Attack on Titan Creator Discusses the Finale’s Most Difficult Decision

Attack on Titan‘s creator opened up about the most difficult decision he had to make with the finale! The anime run of the series might be holding fans on a cliffhanger until its return for the final half of the final season next year, but the official manga run of the series had been brought to its complete end earlier this Spring. Fans of the series responded well to that finale, but series creator Hajime Isayama revealed that there will be more pages added to the final chapter with a special re-release later this year.

This had fans wondering about the creative process behind making this finale happen, and Isayama recently opened up about that in a recent interview about the Attack on Titan series finale. In that interview, Isayama broke down how the actual climax of that final chapter was the most difficult to translate thematically well enough to fans within its final pages.

In the interview (as detailed by @AttackonFans on Twitter), Isayama noted how the climax of the finale had a theme that was difficult to illustrate. He regrets not being able to express that theme properly for fans with the finale, and even thought he would please everyone with the final chapter so he apologizes to the fans that felt let down by how Eren and Armin’s conversation went in those final pages.

Seeing fans’ reactions to Armin thanking Eren for becoming a mass murdered for humanity’s sake, Isayama felt that Armin’s statement here did not come as completely clear as he wanted it to. Armin didn’t approve of Eren’s actions (nor does Isayama, according to the interview), and Isayama feels that it came across as unclear and immature as he noted fan reaction to the moment.

As for why he feels he needs to add additional pages, Isayama also revealed that Bessatsu Shonen Magazine limited the amount of pages he could insert into that final chapter to 51 in total. So he plans to add new material to further flesh out that ending with pages he could not insert into the final release.

But what did you think of Attack on Titan’s final chapter? Did Isayama get all of his feelings and series’ themes across with that final release? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or you can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!