I don’t think any of this is coincidence. And to be fair, Evangelion is a massive success. If you’re going to follow a formula, it might as well be that one. I just don’t think that particular formula is what anybody wanted from Attack on Titan.

Marley was dead, to begin with

Eventually we arrive at Eren’s father’s basement, and it’s time for an extended, expository flashback. We meet some characters who might look like ones we already know – as usual with Isayama, it’s hard to tell. Then, after the flashback, we flash forward. We’re introduced to still more characters, but now virtually the entire setting has changed. We’re practically in a different manga.

We’ve been introduced to two societies called Eldia and Marley. Apparently their conflict has lasted generations. But at this point, are we supposed to care? We have no idea what happened to our original characters in the interim of the flash-forward. Much like the third Rebuild of Evangelion movie, much seems to have changed, but how and for what reasons? Who is aligned with whom? The net effect is that it’s even harder to understand the motivations of characters that were hard to recognize and follow to begin with. (If only Isayama could draw. He can’t.)

Internecine bickering takes over the plot. Whole chapters go by with no Titans at all. It’s all about some incoherent politics that we, as readers, cannot possibly understand, set in some kind of kingdom that’s named after Ebenezer Scrooge’s late partner. We can’t choose sides because none of the factions appears to have any moral high ground. And therefore, we can no longer care about any of the characters, old or new, because we’re simply not interested in whatever they’re doing. (Spoiler alert: He succeeds.)

Remember Porco? Remember Pieck? Remember Floch? Remember Onyankopon? Remember all the timeless moments of all those vivid and memorable characters? No?

Worst of all, Eren, our erstwhile hero, seems to have morphed completely. Instead of a plucky youth finding friendship and a sense of duty while being driven by anger and a drive for revenge, now he’s a long-haired, sullen, taciturn loner. We later learn that Eren’s thinking has taken a turn, and he’s now a genocidal maniac. His goal is no longer to destroy the Titans but to exterminate all human life.

It’s at this point that Attack on Titan becomes completely rudderless. Unmoored from any sense of place, time, plot, or relatable characters, it’s nothing but a slog. Like a man crawling across a barren desert, we readers find ourselves longing for a merciful end.

All things must pass, thank goodness

By now you should have surmised that I was pretty much checked out by the time we reach that controversial conclusion. And I was. But here’s the thing: I suspect Isayama was, too. The competing pressures of prolonging a cash cow for the publisher and wanting to be done with the whole thing probably were weighing heavily on him. That’s how we got concluding chapters that feel simultaneously too rushed and too meandering, with the whole thing ending not with a bang but a whoopie cushion.