#you could have had an amazingly realistic story about rising up from genocide

[innocentimouto]

Snk ending was beyond awful, but are you satisfied with how Levi's story was concluded?

Ooh boy

No way.

Levi saluting his comrades and being the one to care for their sacrifices was so important, especially to those who think he doesn't care about anyone. His story about being the strongest and thus being cursed to watch everyone die except him followed him to the very end. There's much to explore about his self loathing, his upbringing that imprinted in him to believe he was only useful in strength----something that was always reinforced throughout his life---and to lose that strength, and lose purpose for that strength, when that was the only way of life he knew, and anyone who he could have tried to live a normal life with was dead----Levi fulfilling his promise to eradicate titans, his role as a hero and humanity's strongest actually ringing true---

Except it only makes sense if we ignore all the themes and plot points and just focus on trying to aesthetically end each character's story while ignoring the amazing writing that was there.

Why did no one else care about all the other scouts? Many died saving them. These characters only made it this far because the scouts gave their lives. But they only care about Sasha? What about Marco? You find out how he died but you can't see his spirit reaching peace? Wonder why...

Focusing more on Levi (I've delayed this so much because I keep drifting off into ranting about everything wrong with the ending), how could that be a satisfying ending for all of those deaths?

The scouts wanted to rid the titans from the world to SAVE THEIR HOME. To have a chance for the future generations. They died for nothing with that ending. How hilarious that at the end of it all it's Paradis that's stuck with a horrible history they need to atone for and not Marley who could have just left them.

Moreover, majority of the world was wiped out as well. How could they be happy?

Now the anime has never been that happy and has always been darker so the ending could still have been dark. Sometimes people die for nothing. But the way the fandom perceives this ending as "perfect" as in everyone would be content is just no.

They tried to have such a happy ending too! What was the point? Why not have kept it sad if you wanted to wipe out 80% of the world? What we got was Paradis turning completely evil and being a threat to the world.

Oh yeah the scouts died for nothing a hundred times over. Why was it necessary to make Paradis end like that? Why do animes always have genocides and then sneakily give reasons or try to give reasons that justify it?

Paradisians really were monsters. Now they want to wipe out the world. You could have kept Eren wiping out 80% (still doesn't make sense) but made Paradis good.

Of course that would remove the "both sides have done bad so there's no real villain here to punish war is war I guess" that is always used to justify removing consequences from oppressors. Both sides have evil and both sides can do wrong, but this anime went out of its way to make both sides do bad things even when it wasn't necessary.

If Paradis regretted or wasn't on Eren's side, and obviously after the Rumbling the whole world would fear them, we would see the racism and abuse against Paradis. And for some reason Isayama thought it was a mature theme to not paint anyone as a victim.

Anyway no way would Levi be content with it. He does have some sort of inner dialogue about it. But it contradicts his words to Eren in the manga about the world outside being hell. It also seems very unrealistic that he would think an ideal world would exist, especially since he probably had a rude awakening once getting out of the Underground.

Also it was hinted at for the longest time that Reiner and Bertholdt were sent from outside. So they have an enemy outside who's capable of taking down their walls. Obviously the world outside would have challenges.

Also it was Levi's job to take down Eren if anything went wrong. So many people seem to forget this. He also delayed in killing Zeke multiple times! Yes, for good reasons (I'm looking at you---people who say he was so obsessed with revenge yet would never kill Zeke for the sake of giving his side a better chance at surviving!), but that took Levi out of the game for a while, whereas if Zeke had been killed the Rumbling wouldn't have started.

How can Levi be content when his body count is much higher than Kenny? (so many thoughts on him too and how the fandom casually calls him a serial killer)

The problems go way back for me, though. The ending is just a product of all the writing issues until this point.

Levi's ending is decent what with all these issues, but I can't stand the ending in general. None of the emotional beats touched me at all. I was left upset and in shock of just how bad it was watching it.