Attack on Titan The Final Season Part 2

Episode 79

”Did you forget what we came here to do? You keep moving forward. Even if you die. Even after death.”

Was it always going to come to this? It's a question that the viewers of Attack on Titan must be asking themselves, given how dire and desperate the war between the Eldians and the Marleyans has become, but it is also the question that the characters within the story are forced to confront. It is not merely a philosophical matter, either, though the inevitability of war and suffering is certainly a topic that has been on this show's mind from the very beginning. No, with “Memories of the Future”, Attack on Titan has begun to question the causality of its own plot in a very literal way. The slaughter of the royal family; Eren getting dragged into the Titan War with nothing but vengeance to push him forward; the descent of Paradis into total warfare against Marley; Eren and Zeke's bitter conflict, here, at the nexus of time and space that binds all of the Titans together—was this how it was always going to go? Was Eren's destiny written in stone before he was even born?

I have to admit, “Memories of the Future” is a lot to take in, especially given how much of this story has been stretched out over the course of almost a full decade (and the fact that I try to avoid referencing the online Wikis, since even double-checking the spelling of a character's name can reveal huge spoilers these days). It relies on bits of foreshadowing and world-building that stretch back into past seasons, like the flash of memory that Eren experienced when he kissed Historia's hand in Season 3, or even seemingly innocuous moments from Eren's childhood all the way at the beginning of the story. It can feel especially confusing for anime-only fans such as myself, since WiT's adaptation chose to frame scenes differently from the original manga in ways that probably seemed completely harmless at the time. It isn't like that one single panel of the faraway gaze on Grisha's face when he first showed Eren the key to the basement could possibly be that important, right?

The point is, I know there are diehard manga fans that have long since finished this story, not to mention the folks that have gone back to reread everything from the beginning knowing what we all know now. I'm not one of those fans, so I hope you can forgive me if I am a little slow on the uptake with all of the implications that “Memories of the Future” has for the Attack on Titan story. Like I said, it's a lot.

The short version is this: As Grisha reveals when he goes to that church and makes the fateful decision to steal the power of the Founding Titan from the royal family, the Attack Titan has a very special ability that has hitherto remained a secret from every other Eldian. While other Titans will naturally pass along memories to their inheritors from the past into the future, the wielders of the Attack Titan can actually glimpse memories of their future owners, which cascade down into the past and collapse into a loop of infinite causality that basically obliterates any sense of free will or agency for anyone in the AoT universe.

The reveal of this power feels a little bit like the kind of anime asspull that can easily sink a lesser story, but as some keen fans online have been quick to point out, we did receive clues about all of this before. Remember back when Eren Kreuger told Grisha that he had to save “Armin, Mikasa, and all of the others”? That's because Eren the First was glimpsing memories of Eren the Second decades before the events of Attack on Titan occurred. When Grisha obtained the Attack Titan power, he also gained those abilities, and they've become even more twisted and tangled because of what Zeke and Eren are doing in “Memories of the Future”. As the two brothers wander through Grisha's memories, Grisha is, across the flow of time, remembering the memories of visiting his own memories through Eren's eyes. It's why, for instance, he can see the bearded old man that his son Zeke has become, standing right there in his study.

More to the point, it's also why, when Eren watches as his father nearly fails to go through with his plan to slaughter the Eldian family, Grisha can hear the rage and bitter resolve in his son's voice, which is what pushes him over the edge once and for all. There is just so much to unpack in this scene, both narratively and thematically, that it almost becomes easy to forget just how earth-shaking this revelation is: the fact that a hardened and scornful Eren is the one who ultimately caused the murder of the royal family, and in so doing led to Grisha surviving long enough to pass along the Attack Titan to the younger Eren back in the beginning of the story. In other words, we have ourselves a good old-fashioned Bootstrap Paradox, where Young Eren could only ever have become the Attack Titan because he himself used his Titan powers in the future to affect the past in just such a way to set everything in motion. The cycle of war and destruction isn't just a metaphorical one. The men, women, and children in Attack on Titan have all literally been placed into a loop of Eren's design, one which they never had any hope of escaping.

It's a dark road for the story to be going down, and that isn't even tackling the incredibly on the nose political allegory that Attack on Titan is wading into with this episode. I think the historical parallels between the Eldians and post-WWII Japan were pretty evident the moment that we learned how the Eldian King made a vow “renouncing war”—a not-at-all subtle allusion to the 9th Article of the Japanese Constitution, which has been a topic of controversy within Japan's political sphere for the last 75 years. What Zeke and Eren encounter in “Memories of the Future” only makes that allegorical framework even more explicit, what with how the Eldian royals are convinced that their people must forever bear the burden of their past sins, even if it means inviting destruction from foreign foes. Zeke decries Grisha's desire to restore the Eldian Nation as misguided “nationalism”.

Eren, on the other hand, is not ashamed to wield violence and aggression as a means to an end. As he and Zeke look back on the corpses left in young Eren's wake when he saved Mikasa from those bandits all those years ago, he states, as matter-of-factly as possible, “Rather than letting someone steal my freedom, I'll steal theirs first.” He didn't need Grisha to teach him that. Zeke is shocked and humbled when he learns that there was no brainwashing needed to get Eren to this place. “I am…who I've always been…from the moment I was born,” Eren says.

What we come back around to, then, is trying to determine what Attack on Titan is trying to say, and it's just as difficult as ever to do so. Eren is obviously being positioned as someone who believes that it is wrong to simply resign yourself to being punished for the sins of one's ancestors, and that it is only right to be able to inflict deadly force on the enemies that would see you destroyed. On paper, that is not necessarily an evil or outright unjustifiable perspective to buy into, though what troubles me is how often that kind of rhetoric is used by modern right-wing propagandists to minimize or outright deny the very real crimes committed against civilians and ethnic/cultural minorities throughout all of human history. “I had nothing to do with slavery!” many modern white Americans cry, “Why should I be responsible for reparations? Why should I think that ‘Black Lives Matter’ when All Lives Matter, hm?”

Or, to use an example that hits closer to home for the intended audience of Attack on Titan: “Comfort Women? The Rape of Nanking? The so-called ‘war crimes’ of the Japanese Imperial Army have been heavily exaggerated (if not outright made up). None of that should stop Japan from becoming a military power again!' I will not pretend to be an expert in Japanese history or politics, though I am a Chamorro from Micronesia, and I have many relatives with very strong opinions about anyone who would try to downplay the horrific things that were done to my people in the name of Japan's former Empire.

To be clear, I am not outright lambasting Attack on Titan as some kind of pro-war-crimes, pro-imperialism piece of right-wing propaganda. I've been watching this show for a decade now, and I know that it understands the senseless brutality of war and the dehumanizing effects of fascism and bigotry. I can even understand how a modern anime would come to the conclusion that an island nation might need a military power of its own to defend itself from mainland threats — North Korea has never been quiet about its nuclear ambitions, after all. It's just really weird for me to consider that the Eldians of this universe have at different times occupied the positions of the ruthless conquerors of the world as well as the marginalized and dehumanized minorities. It'd be like if someone made a story about a world where the Jews and the Polish and the homosexuals of the world banded together to take over all of civilization with their military might, while Germans got stuck in ghettos with yellow stars stapled to their clothing.

It also doesn't help that we are still sorely lacking in context for a lot of the in-universe details regarding the Eldians' true history, and what all of that might mean for Eren's master plan. Is he trying to shape himself into his people's great redeemer, or are we to take Grisha and Zeke's side in this matter, and fear what Eren has become in his pursuit of true “freedom”? Whatever we might learn in future episodes, is there anything that can fundamentally change the grim outlook of what we've already seen? So many bodies litter the ground on Paradis, and many more are sure to follow if Eren gets his way. We are helpless to do anything but watch the coming disaster unfold, and to reckon with whatever is left in the ashes when it is done. It was always going to come to this.

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Attack on Titan The Final Season Part 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.