User blog comment:San&Ashitaka/To be or not to be?/@comment-93.209.48.123-20140618073951

Does anyone die in SnK? I don't know.

That may be a fringe idea, but remember when Hanji said "what our eyes see may not be the true reality", mentioning Titan shifter bodies appearing out of thin air? Back then, a lot of people suggested that all of this happens in a dream world. I rejected that idea, because it's too simple, in my opinion. However, there may be a true core. Today we now that large scale memory alteration ("Geographica") and telepathy (the Coordinate) are possible and happened in the past. So what is when all people in "this world" are manipulated in real time? Titans don't exist, and something different happens to the people turned into Titans and killed by them. A Titan shifter is able to hijack the "illusion", turning himself into a Titan. That's why they have problems to perceive reality when they do it for the first time.

Hurting yourself is simply a way to do something to your real body (outsde of the illusion). That's a requirement in order to hijack the illusion and get your Titan body going.

So what's with the neck? It could be the part where the brain is "connected" to the illusion. (I do not wish to suggest a Matrix scenario.) Destroying the human part in the neck kicks the target out of the illusion, and the Titan body rapidly vanishes.

I don't know whether I'd call it an illusion, a twist of reality or something like the holograms in Star Trek (which can even kill people). And guess what? The source of this madness are probably the ape and his fellows. The question is whether the dead people are really dead or simply "withdrawn" from the "game". Death could be a convenient way to let real (!) people vanish. Destroying the outer wall resulted in a lot of people dying - or vanishing.

The homeland of Reiner, Berthold and Annie is the point. Maybe the "homeland" is just outside of the illusion (or beyond its reach). That explains why they were so desparate to return home, and why all people from that place seem to be shifters. (With an "error", they lack skin.) Berthold, Annie and Reiner are from the true reality. Annie did everything in order to avoid being questioned. They also suggested that the "world" is running out of time - and they were very happy to see the ape.

Now people will start to be really annoyed, but I wouldn't rule out that alien life is involved. The walls - if they are real - aren't walls, they are bowls, that seems to be a fact. Bowls build in what? Yes, a crater. A crater with the size of Texas. The result of a large scale meteor impact which probably killed most life on "Earth", or what planet this is. The German town on which the walled area is based is located in an old impact crater - and it's called Nördlinger RIES. Ries = Reiss. The Reiss family is perhaps informed about the crater. The basement in Eren's home may lead down into the underground, where the crater can be accessed. The source of the "illusion" could be found down in the crater.

Silly? Well, it's a better explanation than magic. Yet I also support the idea that Titan bodies are build by nano machines needing energy (like sun light.) Contact with "aliens" is a convenient way to bring such tools to a rather "barbarian" world. Or there aren't aliens, just a human civilisation which collapsed (the crater could be from a war), and is now "protecting" what remains in a perpetual early modern age using the remnants of its technology. I also wonder whether you can travel space in a Titan body. You don't age, and there's enough sun light, at least in the Inner Solar System - to you, 2000 years from now.

Tl;dr: Don't believe what you see as long as telepathy and memory changes are possible.

PS: Eren could die, only to wake up in reality - which may be grim. Like being food for ape aliens :)