#aot 124

[nuri148]

Distances in AoT

Or: Yams has no idea of geography and the relationship between distance and travel times in AOT makes no sense.

After a long time in the works, I present to you this 3-part, long af essay about the above statement. Grab your copy of Aot and your calculator and buckle up!

Disclaimer: I’m not a numbers girl. I always struggled with math at school and cannot determine how much each party needs to chip in for a group outing without an excel spreadsheet. And yet the numbers in AoT are so out of proportion that even with my limited math talent I realised what a train wreck they were.

PART ONE: SCALE

The manga, and later the anime, inform us that there are 250 km from the center of the walls to Wall Sina; 130 km from wall Sina to Wall Rose; and 100 km from Wall Rose to Wall Maria.

For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to ignore a few facts that should be painfully obvious in a real-life setting:

1) The walls could never be perfectly circular. Because...

2) Terrain, even in super duper flat places like the Argentine Pampas or the Netherlands1, is never completely flat and never completely uniform. So, even in the Great Plains, the 230 km (equivalent to the distance from Ehrmich to Shiganshina) between Wichita and Oklahoma City, as the crow flies, become 238 km when made in a car – or 256 km on a bike (since bikes can’t take the highway). Likewise, the rougher the terrain, the higher the difference. Salzburg and Linz, in Austria, are merely 100 km away in a straight line, but the shortest route is 124 km.

And bear in mind this distances are on modern roads in modern countries, built with technology that allow us to circumvent geographical accidents such as rivers, canyons or mountains with cool bridges and tunnels. The world in which AoT is set doesn’t have those. If a river is down a canyon, first they’ll need to zig-zag down the canyon, then cross the river (via bridge or ferry at best, fording it at worst), then zig-zag all the way up again. This happens still today, even in our modern whitebread world, in places where the traffic doesn’t justify building a big-ass bridge over the canyon. When I lived in Germany, it was like that to go to the next town.

But, as I said, for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to pretend the walls are perfectly round, the terrain is perfectly flat, and that there is a straigh-ass road, as straight as Argentina’s 22 National Road between Río Colorado and Choele Choel, between each of the Wall Districts. For simplicity reasons too, I won’t be using decimals or taking the thickness of the walls into consideration.

I’m also going to assume (though this is pretty much confirmed by canon), that the only passage between walls is through the Districts.

You’ve likely seen the basic layout plenty of times over the internet.

Well, Let’s start by saying I have a huge problem with this layout. If you bother to separate walls S-R-M to scale with their informed size, the sizes used to depict the Districts are always wildly out of all proportion².

From the several panoramic views of Sigansina, Trost, etc. that are shown in the manga³, and considering the usual sizes of German-style 17th-19th century houses, which is what’s shown from down in the streets (and I’m familiar with from my time living there), the districts seem to be, at the very most, 5 km from the main wall to the district outer wall⁴, with a bridge over the river every 500 m or so. (The walls are usually visible whenever they are in the districts, so you know it’s a small area.) Yet as you’ve seen, most maps show the districts ridiculously large, going to even half the distance between walls. This not only contradicts canon, but defeats the in-canon purpose of building a concentrated, out-jutting urban area to concentrate possible titan attacks there and eliminate the threat more easily.

So in my map, I’ve adjusted the size of the districts to roughly 5 × 5 km. They look almost like dots. That’s another problem of the disproportionate maps that populate the web: it makes you lose sense of just how big the walls are.

Districts of Paradis: Mitras (center); to the East: Stohess, Karanes, Holst (from AotBTF); To the West: Yarkell, Krolva, Quinta (from AotHMOTC); to the South: Ehrmich, Trost, Shiganshina; To the North: Orvud, Utopia, [unknown].

Now, geometry is a wonderful thing. If you know the radius of a circumference, you can calculate all other possible measurements in that circumference. And in this day and age, with computers, you don’t even need to learn formulas or crunch numbers. Yay Math.

So, if radius Mt-S (Mitras-Sina) is 250 km, and wall Rose is 130 km further, and wall Maria 100 km further still, the radius Mt-R is 380 km and the radius Mt-M is 480 km.

The Districts are lined up with the cardinal points. Therefore, to go from a district on the N-S axis (e.g. Ehrmich) to the corresponding one on the W-E axis (e.g. Stohess), you have basically three options:

Route 1) Take roads we know nothing about. The most likely, logical option in a realistic scenario, unfortunately un-checkable. Also slower than the following two hipothetical routes.

Route 2) Ride atop or along the wall. For numbers, I’m assuming a flat wall top. Because we know the radius of the walls, we can calculate the arc length between any two districts (blue in map).

Route 3) Use an imaginary, straigh-ass road between two adjacent districts on a given wall (e.g. Ehrmich-Stohess, Trost-Krolva). Again, because we know the radius of the walls, and the angle of separation of the districts (90°) we can calculate the length of this chord line (brown in map). Note that this solution doesn’t work for districts in Wall Maria, as the resulting chord would intersect wall Rose, and there is no passage there (red in map).

So, how long are these distances? EXTREMELY.

The Arc distance (riding along the wall) between adjacent wall districts is:

Wall Sina (e.g. Ermich-Stohess): 393 km (more or less equivalent to a straight line from Mar del Plata to Buenos Aires).

Wall Rose (e.g. Trost-Karanes): 597 km (Paris-Montpellier).

Wall Maria (e.g. Shiganshina to Quinta): a whooping 754 km (San Diego-Sacramento)

The Chord line distance (straight line between two adjacent wall districts) is shorter, but not by that much (about 10 % less):

Wall Sina: 352 km (Mar del Plata-La Plata)

Wall Rose: 537 km (Paris-Orange)

Wall Maria: 679 km in theory (San Diego-San José) but, as explained, the chord line between Wall Maria districts is interrupted by Wall Rose, so that route is out. The shortest alternative would be to ride in a very slight curve approximating Rose; I couldn’t find a suitable calculator to let my mathematically challenged self get the exact number but I reckon it’s around 700-720 km (San Diego-San Francisco).

The takeout from this is that distances in AoT are HUGE.

Moreover: We know the island of Paradis is based on the island of Madagascar. The diameter of Wall Maria is 960 km (480 × 2), but the island of Madagascar has a maximum width of roughly 590 km.

So we have two scenarios here:

1) The world of AoT happens in a very big planet

2) Yams (and his editors) suck at maths and spacial awareness big time.

Guess which one I’m betting on.

Part 2 Part 3

Notes:

¹ Having grown up in Argentina and living in Europe, but also mindful that many reading this are from the US, I’ve mixed cities from all those locations as real-life examples.

² There is one and one map only, in chapter 5 of the manga, that depicts the walls more or less realistically, but it also shows the geography within the walls as pretty non-flat, non uniform, no straight-roads, so I’m being very generous with my calculations here, borderline delulu.

 ³ I was going to illustrate this with a few shots of the districts, but as I started gathering said shots from the manga I found myself opening yet another can of worms, for the differences in size of a given city between chapters are enough to merit their own post I’m afraid. Not that I can commit to one atm.

⁴ Though, realistically, European medieval walled towns were no larger than 1 km across. Nördlingen, in which Shiganshina is inspired, as well as Rothenburg o.d. Tauber and other partially preserved walled towns are 500 m in diameter.

[hopeymchope]

One last time, for old time's sake: Fuck "Attack on Titan."

It's been a while since I've posted some hate about how badly Isayama killed SNK/AOT for me in its last third. That series — which was a big fave of mine for roughly 89 chapters — eventually just completely fucking shit the bed and then faceplanted right INTO the shit. I got pretty upset about it, and honestly? I STILL get riled up when I think about it.

(If your HOT TAKE in response to this is "Y R U so emoshunly invesstd in FICSHUNUL CHARAKTURS?????? LULZ" just stfu and gtfo, ok?)

But of course, I'm referring to how I felt RE: the manga's events and ultimate ending. Said ending is relevant once more, though, because just this past weekend? The anime hit its conclusion.

As a manga reader, I tried to hang in there for a LONG time after the unfortunate timeskip hit with Chapter 90. But they finally lost me so hard at Chapter 124 that I walked. And that's the reality for most of us who were angry and disgusted. We just... left. We stopped talking about it.

That's why, today, those who're still discussing AOT are almost all the die-hard fans who never stopped loving it. Which is part of why talking smack about AOT right now has got me feeling as paranoid as Sasha trying to stealth-cram a potato down her gullet.

Even so, I soldier forward. I've been thinking back on how bad this one hurt when it killed itself, which led me to looking over my old posts on the matter.

So, in "honor" of the end of the anime series, let me take a moment to look back on how they Shat on Titan.

One my first posts explaining the downward spiral was this long boi that attempted to summarize my MANY negative feelings at the time.

More thoughts on how it all went wrong in response to an Ask.

The timeskip was a mistake, and it felt wrong in many ways. This was the moment it began to most clearly go to hell... even though there WERE earlier warning signs.

...actually, I'd better rant about that some more.

For a while, we thought Isayama was maybe just screwing up an attempted "hate leads to more hate" message? (The ending of the series made it clear he was never trying to go there.)

Of course, at one point it was pointed out to me that the Eldians are maybe supposed to represent the history of Japan instead of the Jews, which... honestly doesn't help the situation very much, actually? It's still REALLY fucked up?

Thankfully, I wasn't totally alone in all this. (Even if it sometimes feels like I am.)

I did come back and read through the ending of the series, which... surprise!... sucked hard.

One last negative ask/response.

I see you wreckin' the tale of the peeps I loved And I'm like, "Fuck you" (ooh, ooh, ooh) The characters you had weren't enough, so I'm like, "Fuck you, and your story, too"

[frozenearthwife]

How popular is RWBY on Crunchyroll?

We all know that view numbers are key when it comes to media. Good or bad ratings doesn't matter THAT much; even bad ratings can get a show renewed if it results in a lot of views.

RWBY V9 is locked behind a Premium CR subscription and needs all the views it can get in order to be greenlit for V10 and beyond.

So how is V9 faring so far; can we figure it out?

Here is some stupid maths because I have a weird interest in statistics.

(Spoiler: I'd say it seems like RWBY is doing pretty good on Crunchyroll, according to this stupid math.)

Some data

On CR there is no way for us to see actual view numbers, but we do have some other numbers to work with and make assumptions off of.

Per August 2021 CR had 5 million paying subscribers. It's fair to assume this number may have grown, since it has only been growing since the start. Number of Crunchyroll subscribers 2012-2021 | Statista

Between January and March 2020 the most watched anime on CR was Attack on Titan. Crunchyroll shares viewership data January through March 2020 | Neon Sakura

If we look at Youtube we can see the amount of views per video, as well as how many likes the video has. I haven't used dislikes in this scenario, but chose videos that fairly surely has way more likes than dislikes. Based on the astounding amount of 8 totally random Youtube videos, ranging from 55000 to 18 000 000 views, there is an average of 6% thumbs up compared to the amount of views. (Side note: None of the videos had more than 8% thumbs up compared to the amount of views, EXCEPT RWBY V1 EP1 which has 15% thumbs up compared to the amount of views.)

This indicates that A) Giving a thumbs up is rather rare and/or B) One person will view the video many times, but can only leave one thumbs up.

Either way, there is way more views than thumbs up, and we'll assume this trend carries over to CR as well.

Calculating episode views on CR

If we look at RWBY volume 9, episode 2, it has 2700 thumbs up per 28th February 2023.

If we assume the same average we found on Youtube is correct for Crunchyroll too, that means 2700/6*100 = at least 45000 views of this episode, since its release on Saturday (that's four days ago).

Episode 1, which released 10 days ago, has 4200 thumbs up. Using the same maths, we can assume the episode has been viewed at least 70 000 times since its release.

Side note, S1 EP1 of RWBY has 3100 thumbs up on CR, which would mean at least 51666 viewings on CR since its release there in 2013. Seeing as this episode of RWBY also aired for free on Youtube and has 16 million views on Youtube, it's a bit hard to compare this episode to anything else using only CR as a source.

Show rating

RWBY as a show has 6200 ratings on CR per 28th February. Being a nerd, I've checked every day since V9 released and observed that the amount of ratings has increased by about 100 every single day (before V9 there were about 4800 ratings or something).

This means more people are watching and rating the show on CR now.

Comparison with other shows on CR

Attack on Titan has 98100 ratings on CR.

In other words, RWBY has about 6% the number of ratings as AOT. No surprise there, RWBY is a freaking webshow that has also been airing for free on other platforms for a long time.

But how much do these show ratings count? We don't know. We must assume that the amount of actual episode viewings are more important.

If we compare episodes then:

S1 EP1 of AOT released in 2013 on Crunchyroll. It has 20 300 thumbs up, which using this stupid math would equal at least 338 333 views. That's about 270 000 more views than V9 EP1 of RWBY. And this AOT episode released 10 years ago. Does it also have 16 million views on other platforms, like RWBY V1 EP1 has? Quite possibly.

Let's compare RWBY to another, newer anime: Trigun stampede. Trigun EP1 aired on January 7th, 2023. EP1 has 1700 thumbs up. That's already far less than RWBY V9 EP1 (which has 4200), despite the fact that the show itself has 12400 ratings compared to RWBYs 6100.

You'd assume a show with more show ratings would have a higher view count than shows with less show ratings. But what does it mean then, when the actual episode has such a big difference in the number of thumbs up?

We can assume some things without knowing for sure: 1) Maybe RWBY fans more often rate both the show AND the episodes (not just the show). 2) Maybe RWBY fans rate single episodes more often than Trigun fans in general. 3) The amount of ratings on RWBY as a show is climbing, which means more people are watching and rating it on CR now that V9 is airing there exclusively. This would include long-term fans who usually watched it on RTs site and thus never left a rating on CR before now. This could indicate that the amount of show ratings for RWBY is artificially small on CR, and will become more realistic as V9 progresses.

Again though, the amount of show ratings might not matter that much compared to actual episode views. 5) I know nothing about Trigun. Or Crunchyroll's statistics...

Conclusion

RWBY is at the very least garnering more views than before on CR, with increasing amount of show ratings, and a good number of thumbs up per episode which can at the very least give us an indication of amount of views according to this stupid math. And compared to a show like Trigun, it actually seems to be getting more views per episode (according to the amount of thumbs up) so...

I'd say it seems like RWBY is doing pretty good on Crunchyroll?

According to this stupid math.

My god I spent so long on this holy fuck why in the actual hell

EDIT: I forgot to add that these numbers EXCLUDES Asia, since they cannot use Crunchyroll (most people don't have a VPN). We have no idea how many people watches RWBY in Asia, but considering it got its own freaking Japanese dub and an original anime... well. A lot. So wherever RWBY V9 will air for Asia, it will boost these numbers significally.

[81194elf]

“Hesitate, and my friends will die...”

[super-peace-fangirl]

Annie be like

[sweet-jolly-fucken-ranchers]

"bert , ymir, erwin and sasha are dead, reiner wants to commit seppuku, historia is pregnant, hange is commander, eren is a genocidal maniac with a pencil mustache and ratty ass hair, armin has snapped psychologically, we had the beach episode without you and The Rumbling is happening"

ere//ri / r*vamika dont interact

[byallmeans1]

Levi waiting for his appearance in the manga 

[alysiusart]

Some quality aruani to feed yall

[mimangacaps]

𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒚 𝒃𝒊𝒓𝒕𝒉𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 & 𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒂𝒐𝒕 ~ 𝑴𝒊𝒌𝒂𝒔𝒂 & 𝑭𝒂𝒍𝒄𝒐

[isarart]

SAUL GOODMAN MADE HIS APPEARANCE!! I'M... 😭😂

[irishwonders]

First, it was Erwin Smith of the Survey Corps.

Followed by Commander-in-Chief Darius Zackly.

Then, it was Nile Dawk of the Military Police.

Next, was Dot Pixis of the Garrison.

All the commanders were dead. RIP Commander Nile and Commander Pixis. You guys fought well. They are fighting titans all their lives, now they end up being one. Such a horrible way of dying.

So now what? We only have Hange and Levi left. And still, we don't know what exactly happened to them.

Please tell me, they are still alive.

[hunnymzdrawsposts]

Me seeing Floch still alive :

[scarareg]

Armin SNK 106

Armin SNK 124

[maagicmiss]

I FUCKING STAN

You go girl

[mejo-jojo59]

Annie wake up

[hookhausen]

Reiner said fuck this shit and went to bed