Rei was well aware that the original Attack on Titan anime had a somewhat redundant narrative in its later stages, particularly with excessive characterisation given to supporting characters like Gabi. The main storyline progressed slowly in places.
In the Japanese adaptation, Rei cut where cuts were needed.
Even with the worldview revelation largely complete, many mysteries and suspensions around the setting's deeper truths remained. For example, the Beast Titan Zeke being Eren's half-brother. Zeke had been thoroughly shaped by Marley, yet he still held a sliver of hope for his younger brother.
Despite everything, he believed Eldians were the world's sinners and that it would be best if they simply disappeared. As for Eren, who resisted the world in pursuit of freedom and peace, Zeke viewed him simply as the product of their fanatical father's brainwashing.
The plot had entered the territory of family ethics. There was no question that this made what had previously been a slower section of the story start to become genuinely compelling.
Eren appeared to be cooperating with Zeke, but in reality he was looking for a way to break the seal on the Founding Titan's power so that he, a person without royal blood, could use what slept within him.
Then the Marleyan military launched a surprise attack on the senior officials within the walls.
From the second half of the season onward, the fight scenes increased substantially. The reputation and viewership ratings kept climbing. By mid-April the weekly rating had reached an outrageous 8.71 percent.
Marley's decapitation plan was specific in its design. Traitors inside the walls had been distributing wine containing Zeke's spinal fluid to Paradis's senior officials. Through Zeke's roar, these people would be instantly converted into Pure Titans, paralyzing the command structure from within.
Simultaneously, Marleyan forces would move on Eren, reclaim the Founding Titan's power, and destroy all those with Eldian blood inside the walls.
Eren was using the Marleyans. But were the Marleyans, Zeke among them, not doing exactly the same?
They each had their own convictions. Yet the complexity of their relationship, two brothers with opposing goals, allowed for the possibility of something more than mutual exploitation underneath the surface.
Then the anime's plot reached its most critical point.
Eren and Zeke had been building toward a single objective: awakening and controlling the Founding Titan's power. Furthermore, they intended to bypass the will of the First King Reiss so that after awakening it, their thoughts would not be constrained by his ideology.
The Vow Renouncing War. The claim that Eldians had committed such grave crimes in history that they deserved only to remain inside the walls and perish quietly. If it were not for the First King Reiss's will interfering with every successive holder of the Founding Titan, how could the people within the walls have endured a hundred years of that condition without the capacity to even resist when enemies came for them?
If Eren could master the Founding Titan's power, he could command the countless Colossal Titans hardened within the three walls and march them toward the world. With absolute and overwhelming force, he would make the world submit and allow Paradis Island to achieve genuine liberation, freedom, and peace.
The full picture of the season's central conflict had now been laid out clearly.
Eren held the Founding Titan's power and the Attack Titan's power, but lacked royal blood. Zeke held royal blood but not the Founding Titan's power. If the two brothers combined their powers, the Attack Titan merging with the Founding Titan alongside royal blood, they might be able to bypass the First King Reiss's mental seal and use the Founding Titan freely.
Zeke's goal was to use that power to strip all Eldians of their ability to reproduce. After this generation, the Eldian race would disappear without the need for further war.
Eren's goal was to use that power to deploy the Rumbling, forcing the world to recognise Paradis Island through terror and strength, making them too afraid to even consider destroying the Eldians.
The two brothers used each other. Yet their relationship was layered with genuine and complex familial feeling underneath the deception. Then, in the latest episode aired in late October, during Marley's decapitation operation against Eren, Gabi, Marley's sharpshooter and the most disliked character in the series, shot through Eren's neck just as he stood one step from completing what they had built toward. His head fell into Zeke's hands.
Time seemed to stop.
The root of the world revealed itself to the two brothers at that moment.
The origin of all Titans and all Eldians.
The Path allowed the two brothers' consciousnesses to enter together. Founder Ymir, for two thousand years, had been in the mental space of the Path, ceaselessly shaping Titan bodies from clay without pause or rest. In this place without the concepts of time and space, the bodies of every Titan in the world had been formed here.
After Zeke arrived in this space, chains bound him immediately. He stated plainly that this was why those with royal blood had always found their thoughts restricted. The chains in the Path space were the mental seal placed on every successive holder of the Founding Titan in the real world.
The only person able to move freely through this space, unbound by chains, was Eren. The one who carried the freest soul and the power of the Attack Titan.
The plot of the past two weeks had been demanding on viewers. However, the large number of analysis posts online allowed most of the Japanese audience to assemble the full picture.
"So now that the two brothers have entered the Path space together, what they are competing for is the support of Founder Ymir?"
"These two brothers are something else. They are both playing the same game on each other. To enter the Path through Zeke, Eren pretended to support the euthanisation plan the entire season, then turned on him the moment they arrived.
To test Eren's sincerity, Zeke pretended to be trapped by the Vow Renouncing War, and the moment he confirmed Eren was using him, he dissolved the fake chains immediately. It genuinely made me laugh."
"I'm confused about one thing. Why could Zeke break free from the First King's mental seal when royal-blooded Titan holders couldn't escape it for a hundred years? It must be connected to Eren. After all this is the first time two people have entered the Path space together."
"Exactly. Who will Ymir listen to now? Will she follow the orders of the royal-blooded Zeke or Eren's?"
"I never understood why the Founding Titan could control Eldian biology and memory at such a fundamental level. It turns out the power is essentially making a request to the young girl Ymir in this space. That is all it has ever been."
"Thinking of Founder Ymir reminds me of another character with the same name in this anime. Historia's best friend. The Jaw Titan. Ymir."
"She named herself after the Founder, didn't she."
"After this episode I'm genuinely feeling down. The Attack on Titan anime is really coming to an end. Once the struggle between Eren and Zeke for the Founding Titan's power concludes, the end is near. I've been following this for over a year. I'm not ready."
"In this season, although I genuinely dislike Gabi, I have to admit her character adds real depth. There are no absolute good or bad people in this anime. The Eldians of history were genuinely a dominant force that controlled the world through Titan power. In the era of the protagonists they are victims of global oppression."
"No one is wrong but no one is right. Absolute freedom and peace only exist in Eren's ideals. Even if he obtained the Founding Titan's full power and killed every enemy across the sea, could he actually achieve them?
When external pressure disappears, internal pressure emerges. United allies split. A divide between internal and external forms again. This is the pattern of human history. Eren is still a teenage boy. He has not fully absorbed the fact that what he is pursuing is an ideal that may never be fully realised."
"Even so I still support Eren. Even if his ideals cannot be realised, his actions at least saved his family, his friends, and his people. That is more than what Zeke offered. How could anyone come up with the idea of self-euthanisation and call it hope?"
"There was no choice for Zeke. The education he received since childhood told him Eldians were the world's curse and had to be eliminated. Sigh."
"The themes this anime tries to express are enormous. The entire plot structure has not collapsed, but I am worried about what comes next. If Eren loses to Zeke here it will be criticised. But if Eren truly masters the Founding Titan's power, given his personality, I dare not imagine what follows."
"We can only trust Shirogane-sensei. The characterisation and worldview revelation are essentially complete. Both sides' goals are clear. How the final ending develops is the question now. I believe Shirogane-sensei will provide an answer that satisfies everyone."
At the end of October, Rei stepped out of the airport in a black T-shirt. Miyu walked beside him in a light blue short skirt. Both wore masks, but the visible contours of their features above them still drew frequent sideways glances from the people passing on the arrivals level.
Rei took Miyu's hand and boarded the vehicle the company had arranged.
"Finally back. Familiar Tokyo, familiar city landscape." Miyu rested her right hand against her chin, looking at the scenery outside the window.
"We finally get a vacation and you are already feeling nostalgic?" Rei smiled. "Back in Tokyo, starting tomorrow, you have to get back into the manga serialisation."
"I don't hate drawing manga. On the contrary, I enjoy it." Miyu smiled at him. "It's just that long-term serialisation occasionally causes fatigue. But a month's vacation is too long for me. My hands are starting to itch."
"If you say that I'll be heartbroken as your husband. Was our honeymoon that boring? You're so eager to get back to work?" Rei feigned sadness.
"Alright, alright." Miyu held his face in both hands and kissed him gently, her smile like a blooming flower. "Even though I know you're acting up on purpose, I still want to say this seriously. I will absolutely never hate the time spent with you."
"It's just that I prefer being with you in the study together. The time we spend drawing manga. We met because of manga and became husband and wife because of manga. Now we are the first and second ranked mangaka on Dream Comic. Next, the twenty-four-year-old genius mangaka Saki will launch her challenge against Shirogane, the top name in Japan's animation and manga history."
"I don't know if it will take five years, ten years, or a lifetime. But my life now has two goals. First, to live to a hundred with you. Second, before I die, even if only once, I must defeat your work and reach the top spot on Dream Comic."
Rei stared at her.
The confidence on Miyu's face carried no hesitation. She would no longer be sad that her talent was not equal to his, because it simply was not something she was measuring anymore. But even so, she wanted to surpass him. Even if just once.
"You will achieve your dream." Rei pulled her into his arms.
It was not flattery. It was a genuine hope.
Miyu was his wife. She wanted to challenge the works of the masters from his previous life, so Rei naturally hoped for her success.
Even if just once. Miyu was also an animation genius. Who knew what she would achieve in ten or twenty years.
At least, looking at the age, the god-like figure of the manga world in his previous life had still been a rookie mangaka at Miyu's age.
In the current Japanese animation and manga industry, among the young people suppressed by Shirogane's fame yet learning the essence of his works, how many would burst forth with their own talent in ten, twenty, or thirty years?
In this world, only change was the thing that would never change.
"Hey... Rei..."
"Hmm?"
"..."
"It's so good to have met you."
"Can you say such mushy things so easily after only being married for a month?" Rei laughed.
"But... me too."
After entering work mode, the couple was refreshed. The pressure of work was absorbed easily under the joy of their new marriage.
And the plot of Attack on Titan began to reach the most controversial section of the original work.
During the process of Eren and Zeke fighting for the Founding Titan's power, Zeke fell into the memories Eren had inherited. Memories focused on their father.
In Zeke's eyes, his father had been a war fanatic obsessed with reviving the past glory of the Eldian Empire and returning the so-called demon race to the world. A man who did not love his family. Cold, harsh, and without warmth. This was also the reason Zeke had reported his father all those years ago, leading to his father's exile to Paradis Island.
So Zeke had naturally assumed his father's approach to raising Eren was the same.
But in Eren's memories, in the memories of their father that Eren had inherited, Zeke saw something different.
He saw a father who doted on his son.
It was precisely because of the failure caused by being too harsh on Zeke that their father had become this way. After arriving on Paradis Island and building a life with Eren's mother, after Eren was born, he had changed everything about how he raised a child.
He gave Eren the greatest tolerance and support. No brainwashing. No personal agenda. Simply a father, accompanying his son as he grew up.
His attack on the Reiss family to obtain the Founding Titan's power had come from fear. Fear that the walls would be breached and Eren would lose everything. He did not want his second son to die in the flames of Marley's war.
Everything Zeke saw in those memories shocked him.
Was this still the father he had known?
And the moment that struck the audience hardest was this. Several years earlier, after attacking the Reiss family, their father had wept.
Grief over having killed innocent people. Grief over Eren's mother being eaten when the wall was breached. And at that moment, he seemed to see Zeke's spiritual form watching from beside him.
He stepped forward and embraced Zeke.
A father and son who had not met in decades. A father long dead and a son who had hated him, reported him, and sent him into exile. The son felt his father's arms around him.
"Zeke, I'm sorry. I should have spent more time playing with you."
The father did not blame Zeke for the report. He blamed only himself. For the lack of care. For the failure of love that had turned his first son into someone who believed his own extinction was a mercy.
Through the Founding Titan's ability to reach across the boundaries of time, the father and son separated by life and death poured out everything they had never been able to say.
"Father?"
"Zeke, stop Eren!"
He said it weeping.
The brief reunion ended.
The audience watched this with tears running.
Then the memories ended. Eren's cold expression appeared on the screen.
Many viewers felt a chill.
Eren. What exactly had he done?
Having inherited both the Founding Titan and the Attack Titan, he seemed to possess the ability to influence the spirits of other Attack Titan holders across the historical timeline. Some kind of precise intervention into history itself.
Was he still the protagonist they knew?
Eren Jaeger?