A rant about Eren in the last chapter.
❗️Obviously there’s going to be spoilers.
Since I only have one friend that keeps up with aot manga who didn’t like the ending, I rant here.
Personally I loved the ending.
I think the peaceful nature of it was perfect. The chapter felt like a sigh of relief after a whole series about fighting and stress and worrying for their lives.
People are confused or angry about the fact that Eren turned “weak” and “his character completely changed” during the part he broke down over Mikasa and I just want to express how I viewed it.
First of all Eren’s “tough/cool/badass” version that we see after the time skip isn’t truly Eren. That’s not his personality that we all know. You can even see in the people making “what would the aot cast do if...” jokes on tiktok when they make two Eren’s, S1-3 Eren and S4 Eren. We know exactly what the real Eren is like from right up until season 4. He was impulsive, loud, angry, at times whiny and he never hid any of his emotions. But he was also passionate and we saw how much he cared for his friends and his goals.
Season 4 Eren was a complete personality flip, not because he grew in that direction but because he knew his future and what he had to do to carry out his goal. He had to push everyone away and shut off all of his emotions or else he wouldn’t have been able to do it. Because of this, this version of Eren didn’t even feel human, let alone like the Eren we knew.
Then Eren had to say his goodbyes and explain his plan to all his friends. This is where we start at the beginning of 139. For the first time in ages it feels like Eren is back, and he is heartbroken and exhausted. We even see Armin realising the extreme burden Eren had to carry “all alone.”
Eren is a 19 year old who’s childhood was stolen from him by the cruel world he lived in. He immediately became a soldier and never even got the chance to properly mature in his teenage years because he had so much responsibilities that were so much bigger than him. He had to deal with so much pain anyway even before he unlocked all the memories, and he even says himself that his thoughts became “incoherent.”
He is literally on the verge of a mental breakdown and when Armin brings up Mikasa, the person he loves most in the whole world and possibly would’ve ran away with if she told him she loved him, he finally snaps and shows what he’s really thinking.
Eren doesn’t want to die. Eren doesn’t want Mikasa to move on because all he wants is to live on with her. He hasn’t been able to live any sort of life his own way because he had responsibilities put on him since the day he was born.
Of course he was going to start whining about her. He’s human. Humans have selfish wants and he just wants this one thing he can never get. He sounds immature when he says it because he is immature. That whole part of their conversation honestly brings a smile to my face because of the childish nature of it.
He literally gave up his life and people are complaining because he whined a little bit to his best friend because he couldn’t be with the girl he loved. He is not “weak”, a “simp”, an “incel” or a “pussy” for this. He’s normal.
Eren Jaeger is still the best written character in AOT, and the fact we see his emotions just furthers that point for me.
Ending note: My apologies I’m not good at writing and this was not written to attack people who disliked the ending, everyone is entitled to their opinion. The only thing I will not accept is either side attacking people who don’t have the same opinions as them or attacking Hajime Isayama for how he ended his own story when he knows the characters the best.
