How Attack on Titan Wrote the Perfect Plot Twist

Season 1-3: Eren keep being kidnapped Season 4: Just as planned

There's Abusing your child, which is unforgivable, and then there's going back through time and space to abuse your own parent. Damn, eren.

I can just imagine Isayama chuckling in his corner as he sees the entire fandom thinking this anime is so cool in season 1. He must have been like "they can not possibly imagine what's next" Im guessing he must've felt so proud of himself

It only makes you realize even more why he was so depressed. Imagine finding out the thing you really hated the most was yourself all along.

It’s hilarious how as a teenager in 2013 I thought this show was just about fighting tall monsters…..I couldn’t have been more wrong LOL

I will always love how Eren takes the typical generic "Never give up/Power of friendship" tropes and subverts them by literally ending the fucking world for his friends.

"To you, 2,000 years from now" is Ymir sending her message to Eren. "From you, 2,000 years ago" is Eren receiving that message. I loved how the meaning became understood once the latter episode came along. The "you" can even be understood as Eren talking to himself, since he gained the ability to travel through the memories of time.

I was taught "not every antagonist is the villain" after I witnessed the twist- I realize "not every protagonist is a hero" holds up just as well

It's not just Eren manipulating everyone else, he is also literally manipulating himself to become the person he needs to be. His motivation throughout season 4 has come from him viewing his own future memories through Grisha

what drives me mad about this is there is no continuity errors between that scene and the originals. to be specific, when Grisha offers to show Eren what he was keeping in the basement, he was looking at older Eren. if you go back to the original episode when Grisha said that to young Eren, Grisha is still looking that direction, towards older Eren. it was made like this because when Isayama wrote AOT, he wrote the story first before drawing any of it. So this was entirely the plan the whole time.

The biggest thing for me about Reiner and Bertolt's reveal is how they had it done so nonchalantly. Reiner confesses so calmly that it almost catches you off guard (if you were a sub-watcher, you'd almost think you misread something). The fact that it immediately goes to a wide shot of the group walking away to the left while Eren and company are standing to the right and the next shot is Hange talking about theories is so hilariously well done. It definitely left a mark.

Eren wasn't manipulating things, it was Yimr. Eren is the manifestation of her suppressed rage, a byproduct of the abuse, neglect and trauma she endured. This is why Eren told Ymir that he knows that she's been waiting for him, and the name of the episode is "From you, 2000 years ago". This would explain the Attack Titans' ability and the reason it can rebel against the commands of those of royal descent, something Yimr didn't have the courage to do when she was alive. The purpose of the Attack titan was to finally free her from servitude.

What hit me the most were the chapters titles… To You 2000 Years from Now and From You 2000 years ago. I always wondered about that first title when I first watched the anime but I did not figure it would be this impactful

The key to a good plot twist is things have to make MORE SENSE after the plot twist. All of the pieces need to fall into place at once.

Another important reason why the twist works so well is that the groundwork for the reveal of the Attack Titan's unique ability was subtly laid throughout the show from the very first episode. In the first episode, we see Eren have dreams of his mother's death, something which he should not be able to see and which, in retrospect, was caused by older Eren sending his memories back to his younger self. Then at the end of season three, Krueger tells Grisha that he needs to save Armin and Mikasa, two names that he should not and could not possibly know unless he knew the future. Even the way the Attack Titan is described hints at its unique ability as it's described as always moving towards freedom and standing against the will of the Founding Titan's inheritors, an ideology that perfectly matches up with Eren's beliefs. On top of that, we learn in season two that the inheritors of the Founding Titans are bound to the will of a past king, so it would make sense that the direct opposite of the Founding Titan, the Attack Titan, would have its inheritors be bound not by its past inheritors but instead by its future inheritor, Eren.

Eren said, “ isn’t this the story you started?” No Eren. You started it. You started the story and made Grisha a pawn in your story.

After "the twist", the way Grisha has a meltdown outside is one of the best scenes in anime so far imho. It hits like a thunder spear to the heart.

I love the theory that when eren at the sea asks “if we kill all our enemies out there, will we finally be free” that he’s actually asking himself this and that eren is not just manipulating others he is manipulating his past self

I really feel like the team that butchered Game of Thrones should be asked to watch Attack on Titan for a lesson in true storytelling, to see how a protagonist can be moulded from hero to villain without insulting the audience's intelligence.

The "future memory" was hinted at before - when Grisha got the Attack Titan, the owl actually said "protect Mikasa and Armin" or so. When Grisha asked who that is, he responded with "I don't know, those aren't my memories". At the time, I wondered if there was some cosmic loop, in which there were characters with the same names in the past, as I think it was already established Titans inherit some memories of their previous owners. Turns out, those were also future memories from Eren. On top of that, in the very first episode Eren "dreams" of the future, which in return were future memories from his father. Meaning the ability affected him even before he got the titanpower. So despite all the distraction, the ability was hinted at in the very first episode already.