Years later, Attack on Titan’s creator still questions his own ending and Eren Yeager’s final arc

The ending of ‘Attack on Titan’ was controversial, to say the least, but it gave us something that couldn’t have ended any other way. And although its creator, manga artist Hajime Isayama, apologized at the time for the direction the ending took, it seems he still has some regrets.

A complex relationship with the protagonist

With the opening on April 24 of the Attack on Titan Museum in Hita City, Oita Prefecture—the author’s hometown—Isayama has made it clear, years after the series ended, that the reasons behind Eren’s journey toward the finale were partly “to create a narrative with a major twist,” although this was also a reflection of the author’s “immaturity and foolishness at the time.” A plaque in the museum bears the following statement:

“Eren became a protagonist who committed mass slaughter on a scale rarely seen in other works of fiction. As for why I conceived such a story from the beginning, part of it was my desire to create a narrative with a major twist—where the victim becomes the perpetrator. But a large factor was also my own immaturity and foolishness at the time, when I was in my early twenties. That aspect became the core of Eren’s character, leading to the point where he confesses not as someone forced into wrongdoing by circumstances, but as someone who harbored a desire to do harm. However, ‘Attack on Titan’ had long since ceased to be mine alone, and Eren became a character loved by many readers. In the end, without fully committing to portraying him as a detestable figure, I found myself depicting him with a certain closeness and sympathy. As a result, I feel there remains a sense of insincerity in the story’s conclusion—at least in my own assessment.”

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Eren Yeager’s transformation revealed that he had always been a complex character, and that the world he lived in and the powers he possessed inevitably led him down a tragic path where freedom was never within reach. Some fans felt the manga’s ending was “rushed,” prompting Izayama to expand on it, providing more context and bringing closure to the characters’ story arcs.

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