I realize this is a very Me issue, so I didn’t bring it up in my main post for the chapter, but it’s the latest example of a thing that’s really been vexing me.
If I shared every single cap of someone borrowing from Historia’s arc this arc, I don’t think I’d succeed in much except offending my patience and eyes. This isn’t unusual by itself; most characters with strong thematic relevance share their themes with other members of the cast. There is often an ongoing conversation within the story about the particulars of how characters feel about the current theme waging war against them.
Historia hasn’t been present for any of those conversations. Her one contribution to the current plot is going, “What.... no... don’t do that....” when Eren says he’s going to murder everything.
Sometimes you think a character is going to matter more to a story than they actually do. It sucks, but it does happen. The characters you love are not always the characters loved by the narrative.
What frustrates me about Historia is that every single beat of her character arc continues to be relevant. Not relevant simply in that I could write meta about it, but relevant in that Eren breaks OG Ymir’s chains with the power of a direct callback to Historia’s arc.
Scene after scene, language we first see in Uprising is revisited. That section of the story is a mine of importance for what we’re currently seeing, but the driving character behind most of that language is not present. Bits and pieces of Historia’s arc are regularly redistributed to other characters without comment.
Everything that went into Historia’s characterization appears to still be at the forefront of the manga’s story, but Historia isn’t part of it.
It is intensely aggravating.
