I will see how Shingeki no Kyoujin ends, of course – eventually.  The fact that it won’t be next week does take some of the shine off this last batch of episodes, especially considering the likelihood I’ll be spoiled before actually seeing for myself.  Truthfully, though, it’s not as big a deal as it could be.  It’s about the ride at this point, and I’m still rather enjoying it.  More than I have for a good while, probably.  Frankly it’s been easier to get through this last season than I feared it would be.

Why is that?  Partly because the nauseating allegories have been back-burnered (though not taken off the stove altogether).  More so I think it’s because things have gotten so silly that it almost doesn’t matter how it ends.  Everyone is just saying or doing whatever for plot convenience, so why sweat the details?  I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to hold Isayama to the standard of all this having a point, when so many other series would fail that test.  That’s not to say it isn’t disappointing, given how much buildup there’s been, to see everything end in an explosion of Nihilism.  But even that sort of fits the series’ worldview, so why agonize over it?

What we have at this stage, basically, is the good guys – especially Mikasa – unleashing an orgy of death upon their former comrades.  They’re certainly committed to saving the people that want to exterminate then and defying their friend, that can’t be disputed.  That they’re theoretically doing it to save the world is the counterpoint, but I’m not sure where Isayama is really going with this.  What does he want us to take away from it, if anything?  The whole boat-jacking thing is beyond silly to begin with, but it’s good theater (which I suppose is the point).

I suppose it was inevitable that AoT would fully deploy the “good German” trope at some point, but it’s really gone over the top with Magath.  His whole moral transformation completely defies credulity – it would be much more effective if Magath were shown to be grudgingly going along with all this despite his reflexive disgust at working with Devil-spawn.  This kind of tone-deaf character writing is not a new thing of course, but it remain an irritant.  As for Shadis showing up literally out of nowhere to make all this possible, that’s a full-on asspull – especially the way his “motivation” was explained away.  Where the plot leads, the cast will follow.

On the plus side, Floch appears to finally be dead, so that’s good.  Once more (it seems to happen a lot lately) Annie asks the most logical question of the week – “are you willing to kill Eren?”  Because if not, all of this (how many hundreds of their countrymen did the heroes slaughter here, with the train factored in?) was a waste of time.  I don’t think it’s realistic to say Eren could be talked out of it at this point – and what ground does he have to stand on, even if he did change his mind after killing hundreds of thousands (or millions) already?  Isayama has made his bed and he has to lie in it, but it sure isn’t looking very comfortable at the moment.