Hello once again, Mrs. Momtaku! After you have replied my questions, I have been able to conclude them. However, I have raised a question anew... on the death of Commander Pixis. Considering how you have analyzed many a great things, it has come to me surprising how this event avoided your valuable gaze. Perhaps related to his death concurring with other important events... it also, in my opinion, signified the past and way of middle ground was forever lost at that moment, as Shadis had stated.
Oh dear. You are correct that Pixis got nary a RIP from me in chapter 124 😥 If I had to list excuses I'd say one of them is that from the time of his transformation in chapter 119 to his final death in 124, we saw Eren's head literally flying off his head followed by all those many months of intense Paths chapters which provided plenty of distractions and much time to deal with the fact that both Pixis and Nile were goners. Plus there was just so much process in those month. So much.
But for sure, the deaths of adult leaders like Erwin, Pixis, Nile, Magath, Shadis is the shonen way signifying change. And in this case, since the government immediately fell into Floch's nasty brand of government, it was a death of all moderate and reasonable leadership as well, or as you say, the middle ground being lost forever.
Thank you for the meta and your lovely analysis of the death of Pixis. I'll be sure to raise a drink in his honor next time I have one.
The irony of this is just hurting me. Sasha who once saved the child from being eaten, killed by Gabi and now Gabi is the one saving the child all over again
Reiner takes a rest and Gabi gears up for action while the 104th try to make sense of what's happening. We bid farewell to Nile and Pixis, and finally, at long last, say hello again to Annie. The focus is on the grounds of Shiganshina in chapter 124, "Thaw".
I’m calling this maneuver the Full Eren, in which your mounting resentment gets the better of you and you to do crazy shit.
Connie’s…been through a lot. Like, everyone here has been through a lot, but for him, it’s… a lot a lot. He lost his home, his family, a couple of his friends, had to kill people against his better nature, lost his best friend, and then Eren started working with Zeke.
He’s lost a lot, and it seems to have finally gotten to him. Sasha’s death seems to have done it. He’s become more and more bitter recently and he’s become more and more resentful. When you get shat on by the world, it gets easy to think you deserve a break.
Your toilet clogs, your car dies, and your girlfriend dumps you all on the same day, and so you start expecting things to start going your way again. Maybe you even expect people to start showing some kindness to you. Because you’re going through a lot.
Then, when things don’t really start going your way, you get pissed.
Connie’s entire freak out here basically amounts to this:
It’s not fair!
Armin got to come back to life by eating someone. And he’s Armin. They were originally going to bring back Erwin, but they went with Armin instead, the bright but inexperienced one.
Now there’s a repeat of that happening, but this time Armin tells Connie they have to choose strategically, not with their emotions.
It’s not fair!
Connie’s definitely being irrational here. Armin never asked to be brought back; Connie’s anger should be directed at Jean or Mikasa.
And of course what Armin is saying doesn’t imply that Connie’s mom is unimportant. I’m sure Armin does value her life, it’s just that he’s not thinking in those terms. In terms of bettering Paradis’ current situation, bringing back Pixis has more value than bringing back Connie’s mom. That frame of reference is what’s relevant here.
No one denies that choosing Armin over Erwin wasn’t strategically sound. Even Armin himself. But going against this logic before doesn’t mean they should just ignore it completely now.
It makes sense to revive Pixis instead of Connie’s mom. That doesn’t say anything about her value as a human being.
But now, Connie’s decided he’s entitled to some kind of break and he’s going to get it, and fuck you if you try to stop him.
People can do cruel things when they’re aggrieved.
What Connie is doing is awful. He’s going to revive someone by killing a kid. Doing that to bring back Pixis would have some sense to it, but here, Connie is just being selfish.
He’s not doing this for the sake of everyone around him; he’s doing it for his own sake and his mother’s.
Compare this to Eren.
Eren is doing this for the sake of everyone around him, but that is outweighed by the cost of all the people who’ll die. Killing billions for the sake of millions will never not be wrong.
Meanwhile, sacrificing Falco to revive Pixis would arguably be fair, since Pixis would be better able to help people than Falco. Or Connie’s mom for that matter.
He would be Paradis’ new leader, and he’d clearly be good in that role. He’s smart, personable, and fair. He has expertise, but knows when to let other people, even completely inexperienced people, take the lead, as he did when defending Trost. These are all things you need in a leader.
He’d be the best person who could lead Paradis.
But this is Attack on Titan, so of course they had to kill him instead.
Speaking of Eren, I love how the end of the world is mostly a background event in this chapter. Apparently we’re getting every loose end out of the way before the main action begins!
I for one believe that killing billions of random people is a bad thing. Many would disagree with me, but whatever.
The best part about this chapter is how it systematically deconstructs every brain dead argument fans are making to justify Eren.
The very first thing this chapter points out is that Eldians will die too. There are Eldians all over the world and they’ll be crushed with everyone else. And because this is Attack on Titan, we can clearly see a mom crying with her baby on just the second page.
But I guess Eren considers them race traitors or something for hating Paradis.
Oh, yeah, and also he just assumes they hate Paradis.
Connie isn’t the only irrational one in this chapter.
Next thing is Jean victim-blaming the people Eren is about to kill. That’s what it is, victim-blaming, and I’ve actually seen it thrown about to justify the Rumbling.
These people are going to be massacred, but…they brought it on themselves! They started this fight! They can’t complain about dying, they chose to hate on Paradis!
The chapter rightfully casts this as fishing for excuses. “They” is a very broad term here. Most of the people in that “they” are not involved in the fighting and are just people living their lives. Lots of them probably hate Paradis, but so what? They’re just random people with no power to harm Paradis.
Those people probably also hate Eldians, and many Eldians are clearly hurt because of that bigotry, but who cares?
Eren clearly doesn’t, because he’s killing the Eldians too!
Eren is killing everyone outside Paradis, regardless of whether they’re Eldian or not, regardless of whether they hate Paradis or not.
That’s the final thing the chapter points out. Many of the people who’ll die are not involved in the conflict, like Onyankopon’s country.
Conflict is a bad thing because it hurts people and destroys lives. To limit this destruction, soldiers are required to distinguish between civilians and enemy combatants. Shoot at the enemy soldiers, not the guy who just happens to live down the street. The point is to limit people’s suffering. Otherwise…you end up with what Eren’s doing.
Slaughtering people because they’re not on your side.
Almost everyone who’ll die are just people living their lives. Eren is killing them because for all his talk about the value of life, he actually rejects that idea. As I’ve said before, Eren is basically a nihilist.
He has no morals. He has no principles. He has no ideology. He just wants his friends to live. That’s a good cause, but it is not tempered by anything that you’d call “thought.”
Eren’s problem is that he has no vision.
He has no vision for himself, the world, or even his friends, the very people who’s doing this for. He wants them to live, but not being dead isn’t the most visionary life goal.
He wants his friends to live long lives, but he doesn’t seem to care about what they do with those lives, not even in a friendly “Hey, so what’ve you got planned for this week?” kind of way.
He can’t imagine people having dreams because he’s never had any himself, aside from wanting other people to survive to live their dreams. Eren is what you could call “thriving-challenged.”
I don’t know if Eren will succeed, but the story clearly does not support the Rumbling, and that’s good.
The Founding Titan’s power is apparently a lot cruder than most assumed. Eren unhardened the walls, but he had to cancel all hardening to do it. And he apparently cannot control all titans. Come to think of it, Eren’s speech last chapter was broadcast to all Eldians, not just the ones on Paradis, even though he has no reason to tell Eldians outside of Paradis what he’s doing.
I don’t know where Isayama is going with this, but it makes for an interesting limitation. Wielding the full power of the Founding Titan has been compared to being a god, but now the Founding Titan isn’t looking so omnipotent anymore.
That’s not much of a limitation, since Eren can still flatten the world at will, but that just makes him like the Death Star. An imprecise, hulking planet killer.
But, just maybe, vulnerable to a smaller-scale attack.
So Annie’s back. Isayama had to do it if he wanted to make it up to the fans for a mostly Gabi-centric chapter.
I don’t really get the anger people have for Gabi. Yeah, she’s been an ass before, but…that’s the point?
Her character arc is that she learns how to not be an ass.
She’s already made up with Falco and Kaya, and it seems she’s going to be on at least neutral terms with Armin and Mikasa, all that’s left is to make nice with Connie for killing his girlfriend.
That may not be possible, but it’ll be a sign of how much she’s grown to even try it.
Gabi’s arc is a good sign for where this story is going. She was a brainwashed warrior, but by being shown kindness and mercy, she’s realized how wrong she was. In that way, she’s a better person than Eren.
Eren never could see past the hatred the outside world had for Paradis. It never seemed to occur to him that people could be made to think differently. It was pretty lazy of him.
That’s a pretty good word for it, actually. Lazy.
Everyone else was actually trying for a peaceful resolution, meanwhile Eren was just bumming around not helping. He sort of seemed to be waiting for a solution to fall into his lap. He must have forgotten he’s the main character of Attack on Titan.
Eren never fought for peace; he gave up too easily.
Gabi, meanwhile, has actually changed. She was shown the humanity of her supposed enemies and she’s reevaluated her worldview.
Eren has said he understands his enemies now, but that’s such a shallow change. He understands they have lives they live through, but he clearly doesn’t value their lives any more than he previously did.
So, yeah, Gabi’s a pretty good character, and a pretty good person. I hope she lives.
Another A+ goes to Kaya this chapter, who’s finally come around to Gabi.
I’m not sure how I feel about how quickly she changes her view on Gabi, but I get the logic. In that moment, as Gabi was standing over Nile’s titan, Kaya saw the same daring selflessness she saw in Sasha. That’s what wins her over.
That leads to the talk about people having devils in them. I like how the series talks about this here. Everyone has a capacity for wrongdoing. We all struggle with it sometimes.
What’s great about this is that the series is talking about the faults in human nature in a way that allows for choice and free will.
This is a more complex understanding of human nature. It’s not like what you see in places like 4chan or Reddit, where people just say that humans are selfish and we can’t do anything about it. People have no free will because we’re just slaves to our “violent nature” and that’s why war is inevitable and blah blah blah.
According to this scene, people struggle to not do evil. Implicitly, this means that some people choose to do evil. They give in. This notion allows for ideas like responsibility to exist. That’s good, because it’s true!
Compare this to Frieda’s worldview, which is similar but subtly different. She believed that the world’s cruelty meant we needed to be kind to others to the point of subservience.
Frieda saw kindness as a response to the world’s cruelty; in 124, kindness is framed as something that can directly change the world and make it less cruel. It is proactive, ironically by not doing something. Not giving in to the devil inside you.
I really hope Tia Ballard plays Yelena in the English dub of season 4. She’d be great in the role.
I can say that with more confidence than Yelena can say Zeke is special, that’s for sure. She’s just now starting to realize that Zeke isn’t all that special, or really even all that smart, and now she just wants a chair to sit down in.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to her, but it looks like Floch is going to try and take over, so she’s probably toast.
I don’t expect Floch to get anywhere far, since he’s presumably doing this to keep the throne warm for when Eren gets back, and Eren doesn’t want it. Floch will dispose of the volunteers but will be himself disposed of when (if?) Eren returns to Paradis and inevitably rejects the role of king.
…Is Historia even technically still the reigning monarch? Her Prime Minister was murdered and her government was overthrown by a coup with popular support.
Jeez, this probably shows how much she’s been a nonentity more than anything else. Her majesty’s government was deposed in a coup with the backing of the people, and she just…wasn’t a factor!
At this point, there has to be something big going on with Historia if we’re being made to wait this long for her to enter back into play. Set ups and payoffs are a basic part of any story. The longer Historia’s inevitable role is withheld from us, the more payoff there will need to be.
I don’t doubt that there could be a satisfying payoff, but the curiosity is starting to become palpable.
...Crap, so this what it’s like to be powerless in the face of something you have control over.
