Board Thread:Manga/@comment-27321453-20181109001854/@comment-35822279-20181109024920

Unfortunately I was not a big fan of this chapter as I found the first half (Pixis and crew talk) merely adequate while I activiely disliked the second half (Gabi).

Positives:

- The wine was confirmed to be spiked with Zeke's spinal fluid so fortunately the alpha plot made tangible progress for once.

Negatives:

- Gabi's plotline completely flatlined for me as it was an incredibly sloppy attempt to drive home the themes of the last 20 chapters as there was so much wrong here from the forced interactions, unrealistic moments, general predictablity, emotional manipulation, and logic errors that made the entire plotline go from merely boring to down right terrible. The core problem that I have with this storyline overall though is that it's too easy to see the deus in the machina as this entire chain of events is unbelievable from Gabi happening to be in the same sector as the family of the soldier she slew to the mindboggling military errors (a single guy guarding a prison like c'mon) and the situation Gabi finds herself in this chapter is also too mechanical in nature from the characters that are conveniently present (SC) to the attempts to play emotional cards that the story didn't earn (Kaya's friend line in this chapter was awful as A.) it was unearned as Gabi has been incredibly unfriendly and downright racist towards her in their few interactions and B.) like seriously did Kaya think Gabi/Falco teleported to Paradis?). Another thing I hated was the saint like disposition of Mr. Braus when it came to Gabi as he was too quick to forgive and didn't even show any emotional struggle with the decision like most normal people would and it's obvious that Isayama prioritized delivering a heavy handed lecture on forgiving thy enemy over something with real emotional impact. I can't help but feel that at this point that this entire plotline is a lame redo of our original 3 warriors individual arcs with all the subtelty and realism drained out.

- Eren and Zeke's lacklustre storyline is also on the verge of collapse for me as it's painfully boring and seems to have confused a slow pace with sinking in quicksand as Zeke spends all his screentime mugging at the panel as the X-Files theme plays (this is the worst mystery box I have ever seen) and Eren despite being the main character/driver of the plot gets to play second fiddle to others while making no progress in his own plot. The biggest issue I have with this storyline though is that everybody in the story keeps saying Zeke/Eren are up to something rather than showing them doing anything and it's honestly immensly grating as Isayama has extremely potent material with the potential fall of Eren into an anti-hero but he keeps focusing on dry scenes of people talking in lifeless rooms about Eren rather than giving us a glimpse into Eren's psyche and his current motivations.