User blog comment:Neetaku/A (Better) Rewrite of Attack on Titan/@comment-38993076-20190416031236/@comment-24407809-20190416050858

Sometimes moving around character deaths is all it takes. My biggest criticism of AOT's story is that even though it desperately wants readers to believe that there are real stakes and anyone can die, it's not written in a way that gives off that feeling authentically. Instead of killing every member of the 104th outside of the top 10 during the battle of Trost, I think keeping the most prominent ones alive for longer so that their presence can be felt more in the series would make it feel much more tragic when they die. Isayama would have a larger cast of characters to kill off more frequently in order to properly produce the feeling of despair that he obviously wants to convey, but can't due to a lack of deaths with meaning.

The reason I kept from making changes that would actually change the trajectory of the story is because I didn't want every single comment on this blog to be "oh, so you think your fanfic would be better than Isayama's huh? Well your story looks stupid," or something like that. I think AOT's actual story is good (I'm definitely starting to see a dip in quality from chapter 100-onwards, though), so I'm more concerned with editing minor details to make a story that I already like well enough better.