Attack on Titan is one of the biggest Seinen entries to have entered pop culture largely due to the popularity of the anime adaptation, but these moments would cause fans to either get them Eaten Alive by a Titan, turn into a Titan Shifter, or both.
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- Argonometra: Armin falls in love with Annie, who murdered thousands of people and feels absolutely no remorse. This is portrayed as the cutest thing ever.
- toggaf: The sheer bias toward the working class. And by that I mean anyone with absolutely no money. It seems absolutely anybody with any semblance of income in Attack on Titan is portrayed as a prick, whilst the writer expects us to believe the poor characters are above reproach. The latest manga chapters are truly the dethroning moments and quite literally the worst writing I have ever seen in a manga, but for the sake of not including manga spoilers I will reference the anime. So when the rich people gave the poor people the weapons to try and take back their land because it was simply IMPOSSIBLE for them to keep sending aid to them, they are considered monsters and cruel... yet when the poor Recon Corps had the absolutely bright idea to release the Female Titan in the inner walls, killing thousands of innocent rich people just to prove a point... we see that as heroic? Get fucked.
- Coda Fett: Mikasa's treatment of Louise is downright sinister. I can understand trying to keep her at a distance or, better yet, attempting to talk her out of her fanatical loyalty to herself and the Yaegerist but neither of those really happen. Every time Mikasa interacts with that girl it's with a detached contempt. The absolute worst of it is in chapter 125 or 126 when Mikasa goes to retrieve her scarf. Lousie is literally dying of a Thunder Spear lodged in her gut, her mother probably has no idea what's going on and is nowhere to be seen. This is the moment for the two women to have a talk about what went wrong. But what do we get? Mikasa angrily takes back her scarf and then walks out before Louise even finishes her pitiful Motive Rant. The only justification I can think of is that Mikasa lacks the social skills to actually talk Lousie down but even then this is unacceptable behavior towards someone who adores and idolizes you.
- Kevjro 7: For me, it's the final chapter's Ass Pull that Ymir was in love with King Fritz, and that's why she always obeyed him and the royal family. This makes absolutely no sense. He's responsible for destroying her home, killing her parents, and cutting out her tongue. And she's in love with him? How? Why? There's no way anyone could possibly feel that way toward a man that did those things to her. Having her being conditioned to slavery would've been a much better explanation, or just simply keeping it a mystery and not explaining it at all. If the only explanation you can come up with is stupid, the best option is to not explain it at all.
- Capricious Salmon: I've loved the franchise since high school, and while I think the ending might've needed a rewrite or an extra chapter, I hate the "reveal" Eren was in love with Mikasa the whole time and it's why he does what he does. Mikasa, while I don't like her attraction to Eren, I can kind of understand it, since they at least gave the reason that he saved her from sexual slavery and she promised Karla she'd protect him. To Eren, Mikasa was always his overprotective foster sister and he was super bothered by the obvious attraction/obsession. But in his final goodbye to Armin, he says he doesn't want Mikasa to be with anybody who isn't him. How melodramatic and honestly, how hypocritical! The whole reason Eren did the Rumbling, as misguided as his plan was, was because he wanted his friends to be free to live long, happy lives.
So you're telling me Eren committed mass genocide and destroyed 80% of the world simply because he was in love with his sister? Not because of He Who Fights Monsters or being stuck in an endless cycle of vengeance? I honestly think Hajime Isayama didn't plan this and only added it last minute because of Executive Meddling, but it's still a bad ending for a great character.- I Like Robots: Withdrawing my earlier entry to second this. While the ending as a whole was poor in my opinion, as revealing that Eren’s motivation for genociding 80% of the world’s population was love for his friends doesn’t come anywhere close to being a satisfying justification for his actions, I can at least say it’s consistent with the overly-passionate, often single-minded Eren who had a habit of leaping into dangerous situations with no regard for his own safety, who was always fiercely loyal and devoted to those he cared about, to the point of outright denial and murderous rage when he felt betrayed, and who had become willing to do anything, including kill innocent people, to keep his loved ones safe. Yet the reveal that Eren was in love with Mikasa this whole time feels like the biggest Character Derailment of anything in the series, as all evidence in-story itself points to Eren being annoyed with her overprotective attitude and motherly tendencies, often harshly rebuking her when she’d hover over him. Yes, he had moments of gentleness with her and clearly cared for her well-being, but as an adopted sister and friend, with nothing pointing to romantic attraction to her. I never liked Mikasa’s attraction to Eren, either, but at the very least, that was established within the story itself, with Jean’s rivalry toward Eren spurred by jealousy over Mikasa’s love for him, Levi pointing out that her love for him was overriding her common sense, and the like. I could buy Eren having romantic feelings for Historia, for example, after their scenes of development during the Uprising Arc and in the crystal caverns, and Eren’s concern over Historia regarding who would inherit the Beast Titan after the timeskip, but Mikasa? This is worse than Armin and Annie in my opinion, as while that was poorly set up and made uncomfortable by lore established in-story, this feels like an author outright contradicting his own story in a last-ditch attempt to appease shippers more than anything reasonably drawn from the story or characters.
- Sor Pepita: I don't know if AoT's author really has far-right beliefs or not, but I think the story is morally repugnant, and if I had to pinpoint a single moment/example to explain why that is I would say Armin's "You became... a mass murderer for our sake..." quote. Now, I know what I'm supposed to believe: Eren is the villain and the story doesn't condone his actions. Only... that's not really true. There is Armin, the moral center of the story, saying that he understands why Eren did what he did. Yes, he calls it a "terrible mistake", but he also swears that he won't let it be in vain. It's like he was saying "Well, you did all that dirty work, guess it would be a shame to let it all go to waste. At least my hands will stay clean". Sorry, that's just sick. I don't buy the half-hearted "Oooh, this is all so wrong, even Eren himself knows it!" bullshit; if the story is telling me that he did it all for his friends' sake, and you have said friends understanding it and mourning the genocidal piece of shit's death, it doesn't really mean it. That's why I cannot label the readers defending Eren's actions as Misaimed Fandom, because the sad truth is that they aren't. They are picking and choosing some of the story's mixed signals, the same way the "Of course Eren is the villain" people are picking and choosing different signals. AoT is a work that half-justifies the ****ing murder of millions of children, never mind other kinds of people, even if it doesn't want to own it. It's not fooling me. If you want a morally complex story wondering whether genocide could ever be justified under the right circumstances read Watchmen instead; at least its villain (spoiler warning) wanted to save all of humanity (by killing waaaay less people than Eren, I might add), not just one ****ing island.
