After a fair amount of controversies, a “Final Season” that lasted almost three whole years, and a polarizing manga ending, the anime adaptation of Hajime Isayama’s iconic saga gets an epic, feature-length finale that brilliantly encapsulates why this story became so popular and gives it a satisfying and thematically resonant closure. Wrapping up almost 100 episodes of intense action, brutal deaths, and enough plot twists to leave M. Night Shyamalan slack-jawed with awe was no small task, but what is arguably the defining anime of this generation has come to a fantastic end that pays off spectacularly in nearly every way.
The final episode begins right where the last one left off, with the surviving Scouts and Warriors jumping out of a plane and onto Eren’s massive Founding Titan. The time for negotiation is over, and the only choice is to kill Eren before he kills all of humanity. What follows is essentially an hour-long fight scene, with the rest of the 84-minute runtime devoted to an epilogue. It very much feels like Attack on Titan: The Movie. Seeing the characters fighting more Titans than we’ve ever seen before on top of a colossal monster hundreds of meters tall – while an ocean of Colossal Titans trample the world below them – feels epic in scope. Even outside the main action, the finale cuts away to scenes of the Rumbling annihilating humanity across the globe (including what looks like Tokyo, India, and London), including a soul-crushing yet visually imaginative scene featuring a baby that pays homage to Schindler's List.
Studio MAPPA has struggled to keep up with the production demands of this final season of Attack on Titan, but both specials in The Final Chapters more than delivered on the level of visual quality fans have come to expect. Whether it’s the dynamic and fluid 2D ODM gear scenes – including a standout sequence by returning and legendary animator Arifumi Imai – or the detailed and kinetic clash of Titans, this is the best MAPPA’s Attack on Titan has looked. Seeing all the resurrected Titans, and the vast variety of designs – which somehow also pays off the season 2 opening with all the Titan animals – is very metal. In fact, the entire Battle of Heaven and Earth is just wall-to-wall hero moments for all, with every character getting a cool and memorable glory shot – even Pieck – while Hiroyuki Sawano and Kohta Yamamoto’s score pays homage to the 10-year history of the show with nostalgic music cues, even bringing back Linked Horizon for a fantastic final theme song.
Of course, it’s not all just cool and gnarly fights. After keeping Eren’s thoughts and motivations at arm’s length for the entire Final Season, the finale finally has Armin and Mikasa confront him. Yuki Kaji cements his performance as Eren as one of the all-time best voice performances in an anime, with the finale showing the most vulnerable we’ve ever seen him, and the most emotionally raw Kaji’s performance has been. But he’s not alone, as Yui Ishikawa and Marina Inoue also do some of their best work as Mikasa and Armin, respectively. We’ve seen these two characters struggle with Eren’s betrayal for so long, it is cathartic to finally see them find a way to move forward.
There are plenty of big twists – not just about the hero-turned-mass-murderer, but also regarding Ymir and the nature of the Titans themselves that provide fascinating context about Attack on Titan’s conflict. This has always been a show that recontextualizes itself through mind-blowing reveals, and the finale is no exception. In a piece of exposition that is as clunkily written as it is riveting to see unfold, Eren just outright explains why he committed atrocities. The best thing about the epilogue to Attack on Titan is that it makes every interpretation of Eren’s character somewhat valid. He really was a hero (to some), a devil (to most), a freedom fighter, a slave, and a symptom of a much larger systematic issue.
Most of all, the finale makes it unequivocally clear that Eren Jaeger was wrong. There is no justification for violence and murder, nothing that can make the killing of children right. Sure, much of the ending is basically Code Geass’ Zero Requiem, but what makes this ending great is how clearly it rejects Eren’s thinking.
In my review of the first special, I wrote that it cemented Eren’s place as “one of the most complex anime protagonists of the past decade,” but having seen the conclusion, in hindsight I’ve come to realize I was wrong. The finale makes it clear Eren was actually rather simple. He was but an idiot teenager given godlike powers, a kid with an idiotic plan that was as flawed from the outset as it was destined to fail. This is by no means a criticism of the story, mind you, as it is one of the smartest things the writers have done – particularly in expanding and fleshing out the manga’s closing conversation between Eren and Armin. This is especially true of the montage during the opening credits, which cements Attack on Titan’s stance on the cyclical nature of violence and how unavoidable it is.
So, in the end, was it worth it? If war is meant to continue, the characters are doomed to fail, and humanity is almost destroyed for nothing, what is the point? Well, for one, Attack on Titan has always been a rather grim and hopeless show about how fear drives us to unspeakable violence and hatred, so there’s no surprise that the ending matched the dour and vicious beginning. But what makes the finale so resonant is that it reaffirms what has always been true about this story: No matter how dark and desperate things get – even in the face of unspeakable horrors – we can find things to be hopeful for and reasons to smile, and keep moving forward as long as we can live free of fear.
As a standalone episode, the Attack on Titan finale does suffer a bit from awkward pacing, as it is 80% fights and 20% epilogue, with plot threads from earlier in the story dropped unceremoniously (seriously, was that all Historia was here to do?) and some brief scenes of clunkily written dialogue. Still, none of that lessens the impact of what takes place on the screen, especially when it’s taken in the context of the previous special, which shows the calm before the storm.
As an ending to a saga, however, this is the quintessential encapsulation of why Attack on Titan has captivated audiences for a decade. A show as thrilling, shocking, and violent as this one couldn’t satisfactorily end any way other than with a bang. This is no Game of Thrones letdown, no The Promised Neverland, but the consummate conclusion to a brilliant story, and one of the all-time most metal endings to an anime.
