It’s all well and good me claiming that AoT’s filmmaking is perfect, but I can’t expect you to take my word for it. I don’t expect you to accept this breakdown as gospel either. But I do think it’s worth analysing the story more directly and seeing how every element of filmmaking comes together to tell this haunting and enthralling tale about the cycle of war, and maybe you’ll understand why I view this show so highly when you realise the intention behind every detail of its construction.

There are so many options for incredible moments from Attack On Titan we could analyse. There’s the ending, which we’ll get to later, the phenomenal Return to Shiganshina arc, the reveal of Reiner and Bertholdt’s true identity. But I think the one that best highlights the immense complexity of this story is the climax of season 4’s first arc, Paradis’ raid on Liberio. Rather than a single scene, I’m going to break down the 4 episode sequence in its entirety, and I’ll give an analysis of a single scene towards the end as well.

We go into this battle having spent the past few episodes exploring Marley, connecting with the characters and sympathising with Reiner perhaps more than any other character in the show prior. It’s a massive departure from the story that precedes it, where we explore the corrupt world within the walls that’s been born as a result of their oppression at the hands of Marley. And we finally witness our protagonists break free of this subjugation at the end of season 3 following the Shiganshina arc. We get to see the beauty in them finally achieving freedom, finally reaching the goal they’ve been working towards for all 59 episodes of the show so far. But there’s one quote from Eren, at the time our chief protagonist, that lays an eerie note to the elation of their victory. As they take in the moment, acknowledge that they’ve finally won, Eren asks, “The enemies over there…if we kill them all, will we finally be free?”. It’s utterly haunting. And it gives us the first hint at what Eren truly is. They’ve won. But he can’t celebrate it. In his eyes, he no longer has that luxury. Rather than appreciate the time he has, a moment of pure happiness with his comrades, he just keeps looking to the future, and towards what he sees as freedom. 

That’s the note we end season 3 with. Then season 4 abandons these characters entirely for the first few episodes. It picks up directly in the middle of the final battle between Marley and the Mid-east allied nations, 4 years after the battle at Shiganshina. And it delivers some of the most incredible storytelling I’ve seen. Isayama makes us care deeply about these characters we’ve never met before, with the exception of Reiner, who cements himself alongside Eren as the most complex character in the show. We spend 4 episodes, an entire hour an a half, just connecting with these characters. There’s some subtle plot progression, some hints towards the coming conflict that creates unease, but the purpose of this storyline is simply to make us care about Falco, Gabi, Colt, Zofia, Udo, Pieck and even Porco. It’s, put simply, to show us that they are human. Just humans. There are numerous parallels to the characters we’ve been following for the earlier 3 seasons, they’re so unbelievably similar to the likes of Armin, Jean and Sasha.

But the biggest parallel is in Gabi. She’s likely the most despised character in the series, for her actions, not for her writing. Her writing is incredible, and it’s that effectiveness that’s made her so despised. Gabi is such a clear mirror to Eren, the protagonist who we’ve come to love. And yet we’re made to find her annoying and ignorant. Her hatred for the people of Paradis is so misguided. And unconsciously, the audience will see this parallel and be thinking of the last moment they shared with Eren. “If we kill them all, will we finally be free?” It’s through this connection that Isayama begins to make us question. The first season of the show is very black and white, human vs titan. In season 2, we begin to get some sympathetic moments from Reiner and Bertholdt, explore how tormented they are at their actions. But it’s more white vs grey, the scouts vs Reiner and Bertholdt. Now, the show’s morality has become a blurred canvas of grey upon shades of grey. We can no longer say that the people who’ve oppressed Paradis, the people of Marley, are evil. They’re just people. But most viewers, myself included, will simply view this as the author trying to make a more complex system of morals, we’ll still consider the scouts our protagonists, we’re waiting for them to return to the story so we can root for them again.

And then we get into the incredible next set of episodes, one of the highest rated runs in the history of television. Of course I don’t stake too much value in IMDB ratings, but they are typically a great indicator of quality when you have multiple episodes in a row with phenomenal ratings, take the ending of Breaking Bad following Ozymandias, or the episodes following Game Of Thrones’ ‘The Laws Of Gods And Men’. The first of these is one which immediately sets itself apart with its title: ‘Declaration Of War’. It’s such a potent headline for the chilling series of events to come. A declaration. It’s an active decision. The war is the result of the choices of a singular character. Eren. He’s the sole driving force that forces the other characters into this bloody conflict. And it isn’t accidental. He walked down this path willingly. This episode is truly the one that makes us question who we’re rooting for. Eren’s still sympathetic here, we still understand the suffering he’s experienced, we know that ultimately it’s Marley’s oppression of Paradis that’s pushed him towards taking these actions. And yet we’re still positioned with Reiner and Falco.

Eren’s manipulation of Falco is plainly cruel. We’ve come to see Falco as this pure, innocent boy who only wishes to help people. And Eren used him. Yet he treats it as a necessary evil. But…can we criticise him for it? When Eren was Falco’s age, he had to watch as his home was destroyed, his mother was eaten alive, and hundreds of people died, for no reason. Even when he found out Marley’s justification for it, it’s poor and inhumane. And in this episode, in this fantastic and haunting reunion between Eren and Reiner, the man responsible for the attack on the walls in the show’s first episode agrees with him. That there was no acceptable reasoning for the senseless violence Eren was subjected to. And he hates himself for it. We’ve only just found out that Reiner forced Bertholdt and Annie to continue their attack on the walls, when they wanted to turn back. If Reiner hadn’t been so desperate to save his own life, Eren’s mother would still be alive. And now he wants Eren to kill him, surely feeling his death would be justice for that of Eren’s mother. But again, can we criticise Reiner? When we witness the moment Reiner forced them to proceed with the attack, we see a terrified, pathetic child, faced with death on top of a mountainous burden and having had the hatred of generations passed dumped onto him, unable to understand it. Should Reiner really be blamed for Eren’s suffering, or should we blame his superiors in Marley’s military, who themselves are acting out of fear that Paradis will rise against them to take revenge for the wars of decades past?

The point I’m trying to convey, and the one the episode is so directly centred on, is that there is no right answer. There’s no correct choice on who we should root for. We can’t justifiably defend Eren’s manipulation of Falco, and massacre of countless innocents that comes soon after. But we can’t truly say he’s wrong to fight back. He’s been subjugated his entire life, oppressed within the walls for the actions of his ancestors he never even knew. Should he not take it into his own hands to protect the people he cares about when he’s the only one with the power to do so? It’s an impossible moral crisis. Whichever character you side with, whatever you believe Eren should have done, you can’t make a flawless argument for it. You can hardly even make a compelling argument, there’s just far too many issues with whatever course of action you suggest he should’ve taken. There’s no good option, for either side of the war. It is simply, impossible.

This is only hammered home further with Eren’s now iconic line, “Reiner…I’m the same as you”. They really are just two sides of the same coin. A coin of suffering, manipulation by their governments, oppression for the actions of generations past. But then, after this moment of sympathy for both characters, Eren proclaims that he will do what he’s always done. “I’ll keep moving forward, until I destroy my enemies.” And he transforms as Willy Tybur’s speech reaches its climax, echoing the title of the episode, “A declaration of war!” Eren’s transformation marks the beginning of the war. As he turns into a titan, Reiner pulls away and desperately rushes to protect Falco. And from the look on Eren’s face, we know that he has made peace with the fact that his transformation may kill Reiner and Falco, despite Falco being nothing but innocent. It’s emblematic of Eren’s resolve to discard innocent lives in pursuit of protecting those of the ones he cares about, who despite being the characters we’ve followed and connected with for three seasons, are far less morally pure than the likes of Falco, Udo and Zofia.

This whole arc masterfully recontextualizes our perception of this series, and the message it’s trying to convey. We no longer have a singular group of protagonists suffering through unfair oppression. We have characters on both sides of the war, all suffering from the same sins of the past. So we watch this entire set of episodes uncertain who we should be rooting for. It’s some of the most challenging storytelling I’ve seen, the viewer is constantly being forced to consider their morals and the actions of the characters. It changes constantly.

When the battle kicks off in season 4 episode 6, ‘The War Hammer Titan’, we finally get to reunite with our heroes from the first 3 seasons. But it’s in a brutal fashion. The scouts return at the end of ‘Declaration Of War’ in a chilling moment that remains one of the shows’ most iconic. Porco, a character we’ve been encouraged to dislike through his opposition to Reiner, is faced with the scouts of Paradis, the people he’s declared devils. And as their shadows zip around in front of him as he questions why they aren’t afraid of him, he’s a titan, we can’t help but understand why Marley are so terrified of the scouts.

This theme continues for the entire battle, which fittingly plays out in the unsettling dark of night, a decision which accentuates the brutality of the explosions destroying countless civilians’ homes. We get further exploration of this through our familiar character of Jean, and particularly his dynamic with Floch. I find this pairing so fascinating since they’re likely the two most human characters in the story, and they’re so similar in so many ways, yet so different in their morality. Floch is unphased by the civilian casualties their attack has caused, seeing it as a justified evil, a fair exchange for the many lives their people have lost thanks to the titans sent by Marley. Jean, on the other hand, doesn’t see it this way. To him, most of Marley’s people are just that, people. They’re as innocent as they all were. And now their home is being ravaged just as his own, Trost, was when Bertholdt broke down the wall.

The arc puts this similarity at the centre of the conflict. The incredible action and intense character moments are constantly surrounded by iconography that we’re familiar with from the early moments of the show, when the people of the walls were being massacred by the titans. Isayama was very deliberate in his portrayal of Eren here. His titan is presented with so many parallels to the colossal titan, though now the brutality of the attack is explored much more personally. The opening to the show focused on Eren’s response to the destruction of the walls, we didn’t have too much opportunity to see the brutal deaths occuring all across the battlefield as a result. In the raid on Liberio, there’s a multitude of uncomfortable close ups of bloodied corpses and families torn apart by a war they don’t have any part in. The most devastating example of this is the deaths of Udo and Zofia, characters we’ve got to witness all the great qualities of these past 6 episodes. And following Eren’s transformation, we cut to Colt, Gabi and Udo, surrounded by shattered bodies. And Zofia a few feet away, crushed by a boulder. Just as Eren’s mother was in the show’s first episode. Only, while Eren’s mother could have been saved had Hannes not given in to his fear, Zofia doesn’t get that chance. She’s killed instantly, crushed brutally. I feel this is a point Isayama has to be making intentionally. The way this battle is portrayed, the slight alterations in these parallels to the show’s opening, it all just makes this battle feel worse. Despite the audience having more reason to sympathise with Eren in his actions, despite us knowing it’s a potentially necessary evil and knowing all the suffering he’s endured, his attack is so much more horrific than that commited by Bertholdt, Reiner and Annie in the first episode.

The arc just constantly challenges our perspective. We want to root for the scouts, we’re excited to see them return, and the action is thrilling. Yet we can’t enjoy it. The scouts claim victory, the result is a direct mirror to the Shiganshina arc not many episodes prior. But where that victory was a moment of great catharsis, the most satisfying conclusion of an arc in the show to that point, here the victory is hollow. Even the scouts, especially Jean, Armin and Hange, question if it was worth it, all the sins they had to commit to achieve their goal. But they didn’t have a choice, because Eren forced their hand. In moving forward towards a better world for his friends, he’s forced them to become monsters, who’ve enacted violence on an even greater level than the warriors had to them 5 years ago. It’s unsettling.

The Raid Of Liberio’s 4 episodes masterfully establish the core themes of the final season, in the complex duality of humanity, the shades of grey in our motivations and actions, and presents us with moral conflicts throughout which are utterly impossible to bring to a satisfying resolution. It’s this complexity that makes Attack On Titan stand out for its genuine understanding of the layers of human nature and the innate failures of mankind. War is unavoidable, humanity is simply predisposed to it. That’s the message it constructs, and yet we aren’t left caring about the stories of these characters any less thanks to this bleak outlook, instead it makes us value them even more deeply. But I’ll explore that further when we discuss the show’s infamous ending.

There’s so many fascinating elements of AoT’s construction, be it the enthralling explorations of character, the incredible action sequences, excellent animation or the soundtrack that enhances every scene more than almost any other show or film. The music of Attack On Titan alone could spark an analysis at least twice the length of everything I’ve written so far, but I’ve already explored this arc far more deeply than I initially intended to so I’ll move on to the next section of this essay.