"Attack on Titan" is close to being the best comic strip in nearly 10 years, although it still has many flaws.
Its characterization is still typical of serial comics, one-dimensional, and a belief goes black: Ellen's pursuit of freedom, Mikasa's guardian lover, Armin's kindness and weakness, Jike's forbearance and cunning, Reiner's fetters and guilt ... The characters advance in one main dimension from beginning to end, which confirms the theme of "Attack on Titan", advancing, advancing, fighting, fighting. The characters lack true spiritual transformation, but their character traits and flaws are brought to the extreme, moving from one external goal of the plot to another, until they die. Perhaps this is the reason why "Giant" was criticized as unfinished: the characters cannot reach reconciliation with the outside world by trying to change themselves, and Alan, who pursues freedom, will surely perish, although the story logic is smooth from the paranoid pursuit of freedom to the extinction of the world. Yes, but this underlying conflict is too intense, the escalation of the conflict is too direct, and the characters experience less illusory hope and belief, and eventually fall into the turbulence of the valley of despair, which makes the destruction of the world not inevitable in the development of the plot. Because the trend of destroying the world is too "incorrect", the alliance of other camps has become a kind of "political correctness" that needs no explanation, making the climax finally become a big action scene of "last minute rescue". But whether it is to destroy the world by one's own will, or to jointly prevent the world from destroying, it just needs to be explained again in order to construct the inevitability. Why does Ellen insist on destroying the world, is there no way to solve it without destroying the world? Why can Eldia and Marai fight side by side and destroy the world in the fight against each other? Why does the wily Gek feel that the euthanasia plan is the only option? According to his qualifications, even if his father suffers PTSD very badly, isn't it more cost-effective to abandon the shackles of the past and join forces with the ancestors to overthrow Marais and reshape the world structure? These key nodes that need to explain "why it must go this way" are simply replaced by "the nature of the characters is like this". A story without these inevitability leads to a devastating ending, which is the ultimate source of "unfinished".
The lack of foreshadowing is a common problem in serial comics. Many characters and story clues are only added halfway. Some characters are not very important if they are written or written, or characters who have been out of the show for a long time suddenly appear, similar to Yani, Fu Locke and Keith instructors. These are not big problems, it is a style of long serialization. However, this kind of instability of characters' status is particularly prominent in "Giant", and it may also be seen from the side that the author Isayama Soru's control over how the characters are integrated into the plot to serve the plot is relatively weak.
But compared to other cartoonists, Isayama's character shaping is very strong. The most outstanding part of "Giant" is that it uses "crisis choices" again and again to set up characters, and highlights the psychological conflicts of the core characters in the crisis choices. For example, after Allen was eaten by "Darwin's Giant", when Allen was chased by the female giant , Before Erwin leads the recruits to his death, when Captain Levi wants to inject the dying Erwin... Every crisis decision is not only the core turning point of the plot, but also a "tragic moment" that further establishes the characters. Allen's tragic paranoia and the soldier's tragic perseverance were strengthened step by step until they could not be questioned in the end.
Even if there is a suspicion of "unfinished", it is not really out of control after all. It is criticized as "unfinished" on the one hand because of the lack of inevitability in the direction of the core plot, and on the other hand, the impact of "destroying the world" on readers' values is too great. It's also because his characters are so deadly that even a little bit of looseness in the final character that doesn't match the previous character image is unacceptable - for example, Allen was so cruel and extreme before, how could he finally treat Mikasa? The problem of possessiveness fell silent?
But the reason why "Giant" is still an epic masterpiece is that it criticizes the theme of dialectics. The core of the giant is to talk about "hypocritical freedom", which is also the freedom of "I was born in this world, I live for myself, and I am not dominated by anyone" in Allen's mouth, but every choice Allen makes, They are all drawn by fate or fate. At the end of the story, this puppet-style "freedom" is embodied as the ability of "Attack on Titan" to foresee and influence the future. Allen's "freedom" is predestined in two thousand years of reincarnation, mixed with self-will, which in turn affects free will and makes people unaware. This is what Zack calls "brainwashing": it was not Grisha who brainwashed Allen, but Allen brainwashed Grisha, the attacking giant brainwashed Allen, and Allen brainwashed himself.
Questioning people's free will, telling that "people make free choices, and the result of the choice is always the one dominated by the structure", this is the profound tragedy of this work, and this is an Oedipus-esque inescapable. Isayama knows the tragic nature of reconciliation.
Tragic and extremely pessimistic. This is reflected in people's inability to structure. On the one hand, people do not agree with Allen's value choice to destroy the world, and on the other hand they feel contempt for the "Virgin of the Heart" like Armin. People both inside and outside the play unanimously deny the possibility of changing structural hatred, prejudice and stigma by creating a space for communication and dialogue, but it is "wrong" to destroy each other in value. The plot brings this meta-contradiction to this dead end, so readers can hardly fully identify with either side. Whichever side wins is either incorrect or not valid. The answer that the real world tells us has always been destruction, world war, genocide, but what most people in the works must hope to see is a decent reconciliation. The question is how to be decent? Since there is no established answer in reality, Isayama has no answer either. Then the plot should not lead to the ultimate destruction that cannot be accepted in value.
Isn't world-annihilating deterrence what the Cold War and nuclear deterrence are like in the real world? But the reason we still exist in the real world is because the balance is not so easy to break, and no one will take that bad move first. The decision of Marais in "Giant" to retake the ancestor was the arrogant and stinky move, which was not strategically tenable. From the point of view of the game, after Marai took that step, the military government of Parady Island launched a small wave of "di Ming" to show its muscles and deter the opponent from fighting for time for peaceful development. This is the most realistic and optimal solution - even when With Parady Island re-catching up with the world's technological rhythm, as the only party with "nuclear weapons", re-enslaving the world is only a logical outcome of a matter of time (and that's not what Armin wants to see). But the strange thing is that Alan, who is "eager for success", doesn't want to do that. In addition to liberating the Eldians, he doesn't want his nation to be hated by others. The way to eliminate hatred is to directly erase the other party. Now that all those who hated Eldia are gone, the Eldians will not be hated. On the other hand, Allen did not want to sacrifice some people around him, such as Histria, because of the "optimal solution". He would rather sacrifice everyone else in the world in order to save some of those close to him. Allen's extreme ethics at the center of our nation are destined to be stigmatized as "Nazis". But in the story, he just repaid himself with the way of Marais, and repaid his grievances with grievances.
The Marais government and Allen written by Isayama are irrational people who don't know how to play games, "freely made their own choices" and chose stupid and arrogant militarism and annihilation respectively, thus breaking the giant world. of two thousand years of reincarnation. But the slow evolution of maintaining the status quo balance is often the theme of the real world. Giants in this sense are opposed to drastic change. But who said that the "slow" under the status quo must be "evolution" and not "retreat"? Are not all revolutions in history the inevitable result of long accumulation? The hero or the sinner simply chooses the moment that must come.
It is not advisable to actively destroy oneself, nor is it desirable to actively destroy others. From this point of view, whether it is the work of "Attack on Titan" itself or the real world, it is quite hopeless. It is only moral to spread out your hands, tolerate the repression of the structure, and live with the flow as far as you can . From the dilemma of "Giant", such a value judgment is more or less deduced. Perhaps its essence is "humanism". But the humanitarianism of the strong is conscience, and is the humanitarianism of the weak fair to them?
The end of freedom is still greater slavery. This theme is still too grand, and there are too many issues to be placed around it at the same time, militarism, racism, nationalism, humanitarianism, phrenology, social Darwin, egoism, alien creationism, original sin theory... These confluences are presented together, and the ambition is too great. It is still difficult for Isayama to put it in and out, which affects the narrative, resulting in too many interludes, too many antecedents, and the sequence tends to be scattered.
Even though there are many flaws, "Giant", which is willing to say and say something, is still much rarer than the many hot-blooded migrant workers on the market who are known for fighting or being funny. And looking back, we can still be shocked or shocked by the choices made by so many plot characters such as Ellen, Mikasa, Armin, Irwin, Levi, Reiner, Jabi, Falco, and Ancestor Ymir. Sigh, this work can already be said to be very successful.
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