Attack on Titan The Final Season

Episode 10

“In other words, there's no prison deep or strong enough to hold me."

I don't think Attack on Titan gets enough credit for how funny it can be, or how deftly its humor is woven into the underlying horror of everything else going on in the world of the show. Attack on Titan has become a series that doesn't easily slot into any one genre or tone over the course of the last thirteen years, but my go-to elevator pitch for the show would be something the lines of “A pitch-black survival-horror flesh-mecha-allegory action-comedy…thing.” This is a cross-media reference that maybe only five other people will understand, but one of my all-time favorite disaster pieces is Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, a movie that wants to say everything and encompass every genre all at once. It's generally agreed upon that Southland Tales' attempt to satirize and subvert every narrative and political trope of Bush-era American culture doesn't really work, so it's honestly kind of incredible that Attack on Titan does. For all of its allegorical pitfalls and muddled exploitation of real-world history and politics, Attack on Titan is just as horrifying, hilarious, moving, and/or disturbing as it means to be, and nearly every goddamn time. If nothing else, this remarkable consistency is a legacy the series can be proud of when everything else is said and done.

Seriously, I cannot understate how gobsmackingly impressive the opening scene of “A Sound Argument” is. Here we have Hange intruding on the final scene of last week's episode, an incredibly tense and private breakdown into Eren's psychological fracturing, and Hange spends a solid couple of minutes literally breaking down how absurd and cringeworthy Eren's transformation into Paradis Island's resident unhinged radical terrorist seems to any rational adult looking at it from the outside: “Were you saying 'Fight. Fight,' into the mirror just now? If you're saying, 'Fight. Fight,' does that mean there're two fights? ...Keeping quiet isn't helping. Normally, people don't talk to themselves like that. I know I've never talked to myself in the mirror before.”

On the one hand, this is some simple but brilliant comedic juxtaposition right here, undercutting the overwhelming tension of the recent weeks by having Hange practically look right into the camera and say, “Can you believe this chuuni dork right here? Someone's been spending too much time on the ZAnon Youtube pages, am I right!?” And yet, here in 2021, it's all too easy to see perfectly how abrupt descents into absurd radicalism can absolutely be unnervingly funny and deadly terrifying all at once. Yes, Hange wants to take the piss out of their old friend a little bit to try and find a way back to the old Eren that used to be such a patient and understanding ally, but they're also trying to feel out just how dangerous he has become. Dozens, if not hundreds of Marleyans are dead. Sasha is dead. To repeat the question we've been tirelessly interrogating for the past few weeks, how many more will have to die before Eren Jeager is satisfied? And how many of those dead will be the loved ones he once claimed were more important to him than anything else in the world?

It's easy to forget that it wasn't always like this, and as the episode cuts back and forth between past and present, we are able to see through the fog of recent tragedies to understand where Hange, Armin, and Mikasa are coming from when they try to appeal to the Eren-That-Was. Before Marley, Kiyomi Azumabito arrived on Paradis; she was the Hizuran (Hizurian? Hizuru?) ambassador that saved Udo from a lashing at Willy Tybur's banquet, and it turns out that she was already in cahoots with Zeke to try and forge a wartime alliance with the Eldians of Paradis. There's a lot of expository question-and-answering going on with her appearance here: We learn that the first Ackermann was the son of Hizuru's shogun that was abandoned during the Great Titan War, which leads to Mikasa being held up as a kind of cross-cultural bargaining chip in the coming negotiations. We also learn that the ODM Gear the Paradisans have been using to kill Titans all these years is fueled by the iceburst stone, a resource found only on Paradis, and Zeke has offered Hizuru exclusive rights to the stuff, presumably so they can build an industrial empire with the technology it powers (and so Hizuru can have easy access to Titan-killing weaponry just in case things with either Marley or Paradis go south).

All of this politicking and world-building is well and good enough, but the most interesting moment comes from Kiyomi's presentation of Zeke's three points for saving the Eldians from Marley. In order to fully exploit the power of the number one weapon of mass destruction that is The Rumbling, they have to show the world its devastating power firsthand in a test run of sorts. Hizuru's cooperation must also be secured so that Paradis has access to the military power needed to hopefully prevent the use of the Rumbling in full. Finally, the power of the Founding Titan and Zeke's Beast Titan must be passed down, and Zeke will pass his power down to someone of Royal Blood.

Hange recognizes the issue of that last point immediately: If the Eldians simply continue to force the horrible legacy of the Titans on their inheritors, the Great Titan War will simply continue to renew itself and resume for generations to come. Eren, too, is completely unsatisfied with this proposal, refusing to let “the price of getting to live” be an existence of being bred as war machine cattle. The Eren-That-Was would not sacrifice Historia or any of his other friends if Zeke's plan is simply to have the Eldians once again hold the world hostage in a captive peace. All it means is that Marley and Paradis will simply be exchanging the roles of oppressed and oppressor once again, and there isn't anything revolutionary about slapping a new coat of paint on the same old status quo, is there?

Except, is that how it might really go? There are far too many real-world examples of earth-shaking revolutions that merely resulted in the poor and oppressed suffering under the regime of differently branded dictatorship. Here in AoT, all through the last couple of episodes, we've seen how the captive Marleyans have become belittled second-class citizens, while the upper-crust of Paradis have found themselves slipping comfortably into their roles as the pro-war, nationalist bourgeoise class. When Historia becomes pregnant (!?), a high-ranking military man named Roeg refuses to swallow the pastoral love story that has been spun around it, instead assuming that Yelena or some other Marleyan convinced her to get knocked-up in order to avoid becoming a Titan, and thus preventing Paradis' ascent to world power. The title from the episode comes from Roeg rejecting the argument that forcing a pregnant Historia to assume the mantle of the Beast Titan would be a cruel and pointless maneuver. “That sound argument might just ruin our country!” cries Roeg, when his ilk weren't even entirely sure what a “country” was, a year or two ago. Below, in the wine cellar, a Marleyan named Griez meets with a positively conspiratorial-looking Nicolo, who holds the perfect bottle of wine for the men upstairs…

The point is, the Eren-That-Was balked at the notion of sacrificing his friends and loved ones to Zeke Jeager's ambitions, and a heartbreaking scene between the Scouts reminds us of how much love and trust was there, once. As Sasha, Connie, Jean, Mikasa, and Armin debate who among them would be best suited to take on the mantle of Attack Titan when Eren's last five years are up, Eren won't have it. They are the most important people in the world, to him, and he wants them all to live long and happy lives. Connie and Jean scoff at this, in the present, while Eren rots in that underground cell. Though Armin's faith in Eren has obviously been shaken, Mikasa still won't come around to the idea that she might have to take up arms against her beloved one day. Connie doesn't even recognize the man in that cell as his friend, because the Eren-That-Was would have never dragged Mikasa and Armin into his suicidal attack on Marley. He would never have laughed when Sasha lay dying in a pool of her own blood, not twenty feet away.

”A Sound Argument”, with its conspiracy-theory pregnancies and political-machinations, is largely more interested in asking questions than providing answers, but Connie raises the most important question of all, and it's the one that makes that awfully funny opening scene so terrifying in retrospect: What did Zeke tell Eren that transformed him into this uncompromising spirit of vengeance and destruction? What more is he willing to do? What more is he capable of? When Eren's patience breaks, he lashes out at his old friend Hange, mocking them as he explains his reasoning for going so far to acquire the War Hammer Titan: For all of Hange's plans and schemes, for all of the other Scout's desires to pursue a plan of peace, Eren now possesses an untold level of power. There is no prison deep or strong enough to hold him, now. Hange, Armin, Mikasa, Connie, Jean, Historia, and all the rest — they might all have their sound arguments to make, and they might have even mattered once, to the Eren-That-No-Longer-Is. We'll see how much they matter now, though, once Eren's blood is drawn, that familiar flash of lighting cracks, and the walls around him come down once more.

Rating:

Odds and Ends

• I will admit that the show's back and forth with time and setting has had me confused about Zeke's initial plans for Paradis and the Eldians, but I think I now understand that the original goal was simply to regain control of the Founding Titan and the Royal Bloodline, to restore the Eldians to a long-term place of power at the negotiating table — the allegory isn't exactly subtle, here, with the Rumbling being brandished as a weapon and bargaining chip in the same way the United States has (and continues to) wield its nuclear arsenal. I'm still a bit fuzzy on some things, like what has/hasn't changed about the plan since Eren changed his tune and the Hizurans beat feet, or how the Fritz bloodline being bound to a non-aggression pact plays into all of this (though, again, real subtle with the allegory there, AoT), but I think I've got a solid enough grasp on things to feel the rest out, going forward. Feel free to enlighten me on anything l've missed or overlooked in the comments, though (no manga spoilers, please!).

• Speaking of Historia, my immediate suspicion, based on Hange's comments in the episode and the trajectory of Eren's character, is that the farmhand romance story is a load of bunk, and that it really is a part of Eren's plans, or a desire to keep her out of the Titan-Inheritor chess game that is going on. I can only pray that it was consensual, though, since I honestly don't know if I would put it past the new Eren to force the issue, so to speak. Hopefully, I'm completely wrong!

• One final note on AoT's potent blend of comedy/horror: I'll never get tired of the way it uses its signature “shell-shock shading” to sell deadpan jokes. The way that Connie and Sasha present each other's disqualifying levels of idiocy in the Attack Titan debate had me cackling, even as I cursed AoT for rubbing even more salt in the wound by making me miss Sasha that much more.

• Half-a-decade of reviewing anime has made it very easy for me to forget stuff like this, but I'm not crazy when I say that the Ackermann symbol on Mikasa's hand has literally never been mentioned or shown before, right? I'm used to AoT cramming unseen or unadapted backstory into dialogue like this, but it stood out more than usual.

Attack on Titan The Final Season 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.