Suke

(!!! SPOILERS AHEAD !!!)

So I've been on this website for 11 years and I've never once written a review, until today... Because in all that time, this is the first time I've witnessed a manga take such a hard turn for the worse on a single chapter. It is so bad that it's retroactively ruined iconic moments. I'm almost impressed.

I read 139 one day before the official release and I legitimately thought it was some sort of prank release with fake translations and dialogue. I mean, could the man who wrote 120-123 and 130-131 be the same man giving us sniffing perv Reiner, whiny and confused Eren and 'genocide apologist' Armin (who can let genocide and matricide slide, but don't you dare hurting Mikasa's feelings)? 

Unfortunately, it was no prank and this was the same man after all.

AoT was on its way to become my favorite manga until the last 3-4 chapters. It honestly made me forget that it was a shonen (and perhaps that also clouded my expectations) but alas... It went for the 'romance' route out of nowhere to "resolve" (being generous here) the main plot points. 

All in all, the story was a solid 9/10 throughout the whole series until the last arc, which also made the characters' score decrease since a lot of them ended up being poorly handled. For instance, Hange sacrificing herself so that the alliance could fly away in that plane, only for Falco to turn into a bird titan like an hour later, the whole war hammer titan arc (after all those deaths and all that fighting, the war hammer titan was barely put to use)... Or they straight up turned out to be insignificant to the plot, despite the author hinting something bigger for them and for quite a long time (the parallels between Historia and Ymir meant nothing in the end and the baby didn't even get a name... I can let 'nameless, faceless farmer' slide but 'nameless baby' as their child is a bit much).

Then the final reveal managed to turn Ymir into one of the dumbest characters in manga history and also rendered the whole story pretty pointless. This flipped the overall score upside down for me.

As for positive moments, with all things considered and as corny as the whole 'ghost of the dead friends showing up' is, it was pretty emotional and I thought it was a fairly decent ending for Levi. Even then, it still leaves many questions unanswered, such as:

1.- Why are Gabi and Falco taking care of him... And why isn't Reiner with them? After all, they were the reason he didn't kill himself.

2.- So he killed Zeke for massacring his comrades, and rightfully so... But Annie and Reiner can live happily ever after? Are Connie and the rest forgetting that Pieck was with Zeke when they gassed Ragako and his mother? Also, why didn't we see Connie reunite with his mother?

Very rushed and lazy writing... Par for the course with the rest of the chapter. If Mikasa is an Ackerman, how did Eren manipulate her memories? I could be missing something, but it was made clear that this wasn't possible. And how did she make it to Paradis on foot, especially without her Ackerman powers and with all the land in between turned into dust? 

Despite all this, I'm still going to watch part 2 because I'm an OG anime watcher since 2013 and I want to see some of the best moments animated. I also hold a faint hope that the studio will cut some scenes and change the dialogue in the final chapter to make it more acceptable... I doubt an anime original ending will happen, but who knows. 

I'm also interested in seeing how anime onlies will react. The turn of events will happen in a matter of 2-3 months as opposed to years, so I wonder how it'll be received among them if the ending remains unchanged.