Board Thread:Manga/@comment-27321453-20180708204808/@comment-35822279-20180711053041

Flashbacks are a bit of a double edged sword in my opinion as some of my favourite moments in recent stories are flashbacks (my favourite TV episode of the year is one big flashback) as they can be deftly used to illuminate a perspective, character, or narrative that we haven't seen before (this story has at least 3 great flashback uses of this kind: Reiner, Ymir, and Historia) but on the other hand flashbacks can grind the pacing down to a halt (106 is extremely guilty of this), overexplain the obvious (106 is again guilty of this), or be a weak way of delivering exposition (106 and 107 are not great in this regard). The core issue with the last two chapters though is that these chapters would have been really good if they were done immediately after chapter 90 but instead they were shoved back 15 or so chapters to try and perserve twists that weren't the greatest as Kiyomi's alliance was pretty obvious in chapter 99 and Zeke's betrayal was pretty much DOA because of how thuddingly obvious it was.