The finale of Attack on Titan

How a story about titants became a faithfull representation of our own world

Spoiler alert fo the ending of Attack on Titan

A few days ago, one of the greatest stories told came to an end with the finale of the Attack on Titan anime, and with it, a finale that has too much to talk about. Although there's a lot to unravel about the final episodes, there's one thing that above all else stood out to me: the epilogue.

For context, I haven't read the manga, but I saw a lot of talk online about how the anime should change the finale of it, so I got curious and started watching videos about the finale, just to see why they wanted it to be changed, so I already knew about the epilogue before the anime ended, but I didn´t start to really think about it until I saw the anime's ending. For the epilogue, I´m referring to the scenes where we see the tree in which Eren was buried and how time passes around it. We see how Mikasa and Eren´s friends continue to visit his grave for years to come, then we start seeing Paradise becoming a modern city, and later a futuristic city, then, we watch the start of a new war, resulting in Paradise becoming a city in ruins. At the end, we see a boy with his dog wandering in the forest, where the only thing left standing is that tree, which has grown tremendously and now resembles the one Ymir entered thousands of years ago. The boy sees the tree and as he starts to enter it we end the series.

The ending as a whole is amazing, every part of it serves a purpose to the story and its characters, which all get a proper conclusion, so, why does the story continue past their lives? Why do we need to see the world succumb to war once more after we spend so much time watching these characters trying to end it? Well, that's exactly what I want to discuss.

The first thing this finale does is make you question if everything that happened in the whole series was in vain, because after all of that, after giving their lives for peace, it wasn´t permanent, for the human being is incapable of staying at peace. This mirrors the real world in a very depressing way, because as we all know, we´ve also come a long way since the first global conflicts and still can't avoid war. It would've been fine to end the story without this epilogue and make us believe that every effort our characters made came to a satisfactory conclusion, but I believe is the epilogue what gives the whole series its real purpose, because it shows us the two sides of the story, for one, our characters did bring peace to Paradise and the world for thousands of years and managed to eradicate the titans for good, but on the other hand, we see that peace is not permanent and that conflict extends beyond the reach of a group of people. 

We find in this ending the truth about life itself, because no matter what we do or what we become, the world will continue to grow and change, but it will also forever be influenced by the decisions of the past.

This week's recommendation: The final mystery of Attack on Titan

After finishing the final episode of the series, I was left with a little void that I felt had to be filled, I wanted another point of view on the finale and what it meant, and this video by 

invaderzz had exactly that. If, like me, you want to explore more deeply the finale of Attack on Titan and the meaning behind it, go watch it, you won't regret it.