If you ignore that the whole Eldian backstory sounds like it was ripped from the pages of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and grafted together with a patchwork of 1500 years of Antisemitic canards, this was a very compelling twist for Shingeki no Kyoujin. More and more this series has gotten better the more intimate it is, and this was a pretty intimate turn of events. There’s so much ponderous subplot and so many ridiculous characters that they can often bog down the entire narrative with the sheer weight of them. This style of storytelling works much better – may we see more of it before the series is said and done.
Given that the powers of the Founder seem to be pretty limitless – making golems, memory wiping – directly affecting the past hardly seems unlikely. The implication here, it seems to me, is that Eren actively manipulated events in the past to move things along to the point where we see them now. If that’s the case, was this something he was aware he was going to do (having seem the future, as Grisha makes reference to again here) or did that whole business with Frieda and the Reiss clan in the cave come in spur-of-the-moment inspiration (note to manga readers: this is a rhetorical question)?
Making Grisha a victim – or at the very least sympathetic – is an interesting turn at this point of the story. We know he’s done plenty of pretty awful things but that extends to just about everybody in the cast. Abandoning his family and manipulating his new one is small potatoes by Shingeki standards, and we’re led to believe he didn’t have the stomach to slaughter the Reiss if Eren hadn’t been whispering in his ear. At the very least he comes off as rather pathetic, which is a bit of a new look for Grisha.
Pathetic is a word I think you could apply to Zeke too, though it’s really only the extent to which that’s true that’s changed. I mean basically, he’s launched this whole euthanasia plan because of his daddy issues. Now that he’s seen the other side of Grisha’s story – even gotten an “I love you” and a heartfelt mea culpa out of him – is Zeke going to change his mind on the whole thing? It would be rather ironic, given that Zeke took Eren on this magical mystery tour to try and change his mind, if he winds up being the one converted.
Isayama’s extremely disturbing historical allegories can’t exactly be ignored as all this plays out, as they’re so intricately woven into the very fabric of the story (you could write a whole book just on how Zeke fits in). I won’t deny even as someone horrified by them that they add a certain ghoulish fascination to this final arc, though I’d still much rather Isayama hadn’t indulged himself in this way. Eren’s role in all this is the crucial one, just as it always has been. And it’s still an open question just what role he fulfills in this denouement.
Marty
February 1, 2022 at 11:41 pmOf the pléthora of bad things Grisha did, I don’t think abandoning his first family really counts. Using his son as a double agent when he was a child in What is essentially Nazi Germany is pretty fucked up, but I think his wife and their rebel group was in on it too, so I wouldn’t necessarily call it “family abandonment.”
If memory serves me right, his wife got injected with Titan Juice and turned into a dummy Titan, at that point I don’t think there’s much Grisha could’ve done in the way of staying with her.
Simone
February 2, 2022 at 4:57 amShe sure was, and then proceeded to go on and eat his SECOND wife. She became the Smiling Titan.
Sonicsenryaku@gmail.com
February 2, 2022 at 5:15 amHoly smokes, this twist recontextualizes everything about this series. It’s official: this is a closed causality loop we’re dealing with here, a development that Isayama has been brilliantly dropping bread crumbs for since the very beginning of the series; no asspulls here at all. If this truly is a predestination paradox we’re working with here, then Eren was always fated to get to this point because it already happened and that’s why Attack Titan users are able to see the memories of future successors. What we’ve been watching since ep 1 was Eren’s journey to get to this point in time; a point that was already deemed certain by the laws of causality. Eren reaching the paths was inevitable because causality said he’d already done it. By the time we’re watching episode one, we’re just watching events unfold of what causality had said already happened.
There’s a lot to this revelation, one of those details being that we as the audience, are meant to surmise that the Attack Titan’s ability to see the memories of future inheritors was only possible because the current inheritor, Eren, had reached the paths and disseminated his memories across the annals of time to the other Attack Titan owners. It’s really curious that Frieda had no idea the attack titan had the ability to see future memories, don’t you think? I believe that’s because that was never a real ability the attack titan possessed. Just like every other major titan, their past memories are carried over due to all eldians and eldian power being connected to the temporal/spatial phenomenon that is the paths. The attack titan would be the same as well, if it wasn’t for the fact that causality had already written into history that Eren would reach the paths and therefore, his memories of present and past events seem like future events being viewed by anyone throughout history who has possessed the attack titans; this includes memories that weren’t his originally as well, because again, devouring a previous titan user gives you the memories they possessed. That’s such a dope way to also recontextualize the attack titan’s ability to “see the future.”
I think one of the biggest implications here is what this development says about Eren’s free will. Eren has been on a path set by fate to reach the point he’s currently at, because causality said it already happen. When Eren said there was only one option, there really was only one option: to move forward, because it was already predestined that he’d reach the paths. The attack titans “future memories” were simply proof of the closed causality loop, hence the title of the very first episode of attack on titan, and the title of the next one. Like Zeke said, the past can’t be changed. Wow; what a fantastic use of the bootstrap paradox by Isayama. If I’m gonna give the man any credit, it’s definitely for skillfully alluding to this since the very first ep. I love how we don’t get to see Grisha’s face when he tells Eren he’ll show him the basement in ep 1, which turned out to be a purposeful move on Isayama’s part cuz it turns out the whole time he was staring at future Eren staring at him.
Also other thing to note, Grisha never manipulated his second family. The whole point of Zeke’s perspective on his father being changed throughout this episode was because he realized that when Grisha was given a second chance to do things right, he actually did. Grisha actually cared about Eren and threw away his pursuit for the new Eldian empire. Zeke thought Eren was being made into a nationalist by his dad, hoping to save him from it; but as it turns out, he didn’t. This brings Zeke to question why Eren is so “pro-eldian;” why is he essentially a sociopath so driven by freedom if he wasn’t manipulated by his father. Eren’s only response is, “fuck if I know; I’ve just always been this way,” supporting the predestination paradox. Grisha says that the attack titan has always been driven to defy the king, fighting for freedom; hmmm, I wonder who that sounds like?? Would make sense if a predestined Eren’s will has always been traveling through the paths and effecting all Attack titan users to get him to where he needs to be.
Eren has been one step ahead of everyone since the time skip because it’s evident that he saw where his path would lead once he kissed Historia’s hand. This is one of the reasons why I found your criticism of the plot making Eren a genius all of sudden invalid, because it was never about that. Eren had information no one could have; he knew where he would end and just had to play the script. By all accounts, other characters should have outsmarted Eren, but him knowing what the future holds made all that irrelevant. All he had to do was have the patience to execute, patience that he’s been visibly learning across seasons. By the time we get the timeskip, Eren has grown out of his teenage phase, broken by what he learns after kissing Historia’s hand; and now we know what he learned this whole time: that he started everything; because he was always fated to; because he’s already done it. The real question now is: what exactly has Eren already done?
ibtachi
February 3, 2022 at 2:32 amWell, that was certainly very interesting. Clearly Isayama has the writing chops to avoid ass-pulls and allegories that throw the narrative into “a vat of shit” (as Eren puts it). A shame this final arc’s had more of that, and less what what we saw here today (and saw back in Season 3 too).
Credit where credit is due, this is certainly a hard series to drop. I cant think of any series that has had the chops to push the envelop this hard (repeatedly) for me – and still manage to pull out an episode where I’m utterly engaged. Also to have that be the 79th episode is quite a feat. Even Game of Thrones (a much better, and less egregious show) kind of lost me by the end of it, where my only motivation to stick with it was a sunk-cost fallacy and cultural FOMO.
That said, I wont discount the possibility that whatever we find out in the following episode has the potential to sour my impression on this episode. But by Jove, I hope it doesn’t. Because when SnK gets good, it gets singularly good.
Guardian Enzo
February 3, 2022 at 7:04 amthis is certainly a hard series to drop. I cant think of any series that has had the chops to push the envelop this hard (repeatedly) for me – and still manage to pull out an episode where I’m utterly engaged.
A very good summation.