Board Thread:Manga/@comment-27321453-20180708204808/@comment-35822279-20180712062515

RuneLai wrote: I like the Marley arc. But I also consider the Uprising arc my favorite. I started reading the manga while the Uprising arc was running and I loved the government conspiracy, the secret police, Erwin planning a coup. It was fantastic.

The Marley arc is different from previous arcs though, and (Sasha's death aside) I think people have trouble with it because until recent chapters the Survey Corps was nowhere in sight. We spent a year in real time getting to know an almost entirely new cast. And now that the Survey Corps is back, there are flashbacks to all those years in between that led up to this point.

If Isayama had stuck with their perspective the entire time there would be no flashbacks. But on the on other hand, it probably would have been pretty boring. I suspect Isayama likes flashbacks because he can do all the dry political stuff and then do a cut (to the past or present depending on whether the politics are present day or in the past) to something more interesting.

We also wouldn't know Marley's side of the story and it's very clear that we are meant to understand that there is a cycle of violence that benefits no one. Eren now understands Reiner's POV and even sympathizes with him, even if he feels obligated to fight. We now know that Karl Fritz isolated his remaining followers on Paradis because he wanted the fighting to end and brainwashed his people so they would be in no position to fight back even if they wanted to. Magath, our Marleyan commender, initially seems like a jackass, but he turns out to be a lot more complex than that.

We'd lose a lot of that perspective if we hadn't seen Marley's side of the story and I like complicated. I don't want easy answers and I like seeing characters choose between two bad decisions.

Gabi was annoying in the beginning, but the chapter where she kills Sasha was the first time I really cared about her. I think Gabi and Falco are there to be the future. They're early enough in their personal war that they can choose not to participate in the cycle of violence the older characters are already trapped inside. I agree with pretty much everything you said as I also loved the level of ambiguity introduced in the Marley arc and how it strengthened the core themes of the series, duality and especially the circular nature of man as AOT makes deft points about the cycles of victims becoming oppresors and how those who can't let go of the past are condemned to repeat it. AOT also appears to be going towards two possible conclusions which is either the cycle is broken or the cycle of violence continues on and I think that it's going to be interesting to see if anyone can break the cycle but personally I don't think Eren is that person as violent people can only bring unstable short term change not lasting change and as you already eloquently said, Gabi or Falco will probably be the one's to end it once and for all.