Attack on Titan has taken us all on quite the journey.
Over the span of ten years, and with four seasons, Wit Studio and Mappa have animated Hajime Isayama’s story brilliantly.
Now, it’s over.
Going into the final episode of Attack on Titan, I was curious to see how I would feel about the ending compared to the manga.
When I first read the final chapter, I honestly went back and forth on whether I liked it or not.
Then, I sat down and read through it while thinking about what Isayama was trying to say, and I came to the conclusion that the ending was a mixed bag, with plenty of good and bad things about it.
It was for this reason that I was hoping the updated ending, which released months later, would fix some of my problems.
Unfortunately, the opposite happened, with the extra pages pushing my opinion on that final chapter into a negative direction.
I have re-read the series a couple times since then and, while I still love it, my opinion of the ending has only become worse with each read through.
All of this made me hope that there would be some changes to the anime’s ending.
I knew we would not be getting an anime original ending, but I had my fingers crossed that there would be extra scenes or dialogue to explain some things better.
After all, Mappa added an extra scene showing what happened to Grisha’s parents in the previous special episode, which I unfortunately did not get around to reviewing. 
Seeing that added scene gave me some hope that there would be new additions to the conclusion.

So, having now seen the final episode of Attack on Titan, do I think the anime improved on the manga’s ending?
Yes!
Do I like it now?
Not exactly, no.
In my opinion, the ending still has a lot of problems.
However, most of these big issues only appear in the last half hour.
The rest of the final episode is mostly great, with incredible animation from Mappa and a fantastic score. 
This is going to be my largest review by a wide margin, so buckle up.
The episode begins where the previous special episode left off, with the Alliance landing on Eren’s gigantic Titan to confront him and stop the Rumbling.
Armin quickly realizes he has to transform into the Colossal Titan to try and locate Eren and Zeke but, before he can, he is kidnapped by an okapi Titan created by Ymir.
The panels of the okapi sticking its tongue down Armin’s throat to prevent him transforming were already disgusting in the manga, but it’s a million times grosser here.
As the okapi takes Armin away, the rest of the Alliance are surrounded by countless Titans, whom Pieck correctly speculates are copies of all the previous Titan Shifters.
Back when this happened in the manga, I criticized it for feeling out of nowhere, but in retrospect I think this was actually a pretty cool writing decision on Isayama’s part.
Realizing the danger they now face, Pieck goes to kill Eren quickly by attempting to detonate the explosives at his head, but she is stopped by a copy of the Warhammer Titan.
Following this, the Alliance are attacked by the copies, including ones of Porco, Marcel and Bertolt, in a thrilling action scene, expertly animated by Mappa.
This ends with everyone in the Alliance cornered, about to be killed, when who should show up to save the day but Annie, riding Falco’s flying Titan with Gabi.

Now safe on Falco’s back, the Alliance discusses their next move, and all regretfully agree that their only option is to kill Eren, much to Mikasa’s horror.
Circling back to Eren, the Alliance splits up, with Jean and Reiner going to detonate the explosives Pieck wrapped around Eren’s neck; Mikasa, Annie and Connie going to rescue Armin; and Falco, Levi and Gabi continuing to fly above.
More amazing animation follows, with the best parts of this section being Pieck’s jet-pack Titan skills, and Mikasa and Annie humorously arguing over which Titan it was that took Armin.
This second match goes about as well as first, however, with the Alliance on the ropes again.
Armin is watching all of this happen and, standing over his own unconscious body, screams at himself about how useless he often feels.
This is probably my favourite voice acting from the final episode, with Marina Inoue giving a fantastic and emotional performance.
Although, despite how emotional this scene is, it has nothing on the cliff scene that follows. 
When I watched the previous special episode, I was disappointed to see this moment was not adapted, and I was desperately hoping that it would be in the final episode.
Well, I was not disappointed because this scene is next and it is even more powerful that I imagined it being.
The scene shows a group of thousands of people trapped between two kinds of certain death.
They can either be crushed by the Rumbling, or they can fall off a cliff to their deaths.
As the Rumbling closes in, people are eventually forced off the cliff, one of these people being a mother.
With one last, courageous act, the mother passes off her baby before she falls to her death.
As the next person holding the baby falls, they also pass the baby on, and on, and on, and on.
Countless people all facing their inevitable deaths pass this baby on in what they know will most likely be a futile attempt to save its life.
It is one of the most beautiful and horrifying moments in the entire series, and seeing it in the anime made me tear up.
The visuals for this scene only add to the emotion, with everything being in black and white with the exception of the mother and her baby.
I am almost certain that the way this scene was animated was inspired by the little girl in the red coat from Schindler’s List.
This scene is, without a doubt, my favourite in the entire episode.

Back with Armin, after some perseverance, he realizes he is in the Paths Dimension and this leads to his meeting with Zeke, who has been trapped ever since Ymir chose to support Eren over him.
Zeke has completely lost all motivation to keep going, now believing life to be more pointless than he already did.
Armin, however, speaks against this, remembering a time when he, Eren and Mikasa ran to a tree on a hill, comparing it all the wonderful little moments in his life which made it worth living.
As a leaf Armin picks from the sand turns into a baseball before Zeke’s eyes, the Beast Titan remembers playing catch with Mr Ksaver and how this was also one of those little moments which made life worth living.
This somehow motivates the ghosts of past Titan Shifters to appear and help the two. 
Armin says this was Zeke’s doing but how Zeke achieved this is never really explained.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few things in this final battle which are never explained but I will get to those in a bit.
In any case, the past Titans, who knew the Alliance, come back from the dead temporarily to help stop the Rumbling.
Among these Titans are Grisha and Kruger, and some fans have questioned their reasons for doing so.
For Kruger, I think it makes sense.
Yes, he would want to free the Eldians of Paradis, but a full Rumbling would also kill all of the Eldians outside Paradis, which he would be against since he wanted to free them too. 
As for Grisha, I still find myself confused about his motives.
Yes, he did tell Zeke to stop Eren but Zeke later says that Eren showed Grisha something which made him hand over his Titan powers.
We never see what this was, and the reason for Grisha giving Eren the Attack and Founding Titans and then later helping the Alliance are a mystery.
I just wish there was more of an explanation for Grisha’s actions.
As for his son, Zeke decides that, even though he does not believe his euthanization plan was wrong, he would not mind being reborn again.
With this fitting decision, Zeke reveals himself to Levi, giving the Scout the chance to cut off his head and stop the Rumbling.
While I would have liked it if Zeke had more time to shine in this final episode, his ending is satisfying to me. 

Following Zeke’s death, we get another moment which does not make much sense, which is the stopping of the Rumbling.
The reasoning for this is that Zeke’s royal blood was key to the Rumbling continuing so killing him stops it, but the only reason royal blood was needed was because Ymir valued it.
However, Ymir disobeyed Zeke and sided with Eren so royal blood should not be a factor, anymore.
Yet, the Rumbling still stops?
Whatever the explanation for this, Armin is freed and Jean blows up the explosives, freeing the source of the Titan powers from Eren’s body, which seeks to reconnect with him.
To stop this, Reiner holds the creature down while Armin transforms into the Colossal Titan, blowing Eren’s gigantic Titan form away.
In the aftermath of the explosion, the Alliance lands at the fort and the Warriors reunite with their families, only for the creature to still be alive, and for Eren to transform into a Colossal Titan.
The creature then sends Titan smoke up to the fort to transform all the Eldians there so they can help it reach Eren.
And so, Mikasa, Levi, and the rest of the immune Alliance go to fight Eren, leaving Jean and Connie to their fates.
If this had been Jean and Connie’s final scene then it would have been a pretty tragic one, as would Annie reuniting with her father only for him to be immediately transformed.
This transformation also crushes a lot of the rapport Mr Leonhart was building with Secretary Muller, which could have had a lot of hope for the future.
As Reiner, Annie and Pieck hold the creature back from reaching Eren, Armin fights his old friend off, while Mikasa and Levi rush to them.
While they are doing so, Mikasa experiences another headache and seemingly remembers an alternate version of the future Eren showed her, where they ran away together.
Honestly, I do not believe Eren would have run away.
Sure, I think some part of him may have desired to, but he has always been the kind of guy to stand and fight so I don’t think him running away with Mikasa would have happened, even if she had offered.
Still, the scene is pretty emotional, with Eren using this as his goodbye to Mikasa.
After this goodbye, Mikasa somehow knows Eren is in the mouth of his Colossal Titan, which is something else I wish was explained but is not.
Levi blows a hole through Eren’s mouth and Mikasa leaps through to decapitate Eren and finally end the nightmare of the Rumbling once and for all.
Eren’s death is very emotional but I wish the following kiss with Mikasa had occurred in the alternate version of the future he showed her, and not when Eren is dead.

Also, Mikasa remembering the alternate realtiy Eren showed her raises yet another plot hole.
In the manga, I was fine with this moment because I thought Eren was showing it to her in the present, but the anime seems to confirm that Eren showed her this alternate future and then erased her memory of it.
This should be impossible because Ackermans are immune to Titan powers.
As I have shown, there are quite a few plot holes with Attack on Titan’s final battle.
However, despite this, I would still say that the final episode has, up until this point, been very good.
The animation, soundtrack and action have all been spectacular, and there have been some emotionally powerful moments, most obvious of which is the baby scene.
Unfortunately, the episode then gets into adapting Chapter 139 and this is where I think the writing goes downhill.
This is mostly because I believe the following scene is the worst in all of Attack on Titan.
The scene is a flashback, revealing that Eren brought Armin into the Paths when he was on the boat.
The reason I consider this scene to be the worst is because it is full of so many last minute plot twists that are either poorly foreshadowed, problematically written, or recontextualize prior amazing scenes to make them worse.
The first of these twists is the reveal of Eren’s motivations.
Eren reveals that his plan this entire time was to commit the Rumbling so that the Alliance would kill him and become heroes to the world, allowing them to potentially save Paradis.
Was there foreshadowing for this?
Yes and no.
On the one hand, if you look at Eren’s actions from the previous special episode onwards, it makes sense.
Eren allowed the Alliance to come and fight him, rather than stripping them of their Titan powers, and there were multiple points in the final battle where the only explanation for why none of the Alliance died is that Eren deliberately let them live.
However, before the first special episode, there are many moments that seemingly contradict Eren’s supposed motives.
The most notable of these is at the end of Episode 87, where Eren states in his own inner monlogue that he will “wipe out every last one of ‘em.”
Along with these seemingly conflicting motives, Eren’s plan is just too similar to Lelouch from Code Geass for me.
In regards to Eren himself, personally, I think it would have been better if his main goal had been a full Rumbling all along.
I am not saying that Eren winning should have been the ending.
I do believe that the Alliance stopping him was the right call for the story.
But I think Eren would have been a much more compelling character if he had stayed true to what we all thought was his original plan.
Still, at least this twist had some foreshadowing, which is more than I can say for the next few ones.
Following the reveal of Eren’s motives, the next big twist is that the reason Ymir did all of this is because she was in love with her abuser.
I hate this reveal.
When I read it in the manga, it took what used to be my favourite chapter, Ymir’s backstory, and threw it far away from my top ten chapters.
Ymir loving Fritz makes absolutely zero sense.
He killed her parents, cut out her tongue, raped her, used her as a weapon in war and then, when she died, fed her corpse to their children.
And you are telling me Ymir loved this monster?
If we saw Fritz pretending to be kind to Ymir to manipulate her, maybe I could believe it, but we don’t seeing anything like that.
He is just completely horrible to her for all of their time together.
It really ruins a lot of scenes from Ymir’s backstory for me, like the moment when Fritz says he will “reward” Ymir with his “seed,” while she looks absolutely miserable.         
This moment made me feel so sorry for Ymir when I first read it, but now I just feel dirty watching it because it makes me wonder if Isayama is trying to say she was secretly happy about it. 

In my opinion, there was another, perfectly good explanation which should have been used to explain why Ymir stayed in the Paths for 2,000 years.
She loved her children.
We see this later on in the episode when she imagines living on with them.
This should have been the explanation for Ymir’s actions, not this extremely problematic love for her abuser, which was probably only a twist to justify Mikasa’s abrupt connection with her.
This brings me to the next bad twist, which is that Ymir was waiting for Mikasa the entire time.
With the exception of Ymir smiling at Mikasa kissing Eren’s decapitated head, there was zero foreshadowing for this.
Not only is there no foreshadowing, but we also get no explanation.
What we get instead is Eren saying “only Ymir knows” which is a complete cop-out.
This was the anime’s chance to give us an answer for something which was missing in the manga and they blew it.
Not to mention that mirroring Eren and Mikasa’s relationship with Ymir and King Fritz’s abusive one is very problematic, since Eren and Mikasa are supposed to be the main ship here.
The final terrible twist in this scene is the reveal that Eren caused his mother’s death by making Dina walk past Bertolt.
There are so many things wrong with this twist.
For starters, it’s a retcon.
We already had an explanation for why Dina killed Carla.
Dina’s final words to Grisha before she was transformed into a Titan were, “No matter what form I take, I promise I’ll come find you.”
So, when we saw Dina walk past Bertolt, we were not wondering why she did so because we already knew.
Dina sensed Grisha in Shiganshina, went to his house, only to find Carla, and that is when her Titan instincts took over and she ate her.
It was a perfect explanation, and to change the meaning of it removes all emotional impact from Dina’s final words, all for the sake of a such a short twist.
This leads into my second big issue with the reveal, which is how brief it is.
Out of curiosity, I timed how long this twist is focused on before it is forgotten about forever.
Do you want to know how long it was?
Fourteen seconds.
Fourteen seconds spent on a twist which recontextualizes the entire beginning of the story and, as a result, it makes absolutely no sense.
Has Eren manipulated the past before?
Yes, but there was a very specific set of circumstances which allowed that to happen.
Zeke brought Eren into Grisha’s memories using the Founding Titan.
Both Eren and Grisha had the Attack Titan, whose ability is to see into the memories of its future successors.
This allowed Grisha to see Eren’s memories of visiting his own.
And so the two could communicate across timelines through memories.
There was no actual physical time travel.
Dina did not have the Attack Titan, she was just a regular Titan, so Eren should not be able to order her through memories.
Therefore, in order to control her, Eren would have had to physically gone into the past and used the Founding Titan to command her to walk past Bertolt, which is a power that has never been established.
Thus, the twist should be impossible, providing probably the biggest plot hole with the ending.

So, as I have shown, this scene has a lot of bad twists, but it’s not just the twists that I take issue with because, up next, is without a doubt the most memed scene in Attack on Titan.  
After Armin punches Eren for how he treated Mikasa and jokes about her finding another man, Eren cries about it, saying he wants her to pine only after him for at least ten years.
I knew this scene was coming, and I still cringed into the back of my seat when I watched it.
I think a big part of the reason this moment does not land with me is because of how Eren and Mikasa’s relationship has been handled.
Sure, there have been a few romantic moments between them.
Their final scene togethor in this episode, Eren saying he would wrap Mikasa’s scarf around her at the end of Season Two, and Eren asking Mikasa what he was to her while they were in Marley.
However, these three moments are the only times Eren ever showed romantic interest in Mikasa.
Otherwise, he’s either treating her like family or treating her badly.
Isayama once said in an interview that he wanted to have them kiss in Chapter 50 but he backed out because he was shy to draw it.
Well, I think he should have just bit the bullet and drawn it.
Have Eren and Mikasa be a couple up until the end of Season Three, then have Eren go off on his own in Season Four, pushing Mikasa away, and then reveal it was to protect her in the final episode.
It would have made Eren say how he really feels about Mikasa a lot less jarring.
What also would have helped is a change in dialogue because, to be honest, I just do not think I can take lines like this seriously. 
Another thing I could not take seriously was what happened after Eren’s outburst in the manga. 
Back in the original Chapter 139, one of the last things Armin said to Eren was, “Thank you. You became a mass murderer for our sake. I promise I won’t let this terrible mistake you’re making be in vain.”
This is, without question, one of the most problematic lines in Attack on Titan, since it makes it seem like Armin is condoning Eren’s genocide.
I know this is not what Isayama intended but it is what it comes across as, which is why I was overjoyed to find that this scene has been rewritten entirely by Isayama for the anime.   
Now, Armin actually accepts his role in the Rumbling through how he showed Eren his book, telling his friend that when they die they will both be in hell togethor.
It both managed to be moving and did not skirt around the horror of Eren’s actions, like the manga did.
So, despite this being the worst scene in Attack on Titan for me, I think it actually ends pretty well in the anime. 

Back in the present, Armin wakes up, remembering everything and learning of Eren’s death.
It is following this that we get my second favourite moment of the episode, which is Levi’s final salute.
He sees the ghosts of his former comrades and salutes them, a tear sliding down his cheek.
Out of all the characters’ endings, this is probably my favourite.
Levi is the last man standing of the old guard, living on to carry on the memory and sacrifices of his comrades.
More moving moments follow as Jean and Connie see Sasha’s ghost, and Reiner reconciles with his mother.
These happy moments do not last long, however, because, as Mikasa begins her journey back to Paradis to bury Eren’s remains, Muller arrives to hold the Eldians at gunpoint, now scared of them again thanks to their prior transformation.
It is in this moment that Armin steps up in his role as humanity’s saviour, proclaiming that the Titan powers have vanished and that he is the man who killed Eren Jeager.
As for Mikasa, while she is making her way back, she is confronted by the ghost of Ymir, and realizes that she is the one who has been causing her headaches.
To me, this is another blotch on Ymir’s character.
Not only was there no foreshadowing for Ymir causing Mikasa’s headaches, but it also makes her look bad because if she knew Mikasa would free her eventually then there was no need to subject the world to such hardship.  
With that, the story then skips to three years in the future, where we see Historia narrating what is happening on Paradis Island in a letter to the Alliance.
We see that Historia has married the farmer and had their child, a girl that I personally like to think she named after Freckled Ymir.
It is also revealed that Paradis’ army is led by the Jaegerists.
Over time, this was something I extremely disliked in the manga because it made Eren look like an idiot.
He trusts his friends to convince the rest of the world to make peace with Paradis and yet he left literal facists in charge of the island.
However, the anime makes a point to note that Eren was an idiot with too much power so I can let it slide.
What I cannot let slide is Historia’s treatment as a character.
She had so much potential in the final arc, and I hate how she was paired off with a nobody and then sidelined with a pregancy subplot which amounted to nothing.
In my opinion, the writing for Historia’s character post time skip spat in the face of her character development in the Uprising Arc.
Think about this, not only does Historia have less screen time than the Warriors’ families in the final arc, but she also has no scenes in the present timeline.
All of her scenes are flashbacks.
That is how little she mattered in the end.
I hated Historia’s role in the final arc back when I first read it, and I am pretty sure I will hate it forever.

As for the letter Historia wrote to the Alliance, Reiner is clearly enjoying it, since he sniffs it like a creep.
Reiner liking Historia is not unusal for him, but did the final scene of a character who has had an emotionally powerful struggle with PTSD really need to be a joke?
Still, I am glad that he lived, along with the rest of the Alliance, who are now going to Paradis as peace envoys, fulfilling the role Eren gave them.
We then get what was, originally, the final scene of Attack on Titan, until the extra pages.
Mikasa is resting at Eren’s grave on Paradis, at the tree where the story started.
Her presence on Paradis is a bit confusing to me, I will admit.  
I mean, the Jeagerists know Mikasa killed a lot of them, right?
Plus, Mikasa is the only Asian person living on Paradis so she would be pretty recognizable.
Wouldn’t she be in constant danger?
Well, Mikasa clearly feels safe beneath the tree, where she weeps for the loss of Eren.
It is at that moment when a bird appears from nowhere and wraps Mikasa’s scarf around her before departing.
So did Eren reincarnate into a bird, or this is just a random bird doing it for no reason?
Whatever the reason, it does look a bit goofy to me.
In regards to Mikasa, as someone who once thought she was one of the best characters in the series, I have slowly found myself disillusioned with her.
I still like her, but there are so many missed opportunities to develop her.
From her Ackerman lineage, to her relationship with Louise, to her connection with Hizuru, these were all chances to give Mikasa character development.
Instead, she just constantly focuses on Eren, right to the very end, even bringing her new family with her to his grave as the years pass.
Speaking of this, I now have to get into the adaptation of the extra pages, which is another area I feel like the anime improved upon.
In the manga, I hated the reveal that Paradis was destroyed because it looked like it was only about 50 years since the Rumbling, making all of the characters sacrifices pretty pointless.
However, the anime updated it to so that the destruction of Paradis happens at least hundreds of years later.
This makes me feel a bit better about the whole thing.
What makes me feel less better is that the anime kept the implication that Titan powers were coming back, by showing a boy and his dog heading towards Eren’s tree, which has now grown to resemble the same tree where Ymir got her powers 2000 years ago.
While this does tie into the themes of the cycle of violence continuing, I personally don’t like that it removes the victory of Titan powers vanishing forever.
The cycle of violence continuing is fitting for the story, but I wish Titan powers stayed gone at the end.

So, since my final impression of the ending is a negative one, I surely think the final episode of Attack on Titan is bad, right?
Well, no.
While there are a lot of things I dislike, the first 50 minutes of the episode are really good, plotholes aside, and there are quite a few improvements from the manga.
I even teared up twice, once during the baby scene, and a second time during Levi’s salute.
And, of course, the animation, score, and voice acting are all incredible.
Overall, I would still say that this final episode is good, despite its many, many short comings.
And, despite not liking how Attack on Titan ends, I would still recommend the series.
The themes, twists and characters are things I will remember fondly for years to come.
Also, having seen the reactions for the final episode from many anime only fans, I know my criticisms of the ending are in the minority. 
The vast majority of fans seem to have loved this ending, and I am happy that they do.
So, as fans of Attack on Titan, no matter our thoughts on the ending, I think we all owe a big thank you to Hajime Isayama, Wit Studio and Mappa for bringing us this amazing anime.
Truly, thank you.