The Following Contains Spoilers For Attack on Titan The Final Chapters
Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan is one of the top modern-times shonen anime. AoT is perhaps the only action anime to garner popularity equivalent to that of Naruto and One Piece. Isayama’s dark fantasy world took the anime community by storm with its unconventional writing and astounding world-building. However, when it comes to plotlines, AoT is unforgiving, and its twists and mysteries are criminal.
Unfortunately, even though the anime is considered a masterpiece, there have been times when Isayama’s lore made little to no sense and contradicted its own facts. From questioning Eren’s sanity to the real nature of the Titan powers, AoT has also portrayed its fair share of dumb plotlines that the fans love to hate.
10 Grisha Yeager Defeating Frieda Reiss’s Founding Titan
Condensing the highly complicated AoT lore into a consistent story hasn’t been the easiest task for Hajime Isayama. Among several things that fans thought made zero sense was Grisha Yeager’s victory against a Founding Titan. After the fall of Wall Maria, Frieda Reiss, and Grisha Yeager go head-to-head in their Titan form under the Reiss Chapel. Grisha ultimately overwhelmed Frieda, stripped her from the Titan’s nape, and ate from her spine.
This allowed him to absorb the Founding Titan, which would eventually be passed down to Eren. The fans were perplexed by this concept because the Founding Titan is supposed to be the ultimate power. The ambiguous explanation of Frieda being “inexperienced” simply just wasn’t enough.
9 The Survey Corps’ Mission Timings
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According to the Attack on Titan lore, Titans primarily need sunlight as a source of energy, and in its absence, they become lethargic and weak. That’s why they’re mostly inactive or immobile during the night. However, the fandom always wondered if that was the case, then why the Survey Corps never carried out special missions during the night.
They’d go on suicide missions during the day when the Titans are the strongest, but not at night. There’s a point that it would be difficult for scouts to fight at night, but it’s the Attack on Titan world — everything is difficult here. The scouts could’ve been exclusively trained to fight at night to avoid being massacred in the day despite it being a huge challenge.
8 Sending Marley Children To Paradis Island
The AoT fandom has repeatedly expressed their distaste and surprise over the Marley arc. The fact that the most powerful nation in the world sent four children to retrieve a formidable weapon from the most hostile territory in the story is just senseless. Marley’s plan was flawed from the beginning, and they didn’t even consider the fact that Frieda could’ve used her Founding Titan’s powers to make Reiner, Annie, and Berthold forget everything.
It was a strategic failure from Marley’s side because too many odds were stacked against them, the biggest being the possibility of Marley losing four of their six Titan Shifters. The plotline could’ve been better handled with a full-on, well-planned assault from Marley rather than sending young warriors with a dumb plan.
7 Marley Controlling Titans
Eldians being treated as third-class citizens and forced into joining Marley's ranks as Titans made virtually no sense. It’s already established in the series that a Pure Titan on a rampage is unstoppable, especially in a crowded area. Oppressing Eldians in Marley ghettos and then poking at them with a serum to turn them into Titans and expecting compliance is sort of illogical.
Either they should’ve been kept in places like camps for the safety of the Marley citizens, or there should’ve been a mind-controlling technology that explains their will to follow their enemy’s orders. There should’ve been an extended explanation for Eldians living in Marley without going crazy over the population once they became Pure Titans.
6 There Are More Than One Colossal Titan
When Ymir’s children consumed her flesh to gain the Founding Titan’s powers, the process created Nine Titans, each one unique and one of a kind. So, when one of the biggest reveals on AoT lifted the curtains over Karl Fritz’s plans, it confused fans. If there were supposed to be only one Titan of each kind, like the Colossal Titan, how did Karl Fritz make millions of Colossal Titans to make the Paradis wall?
For so many Titans to exist, there must be the same amount of Eldians who need to be converted and made to eat the original Titan. There’s no explanation of how Karl Fritz achieved this feat except using the Titan Creation ability, and it questions the conventional way of passing down the Titan’s powers.
5 The Origin Of The Titan Serum
It’s explained in AoT’s history that Titans are created via the Pathway from the Coordinate, in other words, through the Founding Titan. Since Ymir only died physically, and she’s the one who molds the Titans’ bodies and sends them along the paths, how did Marley create Titans without the Founding Titan all this time? It’s known that the Titan Serum is taken from the spin of Titan Shifters, but the origins of Marley’s scientific feat are a bit confusing.
AoT’s original system of making Titans works with the anime’s story. One reason why Ymir wants freedom is because she’s been exclusively making Titans for 2000 years for several Founding Titans. So, the Titan Serum creation throws a wrench in this critical piece of AoT lore.
4 Eren’s Decision To Start The Rumbling
Eren Yeager is a complex character who has been put through hell in Isayama’s dark fantasy world. At first, he simply wanted to break free of the walls and save the people of Paradis from the man-eating Titans. However, when he learned of the Marleyans and his heritage, he slowly shifted towards an anti-hero persona who wished to end the cycle through any means.
Eren’s goals for starting the Rumbling aren’t very clear. Initially, he wanted to eradicate all Titans so the war could finally end, but he ended up killing billions of people in the process. In Attack on Titan’s Final Chapters, the audience witnesses Eren’s Rumbling crushing everything in its path, but he still wishes to save his friends and Paradis. However, are his means justified when weighed against genocide?
3 Grisha’s Backstory
Grisha Yeager is a crucial AoT character with a lot of mystery and confusion surrounding his origin. It would’ve been better if the anime explored his backstory in detail to connect the current situation with Eren. Grisha’s plotline in AoT was inconsistent and fast-paced. Fans were thrown with a lot of information at the same time without proper explanation.
Grisha influenced several key moments in AoT; however, it sometimes confused fans about whose side he was on. He was clear about his intentions, but the way he went about them was questionable. His role deserved a proper arc in the anime.
2 Eren’s Transformation Into A Titan
Eren Yeager was injected by his father with the Titan Serum and then forced to eat him so he could absorb the power of Attack and Founding Titans. His powers wouldn’t be activated until quite later when a Pure Titan swallows him. According to the lore, Pure Titans haven’t consumed a Shifter’s flesh and thus can’t turn back into human forms.
However, when Eren is swallowed by a Titan, which ultimately unlocks his powers, he doesn’t die like everyone else. The only explanation the fans received was that he was an exception or too powerful to be consumed. However, that didn’t sit well with the detailed way the rest of the lore has been explained. It made no sense to incite a Titan-making rule and not have the protagonist follow it.
1 Ymir’s Ultimate Goal
Ymir was poorly treated her whole life, even when she married King Fritz and did his bidding. She wasn’t freed when she died and continued making Titans for about 2,000 years until she decided to side with Eren and follow his genocidal plan. It's unclear what Ymir really wanted. Some fan theories suggest that she wished for closure, like how Mikasa killed Eren even though she loved him.
But Ymir couldn’t do it with King Fritz and may have regretted doing his bidding. Another hot take on Ymir’s goals is that she wanted to end the Eldians' suffering and the vicious cycle. However, as a climactic twist, Ymir’s reasons fell flat, considering the reveal of her desires was the consolidation of everything that happened till the Rumbling.
