Attack On Titan Chapter 97 Thoughts
We’re finally moving forward!
Aside from the fact that I can’t stand Eren’s stubble-beard, I actually don’t mind his appearance in Marley after reading the chapter.
It’s a strange decision on the Survey Corps’ part considering how important Eren is, but it does have a thematic purpose in contrasting three different perspectives - Eren’s, Reiner’s and Willy’s. It’s also in line with the thematic idea of taking risks to achieve something.
Willy sort of just accepts the role and the memories passed down to him. He’s complacent because “things have always been like this”. The Tyburs are essentially the Reiss for this arc, with their reasoning to keeping the status quo being “it’s the Marleyan’s fault that they abused the power they got”, instead of putting a stop to the whole thing.
The question with them that remains is what exactly they are going to reveal at the festival. Willy’s words could be interpreted as wanting to fix things because they only stood by and watched, but considering they are the ones that are keeping this whole system up, this is questionable. The Tybur family’s existance illustrates the thematic idea of “taking responsibility”, which has also been there for a while - Eren mused that with great power comes great responsibility back in the training flashback, and this is also one of the reasons Kruger trusted the Titan power to Grisha. He essentially told Grisha to take responsibility and acknowledge what he has done wrong.
The Tyburs are the anti-thesis for that because they’ve kept the system up. Willy is essentially saying *the Marleyans gotta take responsibility for it themselves, not my problem”, even though his family is the one who could end this whole thing. At this point, somebody has to properly take responsibility, be it Marley or Eldia, perhaps both of them, because both sides have done horrible things.
Willy’s perspective is a contrast to Eren, who talked about the difference between having a choice and not having a choice and from all the three perspectives was the most free to choose to fight. He could’ve just become a regular person working on the fields to get by, but he chose to fight the Titans. He chose to go and find out the truth. He chose to move forward. Ironically that is how Eren adopts Reiner’s advice in the training days - keep fighting; you will grow stronger and the world will change for the better.
Reiner himself has a completely different reaction to everything going on, however, because of the brainwashing he’s gone through.
Reiner moves forward not seeing the bigger picture and through that contributes to making things worse. He says he’s not friends with the devils of Eldia as he talks about the plans to destroy Wall Rose, while during his time in the training corps, he actually does befriend many of the cadets there. It’s painfully contradictory and once he is confronted with it directly when Marco dies because of his actions, he breaks. I adore this character writing for it’s nuance and I think this chapter has done the best job at showing the contradictions of Reiner’s character, instead of just telling you it’s a thing.
Then we see him try to kill himself, like the lone old man from his village did when they were undercover, but he can’t because he still has somebody to live for. Oh hey, can’t wait for the kids to be killed because this is Attack On Titan.
There’s the idea of perfection and imperfection being thrown around here. The hero Helos was perfect, but hollow inside. While the people in Paradis move forward making many mistakes and we’re told by Eren’s mother Carla that Eren is fine as he is - he just needs to do his best. It’s okay to not be perfect all the time, it’s simply important to keep fighting to overcome those flaws.
In case you didn’t figure it out yet, the story is also pretty anti-imperialist. Magath calls Marley’s path of conquest self-destructive and wishes for the Marleyans to learn the truth about war, while the Tybur family withholds it all. While Eren muses that he probably wouldn’t have been so eager to go to enlist in the military if he knew the truth about how terrible war is.
While having that almost-suicide in there, the chapter in general actually has the most lightheartedness and hope we’ve had in a while and I welcome it. Bertholdt’s sleeping poses and Eren’s words cheering up Falco made me smile. Reiner chooses to go on living for those he still has. We finally see the hope in the darkness, even if it is just bits of it.
I also really like seeing Annie being a bad liar. Eren called her that, but we’ve never really seen her actually be very bad at it.
This really was a very thematically rich chapter, but I also really do appreciate it for giving a more confident direction to the plot. Good stuff.
