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SNK S4 EP13: CHILDREN OF THE FOREST

wine x blood

Now I'm entirely into Attack on Titan, have a Annie from the OVA Manga

Eren wants to forget. Mikasa chooses to remember.

If Eren really did send all these alternative universe visions to Mikasa, he wants to turn her back so she won’t follow the same bloody path as him. Eren sees their desire to be together as selfish one, because instead of fighting alongside with others and doing something great, they are choosing to live a peaceful life in mountains.

Eren loves his friends, but he is ready to sacrifice his love and humanity for a greater good. He doesn’t want them to remember him and bring them so much pain with his actions. He wants them to forget him so they won’t suffer as he did, when his close ones died.

But Mikasa sees it as the motivation to keep fighting and saving. She chooses to live so she will remember and the memory of her loved ones won’t die with her.

“Once I'm dead, I won't even be able to remember you. So I'll win, no matter what. I'll live, no matter what!”

Actually, before I thought that it was either because of her triggered anxiety, when she loose people she loves or when Ymir/Eren changes something in the timeline, but now it’s because Eren sends her alt. visions that should stop her from following him, but she still continues to move forward and stay by his side. Since she chooses to remember, Mikasa is technically opposing him and when she does, Mikasa gets a headache.

Mikasa’s selfish desire to be close to Eren saved so many people from Yeagerists and titans. Mikasa could simply die back in time and let herself be eaten by a titan. But her desire to love and remember pushes her to fight and simply live. Because of her Gabi wasn’t killed, Louise and her mom weren’t eaten by a titan, Kiyomi and her people didn’t die from hands of Yeagerists and much much more.

For Mikasa, love is a motivation. For Eren, love is a sacrifice.

Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls and It Dies...

Or, why I am pretty optimistic about the fates of Jean, Connie, Gabi, and all titanized people this chapter, which is also an excuse for me to talk about SnK’s allusions to Russian literature. 

There are strikingly parallel ideas The Brothers Karamazov and Attack on Titan, as well as parallel plot points and imagery to the point where if it isn’t deliberate, it’s uncanny. (NB: before people yell at me about comparing a Japanese and Russian work, Isayama has used Russian names since the start of SnK–Shiganshina is a Russian name.) In particular, there are narrative allusions to a portion of the novel known as “The Grand Inquisitor,” which is a short story within a novel. The central thesis of “The Grand Inquisitor” is as follows: 

nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. 

This parable is told within the story by Ivan Karamazov, a character whose intellectuality is his gift and his curse. He tells his brother Alyosha that the motivation for creating this parable is precisely the evils done to children (oh look, a major SnK theme) and specifically cites an example which was unfortunately taken from real life in Russia and which Isayama has an uncanny parallel:

I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when every one suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That’s a question I can’t answer… If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? … if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old…

Keep reading

the latest episode made me so excited... especially the conversation between gabi and kaya in the end. it was awesome. and i can’t help but think again about how deeply gabi actually hates herself. the saddest thing is that she doesn’t even understand it. may i just cry about this lost, misguided child?..

when kaya asks gabi why her mom must be eaten alive, all that gabi has in answer is racist marleyan bullshit. and when kaya calls her out on that bullshit, there’s nothing left but shock and panic. 

because there’s no reason why kaya’s mom has to die. and why gabi and other eldians have to suffer, carrying the burden of their ancestors, too.

it’s that simple.

but as kaya struggles to understand why people of paradis have to be eaten by titans, gabi and marleyan eldians struggle to understand why they have to live in an awful ghetto, bear countless acts of violence, and be turned into these goddamn titans. sadly and ironically, marleyan propaganda is the only thing that helps gabi not to sink in the despair her life is. it gives her simple reasoning of why she has to live like that and be hated, as well as the faith in a better future. 

if only she will be the good eldian, of course.

SNK S4, EP 11 : FAVORITE SCENE

“There are humans outside the walls and they call us the race of devils, right? But I couldn’t understand why the world despises us like that.

Mia. Ben. Tell me.”