To exist is to encroach upon the existence of another. This is the uncomfortable truth that lies at the heart of Hajime Isayama’s anime Attack on Titan. Initially framed as a struggle for survival, it eventually shifts to the nature of freedom and the determinism of conflict.
The series implicitly concludes a grim reality: there is no such thing as absolute freedom. One individual’s exercise of liberty will naturally and inevitably clash with the freedoms of another. For as long as distinct individuals exist, their desires will oppose one another, rendering conflict inevitable and eternal. However, the series is not nihilistic. While it acknowledges that violence is the inescapable result of this inevitability, it simultaneously argues that hate is not the solution. If conflict is the disease of human nature, the narrative suggests that the solution is not victory but connection. To explain the message’s importance in the show, this essay will contain heavy spoilers.
Humanity, what remains of it, lives in ignorance. Three concentric, fifty-meter walls: Maria, Rose, and Sina, surround the remainder of human civilization, and within them, generations have been raised on a single, consuming terror: Titans. Enormous, grotesque humanoids with no apparent purpose beyond the consumption of human flesh, they are described as something insulting, entities that eat absent appetite, kill without malice, and exist void of reason. For over a century, the walls have held. The people inside them have been taught to mistake their survival for peace. Until year 845.
The event was thought to be impossible, just as much a nightmare as it was absurd: a sixty-meter Titan, surpassing the height of the walls, materializing in a spontaneous flash of lightning. The subsequent breaches of Shiganshina’s and Trost’s gates allowed easy entry of Titans throughout the entirety of the outermost wall, wall Maria. A ten-year-old boy, Eren Yeager—and his two friends, Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert—witnessed the consumption of his mother by a “Smiling Titan,” a moment that solidified his worldview into one of absolute, genocidal vengeance against the Titan race; this is the current protagonist. Following this fall, the monarchal government “resolved” the resulting food shortage in 846 by sending 250,000 of the refugees on a suicide mission to “reclaim” Wall Maria; among the hundreds of thousands of deaths was Armin’s grandfather.
In 847, the survivors of the Shiganshina attack (including that of Eren, Mikasa, Armin, Reiner Braun, Bertholdt Hoover, Annie Leonhart, Historia Reiss, Jean Kirstein, and Sasha Braus) enlisted in the 104th Training Corps. Under the instruction of Keith Sadies, the cadets underwent a three-year program to master Omni-Directional Maneuvering (ODM) gear, a technology that allowed soldiers to navigate three-dimensional environments to strike the Titans’ singular weakness: the nape. The graduation of the 104th in 850 coincided with the Colossal Titan’s reappearance at the Trost District of Wall Rose. In saving Armin, Eren was consumed by a Titan, surely dead, that is, until he was spotted emerging from the nape of a Titan, alive.
Eren Yeager’s apparent death by consumption triggered his first transformation into the dubbed “Attack Titan,” a fifteen-meter sentient entity that began slaughtering other Titans with deliberate martial technique. By inflicting self-harm, Eren can, at will, shift into this Titan. And in a desperate operation, Eren, utilizing this seemingly impossible new ability, sealed the breach in the Trost gate, marking the beginning of humanity’s first successful defense of territory.
Following this reclamation, the Survey Corps, under Commander Erwin Smith, launched an expedition to reach the Yeager basement in Shiganshina, where Eren’s father, Grisha Yeager, had hidden the “truth of the world.” The mission was intercepted by the Female Titan, an intelligent adversary identified as the previously mentioned Annie Leonhart, a member of the 104th Corps. A subsequent trap in the Stohess District of Wall Sina led to a brutal urban altercation; while Annie was ultimately defeated in combat, she encased herself in an indestructible crystal cocoon along with the surely absurd claim that “Titans aren’t the only enemies.”
The narrative reached a terminal point of betrayal shortly thereafter on the summit of Wall Rose. Reiner Braun and Bertholdt Hoover, suffering from the psychological strain of their dual identities, revealed themselves to Eren. Reiner is the Armored Titan; Bertholdt is the Colossal Titan. They kidnapped Eren and Ymir (another cadet to have possessed a Titan) and retreated toward their “homeland.” Quite an odd thing to say given the last of humanity resided within the walls.
In the following rescue operation at the Forst of Giant Tress, the Survey Corps suffered massive casualties. In a moment of despair and anger, Eren made physical contact with the Smiling Titan. Following this, he gained control over the surrounding Titans. He then commands them to devour the Smiling Titan and attack Reiner and Bertholdt. How he gained this instance of power is unknown.
This discovery: that the walls contained dormant Titans, and that the monarchy had been suppressing the truth, led to a political uprising. The Survey Corps challenged the legitimacy of the government, exposing the Reiss family as the true royal bloodline. Rod Reiss, the true leader of the monarchy, attempted to convince his illegitimate daughter, Historia, to consume Eren and reclaim the “Founding Titan” that had been stolen. Historia’s refusal led Rod to shift into a 120-meter “Strongest Titan,” a faceless, crawling entity that threatened the Orvud District. Following a coordinated strike, Historia delivered the killing blow to her father, establishing her legitimacy as the new Queen of the Walls.
The Survey Corps launched an operation to recapture Shiganshina but were challenged by three Titans: Zeke Yeager (the “Beast Titan”), Reiner, and Bertholdt. Zeke, being a hairy, ape-like Titan, utilized crushed boulders to enact a long-range bombardment that decimated the Survey Corps’ main body. In a last resort to overcome the Beast Titan, Commander Erwin Smith led a suicide charge of the remaining recruits to serve as a distraction, allowing Captain Levi to neutralize Zeke. Simultaneously, Armin Arlert sacrificed his life to distract the Colossal Titan, allowing Eren to kill Bertholdt. Zeke and Reiner were rescued by an intelligent, crawling, quadrupedal Titan, later dubbed the “Cart Titan.” Levi ultimately chose to save Armin over Erwin using the single, mysterious Titan serum obtained by Rod Reiss during their altercation, allowing Armin to inherit the Colossal Titan.
The survivors reached the basement and discovered the truth to the world: three notebooks. These books documented the life of Grisha, including a photograph of him with a woman and an unknown child that read, “This is no illustration…Looks quite nice, right? Where I’m from, there are many amazing technologies like this. Mankind isn’t gone.” They learned that they were “Subjects of Ymir,” an ethnic group capable of turning into Titans who had been isolated on Paradis Island following the “Great Titan War.” Their enemies were the Marleyans, a continental power that used the “Titan Devils” as weapons of war while maintaining a global regime of anti-Eldian segregation. This revelation shifted the perspective to the continent of Marley, where the military relied heavily on the “Warrior Unit,” which indoctrinated Eldian children to compete for the inheritance of the Seven Titans under Marley’s control (there being nine total, with the Eldians maintaining the other two). Between 850 and 854, Marley engaged in the Mid-East Marleyan War, a conflict that demonstrated that the era of Titan dominance was coming to an end as modern anti-Titan artillery advanced.
The mentioned Smiling Titan, its unique appearance, and the power Eren obtained after making contact, is no coincidence. The Smiling Titan is revealed to be the Eldian Dina Fritz, a member of the Fritz bloodline who, after being transformed unwillingly into a Titan and left on Paradis, came to devour Eren’s mother. Dina’s identity matters specifically because she carried royal blood: when Eren made physical contact with the Smiling Titan in the Forest of Giant Trees, that contact created the exceptional circumstance by which Eren, who otherwise lacked royal lineage, could briefly access the Founding Titan’s power within him.
Additionally, Dina Fritz was Grisha’s first wife and the mother of Zeke, Eren’s half-brother, the Beast Titan. In brief: Zeke possesses royal blood, Eren possesses the Founding Titan, they are mutually causal, neither useful by themselves.
Four years later, Willy Tybur, the head of the influential Tybur family, orchestrated a global festival in the Liberio Internment Zone to address the “Eldian Problem.” He revealed the true history of Karl Fritz’s (the Eldian king who lived nearly 100 years prior to the show’s plot) pacifism but declared that the peace had been stolen by a “rebel.” That rebel was Eren Yeager.
Tybur called for a global alliance to invade Paradis and exterminate the “devils.” Eren, nearly a year prior, had infiltrated Marley as a wounded soldier, and launched a preemptive attack during Tybur’s speech, consuming Willy and the War Hammer Titan. The Survey Corps arrived in airships to extract Eren, resulting in a massacre of thousands that radicalized the world against the island, nothing short of a declaration of world war.
It is worth understanding Eren’s radicalization. Follow the ideological arc that the series so carefully constructs beneath its surface: the boy who enlisted driven by grief and rage was not, fundamentally, different from the man who threatens to unleash the Rumbling. What changed only was his comprehension. Eren always wanted freedom, absolute freedom, for himself and for those he loved. What the basement revealed was that this desire had never been enough. The Eldians of Paradis had been born guilty, condemned by ethnicity, and cordoned off on an island to be forgotten or, when convenient, utilized as weapons of domination.
Eren’s self-consuming rage now had an even larger target. No longer the Titans, but those whose hatred had enabled war, conflict, and control: humanity; or more specifically, all of those who threatened Eren’s freedom.
What makes Eren’s radicalization so tragic, yet so human, is that it is rooted in love. His devotion to Mikasa, Armin, his mother, and the remnants of the 104th is the ultimate driver beneath every atrocity he commits. Eren does not choose the Rumbling because he stopped caring about human life, but because he cared too much about specific human lives and could not reconcile that particularity with any universal ethics. He is, in this sense, a portrait of extreme tribalism. Isayama writes Eren, ultimately, as a victim over anything else. He was born into a world already at war; raised on trauma; given a power he never asked for, the Attack and Founding Titan; and shown a future—through the Attack Titan’s true ability, the ability to access the memories of all future inheritors—that he could not unlearn: the Rumbling. Unwilfully instigating his own radicalization with the knowledge that it was coming, a determinism rendered unbearable, portraying the most damning argument in the series: Eren is an expression of human nature, the byproduct of when individuals crushed under generational trauma, systemic oppression, and the desperate love of the powerless are finally given immutable, uncontrollable power. The Rumbling is the series’ condemnation of every society that creates the conditions for an Eren.
Upon returning to Paradis, the military government’s distrust of the Yeager brothers (Eren’s brother being Zeke, an indoctrinated Eldian soldier for Marleyan left behind by his “treasonous” father) led to the rise of the “Yeagerists” under Floch Forster. The Yeagerists utilized Zeke’s spinal fluid, hidden in military wine, to take the high command hostage. Zeke’s objective was to use the Founding Titan to render all Subjects of Ymir sterile, effectively sterilizing the entire ethnicity, preventing the “devils” from reproducing.
Eren, however, feigned cooperation with Zeke to gain access to the “Paths,” the metaphysical dimension where Founder Ymir resides. There, Eren successfully appealed to the Founder Ymir, recognizing her as a human who had been trapped in 2,000 years of servitude rather than a god or a slave. Ymir lent her power to Eren, who initiated the Rumbling:
The activation of the millions of Colossal Titans within the walls to completely crush all life outside Paradis.
The final phase of the conflict, the Battle of Heaven and Earth, saw an unprecedented alliance of former enemies: what remained of the Survey Corps and the Marleyan Warriors. Pursuing Eren’s “End Titan” to Fort Salta, they fought against past generations of the Nine Titans manifested by Ymir. Within the Paths, Armin and Zeke reached a philosophical consensus on the value of life’s small moments, allowing the spirits of past shifters to turn to aid the alliance. Zeke allowed Levi to decapitate him, halting the Rumbling by severing the connection to royal blood.
Eradication of the Titan phenomenon was achieved through a psychological breakthrough. The Founder Ymir had remained a slave to the Fritz bloodline due to a tragic, trauma-induced love for King Fritz. She required a “choice” for someone who shared her capacity for devotion but possessed the strength to defy it for the greater good. Mikasa Ackerman, despite her love for Eren, entered the mouth of his Titan and decapitated him, an act that allowed Ymir to find peace and destroy the Paths. Every Titan on Earth returned to human form, and the Titan curse vanished from existence.
In the aftermath, eighty percent of the world’s population was dead. While the Titan curse ended, geopolitical tensions persisted; Paradis Island began mobilizing an army in anticipation of future revenge. Armin and the remaining alliance members transitioned into roles as peace negotiators.
Decades later, Mikasa passes away of old age, and the world eventually returns to a state of total war, with Shiganshina being destroyed by modern carpet bombing.