Board Thread:Manga/@comment-27321453-20181109001854/@comment-30473998-20181110044101

Penguinluver1431 wrote: Defiinitely struggling as of the past year. I wasn't even upset by the whole serum bowl controversy like the rest of the fandom seemed to be. It was the big reveal of the outside world that I really had doubts about the future of the series. The way they had explained the nature of the Titans before, my impression was that it would end up being some kind of apocalyptic event that caused the events prior to the series, or that it would be a bit more mystical in terms of legends like Ymir and the "Devil" and so forth. Big evil government from across the ocean was...not a good story element. I didn't like it in the least, it was such a letdown. That's when I started to realize Isayama had jumped the shark and that the writing had been slowly but surely going downhill. I'm still trying to stick with it since I liked the beginning, but lately the cons have outweighed the pros.

Sometimes, I think that Isayama just creates side characters or minor plot elements in case he wants to bring them back later: "You'll be relevant later, maybe." I feel like Louise was one of these -- yes, she was drawn, but she wasn't assigned a specific purpose until much later on in the story planning. She has a pretty plain design and could easily be mistaken for somebody else. However, I don't think the King Karl Fritz reveal was planned exclusively in the Uprising arc. Meanwhile, big evil government might have been planned from the start, but the reveal of it could have initially not been considered to be included within the series.

Notice how 94-96 seem slow/repetitive? I'm guessing that Isayama used that time to come up with either the ending, a method for arranging the chapters we are in now (flashbacks vs. real-time), or coming up with everything we have now (as in late Marley arc to now). It's sort of agreeable why you think the writing is going downhill -- the Marley arc is the least connected arc to everything else. It's like Isayama improvised it, except he's really good at improvising.