In the second season, Eren gets captured again. This time, not just Levi but Commander Erwin and the entire Survey Corps are coming to rescue him. The only reason this anime has not ended is that Reiner and the others want Eren alive."

"I acknowledge the animation quality completely. I have the highest respect for everyone at Illumination Production Company. I am genuinely grateful for the world Shirogane-sensei conceived. But Eren as a protagonist needs to perform once. His popularity has dropped outside the top six or seven in the entire series. Can he even be called the protagonist at this point."

"The final episode should give him the moment. His hands are cut off and he is exhausted right now, but by the end he should be able to overcome that and have a significant transformation and defeat Reiner and Bertholdt."

"Let us hope so."

"Twenty minutes until the episode. Last episode of Season Two. Eren, hold on."

Yuna Sato had been a dedicated Shirogane-sensei fan for seven years. This was the one time she could not find a straightforward counter-argument to the complaints about the protagonist.

The animation was excellent. The battle sequences were exceptional. The world-building was extraordinary.

The plot was not hot-blooded. It was, honestly, quite depressing. Even Demon Slayer handed out its emotional damage while showing the protagonist visibly growing. Eren had been captured twice.

'Keep going, Eren', she thought.

Have a satisfying hot-blooded battle tonight and prove every single person complaining about you wrong.

Eight o'clock.

The twelfth and final episode of Attack on Titan Season Two began.

The opening theme. The visuals. Then the plot continuing directly from the previous week.

The Titans that Reiner had drawn in were engaged with the full Survey Corps. Erwin, now missing an arm, was issuing orders for all members to retake Eren at any cost.

Then an old acquaintance appeared on screen.

Eren's arms had been cut off. His stamina was completely exhausted. He could not transform.

And the Titan that had eaten his mother five years ago was approaching.

Mikasa's stamina was also gone. Her blades were chipped and dull.

The person standing between Eren, Mikasa, and that Titan was Uncle Hannes.

The man who had not been able to fight this Titan five years ago. The man who had taken the children and run, leaving Carla behind. Eren's uncle figure.

Yuna's chest tightened immediately.

The symmetry of it was immediately visible. The same Titan. The same three people. The same situation. In the first episode, Hannes had not been able to make himself fight this creature. He had turned and run and Eren's mother had died.

Now Hannes was not running.

Shirogane-sensei's works always hand out their damage, Yuna thought. Everyone knows it is coming. And when it actually comes, you still cannot block it.

"Watch closely. I am going to avenge your mother right now."

The moment that line left Hannes's mouth, Yuna's eyes went red.

He charged.

Every member of the Survey Corps around them was occupied with their own Titans. Nobody could reach him. Nobody was coming.

Hannes lasted less than thirty seconds.

"No."

Yuna's eyes were wide.

In the story, Eren bit into his own arm until the blood ran. Trying to force a transformation. Trying to generate enough of whatever it was that allowed him to become a Titan.

Nothing happened.

He could only watch.

"Now, if I cannot transform into a Titan, what is the point of anything?"

The voice actor delivered this line with every layer it needed: the despair, the helplessness, the hatred for his own inability to do the one thing the moment required.

Five years ago: his mother, this Titan, Hannes taking the children and running.

Right now: Hannes, this same Titan, Eren unable to transform.

The Female Titan had fought Levi's entire squad before engaging Eren and had still defeated him in two minutes. Reiner had fought Eren, fled carrying multiple people, and was transforming again now in the same day. Both of them had pushed past limits that should have stopped them.

Eren, with his own arm bitten to the bone, could not do it.

He watched Uncle Hannes die in front of him.

Why had Attack on Titan been called a masterpiece by many in Rei's previous life while simultaneously being dismissed by many others?

Beyond the art style, the specific approach to protagonist characterisation meant that a significant portion of the youth demographic simply could not sustain watching it. The experience of following Eren was too consistently painful without the release that hot-blooded battle anime typically provided.

Yuna was feeling that despair right now.

Unlike some other anime fans who could redirect their self-insertion toward Levi or Mikasa or Erwin and use those characters as a buffer against the oppressive weight of the plot, Yuna had been locked into Eren's perspective the entire time. She could not disengage from it. Every defeat he experienced, every moment of powerlessness, she felt from inside it.

The voice actor's performance was not helping. The BGM was not helping.

How can you be this cruel with it. Shirogane-sensei, do you have any mercy at all.

Eren had spent five years working toward something. Training. Fighting. Surviving. And at the most critical moment the series had yet produced, he was experiencing the same exact powerlessness he had experienced fleeing in panic five years ago. The same Titan. The same result. The same inability to do the one thing the moment required.

What had the five years accomplished. Had he gotten stronger. Had he moved even a single step toward any of his goals: driving out the Titans, avenging his mother, reaching the sea, finding freedom.

"Hahaha. Hahaha."

Eren knelt on the ground with tears running freely from his eyes and could not stop the maniacal laughter.

"You really haven't changed a bit. You still can't do anything. I still can't do anything."

He looked at the bite wound on his arm. He had bitten until it genuinely hurt, until the blood ran properly, and his body had simply not had the stamina to convert that into a transformation. The mechanism was there. The capability was absent.

Yuna's chest ached.

Mikasa, watching from beside him, did the thing Yuna wanted to do.

She crouched down next to Eren.

The Female Titan that had once speed-ran through him was a dozen metres away and closing. Seven or eight more Titans were approaching from behind. It was already a dead end in any tactical sense.

Mikasa looked at Eren with a smile on her lips.

The BGM swelled.

"Eren, listen to me. I have something I want to tell you."

"Thank you for always being by my side. Thank you for teaching me how to live. Thank you for wrapping this scarf around me."

Yuna stopped breathing.

Perhaps Eren was just an ordinary person. Perhaps he could not do the extraordinary things the moment demanded. Perhaps he had failed again in the way he had failed before and would probably fail again.

Mikasa loved him exactly as he was.

Not the Titan. Not the power. The boy who had seen her in the dark when she was a child and had chosen to save her and had wrapped his scarf around her shoulders. That Eren. The specific ordinary person that Eren was.

He had saved someone. Long before he had saved anyone on a battlefield, long before any of the Survey Corps operations, long before any of it, he had saved this girl. That was real. That had mattered. It still mattered now, at this exact moment, surrounded by Titans with no gas and dull blades and an arm that would not transform.

"It's just a scarf, isn't it? I'll wrap it around you again and again."

Eren stopped falling into himself.

He stood up.

He turned and faced the Titan that had eaten his mother and had just eaten Uncle Hannes.

He stood in front of Mikasa.

That was all. He simply stood in front of her.

The tears Yuna had been holding back fell.

Eren is just an ordinary person.

Except for the transformation ability Shirogane-sensei had written into his existence, he was not different from any of the Survey Corps members who had died on this battlefield today.

He had no special perception, no exceptional physical ability, no tactical genius. He was an ordinary boy who had felt things very intensely and had acted on those feelings regardless of the outcome.

And at this moment, standing up with an exhausted body and a bitten arm and no ability to transform and no hope of survival, and putting himself between Mikasa and the Titan because that was the only thing left to do: this ordinary protagonist moved Yuna in a way she had not been moved by a protagonist all season.

"From now on, I'll wrap that scarf around you as many times as it takes."

Eren roared.

He swung his weak human fist at the palm of the Titan in front of him. A palm larger than his entire body.

The BGM shifted.

Something changed on the battlefield.

Every Titan in the vicinity that had been attacking the Survey Corps members simultaneously redirected. They turned toward the Titan that had eaten Eren's mother. They converged on her. They began consuming her.

Eren did not understand what was happening.

Reiner and Bertholdt's expressions showed they did. The shock on their faces was not the shock of people watching something random. It was the shock of people recognising something specific.

Ymir's expression changed immediately as well. Something resolved in her face. Whatever she had been weighing about Christa's future and the choice between staying inside the walls and leaving: it settled. Christa staying inside the walls was the only path with an actual future.

What exactly did Eren just display, Yuna thought, with her scalp tingling and goosebumps breaking across her arms.

She did not know the mechanism. She only knew what she had just watched: every Titan on the battlefield moving in response to Eren as though receiving a command.

Erwin seized the moment immediately and ordered the full retreat on horseback. Reiner moved to stop them.

Eren roared at him.

"Stay away!"

Every Titan on the field lunged toward Reiner simultaneously.

Eren can control Titans, Yuna thought, the realisation arriving like something physical.

Was that possible? She turned it over quickly.

Reiner could harden his Armored Titan's surface. The Female Titan could crystallise herself. The Colossal Titan could release steam at will. Each Titan Shifter had a specific ability unique to them beyond the basic transformation.

Eren being able to command mindless Titans: it was not a pure invention from nowhere. It fit the internal logic of what the series had been building about Titan Shifters and their individual capabilities.

The adrenaline hit her brain before she had finished the thought.

And yet even with that, even with the hot-blooded image of every Titan on the battlefield turning toward Reiner on Eren's command, Yuna could not quite reach happiness.

Because the cost of this episode was still sitting on top of it.

The Survey Corps had been shattered. The losses were severe. Uncle Hannes was dead. The operation had been a failure by every objective measure. The only outcome they could claim was retrieving Eren.

They had gotten Eren back. That was all.

As for the truth of the world, it could only be said that some of the mist had cleared, but the full picture was still hidden.

Yuna watched the subsequent post-arc update segments in the anime with a melancholy heart. The fates of various characters laid out with the specific economy of a series that understood its audience needed orientation after the devastation of the finale. Everything else would have to wait for Season Three.

Masterpiece.

She did not care what anyone else thought. For Yuna, with only two seasons aired, Attack on Titan had already ascended to that status in her heart without qualification.

Listening to the Season Two ending theme, she drifted into a specific quality of agitation and reflection that she recognised as unique to this series.

Getting deeply into Attack on Titan produced a particular emotional state after a major arc concluded. Not the satisfaction of a hot-blooded battle anime where the protagonist had triumphed and justice had been served and the audience could close that chapter with a clean feeling. Something else.

A sense of scale, a sense of fate, the understanding that the characters in the story had no available choice except to keep moving forward regardless of the cost. The emotions sitting in the chest were tragic and they did not resolve cleanly. They simply existed there, the way certain real things existed.

Where would the subsequent plot go?

Reiner and Bertholdt had escaped with Ymir. Would the organisational force behind them regroup and continue their campaign against humanity inside the walls? What exactly was that organisation and what did they want from Eren specifically?

The ending theme finished.

The final screen of the animation displayed a single short line of text.

Attack on Titan Season Three: airing during the spring holiday season next year.

With the melancholy still sitting heavily in her chest, Yuna turned off the television.

Then she went and found the first and second volumes of the Attack on Titan tankōbon she had bought at the September release and carefully re-read the plot of the first chapter. The moment Uncle Hannes had pulled back at the critical moment and taken the children instead of fighting the Titan that had taken Carla.

Uncle Hannes had self-awareness the entire time. He always knew he could not defeat a Titan. The first time he pulled back was pure instinct. The second time tonight, knowing he could not win and going anyway, was courage.

When Yuna had first watched the first episode of the anime, back in April, she had posted a comment online calling Uncle Hannes a coward. She had been certain of the assessment. Three hundred replies had agreed or argued with her.

She found the post now on the forum app.

She read it.

Then she deleted it.

At least with this work: when you saw what came later, you discovered that many of your early perceptions of the characters had been fundamentally wrong. The series had been building the real versions of these people underneath the surfaces it presented, and it only showed you those real versions when the moment had earned the reveal.

Uncle Hannes was tragic.

Reiner and Bertholdt were also tragic.

She did not know yet why they had attacked the wall. What the full circumstances were. What they had been told or believed or been forced into. But the scene during the escape where Bertholdt had been crying and asking who could possibly enjoy killing people: it had made it difficult for Yuna to sustain the pure hostility she had felt toward him in the immediate aftermath of the episode six reveal.

But.

Whatever hidden circumstances existed. Whatever the full truth of their situation turned out to be. Sympathy was not the same as forgiveness. A character's popularity was not a get-out-of-jail pass. Being forced into something or having been a child when it started did not erase the accounting for what had been done.

The wall breach. The hundreds of thousands dead. Carla. Hannes. The Survey Corps members across two seasons of operations. All of it had a cost that sat in a specific column regardless of the backstory.

Yuna only hoped Shirogane-sensei would give Reiner and Bertholdt a reasonable ending in the subsequent seasons. Not an easy one. Not a forgiving one. A reasonable one, that acknowledged both what they had done and what they were, without pretending that complexity in one direction cancelled the weight in the other.

...

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