After this episode aired, tens of millions of fans in Japan were completely stunned.
It was similar to reading about a great historical battle in a textbook where hundreds of thousands perished in a single event. Everyone's first reaction was the same detached acknowledgment. Numbers processed intellectually, understood abstractly, and then moved past without truly landing.
Normal people had no genuine feeling for the so-called massacres described in history books. They were difficult to imagine. Humans found it hard to fully absorb things they had not directly witnessed or experienced. The destruction of the world as described in the anime's dialogue had been far too clean and simple.
But then the story moved directly to Ramzi's perspective. An ordinary person at the absolute bottom of society. A cheerful boy who had not done anything fundamentally wrong and simply wanted to survive, who might steal a little to eat but had never truly hurt anyone. Dying under the feet of the Colossal Titans that Eren controlled.
When that scene was presented to the audience, the dramatic tension of the entire anime reached its peak.
"I agreed with Eren's actions until last week. This week I've started to waver."
"Why depict such a cruel plot? Shirogane-sensei, is your heart made of iron?"
"After watching this episode I'm questioning things. I support Eren, but I suddenly feel guilty for supporting him. Am I potentially heartless deep down, which is why I support him?"
"Someone has to bear this. If Eren doesn't start the Rumbling today, in a few years when his lifespan ends and no one can control the Colossal Titans anymore, the countries of the world will definitely unite to destroy Paradis Island. The world cannot allow another Eren to emerge from Paradis Island in the future. The simplest solution is for Paradis Island to cease to exist."
"I really liked Eren as a protagonist before. After this episode, I'm no longer a fan. I support Mikasa and Armin's alliance to stop this monster."
"If you're a bystander or an enemy, you think Eren is a monster. If you're an ally, you understand what he's worth."
"You still cannot do this. Hundreds of millions of people in the world versus one million on Paradis Island. Which side weighs more? Sacrificing hundreds of millions to save one million?"
"Humans are not computers. They are emotional. There are plenty of people in society who would dare to sacrifice the world to save one person. If there were a button in front of me that chose between my daughter's life and the rest of the world, I would most likely choose my daughter. I cannot see the so-called others in the world. I can see the people beside me."
"I only hope Shirogane-sensei has something extraordinary in the subsequent story. If the Titan anime continues like this, its reputation will be in danger. Turning the protagonist into the final villain is unprecedented in the history of global animation. I cannot imagine where Titan's reputation will land after it ends."
Fan arguments ran through the night. Skepticism from media coverage. Peers across the anime industry watching Shirogane's plot direction in stunned silence.
How did he dare?
How could anyone write an anime script like this?
Was Shirogane genuinely not worried about the work's reputation collapsing overnight?
This was a global masterpiece worth tens of billions. If the ending was not handled correctly, the value of the entire property would be discounted. Rei's personal losses would be in the hundreds of millions.
Was it really necessary to push it this far?
"Thank you for your hard work, everyone."
Inside Illumination Production Company, the entire Attack on Titan animation production team, over one hundred and thirty people, sat together in the company's largest conference room and watched the completed final arc's last episode together.
Rei looked at the expressions in the room below him. Complex. A hint of relief and a hint of reluctance sitting alongside each other.
Relief because they had finally completed a major project that had lasted two years.
Reluctance because of the sadness over the work's end. Eren's story had come to a close.
"Many thanks to everyone and the dozens of partner companies. Although fewer than two hundred core production members are here today, I know that from the inception of the Titan anime to now, the total number of production staff from all parties involved is several times this number."
Rei spoke from the stage as the second-largest shareholder of Illumination Production Company. The people below sat upright and attentive. Their attitude toward Rei's remarks was considerably more serious than toward Chairwoman Himari's address.
Everyone in the company understood that the reason Illumination Production Company had grown into the number one animation production company in Japan was entirely because Rei had delivered one landmark project after another. That was how this company had come to exist.
"The production of the Titan anime has temporarily concluded. The remaining plot will finish airing over the next few weeks."
"The second movie of the Demon Slayer Infinity Castle arc will be released during the spring holiday season next month, along with the children's film produced by our company, My Neighbor Totoro."
"Bleach will begin airing in the spring season this April."
"Naruto will begin airing in the summer season this July."
"The production project for three OVA episodes of One-Punch Man has been approved. The production project for the Hunter x Hunter film has been approved."
Any one of these announcements would have been a major event in the Japanese anime industry on its own. Here, they were delivered as a straightforward report on the company's work schedule.
Rei had not forgotten the unresolved situations with One-Punch Man and Hunter. The problem was that he genuinely did not know how far either of those works had been updated before his transmigration. His memory of the broad strokes of his previous life was clear enough. The specific time details were blurry.
It was similar to the situation the characters in Your Name had faced. Their memories of the body-swapping were clear, but they had no instinctive sense of the specific dates involved. Otherwise, after swapping bodies, they would have realised the three-year time displacement simply by checking their phones every morning.
Rei was in a similar situation.
"Maybe the time node I transmigrated from was after Togashi finished Hunter?"
Rei recalled the plot of chapters 413 through 437 of the Hunter x Hunter manga that had come back to him all at once the previous night. He had originally assumed the series had only been updated to chapter 413 before his transmigration, but this long string of recalled plot points had immediately invigorated him.
According to the progression of his recovered memories, it seemed the first chapter of the Dark Continent Arc was close to being fully mapped out and could be approved for a TV anime project.
Could it be that Hunter isn't a 'once-in-a-lifetime' series in Japan? And One-Punch Man too? Rei thought to himself while continuing his address.
Japan's anime fans in this world are so lucky. They don't have to wait twenty years to see the Dark Continent Arc anime.
After the meeting concluded and the schedule for the year had been roughly laid out, Himari found Rei alone in his office.
As usual, she began with a degree of flattery toward her biggest benefactor. Illumination Production Company did not own the copyrights to Rei's works, but Himari had personally invested in them with his permission.
Her investment ratio was less than one percent, but across several years and so many works, this woman who had been introduced to Rei by her good friend Misaki when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy had quietly become one of the wealthiest people in Tokyo, her personal holdings now worth hundreds of millions.
She and Miyu, one overseeing Illumination Production Company's operations and the other serving as CEO of Shirogane Animation, handled essentially all of Rei's business affairs between them. She was one of the people Rei trusted most in this world, alongside Miyu.
"In the blink of an eye, five or six years have passed." Himari smoothed her hair and settled into the chair across from him.
Rei stopped her before she could continue.
"Don't start with the sentimental remarks about time being ruthless. You're in your early thirties and in the prime of your life. Don't perform middle age."
"Can you show some basic respect when you speak?" Himari looked at him, at a loss.
"Alright. Business. The first few original drafts of Bleach and Naruto are finished. Photography and post-production compositing are mostly done. We're about to enter the sound and image synchronisation stage. This should have been completed long ago, but you haven't had time, so I haven't moved forward on my own."
She looked at him steadily.
"These two works, in your words, will serialise for at least ten years or longer. The choice of voice actors is crucial. I don't bring something like this to you for other projects, but for a decision of this scale on a project this large, I think it still has to be you."
"That's correct." Rei nodded.
In his previous life, the voice actor for the lead character of a certain long-running pirate series had been over seventy years old, and the publisher had still been discussing new projects featuring that elderly performer in the role. Many fans had spent years quietly worried that the voice actor might not live to see the story's conclusion. A different performer for another major character had already been forced to step down due to worsening health.
"This issue requires careful consideration." Rei tilted his head slightly.
"What is the average life expectancy in Japan?"
"Seventy-five. Why?" Himari asked.
"Then screen candidates with that in mind. For anyone over fifty, unless the voice is truly exceptional, prioritise candidates under fifty. I will attend the voice actor auditions personally."
It was not a matter of discrimination against older performers. Replacing a voice actor mid-production had too significant an impact on the viewing experience.
"Understood." Himari's eyes lit up. She left shortly after.
With Himari gone, Rei turned to the stack of contract documents requiring his signature and seal. Major decisions did not occupy every day. Most of his time was consumed by exactly this kind of work, the same routine administrative labour as any office. Only during the key creative and production decisions for anime did he feel something closer to genuine engagement.
"I feel this year will likely become a watershed moment in the history of Japan's anime industry." He looked at the scenery outside the window.
Bleach and Naruto were airing this year. One Piece was approaching. Along with a number of popular short and medium-length series from his previous life that he had been planning.
It might take years, perhaps a decade or more, for Japan's domestic anime creators to produce a new generation of genuine creative talent capable of sustaining a golden age on their own terms. But Rei, with the capital infrastructure of Illumination Production Company and Shirogane Animation behind him, had the means to create the conditions for that golden age now rather than waiting for it to emerge organically.
"In a few decades, people in this industry might look at this period the way the anime world looks back at Osamu Tezuka."
While Rei was occupied with production matters, the main plot of the Attack on Titan anime was advancing at pace.
The Alliance had managed to repair and launch the plane before the Colossal Titans could destroy the airfield.
This had come at a cost.
Hange, commander of the Survey Corps, had not made it onto the plane.
Enduring the immense heat, she pushed forward toward the Colossal Titans alone to slow their advance, slicing through the napes of the leading Titans one after another until she finally vanished into ashes.
When Hange died, her consciousness arrived somewhere else entirely.
A clear blue sky. Erwin waiting beneath it, along with the many fallen comrades of the Survey Corps who had come before her.
"You've worked hard. I'll listen to your story slowly."
Erwin reached out his hand to her and said it with a smile.
That single moment had ignited the tear ducts of countless Titan fans across Japan the previous week. Erwin's standing in the series was beyond question. His reappearance, even if only in an afterlife or a hallucination before death, had brought the episode's reception to a peak that the season had not previously reached.
Then came this week.
The Alliance had finally reached Eren.
Sensing their approach, Eren pulled them all into the Coordinate space. There, he heard Armin's argument. That this display of power had been sufficient. That Eren stopping now and signing non-aggression treaties with the other nations of the world was the most correct path forward.
Eren's answer was quiet and without hesitation.
"I will not leave the future of Paradis Island to chance."
"I will keep moving forward."
"Then why did you pull us in here?" Armin and the others had not expected his resolve to be this absolute.
"It was to tell you that there is no need for conversation. If you want to stop me, then kill me."
"You are free."
At the end of this week's episode, the Alliance, having failed in negotiation, arrived at Eren's final position above the ongoing devastation. Everyone activated their Omni-Directional Mobility Gear, confronting the massive Titan Eren had become.
From the clouds, Eren's enormous skeletal form emerged. Countless Colossal Titans stretched behind him in every direction, as far as the eye could reach.
Armin and the others looked at what Eren had become, and Armin spoke.
"Eren, once I pull you out, I'm going to ask you one more time. Exactly how are you free?"
The stage for the final battle had been set.
All the character work. All the worldview revelations. All the grief and the politics and the conversations in cellars and on airships and around tables where former enemies sat together. Eighty episodes of foundation. Completed.
Every fan in Japan understood what was coming.
Starting from next week, the Titan anime would be nothing but fighting and consequence.
Either Eren killed his once-closest companions and completed the world's destruction.
Or the Alliance found a way to defeat him, a way that tens of millions of viewers had been unable to identify, and pulled him out of that skeletal shell to stop the Rumbling.
There was no longer any room for anything else.
Even those who had maintained some hope for a gentler resolution had let it go. This anime was cruel in its architecture and had always been. No matter which direction the plot moved from here, it was going to be heartbreaking. The only thing fans could hope for now was that Shirogane would be somewhat merciful in how he handled the final battle's individual moments.
The countdown to the end of Titan had officially begun.
Rei read through the week's reactions late in the evening and set his phone down.
The Erwin reappearance had done exactly what he had known it would do. There were characters in long-running series whose absence accumulated weight over time, whose presence in a final moment carried the sum of everything the audience had felt across hundreds of episodes of investment. Erwin was that character for this series. One hand extended under a clear sky, one sentence delivered with a smile, and the forums had produced more sincere grief than almost any other single moment in the season.
He thought about the weeks remaining.
The final battle was structured to do something the series had never previously attempted at this scale. Every character who had survived to this point, every relationship that had been built and complicated and broken and partially rebuilt across four seasons, was now converging on a single confrontation. The writing had to hold the weight of all of it simultaneously while still moving at the pace the action demanded.
In his previous life, it had not entirely held. The details had buckled under the structural load. The character moments in the final chapters had not matched the ambition of what the series had built.
In this version, he had made adjustments. Not to the bones of the ending. The bones were what made the series what it was. The adjustments were to the tissue around them. The specific lines. The specific images. The specific choices about what to show and what to leave in silence.
Whether it would be enough, he would not know until the audience saw it.
He turned off the desk lamp.
Outside, January had settled completely over Tokyo. The city ran its late routines with indifference to anything broadcasting on any screen.
The end of Titan was close.