Between the Uprising Arc airing right now, and the developments in the manga…….I am having a lot of thoughts concerning how Isayama is addressing the cyclic nature of things.
During the Uprising Arc, Hanji was basically warned that the rebellion would simply become the next keepers of order. That just like the Military Police’s secret units had done horrible things in the pursuit of peace, Hanji and co would end up the same.
“It’s your turn now.”
We are seeing that warning come home to roost, with the current political unrest on Paradis. With the way our heroes have quite literally repeated the catalyst of the series. Eren, Mikasa, and Armin have become the mass-murderers that slaughtered innocents in a city. Another angry child has been sent on a spiraling path of revenge, to terrible consequence. And now we have people like Floch crowing about the “New Eldian Empire”, and quite literally wanting to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors.
Everything is about the younger generation swearing to do better, then ultimately becoming their senior as time goes on. Cycles of abuse, violence, and hatred that go on and on. The rebels are now the dictators. The victims are now the attackers.
One reason I think we have the characters of Falco and Gabi is to represent this shifting of generations. The 104th, the ones we started with as kids, are the adults now. They are the ones primarily guiding the story, and the future of the world. So we have Hopeful All-Loving Hero Falco, with a kindness we haven’t genuinely seen in this series before. And we have Gabi, the angry bratty girl that is echoing both Eren and Reiner. The girl explicitly painted as someone people want to save from repeating the mistakes of the past.
I think Falco and Gabi are going to be our determining factor in terms of what kind of message Isayama wants to tell.
Whether he wants to conclude it on a dark note, with these two children either doomed to repeat their seniors’ mistakes……or dead, the hope of a better future gone.
Or whether he wants to leave us with a more hopeful note, with the chance that these two kids and their generation might be able to finally break the cycle.
I think Gabi is the proverbial Canary, the sign of which way the story will ultimately go. Whether she can break free from the toxic world view she was raised on, and learn from Reiner’s (and Eren’s) mistakes. Or whether she’s doomed to death or repeating their problems.
Ultimately, the major problems being faced at the moment are the result of previous generations failing their descendants. Carl Fritz chose to essentially Rage Quit, retreating behind the Walls and erasing the memories of his people. He chose to do NOTHING to resolve the worlds’ problems his empire caused, instead running away from it and asked the world to wait until he was dead to come knocking. He made it the problem of future generations, including passing on his Will so that his heirs could never be capable of deciding for THEMSELVES how to handle the problem. Even with the knowledge of the Truth, Uri or Freida may have decided on other courses if Karl’s Will didn’t bind them. Instead, they were rendered helpless.
And Grisha ultimately left everything on his sons. He chose to ruin his own life, destroy his own family……and then spend his remaining 13 years sitting on the truth, never once lifting a hand to help Keith or anyone else. Then he dumped everything on Eren, while leaving him with a vague order to go to the basement and NO INFORMATION. Like, holy shit dude could you have maybe confided in Keith (instead of telling him to GTFO) or left Eren some written instructions before he ate you?
No, instead these two prominent figures of the story make everything someone else’s problem. The problem for their children to deal with.
My descendants, keep our people imprisoned and let them all die. Keep them ignorant.
Zeke, save the Eldian people.
Eren, avenge your mother and learn the Truth.
Freida and Historia, become God and rule over humanity.
No one wants to take responsibility for themselves. They leave it to others.
I don’t ship it and I don’t think Levi felt anything romantic for her, but you don’t say you want to marry people you just admire. That’s just a blatant misreading of the text. Was she “in love” with him, or was it like a strong schoolgirl crush? I honestly think the latter but like. She canonically did have romantic feelings for him.
Both Yukine and Yato are trying to focus on building new lives–for Yukine, at high school, and for Yato, at college–but when Yato’s father shows up as his professor and a mysterious girl starts tailing Yukine at school, they find that it might not be so easy to escape their demons after all.
As for now I think Benjamin has been set up to be a secondary antagonist and a foil to Tserriednich:
Benjamin
is introduced as a character antagonizing Tserriednich and the
narrative made it pretty clear he hates his brother very much. However,
despite being an enemy of one of the main villains of the arc, Benjamin
is still framed negatively:
As a matter of fact he is
currently one of the main problems for Kurapika’s group differently from
Tserriednich who has yet to act in an aggressive way.
Oh gosh! Where to begin? It’s really the forefather of most young adult stories nowadays. So many of them draw inspiration from it.
Basically, it’s a deep character study that takes an empathetic, compassionate look at each of its five main characters. It shows their desperate desire to connect with people around them but how they suck at doing that. Bender antagonizes, Andrew doesn’t listen and is too quick to judge, Claire is aloof, Brian just wants to do what’s expected, Allison withdraws. But they do connect, once they start breaking out of their shells. They’re all in shells really, in the stereotypes the principal assigns to them: princess, jock, brain, basket case, criminal. But the story takes a deeper look at that and deconstructs those stereotypes, pointing out that each of them have the traits of each one of those stereotypes. In this way the film touches on individuality vs. conformity, and it does so with compassion. It shows that they can connect, that it is possible, and in that way I think of it as a very hopeful movie.
It never condemns any of its characters, though it does condemn some of their actions. It’s honest in terms of how it presents their flaws, and their backstories, and their struggles, and it doesn’t laugh at their emotions ever. It’s really hard not to feel for each of the five characters by the end of the film.
I also like how it contrasts the Janitor and the principal. The janitor is not gonna take the students’ shit when they laugh at him, but he also clearly doesn’t judge the kids and even cares about them. In contrast the principal cares only about his image, the way society is run. Tying into the theme of conformity, he even goes on a monologue about this at one point in which he says:
“what keeps me up at night is the though that when I’m old, these kids will be taking care of me.”
The janitor replies:
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
I’ve never interpreted that line to mean “because they’re assholes,” but rather “because you treat them like shit.” The principal is really someone smothered in the role he’s assigned himself who wants to break free too, as we see him lashing out at Bender, losing his cool, and he’s trying to assign the kids to a role like the one he’s assigned for himself. But the principal doesn’t break free because he can’t really connect. The kids can.
Of course, it’s not perfect. It was made in the 1980s and refelcts some cultural attitudes from that time, most directly in that Bender’s behavior with Claire before they get together honestly crosses the line into sexual harassment a few times. Molly Ringwald, the actress who plays Claire, wrote a fantastic essay about that last year. The movie never excuses Bender (other characters call him out for it, notably Andrew), but it also doesn’t really come down on him as hard as it could have in terms of how wrong that is. Still, I like Bender and Claire’s relationship. Problematic, yes, but all stories are problematic. It’s important to recognize it I think, but I still love the film.
My favorite scenes are the scene where Bender reveals his home life and loses it, and the scene (of course) where they all discuss why they are in detention together.
❤ Favorite Male: Bender ❤ Favorite Female: Allison ❤ Favorite Pairing: Allison/Andrew ✖ Least Favorite Character: The Principal ✔ who’s most like me: Brian ❤ most attractive: Bender ❤ three more characters that I like: Claire, Brian, Andrew, the Janitor
hamliet 