The familiar theme song of Attack on Titan played.
But this time, for most viewers including Yuna, their state of mind while listening to it was completely different from every previous week.
The opening ended. On screen, on the spine of Eren's Titan form, his half-brother Zeke, the royal-blooded person who had been absorbed and digested by Eren, manifested a half-body from within Eren's Titan like a growth emerging from deep tissue.
Yuna finally understood why so many Titans had defected at the end of last week's episode, choosing to assist the salvation squad.
The reason was straightforward.
Eren had controlled the Founding Titan's power through Zeke as a medium. Zeke's will had not vanished. It had been lingering in the Coordinate space. But it happened that Eren had swallowed Armin's physical body, causing Armin's consciousness to also enter the Coordinate space and allowing him to communicate with Zeke directly.
From there, they only needed to rouse Zeke's consciousness. Not even necessarily to separate his royal blood from Eren entirely. Just for Zeke's consciousness to show even a trace of genuine resistance in the real world.
A flaw would appear in Eren's control over every Titan throughout history.
But isn't this a bit too simple? Yuna felt the doubt forming clearly.
In anime, creators had a tendency to impose an intelligence-lowering quality on their villains at crucial moments. Eren possessed a massive advantage. He had the power to destroy the world. Yet he had allowed a salvation squad of fewer than ten people to successfully break through to his core domain, enter the Coordinate space, and turn Zeke against him.
Was it really that straightforward?
In everything that had come before, Eren had never come across as a tactical genius, but he had never been a fool either. You were telling her that Eren, holding every advantage and a winning position, could have ended it in a single move, but instead chose to dismantle that position, play an indirect game, and somehow accidentally hand Armin a path back from a losing situation?
Yuna continued watching.
The plot moved to the salvation squad preparing to plant powerful explosives to destroy the neck bones of Eren's massive form, then break into the interior of his skull to extract his true body and kill him. A group of past-generation Nine Titan holders manifested on Eren's body to obstruct their approach.
But the more Yuna watched, the stranger she felt.
The Founding Titan could alter the thoughts of Eldians. Why hadn't Eren simply controlled Armin's thoughts directly and made them all stand down?
Perhaps because Eren craves freedom more than anything, he hates the idea of imposing mental seals on others.
But is holding to that belief really more important than personally killing your once-closest companions?
She could not work it out. The intelligence-lowering quality was too obvious.
The unease in Yuna's heart grew.
It was not that this kind of plot arrangement was impossible. But for an anime that had maintained a quality level above ninety-five across its entire run, to arrive at a sixty-five-point ending.
Even knowing that ninety-nine percent of anime in Japan never came close to a fifty-point ending in their final chapters.
This was Titan.
This was the Attack on Titan that had shaken the world. That had sparked enormous controversy every season. That had carried the weight of millions of invested viewers to this final moment.
To simply impose an intelligence-lowering quality on the protagonist Eren as the resolution.
Was this the ending that Shirogane-sensei had spent two years carefully building toward?
She understood, of course, that he was not infallible. But every Shirogane fan believed he was someone infinitely close to the God of Anime. How could someone that close to that title deliver a sixty-five-point ending?
Anything below ninety was a failure.
It was not just Yuna. Many people watching the Titan plot at this stage held the same thought. The Titan fans in particular could already anticipate how the anti-fans in Japan would react tomorrow morning. How the anime media would respond.
In Japan's anime industry, the two greatest sources of traffic were praising Shirogane and condemning Shirogane.
"Shirogane-sensei, please don't let everyone down." Yuna took a slow breath.
The next several minutes were entirely fight sequences.
Then it moved forward. After Armin was freed, he successfully reached the neck of Eren's Titan form and transformed into the Colossal Titan. With the force of a nuclear detonation, he destroyed Eren's Titan neck.
At the same moment the neck was blown apart, the Hallucigenia that had been inside Eren's Founding Titan body appeared, reaching toward Eren's skull, trying to reconnect.
The salvation squad worked simultaneously to restrain Eren's skull and to prevent the Hallucigenia from reaching it.
"Uh."
A look of blankness crossed Yuna's face.
It was not that this development was poor. It just was not as exceptional as she had imagined. This ending was not worthy of Attack on Titan. This anime had produced so many scenes that had lodged permanently in viewers' minds. But the ending itself was flat. No turns. No final revelation that reframed what had come before.
A being capable of destroying the world, cornered by fewer than ten people, his head blown off, and still declining to use the Founding Titan's power to simply alter the thoughts of Armin and the others and make them step down.
Was this reasonable?
He could commit to destroying the entire world for Paradis Island's sake, but he was unwilling to influence his former companions' thoughts for even three days? After three days, once the Rumbling had concluded, he could simply have restored them.
To persist in this half-formed approach. Carrying out something as devastating as world destruction with absolute resolve, yet lacking the willingness to adjust his former companions' minds. Walking himself into a dead end.
The intelligence drop is just too severe.
Yuna exhaled.
Though she also could not blame Shirogane entirely.
She could understand the logic. But even understanding that, even knowing this ending was not what she had hoped for, what could she do?
Could she think of a better one herself?
Letting Eren successfully destroy the world would be an inferior ending.
Imposing an intelligence-lowering quality on the salvation squad to defeat Eren was also an inferior ending, but at least it aligned with the values a mainstream audience could accept.
A truly superior ending was what she had been waiting for.
Tens of millions of Titan fans in Japan had been waiting.
But it seemed they would not get it.
Yuna took a breath and made her decision. She would stop analysing and simply let herself enjoy whatever brilliance remained in these final moments of the Titan anime.
The remaining plot time was devoted to the Hallucigenia and Eren's skull repeatedly attempting to reconnect. The process was accompanied by countless sacrifices along the way.
And then, at the final critical moment, the plot arrived somewhere unexpected.
Mikasa suddenly woke up. In front of her was Eren, carrying a hoe, farming together with her in the mountains. A quiet scene of the two of them living an ordinary life as husband and wife.
"Is... another timeline?"
If not for Higurashi: When They Cry and Summer Time Rendering, this plot development would have left the audience completely bewildered.
But precisely because Rei had previously produced a sequence of anime dealing with alternate timelines, the foundation was already there.
"Huh?" Yuna's mouth hung open.
Then her spirits lifted at once.
Could this be the turning point?
She kept watching.
This was a timeline where Eren had escaped from his responsibilities. A timeline without the destruction of the world. He had simply walked away from the conflict, become husband and wife with Mikasa, and lived a quiet life in a small wooden cabin in the mountains. Meanwhile, Paradis Island had already been destroyed. He had escaped all responsibility and chosen to live on with Mikasa.
Was such a worldline the correct ending?
Of course not. The thought rose with immediate force.
Shirogane was doing what he always did. Using the existence of another worldline to destabilise the audience's certainty.
You think Eren's destruction of the world is too cruel?
Then here is a world where Eren does not destroy it. Can you accept that instead?
I can't accept it.
As the thought settled in Yuna's mind, a wave of melancholy followed it.
She understood that what she had just seen was not real. This was the direction of the world that Eren had perceived through the combined power of the Attack Titan and the Founding Titan. He was the one who decided which path the world would take. He could see the world after each decision he made.
So.
Armin, Mikasa, and everyone watching this anime, who among them could truly feel Eren's helplessness?
That if he did not destroy the world, perhaps Paradis Island could still survive. That was the thinking of an ordinary person. But Eren, who could see the worldlines that unfolded after every possible choice, knew with absolute clarity. Between the world and his hometown, he could only save one. In the endless future, he had found no possibility of both surviving.
But does it really not exist? Yuna's analytical mind reasserted itself.
If he could see the future across endless choices, how could a genuinely happy ending not exist somewhere in them? Or rather, was Eren's current course of action, this specific timeline, the best available option?
The plot returned to reality.
Eren's skull grew a small torso and grappled with the Colossal Titan that Armin had become. Mikasa and the others used the opening to break through into Eren's mouth.
Inside the mouth of the Titan Eren had become, the eyes of Eren's true head opened.
They were calm as still water. No surprise. No resistance. Only a final, lingering look at Mikasa.
Then Eren closed his eyes.
A cold light moved through the air. Eren's true head was severed by Mikasa's hand.
Mikasa held his head and kissed it.
"Have a safe journey."
The Rumbling stopped.
The plot shifted into a stream-of-consciousness presentation.
In a space of consciousness, young Eren and Armin sat beside each other.
"I can understand that you chose to do this because you saw the future through the Attack Titan's power. But what was the reason for having to beat me so badly?"
Yuna frowned.
Was this their consciousnesses speaking to each other?
"My head was full of wanting to make you all hate me. So it just happened that way. I'm sorry," Eren said, his voice carrying a particular awkwardness.
"So your goal was that after breaking ties with us, you would have us rise against you. To frame the people of Paradis Island as the heroes who saved the world?"
Armin's single question froze Yuna completely.
Wait.
Wait.
What was the purpose of doing this?
The demon who had nearly destroyed the world was Eren, from Paradis Island. And the people who had killed that demon were Armin and Mikasa, also from Paradis Island, along with Levi and Reiner, who was himself Eldian.
Was this Eren directing and performing in his own theatre?
Something felt slightly off. But following this line of reasoning.
The reason the world hated Paradis Island was that the Eldian Empire had brought countless disasters to the world through the power of the Nine Titans two thousand years ago. If not for the First King Reiss, likely a singular case of someone who chose to retreat to Paradis Island while holding absolute power over the world, sealing his own people away and then imprinting that suppressed ideology onto every future Founding Titan successor, the history of the world would have been entirely different.
But what if Eldians saved the world?
Then the world's perception of Eldians would fundamentally shift. Eren's destruction had reached approximately eighty percent completion. By deliberately leaving the vulnerability that allowed his companions to kill him, the outside world would also be left without the capability or justification to invade Paradis Island afterward.
Yuna felt a tingling spread across her scalp.
In an instant, Eren's image transformed. From a heartless and brutal world-destroying demon into a tragic hero who had taken the infamy onto himself to find a way out within the impossibly narrow gap between preserving his hometown and preserving the world. He would bear all the condemnation. But he had preserved a small possibility of survival for both Paradis Island and the world simultaneously.
"You will be seen as great benefactors by the surviving heroes of humanity. Having upheld the path forward for mankind, you should become some of the most respected people in the world."
Yuna's eyes went red.
Eren continued telling Armin of his plan.
In the original manga, in the first episode of the first season, after Bertholdt controlled the Colossal Titan to breach Eren's hometown, he collapsed outside the wall from exhaustion following his transformation and was discovered by a Titan, nearly about to be eaten. Because Bertholdt could not die at that point in the timeline, the future Eren had controlled that Titan to spare him. And the Titan, redirected, walked toward Eren's mother and ate her instead.
In the original work, this section of the plot had been condemned by countless Titan fans.
Because Eren had set out on his entire path precisely because of his mother's death. To save Bertholdt in the past, to ensure history unfolded as it needed to so that he could eventually obtain the Founding Titan's power, he had allowed his own mother to become the necessary sacrifice. The logic was one that the audience could not forgive.
The protagonist's character had completely collapsed.
Rei had removed this section of the plot without reservation.
In this Japanese adaptation, Eren simply explained his subsequent plans calmly. He and Armin fell into argument. They scuffled on the shore of a vast ocean within the consciousness space.
In the original manga, Armin had beaten Eren with genuine force and told him that as the immature person he was, Mikasa would definitely forget him the moment he died, find a better man, and build a life with him.
The original manga's Eren had immediately dissolved into tears.
"I don't want something like that to happen. I don't want Mikasa to have another man. I want her to have only me in her heart. At least I hope that after I die, she can still miss me for ten or more years."
"I truly did not expect you to say something so pathetic." Even Armin had been stunned.
When Rei had read this in the manga, he had also been stunned.
In this Japanese version, when Eren heard Armin's words, his eyes only reddened and tears briefly appeared. But the determination in his gaze did not waver.
He might have been in genuine pain at the future Armin had described.
But he had already abandoned the path where he escaped the war with Mikasa at his side.
Since that was the case, there might be reluctance. But there could be no regret.
Yuna's nose felt sour as she watched.
"I truly... hope she is happy."
"I don't want to die. I want to be with everyone, with Mikasa... But there's no other way."
These were the final words the future Eren spoke to Armin.
This line had existed in the original manga as well. Only, because of the changes Rei had made to Eren's characterisation throughout the adaptation, the meaning of those words carried a subtly different weight here.
The plot continued to reveal its final layer.
This conversation between Armin and Eren had not taken place during the battle. It had taken place before the final decisive confrontation. Eren had summoned Armin alone into this space, told him the complete truth, and then sealed Armin's memories.
The condition for unsealing them was the death of the world-destroying demon in reality.
Eren's death.
A current of electricity ran from Yuna's heels to her scalp. Goosebumps rose across her skin.
This might be an echo of the Zero Requiem from a work called Lelouch that she had never seen and that did not exist in this world. The level of shock it carried might not be as profound as whatever that structure had achieved in its original form. But for the Japanese audience and the global audience who had no prior experience of that narrative model, even this version, reaching seventy or eighty percent of that concept's potential, was enough to strike deep.
The characters' struggles. Their helplessness. Their sacrifice. The weight of what they had each carried.
Countless emotions rose in Yuna simultaneously.
Eren had been an ordinary person.
But he had borne everything.
He had given everything he had.
With protecting Paradis Island as his primary premise, and protecting the rest of the world as his secondary premise, his own happiness, honour, and reputation had been the last things considered.
You could call him immature. You could not call him cowardly.
He was like Hamlet. In the eyes of a thousand viewers, there would be a thousand versions of him.
But his performance in the final moments of his life was worthy of the stature of the protagonist of Attack on Titan.
"Eighty percent of the world's population eliminated. The remaining twenty percent will not have the capability to invade Paradis Island."
A deep sadness rose in Yuna's chest.
On the screen, the ending theme played.
The final image was of two best friends, Armin and Eren, holding each other.
Tears moved in Yuna's eyes. She picked up her phone, intending to write something on the forum.
In the end, it became a quiet sigh.