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[nuri148]

The Rumbling's Math (or lack thereof)- Part II

The Time Factor

Finally, there is the question of time. We don’t have an exact timeline of the events between Eren waking up the Wall Titans and the Battle of Heaven and Earth, but we do have the speed:

If the rumbling covers 600 km in half a day, that’s 1,200 km per 24 hours – 50 km/h (for details on horse speed, you can check my essay Distances in AoT). That’s also about the fastest a real ship can go, so I’ll assume their speet is the same both on land and in water.

Unlike normal titans, wall titans do not go dormant at night, so they advance 24/7 (ch. 126). It makes sense, too, since, if they’d stopped at night, people could simply surround them towards the already trampled areas, saving a lot of lives, and the combat planes could gun down a good number of them as well—as long as they stayed out of reach of the rock-hurling titans sprouting on Eren’s back.

Since the manga does feature a nice map of Paradis and Marley, we can try to calculate how long it would take for the Rumbling to get to Fort Salta.

Some notes on how I worked the map:

Wall Maria has a diameter of 960 km. From atop the 50 m walls, the line of horizon lies 25 km far. Paradisians ignore the existence of the ocean, so the nearest coastline must be at least 25 km away from the wall (realistically, a bit more, since certain atmospheric conditions can make visible things that are usually below the line of horizon, but let’s keep things simple and say 25). Therefore, the island of Paradis would be 960+25+25= 1,100 km of minimal width.

Please note that, although the island of Paradis is based on the island of Madagascar, the diameter of Wall Maria alone (960 km) is over 1.5 times the width of the actual island of Madagascar (580 km).

The island width in my (printed, as It’s easier for me to do this stuff with actual ruler and pencil) map is 7 mm, so all measures are calculated upon this scale of 7 mm = 1,100 km.

Before all the titans cross the strait into Marley, they need to assemble. They can’t just emerge from the walls and start walking, or else they’d destroy Paradis first, the very land the Rumbling is supposed to protect. So they’re likely walking in a more or less single line along the path the now torn walls leave (more like a trench, since the bottom 10 m of every titan are underground forming the wall’s foundations) until reaching the sea, from where they swim to the coast of Marley. This line, for the titans in the further edge of wall Maria, would be just over 1,500 km, so 1,500 ÷ 50 = 30; it would take them one day and six hours just to clear the walls and gather on the coast to start their march onto Marley—which, incredibly, ch. 126 pretty much confirms.

It’s worth noting that, in contrast to the impossibly fast horses of the Utgard castle siege, this time Connie and Falco are shown to spend the night on their way to Ragako.

Mind you, even when trying to minimize destruction within the island, the titans in walls Sina and Rose still have to breach the distance between those walls and wall Maria, so there will be a non-negligible strip of scorched earth between the three walls—as the manga itself acknowledges in ch. 125.

We know the Rumbling does not cross the sea from the port where the Scouts board the Azumabito ship, as it shows no signs of titans having passed. The port seems to be in a straight line south of Shiganshina, which is not the closest point to Marley. The closest point to Marley is nearer to the Yarkell-Krolva-Quinta axis, and general consensus is that Liberio is near this point.

Now this is where things get murky, or Yams forgets all about math again. Here’s the map I printed, with the distances calculated based on the (minimum) Paradis island witdh of 1,100 km = 7 mm on paper.

https://i.postimg.cc/ZRM2nXSX/image08.jp

And those distances are HUGE. Plus, Liberio, Odiha and Fort Salta—the three key locations of the Rumbling and the Battle of Heaven and Earth, are in a triangle, not a line. And at 50 km/h, the time it takes to get from one to the other is also remarkably long:

Scale:                 mm      km                 Time to reach at 50 km/h

Paradis width     7          1.100,00         (in decimal)   (in hrs:min)   (in days)

Paradis-Marley   6          942,86            18,9               18:54             0 d 18 h 54 m

Paradis-Ft Salta  99        15.557,14       311,1             311:06            12 d 23 h 6 m

Odiha-Ft Salta    75        11.785,71       235,7             235:42            9 d 19 h 42 m

Paradis-Odiha    42        6.600,00         132,0             132:00            5 d 12 h

For context, the 11.785 km from Odiha to Fort Salta is only a bit more than the current SCL-CDG flights between Santiago, Chile and Paris, France (11,666 km). That’s how far those 2 are. Hold on to that commercial aviation reference.

In this sense, the only way to destroy those three as seen in canon would be a curved trajectory: cross the sea and turn towards Odiha, flattening Liberio in the process; turn left again in Odiha towards Fort Salta. This would reduce a bit the time needed to connect all 3 places, though not significatively. Another possibility is that Eren’s splitting the titans in two or more columns in order to target more densely-populated areas and strategic bases first (like the base in the north of Marley that  Yelena points at right before Ft Salta and never gets mentioned again), but then again, this would leave large swathes of land untouched, serving as refuge for everyone smart enough, and close to the rumbling’s border enough, to escape sideways, unlike Rickon Stark in GOT, but nothing in canon suggests that.

Also, let me remind you again that the titans’ column is made of several ranks, so its total width is much less that if we just lined up all the titans side by side. Here are the ranks width projected onto the previous map at scale; remember that the advancing column has between 3 and >6 ranks, so the actual width of the whole thing is probably between the 4- and 5-rank values, if not less (the rank width are the brown “rows” in the image).

Ranks   Titans/rank      Rank width in km

1           358.600            8.965         (Discarded)

2           179.300            4.483         (Discarded)

3           119.533            2.988         (true in some sections)

4           89.650              2.241         (true in some sections)

5           71.720              1.793         (true in some sections)

>6         <59.767            <1.494       (true in Odiha and Fort Salta columns)

Next we have the Alliance. We aren’t told how long it takes them to reach Odiha from Paradis on the Azumabito ship. Their route must be slower than the titans, though, as only super-fast modern ferries can reach 50 km/h, so it would take them no less than a week to get there. They arrive just before the titans, though, who, by my calculations, would need only five and a half days to get there straight from Paradis, so this supports the theory that the Rumbling would not advance in a straight line. Or that Yams just didn’t do the math, which should surprise absolutely no one at this point.

However: the Alliance escapes Odiha by flying boat (plane) just as the titans are arriving. But by the time they spot the Founder and Fort Salta, they are behind the mass of Titans. This supports the two-column theory, as the only way for the titans (50 km/h) to have such advantage against a plane (~300 km/h) is to have a very generous start, that is, heading for Fort Salta straight from Liberio coast, without deviating to Odiha first.

The glaring problem with this part, though, is one that, if you’re lucky enough to have taken more than two or three plane trips in your life, probably already realised: there’s no way in hell that that tiny plane, which isn’t even fully fuelled, can cover the distance between Odiha and Fort Salta.

The flying boat appears to be based on the Kawanishi H8K, a Japanese WW2 flying boat. At a length of 29 m, it was smaller and had less fuel capacity than the Airbus A318 of today. Its cruise speed was 296 km/h. At that speed, it would take over a day and a half to get from Odiha to Fort Salta.

                                                  Time to reach at cruise speed

Cruise speed      Distance          in decimal        hrs:min       in days

296.0 km/h         11,785.7 km      39,8                  39:48           1 d 15 h 48 m

The above number is net time, that is, if the plane didn’t stop at all. But a plane that size only has a 5,000-7,000 km range—with a full tank. Only big long-haul airliners like the Boeing 747, Airbus A330 and up can travel more than 10,000 km without refuelling. If the plane did pit-stops, it could work but, the thing is, where on the Titan-flattened earth is Azumabito’s flying boat going to land and refuel?

If the Rumbling advances in two or more columns, there might be available non-destroyed airstrips along the road to stop, but if that’d be the case, it’s a huge thing, more than worthy of showing up in canon, isn't it? Yet they make it look like a short flight.

80 % of humanity, dead

Actually, I’ve no problem with this number. Some people tend to conflate 80 % of the world’s population with 80 % of the world’s surface, but this is wrong. People are not distributed evenly across our world and neither would they be in AoT’s world. There’s no shortage of maps available on the internet showing population density. as a sample, this one showing 25, 50 and 75 % of our world’s population:

So no, Eren needn’t to trample everything to kill everyone.

If anything, what bugs me about the 80 % is that neither Eren not ANYONE at that point can possibly know what percentage of humanity perishes in the Rumbling. This is because the actual extent of the damage and body count can't be known until weeks, if not months, after the Rumbling stops: they don't have internet or satellite phones, radio towers would be out, so data assessment and communication would take time. Also, because the power of the titans ceases to exist after Eren’s death, he couldn’t possibly remember this info from the future Attack titan (it's a closed time loop, so they can't see things in paths from after the time loop). One more oversight from Isayama, who has proven time and again to be shit with numbers. He could have just said Eren wiped out "most of humanity", with Armin confirming the number in the epilogue, but no, he just had to pull more random numbers out of his ass. The only way Eren could have known what percentage of humanity he’d kill would be for him to thoroughly study the available population data and chart the route of the Rumbling accordingly, but this is Eren we’re talking about. He may go as far as to target the cities with the bigger font size on the map, but you know he won’t ever crunch the numbers.

I find it interesting, too, that no one seems to care about all the other things destroys. Save for a brief mention by Willy Tybur in ch. 100 (and I think Hange also mentions something in passing at some point, will add if I find it).

Final musings

I have no conclusion for this rant more than that the geography and maths of the Rumbling make no more sense than the geography and maths of the walls, that is, little to none at all. The TL:DR of this is that there aren’t enough titans to cause the level of destruction the manga shows in as little time as the manga suggests, and that the timing of the alliance flight and pursuit is all over the place.

There are two questions that remain a mystery and could provide an answer to the incongruencies of the Rumbling. Unfortunately, canon says nothing for or against this, so strictly speaking, they are more headcanon meant to explain the gaps in the manga rather than an informed interpretation of canonical events.

The first question is whether Eren’s founder is capable of creating more titans than the ones existing within the walls. As we’ve seen, the roughly 400k titans we have are too few to cause that level of destruction in just a few days. Being able to create more titans could allow to reach the necessary number to destroy the whole continent within a week. However, if Eren were able to create titans out of thin air, it’d make no sense to awake the wall titans in the first place, spreading terror on Paradis before crossing the sea. Just make a gazillion titans appear on the coast of Liberio and go.

The second question is how much control Eren actually has on the wall titans, and how far reaching that control is. Does he have to be within a certain distance of the titans to order them to march? Do they sense humans the way mindless titans do so you just tell them “go” and they’ll find their way to the next densely populated spot? Can Eren order one titan 2,000 km away to walk or stop? Or do the orders pass from close-by titans to far-flung titans like a network? Can he control them individually?

Though Reiner says in Ch. 124 that “the founding titan is able to control all titans and subjects of Ymir as it sees fit” the answer to that question seems to be he can’t or, if he can, he can’t control more than one individual titan simultaneously. We can see evidence of this a few panels later, when Armin notes the mindless titans born of Zeke’s scream have started eating Eldians (looks like Eren forgot to tell those what to do), as well as the panels in later chapters where we see titans tripping and falling. Do those become stragglers, following the rumbling from way behind? Or strays, walking aimlessly in random directions?

Are they still bumping into the White Cliffs of Dover?

[nuri148]

The Rumbling's Math (or lack thereof)- Part I

Hi, I’m Troy McClure. You may remember me from “Distances in AoT” and “How big are the districts in AoT?” Today, I’m going to show you how the maths of the Rumbling also make no sense whatsoever.

To see how the big  the Rumbling would be, how much destruction it could cause and how fast, the first thin we’ll do is calculating how many titans hide in the walls and how big they are. This isn’t complicated... in theory.

THE WALL TITANS’ SIZE

Canon gives their height (60 m) and extra materials provide a nice diagram of them, so the rest of dimensions can be calculated easily by rule of 3.

So each titan is

60.0 metres tall

19.5 metres wide (at the shoulder)

10.5 metres thick (front to back)

  9.0 metres foot length

First obstacle: thickness. As seen in the manga, the walls aren’t that thick. It’s true that the diagram is of Berthold’s Colossal, rather than the walls’ colossals, though, so it’s possible the Wall Titans are thinner. Or maybe they’re soft and are compressed inside the walls lol.

The other “difficulty”, as usual, is that there are a number of variables we just have to eyeball or take as face value, namely:

The actual perimeter of the walls

For simplicity’s sake I’ll use the [physically impossible but] generally accepted notion that the walls are 3 concentric, perfect circles of 250, 380 and 480 km of radius respectively.

That means the circumference of the walls is:

Wall Sina                      1,572 km

Wall Rose                     2,388 km

Wall Maria                     3,016 km

Total circumference    6,976 km

The districts walls

To this we must add the length of the districts walls, which unlike the circumference of the wall, we don’t know and, as I’ve discussed before, the graphic evidence we have is quite poor and contradictory at best, when not simply incoherent. In our world, it would make sense if the districts were different sizes (there is a reason we always hear about the same ones, after all), but we tend to imagine them as all the same size which, if we take into account that the walls were created by ₊˚⊹ magic ₊˚⊹, isn’t without logic—In that case, Utopia residents probably enjoy larger houses at lower prices than, say, their Trost counterparts.

From the measures taken for my last essay, the curved walls of the districts that jut out from the main wall seem to be between 620 and 2,900 metres long; from all the different approximations (nine) that I was able to measure, I got an average district wall length of 1,312 metres. A bit bigger than Carcassone’s inner city. I’ll take this measure as standard size.

So 1,312 m × 12 districts = 15,744 m or 15.75 km

Putting it together

So we have a total of:

6,976 km of walls + 15.75 km of districts walls = 6,991.75 km of titans standing side by side.

I’ll round that up to 6,992 for simplicity.

6,992 km = 6,992,000 m

Each titan is 19.5 m wide

6,992,000 ÷ 19.5 = 358,564 titans.

Based on this (approximate) numbers,

There are 358,564 titans inside the walls.

A tad fewer than the “tens of millions” Willy Tybur says in Ch. 99. —This might be him [or Marley’s propaganda] blowing it up to get his way, as Eren himself speaks of “thousands” when discussing the Rumbling (sorry, lost the ch. number where he says so)

COVERAGE

Still, almost 358,600 titans are a lot of titans. How much damage can they do?

A lot, sure. Every life is precious. But in a planetary scale, the extent and seriousness of the actual destruction depend on a lot of variables, for instance:

How do they move? They advance in a tight formation, but how tight? Do they tread carefully to make sure they stomp everything evenly or do they just walk on and if they miss spots, well, good luck for those who were on that spot, I guess.

From what I can infer from the manga, the latter is true. The titans walk blindly, eyes to the front, they don’t see what they step on. We even see some tumbling and falling in some panels. They also walk close, but not grazing shoulders.

That brings up another question that doesn’t have a clear answer: what happens when they encounter an obstacle that’s too steep or tall to just step on? What if they run into, say, the 110-metres-tall White Cliffs of Dover? Do they surround it? Or do they keep bumping into them forever, like a faulty Roomba?

Fort Salta itself doesn’t look like something the advancing column could simply climb. Maybe a couple of titans could haphazardly find the road that leads to the top of the mesa, if that road was wide enough (20 m minimum) for a titan to walk on it which, by the looks of it, doesn’t seem to be the case (for reference, New York’s 5th Avenue is 16,5 m wide, not counting the sidewalks).

Either way, since we don’t ever see any titans going backwards to finish the job, there would totally be “pockets” of land left untouched by the Rumbling. (Funny that Yams didn’t think about this, seeing as his hometown itself is surrounded by mountains.)

Moreover, there is the question of how much terrain do they cover at a given time. If all 358,600 titans walked in a single row side by side, that line would extend for almost 9,000 km—But they would leave a lot of undamaged “pockets” behind, either because of the space there is between each individual foot and step, and because any fallen titan would create an even bigger space in between, or shrink the line. Imagine a bunch of gardeners each with a lawn mower advancing on a football field; there will be strips of unmowed lawn left behind in the spaces between them, unless you send in a second row of gardeners mowing those strips.

Therefore, it’s only logical, as canon shows, that the titans advance in a multiple rank (row) formation. Though “formation" might be a misnomer, as they don’t seem to be very evenly spaced, nor is it clear how many ranks there are. Here, I’ve calculated the rank length based on how many ranks there are. Please note that, for this, I’ve bumped the titan width to 25 m, as the titans walk close side by side but not so close that they touch shoulders.

Ranks  Titans/rank        Rank width in km

1            358,600                8,965

2            179,300                4,483

3            119,533                2,988

4            89,650                   2,241

5            71,720                   1,793

In the panoramic views from ch. 126 onwards, there seems to be between 3-5 ranks. However, in Odiha (ch. 132) and in the final battle, the column is much thicker. It is likely, too, from the looks of the final battle, that the ranks are higher in number close to the Founder Titan and they thin out to the sides; that would mean the damage is not even across the stampede. Whether the formation stays stable or they concentrate or spread out as they go, in any case, there would seem like the whole group never exceeds 2,900 km width. Which is still a lot, but not enough to destroy the whole continent in less than a week.

There was a meta post I came across while researching for this that proposed that the rumbling moved radially (for maximum coverage), but that doesn’t make sense (not that Eren had any sense to begin with) because the titans are solid objects, not a liquid, so if they were to spread radially, the more they advanced, the more and more space there’d be between them, reducing the destruction considerably.

[nuri148]

New Meta on AO3!!!

The Rumbling's Math (or lack thereof)

Hi, I’m Troy McClure. You may remember me from “Distances in AoT” and “How big are the districts in AoT?” Today, I’m going to show you how the maths of the Rumbling also make no sense whatsoever.

[jean-kirschtussy]

I've seen people push back hard on the idea of referring to Mikasa as "selfish," but I'll argue that referring her in such a way isn't entirely antithetical to her character.

I think a better way to frame it is that a lot of her actions are tinted by individualistic desires. At the start she's determined to protect her family. And even some of her actions within Trost can be framed as her following orders and not being pushed forward by an innate sense of heroism.

IMO, her individualistic desires are embodied in how she disobeys Levi's orders to save Eren from the Female Titan, which immediately leads to her Captain getting hurt.

But she learns from her experiences though and come the next few seasons she doesn't freak out and break away from her squad when Eren is inevitably pulled into danger yet again. Her arc is subtle, but it's there.

And keep in mind that I'm a Mikasa girlie too! I love her to pieces. But I'm the kind of person who wants their favs to be flawed because that's usually how I relate to them, so I feel like erasing said flaws or filing off their edges to make them more palatable feels unfair.

I bring this up because Jean is also a character who people can easily call selfish, as a lot of his goals pre-Trost are rooted in individualistic desires. He wants to live a comfortable life in an increasingly uncomfortable world, and who could blame him?

But I notice that people praise Jean for giving up his individualistic desires, wherein he kisses every prospect of a cushy life goodbye for the greater good, letting that little fantasy coping mechanism dream of his fade away as he re-enters the world he actually lives in.

And yet people aren't as quick to give that praise to Mikasa, who also sees her fantasy hallucinationship dream fade away as she comes back into reality.

Is it because her arc is less succinct than Jean's? Is it because Jean's a man and Mikasa's a woman and life isn't fair? Or is it because some people can't process the nuance of Eren being both someone she loved and someone she gave up for the greater good? Who knows?

[alexdswfan]

The importance of Hange's character in AoT and in Levi's story

This is a rant of mine that I've always wanted to express since I entered the AoT fandom, because the fact that an argument like this can be made where the fandom questions Hange's importance in the story, a character integral to the story and part of the most important side characters, has never sat well with me, especially for someone like me who has Hange Zoë as one of their all-time favourite characters not only from AoT, but from any media ever. The fact that Hange receives such claims from the fandom while other important characters, like Levi or Erwin for example, are not subjected to these sorts of claims, has always rubbed me the wrong way. I never really understood why these claims even exist in the first place and target Hange specifically, but perhaps sometimes there's no explanation to these things. I do want to specify that Hange has slowly gained in popularity especially after the release of season 4 as compared to previous years when Hange hate was definitely more prevalent in the fandom than nowadays.

But with that being said, this claim is unfortunately never truly gone from the fandom, and despite the fact things have improved, it's always relevant to remind the fandom why Hange is important to the story and cannot be so easily erased from it. Maybe for some people, this post won't make a lot of sense as to why it even exists since they already know Hange is an important part of AoT, but I still feel I need to enumerate in greater detail why Hange IS important to AoT's story AND to Levi's narrative as this fandom often times seems to overlook this fact as seen by this reply I've received to a comment I made stating both Hange and Erwin are equally important to Levi. (I might be annoying with this, but it’s something I cannot slide easily. In the end I decided to show the full reply just so you could see for yourselves the extent of some people’s delusions when one is too engrossed in their favourite relationship and fails to recognize the importance of others, which is why they had no problem saying Hange could be erased from the story.)

There are many incorrect facts in this reply and I won't go through all of them as some are very shippy-biased and many blogs out here have already discussed and debated these claims in full (like the Ackerbond which has been debunked by the manga countless times or again the infamous take that Levi chose Erwin over humanity), but I'll counter-argument the idea that "you can take away Hange from Levi's story and it doesn't change anything", going further to explain why it's impossible to erase Hange from the story and from Levi's narrative from the manga's perspective.

(Before I do that though, just want to share a newest reply I received after I called out someone still spewing the same old argument that Levi doesn’t like Hange because Hange is unhygienic and this is how they answer me:)

(To imply Levi and Hange are not even friends, or that Isayama showed that Hange means nothing to Levi, is mind-boggling to me. As you can see, the hate Hange receives from this fandom is unfortunately still relevant.)

Hange's importance to the AoT plot

The first reason why Hange is essential to the story is through the intellect they're showcasing which helps the entire cast to devise plans out of their discoveries or theories that happen to be correct. This intellect actually helps the plot moving forward. One of the best examples of such importance is shown in chapter 37, Southwestward. Hange is the one to prove the walls are made of hardened Titan skin like Annie produced and the idea to use Eren's Titan later to seal the wall in Shiganshina, which is the whole purpose of the second part of season 3 in the anime, comes from Hange. Although Armin also speculated on the fact the walls are made of hardened Titan skin (in chapter 34), Hange is the one to scientifically prove it. Without this important discovery, the whole mission to go to Shiganshina to seal the wall and the reason Eren needs to train his Titan to harden his body later in the story wouldn't have been possible. The rest of the story leading up to the expedition in Shiganshina is shaped around that single discovery made by Hange. Without their scientific approach and their deduction skills, the plot would've come to a halt. Here are panels from chapter 37 showing how that important discovery was made and how Hange (and Armin to a certain degree) exposed their findings to the rest of their teammates in the cart.

Hange is also essential to Erwin's strategic plans. Both Armin and Hange are, but I'll concentrate more in this post on how Hange's theories and ideas are what fuel Erwin's own plans. The example with the discovery of the hardened Titan skin is definitely one of them, as he then plans an entire expedition in order to let Eren use his Titan abilities to seal the hole in wall Maria which will also lead to his own death. Another example where we see how Erwin plans around Hange's theories is in chapter 28, Choices and Consequences. This is after Annie summons other Titans to eat her Titan form in the forest and Erwin orders Levi to replenish his gas and blades. Erwin reveals later to Hange since Hange asks him why he told Levi to do that as they're all in a hurry, and he says he was inspired by one of Hange's theories when they theorized for the Colossal Titan's disappearance someone with ODM gear could've escaped using steam as cover, even though Hange didn't believe in the theory anymore due to Eren's state when he emerged from his own Titan the first time. However, Erwin keeps that idea by theorizing Annie could have done it unlike Eren, which he happens to be right. By giving Levi that order, he knows Levi shouldn't meet with her since Annie goes straight for Eren and Levi's squad as we all know how the story goes. Therefore, without Hange, his strategies wouldn't be as efficient, which is why Hange is not only essential to him but to the plot as a whole. These are the panels showing how Erwin was inspired by Hange's idea to make this plan on the spot.

Not only Erwin respects Hange's theories, but Levi can also be seen respecting Hange's theories multiple times throughout the story, and not only respecting but actually acting on them and basing his own plans around them. One example of this is in chapter 62, Sin, where Hange explains why they find Rod Reiss' testimony suspicious about the destruction of the chapel in which his entire family was killed (we find later by Grisha). That pushes Levi to accept investigating the chapel since he remains the head of the 104th even if Hange joined their group, swayed by Hange's arguments, and this is how the group later finds Eren and Historia. Here is the panel clearly showing Levi following Hange's lead.

Another example where we see Levi clearly be inspired by Hange's theories to act is in chapter 133, Sinners. After the Alliance processes Hange's sacrifice and pitches ideas for how to stop Eren, Levi proposes killing Zeke as one of the ways to stop the Rumbling, inspired by Hange's hypothesis. This then adds a new reason as to why Levi wants to kill Zeke (and not only for Erwin as some people might want to believe), but also to save humanity, guided by Hange's reasoning. And we see later that killing Zeke does stop the Rumbling, at least temporarily, but enough for the Alliance to think of another plan. Hange is then essential to the Alliance even after their death through Levi remembering their sharp intellect.

Related to how Levi acts on Hange's theories, he also praises Hange's leadership skills, like we can see in chapter 52, Krista Lenz, where the Survey Corps are into hiding to help Eren improve his Titan hardening skills. There's a moment when Hange hesitates on the next course of action, but Levi brings the determination Hange needed to fight back by laying out what options they have left. When Levi then compares Hange's answer to something Erwin might have said, he is recognizing the same leadership skills needed to be a commander that Erwin possesses in Hange, which not only is a sort of foreshadowing for what's to come in Hange's storyline, but it shows how both Levi and Erwin see Hange fit to be the next Commander (Erwin naming them as his successor later in the story is proof of Erwin's own trust in Hange's skills). Therefore, this means that the Survey Corps are in good hands regardless of what might happen to Erwin in the future, and we can see later how both were right (despite some people in the fandom criticizing Hange's commanding skills or actions later in season 4, how it's "their actions that led to Eren activating the Rumbling" as that framing is flawed but I'm overlooking that for now).

Hange is also essential for being the mastermind behind the thunder spears, helped by the engineers, weapons that can fight against the Armoured Titan and that will later be the weapons of choice for the Scouts (except Levi because he is a boomer until he does use them and yeah, that doesn't go well for him. Poor Levi :( ) So without Hange, no thunder spears, which wouldn't have gotten the Survey Corps as far as they've come. Here is the panel where we see Hange present the weapon to the rest of the Survey Corps from chapter 76, The Thunder Spears.

It’s thanks to Hange’s sacrifice the Alliance can keep going and the plane can take off with the rest of the Alliance. Despite this still being debated in the fandom, whether Hange's sacrifice was truly needed and whether they killed enough Titans to allow the Alliance to take off, the narrative is definitely framing it as necessary, and that without Hange's intervention in chapter 132, the plane could not have taken off. So Hange is essential for the survival of the rest of the Alliance.

Hange is the one who created the Alliance that can retaliate against Eren. They're the one to bring everyone together, from the Paradis side to the Marley side, which is no easy feat considering the historical tensions and divides between the two nations. But Hange is the main instigator, which makes them incredibly important for the existence of the Alliance in the first place. This panel from chapter 126, Pride, perfectly shows how Hange is the one to approach Pieck and Magath to create an alliance with them and Levi, followed later on by the 104th, Gabi, Falco, Annie, Reiner, Onyankopon and Yelena.

This is another reason why Hange is essential to the story, maybe overlooked but incredibly important, and maybe more so in our current times. Hange is the only character who says overtly “genocide is wrong”, and despite the Alliance definitely agreeing with them as well on that, I think it's important to be said explicitly since people still misunderstand this sentence even when stated explicitly. I've seen some people in the fandom say that what Hange said isn't nuanced or is too "simplistic", but the truth is that genocide is among one of the very few things in life that are actually very black and white. There's no grey area when it comes to genocide, no nuance, no "good reason" that can justify it, no historical trauma that can justify mass exterminations like Eren's or the ones we see nowadays in certain corners of the world. It IS wrong. Case closed. Therefore, Hange's statement is crucial, but more so, they're not afraid to call out their own people (in this case Eren) committing war crimes, even if it's painful or uncomfortable, something that for some reason is still incredibly hard to do even in real life. And Eren isn't just "another Paradis Eldian" to Hange or the Paradis side of the Alliance: Hange and Levi see in Eren something deeper than a mere subordinate (and I know the fandom likes to joke about how Levi and Hange are like the parents of the 104th, but pretty much) while the rest of the 104th with Mikasa and Armin mostly see him as their closest friend, making the heartbreak at having to fight him even more tragic. So that Hange is able to hold Eren accountable after everything he represents to them because genocide is just that wrong and horrific is incredibly strong and courageous, and absolutely necessary. We should definitely take example from Hange's moral clarity as well. Here are the panels in chapter 127, Night of The End, where Hange clearly expresses that genocide is wrong to Jean and Mikasa and then later during the stew scene in the forest where they tell Magath that no one wants a genocide.

Hange’s clear statement about genocide also completely invalidates the criticism AoT sometimes receives for “endorsing genocide or fascism”. The narrative is not neutral: it clearly supports the Alliance and sees them as the right side, so Isayama was not subtle about the message that the Rumbling is wrong. But again, who truly remembers Hange saying that? This is why Hange is essential to the plot and their statements should be remembered more often by the fandom or else people risk misinterpreting the core message of the story.

Also, can we appreciate how insane Hange is for saying that (still from chapter 127):

I think a lot more people should remember Hange's words here instead of using ancient history to justify war crimes. Their moral clarity is spot on (and hats off to Isayama for writing that).

Hange's importance to Levi's narrative

Alright, so you’ve probably all seen me come with this, which is the most straightforward and simple reason to explain why Hange can't be erased from Levi's story, and it's that they save his life after Zeke exploded the cart in which he was too with the thunder spear. Pretty self explanatory, and here is the panel from chapter 115, Support, that clearly shows how Hange is trying to save Levi by lying to Floch so the Yeagerists wouldn't shoot him on the spot.

I'm going on a little tangent here because there's something I want to discuss about what Hange saving Levi means in terms of queer theory. This is obviously an interpretation I have of the scene, so I'm not stating Isayama necessarily intended to add a deeper meaning to this scene except only to show the culmination of Levi and Hange's own theme of mutual care, but I've noticed something about this scene that I find interesting. So, Hange's character as a concept is inherently queer due to their gender ambiguity. I'm not here saying Hange as a person is necessarily queer or that Isayama wanted necessarily to make Hange queer, but that ambiguity makes the concept of their character pretty queer. So it's interesting to see a character like them representing queer concepts about gender save a masculine character that on the other hand represents healthy masculinity: Levi emulates that masculinity through his compassion and empathy and desire to protect others, which is what masculinity actually should be about. To see a masculine character who usually is the one doing all the saving be now saved by a character without a conventional gender subverts the traditional trope of the male character saving others. Not only is he shown in an extremely vulnerable position, but someone else, neither really male or female, ambiguous really, protects him now, which is in my opinion a very interesting interpretation of this scene since it plays with gender roles. What is expected of Levi as the male character is now pushed onto Hange who doesn't have a clear gender, which makes the scene even more compelling from that perspective.

But Hange saving Levi's life is not the only reason why Hange is important to Levi. This reason is too obvious and easy to find and I want to go deeper than that as the person from the start of this post believing Hange could be erased from the story was not considering this reason as very important as seen by the reply below.

So why Hange IS emotionally important to Levi since apparently for some people, saving one's life is regarded as unimportant to someone's narrative? I will show how Hange is important to Levi beyond the trifling matter of saving his life (let me be sarcastic for a moment here lolol) and how this fandom time and time again struggles to truly understand the relationship between Levi and Hange, which is actually quite interesting, because I think Levi and Hange have one of the most straightforward relationships to follow in the story, and yet, some people still manage to misunderstand it.

Hange is emotionally important to Levi since Levi would've been a lot more depressed in the Survey Corps had Hange not been around. He would've been a lot more misunderstood by the people around him without no one to make poop jokes with or to give into his snarky comments, and Erwin cannot replace Hange here as he would've been more distant as the Commander and also in relation to his own dream and struggles around it. Levi needs someone like Hange to act as his "partner in crime" or the Survey Corps' experience for Levi wouldn't have been the same, and that is as important as any story narrative since it would've shaped Levi differently if Hange wasn't around him. I'll link my previous metas about Levi and Hange's communication skills and how Hange treated Levi when he first entered the Survey Corps for more explanation on why Hange is so important to Levi as I've gone into more details in those specific posts. But if I can resume rather quickly, it's because Hange cares for Levi exactly like he cares for them back and for the rest of the AoT cast for that matter, and Hange is among the very few who can perfectly understand his world view. Therefore, Hange cannot be erased from Levi's narrative due to this strong closeness they share together, no matter how hard some people in this fandom wish they could.

There are probably a lot more reasons why Hange is important to the story, but these are the ones I could think of. This post also doesn't cover fully how Hange is important to Erwin even if I showed it a bit, or to Moblit, or to the 104th, or to their own squad, but I wanted mostly to answer the claim of how Hange is meaningless to Levi since that was the topic discussed with that other fan, and this post would've been a lot longer than it already is. I wanted to make a post like that to counter-attack this claim that can't be more wrong and disrespectful to Hange's character and what they represent and to their fans, with the hope that perhaps I won't have to see it anymore circulate among the fandom. I know this is naive as claims like these always persist, and people who strongly believe Hange is not important to the story will continue to cling to that belief, but I'll try to end this already very long post on a more optimistic and positive note: this claim is slowly declining in the fandom like I've stated at the start of this post, especially after the release of season 4, which can only be celebrated. I also hope that with this post, the fandom can cherish Hange a little bit more and remember why they're such an incredible and amazing character to the story, to Levi and to other AoT characters, and to stop spreading this claim that they can be erased once and for all. If Isayama made Hange, it's because they serve a purpose in his story, and to state otherwise is to misunderstand that purpose in the first place.

[rivangel]

in chapter 36, sasha is remembering the moment in the training corps where ymir makes fun of her fake proper accent because of her argument with her father, seeing now that everyone IS connected. she’s coming out of the forest to help her fellow person.

the question, and also the bigger question, is whether sasha putting aside her selfishness to look for survivors in an otherwise desolate place is a form of freedom or slavery.

either way - in the memory - sasha was enslaving herself to this standard of being ‘above’ her rural upbringing. historia (who isn’t short of being a moral compass in the series) is adamant that pretending doesn’t necessarily make sasha someone she’s not; she’s basically acting that way to suit herself. in the present while trying to save the girl, she’s helping her fellow person not out of necessity - sasha didn’t have to stop at the village where apparently it’s ’no longer fit for human life’ - but out of a genuine willingness to help someone else while knowing her own village has probably already fled.

sasha is still sasha even if she’s not “being herself” by being selfish. you could really say selfishness is a core trait to everyone.

in short, sasha is remembering that moment because she’s technically defying who she “really is”, but she desperately is fighting so hard for it. she’s accepting that living in the world IS a privilege.

[rivangel]

(in bad boy) it's also still majorly interesting to me how the Titan-esque 'power' that awakens doesn't just activate the mind but sort of wakes up? the brain itself (but that'd make sense for fighting). it REALLY resembles tiny tendrils of the hallucigenia which is sooo disturbing.

in general, the "life" probably attaches itself to the spinal cord and brain, which is why the weak spot of titans is the nape of the neck, severing the spinal cord from the brain stem which ordinarily paralyzes you completely. (sort of like sleeping -> dreaming hmm)

for Eldians in general, this is probably an arbitrary thing/presence, but it presents itself a lot more the more powerful you become as a titan. so of course, it's more present in Ackermans than Eldians, but less than Titan shifters. Eren possessing like... 3 Titans including the Founder is probably what did it (when it burst out of him after Gabi shot his head off)

[theterpiel]

How AOT's main trio set Ymir free

Eren, Armin, and Mikasa all taught the Founder Ymir valuable lessons, and were instrumental in setting her free. All three of them caught Ymir's attention and she made the effort to reach out to them personally in different ways, observe them, learn from them.

First Eren reached her in the Paths and told her that she's her own person, and can choose what SHE wants rather than follow orders. This was the first time in her long, miserable life, that someone called her a human being. The first time in 2000 years (that would have felt even longer in the Paths, closer to millions of years), that she was told what happened to her was wrong. In her life, she had spent her whole life as a dehumanized slave without any acknowledgement of her own humanity. Eren opened her eyes (literally) to the injustice of her situation and taught her autonomy.

Then Armin arrived to fight Eren, and Ymir watched his every movement closely, even stealing him into the Paths with the Okapi and trapping him there. She watched his conversation with Zeke where he shared that the meaning of life is in appreciating the little moments and the love you already have rather than chasing an unattainable dream. In her life, she longed for an unattainable love/validation from King Fritz who was incapable of giving it to her, since he's a monstrous psychopath. She lived and died yearning for something she would never receive, rather than living for what she had (her daughters). Armin taught her the true meaning of life.

Lastly, Mikasa. From the moment Ymir noticed Mikasa's love for Eren, she was intrigued. She began to peak through Mikasa's lifetime memories, causing her headaches. Then Mikasa killed Eren despite loving him, knowing it's the right thing to do and proving she's not a slave. Ymir herself couldn't do this in her own life, instead choosing to die for the monster she loved, instead of killing him. Mikasa taught her that love does not equal submission.

In the end, all three of the main trio were instrumental in setting Ymir free. In her last appearance, Ymir had a vision of what she wished she had done, what she WOULD have done had she received these three lessons earlier in her life. She would have protected her beloved daughters, the truly important and precious things in her life, rather than being a slave to the abusive king. If she were given another chance, she would have let him die.

In the end, Ymir's deepest most primal desire was a pure and loving human connection, some semblance of tenderness and care, something she was so deprived of. This desire was so strong that it bled into every single Eldian, connecting them all to Ymir through the Paths. One lonely, abused little girl's desperate need to be loved, enveloping every one of her subjects, binding them all to her in an all-consuming web. She has always been desperately reaching out to other people.

In her ill young mind she mistook the king's sick """rewards""" as that love she craved. Eren made her realize "what he did to me was wrong and I have a right to my anger", Armin made her realize "I shouldn't have waited for love from him that would've never come and instead cherished the love of my children", Mikasa made her realize "I should have let him die/killed him myself". Acknowledging all this and making peace with her tragic life and the decisions she made, allowed her to let go. She finally moved on, and in this moment, she appeared not as an immature child, like she did throughout the Rumbling, but now as a grown adult woman.

Ymir's story in the finale is essentially a coming-of-age story from the perspective of a mentally ill, dehumanized slave. She starts the finale as someone with arrested development lashing out at the world, and ends it as an adult at peace with herself. Eren invited her to indulge in her rage. Armin helped her consider what was truly important. Mikasa healed her and allowed her to let go. All three protagonists were valuable and influential in freeing Ymir.