Attack the giant has attracted a large number of followers worldwide thanks to its thrilling action sequences and brain-twisting episodes under the pen of mangaka Hajime Isayama, but its true meaning brings the whole journey into one. Another aspect: the fear of being “the other”. With the Attack on Titan animated series currently in the midst of its final episodes and alongside the terrifying apocalypse caused by Titan, the theme of the total destruction of humanity permeates the work, as according to many way, it’s been around since the first man-eating giants appeared. Wall Maria and eat Eren’s mother in the beginning.
The prominent theme of existential fear has greater historical resonance in understanding the story than simply for entertainment: it is a necessary part of Isayama’s entire social message, specifically is the need to give up bigotry and hatred in order to avoid intergenerational conflict at a fundamental level. In other words, it’s the story of what happens when a cycle of oppression, in which races of humans are successively alienated socially and politically, spirals out of control and turns into a craze. nightmare.
Attack on Titan is about Bigotry’s intergenerational trauma
For much of the story’s opening, the logic of the Attack on Titan world remains a mystery to the reader. It wasn’t until halfway through that the source of monster infestation in the walled city was explained: the people in that city, on an island called Paradis, were descendants of a dominant tribe of people known as the Eldians. the royal family, after centuries of mainland rule, decided to surrender and flee to Paradis (or abdicate according to the told version) leaving behind their formerly subjugated people, the Marleyans, power. As the royal family possessed the Founding Titan, who gave them full power over anyone of Eldian blood through a magical link, this allowed them to conceal their knowledge. with other Eldians for nearly a century before the story begins.
What became clear after Grisha Yeager’s diary was found is that this led to a pre-Holocaust-like situation for the remaining Eldians in the Marley Empire. Forced to live in the slums and endure brutal racial oppression, these Eldians’ most dire fate was their ability to be turned into Titans, which the Marleys used as a form of punishment. punish. The true source of the Titan’s incursion on Paradis is revealed to be Eldian prisoners whom the Marleys have turned into mindless Titans, used as a form of psychological warfare against the Eldians on Paradis to pay chopsticks for the supposed cruelty of their people. Ironically, the Eldians of Paradis were ignorant of this conflict, as the royal family had wiped their shared memory, and the Marleys, too, were unaware of the Eldian ignorance.
What is clear, however, is that the Marleyans are depicted as obnoxiously cruel to the Eldian refugees, with Grisha’s older sister Faye being brutally murdered as a child by a Marleyan military officer. These Eldians are forced to spread a set of beliefs that make them natural-born monsters with the sole purpose of living in service to their adopted Marley state. Their indoctrination was so powerful that it even led young Zeke Yeager to betray his own parents and plot to destroy his own people. This prejudiced environment is expanded upon in the Marley sequel, demonstrating the layered and systematic indoctrination that the Marleyan “Warriors” must follow, with the aim of providing for military needs. by Marleyan.
Attack on Titan shows the danger of turning humans into monsters
Eren, despite possessing the powers of the Attacking Titan, is often portrayed as an outcast among his colleagues in the Survey Corps, mistrusted by the government and often bullied. enemies take advantage. Easily impulsive and prone to rage, Eren is both a sympathetic character and an unrepentant villain, instigating a series of atrocities in what ultimately leads to the end. Turns out to be a genocidal plot to the rest of the world: “Room.”
Eren’s actions do not seem to be without reason as he is a witness to the culturally enigmatic hatred that the people of Marley hold for the Eldians, including the Eldians of Marley themselves. Faced with the possibility of his people facing genocide, when Marley began an all-out assault on Paradis, Eren made the unforgivable choice to use his Primordial Titan’s powers (acquired). from his father’s eating of the Ancestor Titan before) to free the Colossal army. Giants within the giant walls of the city of Paradis, set to crush the rest of humanity to death. While his heel-turning action was quite shocking for fans, in the context of the historical reference to World War II, the analogy foreshadowed Isayama’s intended lesson.
The Eldians and the Marleyans had been in conflict for so long that they didn’t really know who was right and who was right. Both sides acted as aggressors in the conflict, with Eren himself causing a terrorist attack in Liberio (an Eldian slum) following the Marleyans’ declaration of war, completely contrary to wishes of his friends. Despite Eren’s amazing abilities for death and destruction, Isayama has gone to great lengths to prove that, in Eren’s view, he is merely responding to the world’s unrelenting and visceral hostility, and this state of existence often leads to emotional isolation. And it was this feeling of isolation that led him to crime.
What Eren lacks in the compassionate heroism manifests is the fear of being the “other,” someone who is constantly at odds with his environment, oppressed by forces above him and his surrounding colleagues. him as a permanent outsider, which is what makes him this monster. Partly a criticism of typical shounen fare, in which a group of adopted heroes become a supportive family, Eren’s eventual abandonment of his friends in the Survey Corps aims to prove that , as he witnesses humanity’s rejection of him, including them, so he rejects their sense of morality.
Fear of social alienation and rejection is not limited to Eren. His fear recurs throughout the story, in Mikasa’s sadness at being rejected by Eren, in Reiner’s haunting need to atone for his Eldian heritage as a Warrior, in Zeke’s betrayal of his parents. In short, this is the price of bigotry, according to Attack on Titan: it causes one of two things. It either kills off a large number of politically undesirables in a sickly organized fashion or creates a society of broken people who are willing to sacrifice all they hold dear just for the sake of it. be belonging. It’s a clear message, but still relevant in a world where bigotry and prejudice persist. It’s a testament to Isayama’s skill as a writer Attack on giants all twists and turns make sense when viewed through this thematic lens.
