Attack on Titan’s Anime Can Make Its Ending Better

Attack on Titan has brought its second part to an end and will be coming back with a third next year. But the series should really take that extra time to make the original manga’s ending hit better. The end of Hajime Isayama’s original manga series is complicated. Without going too far into detail, the biggest enemy to Mikasa, Armin and readers alike was time. Time needed to flesh out the true scope of what the creator was seemingly trying to accomplish, and it got to even the point where Isayama had to add more chapters to its final version in the physical volume releases.  

With the final episode of Attack on Titan: Final Season Part 2, there are essentially eight chapters of Hajime Isayama’s original manga series to cover. There’s no guarantee that Part 3 of the anime’s final season will run for a full cour of 12 episodes, but it should. As fans have already seen from the anime in the past, the series has taken full advantage of the medium to better flesh out the material from Isayama’s original story. It should do the same with the ending and fully bring to life what Isayama had trouble expressing completely. 

Without giving too much away about the context of the original ending to avoid spoiling it for those only experiencing the anime, the ending of the series involves a string of heavy conversations. Much like some of the biggest moments in the series to this point, the real action hasn’t been with the Titans themselves, but instead what the fallout of those fights and attacks does to each character. Isayama gets particularly philosophical when it comes to the way Eren really digs into his motivations for the Rumbling itself and this comes through in a major way with the finale. 

But the final chapter (the original release especially) doesn’t feel like it lands in the way the creator might intend. It’s either a sense of scale missing, or an emotional intricacy that can’t be quite delivered in words, but something doesn’t connect. That’s especially true when accounting for the extra pages that go on to provide an epilogue that raises even further questions. It all just seems to go by so quickly, and the anime really should use the extra time afforded by not being some two hour movie to help the ending come across better. 

It’s already worked in the past with Eren and Zeke’s dive into the past and Eren’s real motivation reveal, for example, and could be what helps the manga’s original ending land smoothly. But what do you think? What are you hoping to see from the end of Attack on Titan’s anime? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!