Board Thread:Manga/@comment-27321453-20181008195355/@comment-8458738-20181020024231

Freeman1378 wrote:

I don't think that Sasha was killed because Isayama disliked her but was instead done to serve three narrative functions. First Sasha was the comic relief character and its common in Japanese/Western media to kill the most cheerful/normal/jokey character when things take a turn towards the dark to highlight that the happy days are officially dead and this death served that purpose to a tee. Secondly I think killing Sasha was a last ditch attempt by Isayama to show that the Battle Of Liberio wasn't a total curb stomp but unfortunately choosing a character who never reached their full potential felt like Isayama was pulling his punches as Liberio needed a major death to make this narrative trick work. Finally this death was executed to make us question Eren's morality by having his actions result in the death of a main character but Isayama dropped the ball on this one too by making Eren's gambit a total victory in nearly every way (the story would already be over if Zeke wasn't shady) and the moral ambiguity would have worked better if the battle was a bloodbath for both sides with numerous high profile character deaths to make us question the cost of said battle. So....are it worked mostly on those three narrative fronts.