Attack on Titan Would Be a Top-Five Anime If Eren Had Died in Shiganshina

Isayama built one of the greatest shows in history across three near-perfect seasons, then closed it with a tantrum and a metaphysical reveal that a clean death would have rendered unnecessary.

The cleanest ending for Attack on Titan was always Eren Yeager dying in the rubble of his hometown, the Founder's secret unspoken, the Rumbling unthreatened, the show trusting its own thematic architecture instead of explaining it. Isayama didn't take that exit. He took a longer, messier one, and the final stretch is the only part of a near-flawless run that the Codex rubric cannot defend at the same altitude as the rest.

The Consensus Is Too Forgiving of the Ending

The dominant fandom position now goes something like this: "Many people blame the author for the ending but he did quite well — the disappointment is overstated, and the only real misstep was making Eren look like that, because he was never that guy." It's a generous read. It treats the finale's structural problems as a characterization wobble rather than what they actually are: a writer reaching for a reveal the show didn't need, then having to soften his own protagonist to land it. AniList's 85 and MAL's still-elite ranking absorb the finale on reputational momentum from Seasons 1 through 3. The Codex score of 8.40 sits below where the first three seasons alone would land precisely because the rubric grades story as a finished shape, not as a highlight reel.

What the consensus gets wrong isn't that the ending was bad — it's that the ending was necessary. It wasn't. Eren dying at Shiganshina, with the Founder's truth left as inference rather than monologue, would have preserved every theme the show spent 80-plus episodes building, and spared the audience the version of Eren that arrived in the final cour.

The First Three Seasons Are a Master Class in Escalating Reveal

Every season of WIT STUDIO's run delivered a new and structurally seismic reveal about human society, and the pacing was relentless. The Colossal Titan and Armored Titan breaching Wall Maria in the cold open. Eren's first Titan transformation in episode 8 reframing the premise mid-season. Pixis's speech before the reconquest of Trost — one of the best generals-addressing-troops moments the medium has produced. Levi saving Eren and Mikasa in the forest. The Female Titan's first appearance and the entire Stohess sequence where Armin's deduction traps Annie. Reiner and Bertholdt's reveal as the Armored and Colossal Titans, delivered casually on a rooftop, which is still one of the great pivots in shonen. The Beast Titan's reveal. The return to Shiganshina. The beast Titan's trap. Erwin's two sacrificial charges — the first one blocking Reiner and Bertholdt's escape with Eren, which cost him his arm, and the final cavalry charge into certain death so Levi could close the distance. Kenny Ackerman's reveal and the running gunfight with the Military Police. Levi's two duels with Zeke.

This is what the Codex 8.7 story score and 8.8 world score are measuring. Tetsurō Araki's direction, Sawano's score, and WIT's ODM choreography — particularly Levi's spin against the Female Titan in episode 22 — set a bar that has not been seriously challenged in TV shonen action. The animation 9.0 isn't hype; it's the floor of what the early seasons sustained. This is the kind of structural ambition we tried to defend in the Vinland Saga editorial, and the kind of cultural penetration we credited in the One Piece numbers piece. Attack on Titan earned its 9.5 cultural score the hard way: it broke shonen out of the post-Naruto/Bleach slump single-handedly.

The Three Underwhelming Beats Are Real, and They Cluster

Greatness does not mean perfection. Isayama is human after all, and three failures sit visibly inside an otherwise exceptional show.

The first is Annie. Trapping her in the crystal at the end of Stohess was a stunning beat — Armin's deduction, the Stohess chase, the reveal — but leaving her there for multiple seasons and then waking her up to do almost nothing of consequence is a structural waste. A character that important to the early mystery deserved a real second act. She got a coda.

The second is Mikasa. The character score of 7.5 already flags Eren as the weakest lead — his rage-driven monologuing flattens him next to Armin's tactical growth — but Mikasa's stagnation is the quieter failure. She is a great character on paper, and she pales next to the other two Ackermans the show actually develops. Kenny gets a backstory, a worldview, a death scene that recontextualizes the Military Police arc. Levi is the show's most reliably compelling presence across all four seasons. Mikasa, across the entire run, remains tethered to Eren. She never grew up the way Jean did, the way Reiner did, the way even Gabi did in a fraction of the screen time. The final season tries to give her agency and it lands as belated.

The third is Eren's tantrum. The finale needed to either commit to Eren as a genuine monster or kill him before the show had to answer for him. It did neither cleanly. Isayama is a great writer and the ending was good not great for a great show — and the gap between good and great is exactly the space the Founder reveal occupies.

Gabi, Reiner, and the Final Season's Real Achievement

The final stretch isn't a wholesale failure. Gabi is the genuine triumph of the back half — a protagonist whose hatred is earned by the show's own logic, which is the highest compliment a revenge narrative can be paid. Reiner's arc from Marley onward is some of the most psychologically punishing character work in the genre. Jean grows. Armin grows. Floch becomes the show's sharpest political instrument. These are not the moves of a writer who lost the plot. They're the moves of a writer who built a magnificent ensemble and then asked his lead to carry a thematic burden the character was never designed for.

The Steelman: Maybe Eren Had to Live for the Theme to Land

The honest counter is that killing Eren at Shiganshina would have made the show's anti-war thesis cheap. Without the Rumbling, without Eren's final choice, Attack on Titan becomes a tragedy about cycles of violence without ever forcing its protagonist to enact one. The Founder reveal, in this read, is what elevates the show from great war drama to genuine geopolitical fable — the same kind of ambition we credited in the Hunter × Hunter reassessment.

The rubric reads it differently. Themes scored 8.0 because Season 1 already crystallized the thesis in Armin's episode 12 line about sacrifice — "those who can't sacrifice anything can change nothing." The show didn't need Eren to become a genocidaire to make that point. It needed him to die proving it. The version where Eren falls at Shiganshina, the Founder's truth buried with him, is the version that trusts its own themes. The version we got is the one that explains them.

Verdict

The Codex 8.40 is not a knock — it's an honest accounting of a show whose first three seasons would clear 9.0 standing alone and whose finale drags the composite down. Attack on Titan remains one of the greatest anime ever made, and the ending is the only reason that sentence needs the word "one of."