Because I Was Born Into This World

never thought I would do manga colourings for this but here I am

What's the theme of Choujin X?

So I've been wondering for a while, what idea does this story revolve around? What's the main conflict of the story? What concept should we pay attention to when reading this story? I can't claim to be 100% right or sure, but now that the story seems to have officially started, I'm going to try to articulate my ideas on this topic. By the way my ideas concerning the topic are heavily inspired by Jung.

Most fundamental to understanding the theme of this story is what exactly a choujin is. We've been given two main definitions, a person who becomes the form they desire, and a person who overcomes the limits of their humanity to use their ability. But why do such a minority of people have the capacity to become them?

The answer lies in the possession of a complex. A complex is a pattern of emotions, behaviours, thoughts and ideas which recur around a particular concept or theme. It's an unconscious way of seeing the world that influences how we act. But the issue is precisely that it's unconscious. The conscious self who wills events isn't aware of the complex that has formed within them, and that's usually the result of repressing a part of you that you don't like, so this complex tends to dominate and negatively affect the psychological well being of people.

Without such a complex one cannot become a choujin. When we combine what we know, we have a choujin as a person with a particular unconscious(at first) way of seeing the world and who tends to act accordingly with such a complex, and is fixated enough on such a theme and desire that they sacrifice their humanity for it. They are people who are governed by and hyperfixate on an idea so much that it is manifested through their capacities and harms their wholeness as a human being. In fact, I think that's what's expressed in the opening words of the story.

So there doesn't seem to be a moral status to being a choujin, but there's definitely something negative enough about it to warrant it being compared to a disease. And I think that's the status of it being a manifestation of a complex. A complex exists in the personal unconscious and exerts influence usually unwanted upon our actions. When one is brought into contact with what Jung calls the autonomous complex(the Shadow) it can possess us. When a complex possesses us we lose sight of who we are and unconscious impulses are brought to light. We lose control. The danger inherent in becoming a choujin is becoming consumed by our complex. When we are consumed by the shadow of this complex our humanity is shed for the continuous growth of the thing within us, and we become monsters. That's the affliction, the constant need to maintain control and humanity because of the tendency of the complex to take hold of us.(Note: Freud's name for the unconscious was the Id which is gotten from the German "It". There's something "other" about it and it fits quite well with the opening words in reference to becoming a choujin and it's relationship to complexes.)

Now I don't think Choujin are condemned or are essentially damned by their transformation, in a way, being a choujin can help one come in contact with their complex and start the journey Jung called individuation to integrate it. Through the dream at the heart of each person, the promptings of the ideal Jung referred to as the Self, people can be called back from despair to reconcile elements of themselves as we saw with Shiozaki. (Note: Chapter 1 of the series is called "Behold the Man" which could very well be a reference to Nietzsche's book of the same title with the subtitle: How one becomes what one is. This fits well with Jung's notion of the Circumbulation of the Self. We gradually become our true selves over time, as we strive to the ideal of the Self.)

So on a general level I believe the theme of the story will center around the integration of the shadow as it is manifested in our complexes. It's awakened, and it could be repressed or it could take over you, but the call of the story will be to overcome and integrate the shadow by finding your purpose in life.

The Heights by Quentin Stipp

TG:re Volume 5 Extra Translation

※

Like mortar in a mixer Three heads, melted thickly

Miracles have been used up long ago and lie cold on the concrete

Killed I killed Have I killed?

I was losing my grasp on reality, when the eyes of the heads opened wetly like genitals, to say hello

The heads whispered in Mother’s voice

“you” “you” “you”

“you” “how did you fool yourself into thinking you would be loved” “when you’re so ugly”

“uoh……..”

Gentle abuse, repeated over and over in “that box” The sky flickers, like traffic lights

Before I knew it, nine thorns sprang out from the chest cavity The diaphragm shivered, as if about to cry

(my body!)

I finally lost my grasp on reality, and I started climbing the steel tower The handrails I touched all turned black and rusted.

(I knew I was made of poison!) (No, it was that woman who was poison itself)

(climb, climb)

(not enough to die) (to a higher place, higher place, climb!)

※

The intestines of the dead, reaches out to the heavens from the tip of the steel tower.

The intestines were knotted together like rope. I desperately pulled the rope in.

squelch, squelch, squelch

The knot had grown long enough to reach the sun.

Tower of beloved corpses. With each pull I reach the peak, and the height increases. I cannot see the ground anymore.

The tower starts to shake widely, whispering in Mother’s voice.

“automatic failure at happiness, shapeless spawn”

(ahh)

“My dear lost one”

“Your parents failed in raising you”

And I died.

Image Source: Baidu

Major thanks to @makyun for helping me translate!

I think this is all quite valid, but I'm quite sure Isayama intended to portray Eren as something "inhuman."

There's the scene in Marley were he speculates that he was born like this.

There's the scene in 121 where he also claims to have been like this since birth.

There's the constant narrative of this being set in stone(Eren's birth is even juxtaposed with "it doesn't matter where" and his child self with "maybe all of this was set in stone from the start"), and even when Eren reflects on why he wanted to do this in 139 there's a shot of him just being born.

There's also the fact that Yams has explicitly addressed the theme of the "innate perpetrator" in two of his interviews as essential to the ending. One in 2017 where he says this:

Ultimately, I don’t think the series passes judgment on what is “right” or “wrong.” For example, when I read Furuya Minoru’s “Himeanole,” I knew society would consider the serial killer in the story unforgivable under social norms. But when I took into account his life and background I still wondered, “If this was his nature, then who is to blame…?” I even thought, “Is it merely coincidence that I wasn’t born as a murderer?” We justify what we absolutely cannot accomplish as “a flaw due to lack of effort,” and there is bitterness within that. On the other hand, for a perpetrator, having the mindset of “It’s not because I lack effort that I became like this” is a form of solace. We cannot deny that under such circumstances, the victims’ feelings are very important. But considering the root of the issue, rather than evaluating “what is right”…to be influenced by various other works and their philosophies, and to truthfully illustrate my exact feelings during those moments - I think that’s what Shingeki no Kyojin’s ending will resemble.

And the other with Arakawa where he draws a connection between his self expression through destruction/"turning things upside down" with the ending and the work of Minoru Furuya(the artist from whom he got the "innate aggressor" theme).

Do you think Eren was forced to do the rumbling because he felt he had no choice? A lot of people are saying that Eren felt compelled to do the rumbling because it was the only way to save paradis. And that sounds wrong to me. He started the war and people don't care about that. A lot of people are mad when we criticise the rumbling or Eren's actions or if we even dare to imply that he did it for selfish purposes. They say that there was no chance for diplomacy at all. What do you think of this?

Hi!

I think that Eren did the rumbling because this was the conclusion that he wanted: to put an end to the Titan curse. I believe that there would have been other ways to save Paradis if that was what Eren wanted, however, those conclusions would not have led to the eradication of the Titans.

The weird complicated part and what I think Isayama was going for, is the kind of time travel that I believe he enacted [wiki]:

The Novikov self-consistency principle, named after Igor Dmitrievich Novikov, states that any actions taken by a time traveler or by an object that travels back in time were part of history all along, and therefore it is impossible for the time traveler to "change" history in any way. The time traveler's actions may be the cause of events in their own past though, which leads to the potential for circular causation, sometimes called a predestination paradox,[81] ontological paradox,[82] or bootstrap paradox.[82][83]

and the so-called time loop is a causal loop [wiki]:

A causal loop is a theoretical proposition in which, by means of either retrocausality or time travel, a sequence of events (actions, information, objects, people)[1][2] is among the causes of another event, which is in turn among the causes of the first-mentioned event.[3][4] Such causally looped events then exist in spacetime, but their origin cannot be determined.

Which means events became fixed and he didn't have a choice because of the decision that he at some point had made. But we are given a glimpse that even if he didn't have a choice, it was still as what he wanted, as per his thoughts in chapter 130.

I'm sorry it is very confusing XS

Was it for selfish purposes? I think that it was a mixture of both, selfish in the sense that he wanted to achieve his own personal aim, but he did still want to achieve freedom for Paradis, by destroying all of their enemies. As with the whole story, it's complicated and not so easy to paint a singular "good/bad" stripe on anything, let alone Eren, which I also believe is the whole point. Plus the fact that I'd said that he believed that he had made the wrong decision in relying on his comrades during the first mission to capture the Female Titan which I believe also led to him choosing to go it alone, which does seem to vaguely imply that there might have been a chance for a different solution if he had brought his friends on board.

I'm going to bring back my thoughts at the ending, because I don't feel like there's been any change in my thinking since then.

I’m going to admit that the reason the ending worked for me is precisely because Eren was shown to have only 2 braincells and failed to use them. He claimed that he loved his friends, but failed to bring them into his decision making and decided to go gungho and do it all by himself. He claimed that they were free to act but his decision in fact took away that freedom from them and forced them down the path he set out for them. He did it this way because he was bull-headed Eren always charging ahead leaving his friends behind. The power of friendship didn’t fix anything either. I feel a sense that there might actually have been a better way, if he wasn’t the way he is. It is a tragedy.

So I do believe that rather than that there was no chance for diplomacy, that diplomacy wasn't given a chance at all, at least not until Eren had achieved his main aim, leaving his friends to clean up the mess.

Thank you for your ask! :)

Thank you! That was an amazing articulation of the points I brought up. Personally, I think the ideas executed in this ending are good(except how the Titan Curse ended), but the execution and tone are terrible, add that to the fact that it's pacing is off and plotlines were abandoned, and it strikes us as bad, but I think there's still quite a bit of good to be detected behind the fan-service. About Eren wanting not to be seen as a monster by his best friend, I've been thinking about that quite a bit. He did push away Armin and Mikasa but deep down he's still lonely and wants to be accepted, I think the ending could have portrayed this better by diving into the complex emotions Armin and Eren must be feeling towards each other right then. There's a lot of tension, but there's also a desire to understand and reunite and the internal conflict caused by this should have been better presented.

Critique of the Ending

After an unreasonably long wait, here are my thoughts on the ending in more detail. I’ve always tried my best to decipher the author’s reasons behind their narrative decisions instead of dismissing them off the bat if they rub me the wrong way. But, in the case of this final chapter, I can’t help but find it unworthy of all that came before it.

This critique is divided into four subsections: ‘An Irresponsible Plan’, ‘Underwhelming Heroes’, ‘Wasted Characters’, and ‘A Gimmicky Solution’. The ending launched so much new information at us that I can’t cover everything, but I have addressed those errors in plot, themes, tone, and characterisation that disappointed me most.

Keep reading

Ozen “The Immovable” ✩ Marulk’s Daily Life

[“One of the very hardest things about preventing and ending violence is that most of our work isn’t really about getting someone to stop being violent. Most of the time, that’s not the heart of the thing. The even-more-rigorous struggle is to cultivate all of the awareness and skills that would have been necessary for the violence not to have happened in the first place.

Which is why, when we talk about violence, we always end up talking about everything: slavery, binary gender, the original disconnection of humans from the rest of life on this planet, and so on. Solving violence is rarely as much about the moment at hand as it is about everything else that preceded it.

Which is where shame comes in.

As a therapist who has spent the last decade working with movement folks who are survivors of intimate violence—as well as with many people who have caused harm—I see shame as one of the most pervasive, painful, and insidious barriers to our efforts to fulfill the aspirations of transformative justice.

In order to develop real responses to the myriad harms in our lives—or even the capacity to develop real responses—we need to understand shame and develop tools for working with it, individually and collectively.

(…) Shame is different than guilt. While guilt focuses on our behavior (“I did something bad”), shame creates an identity: “I am bad.” Shame keeps us stuck, isolated, and hiding. With no way to escape from the totality of our belief (“I just am wrong”), we may do some of the following:

hide what we feel is bad about ourselves and try hard to pass as “good.”

overcompensate in other parts of life through overwork, caretaking, or perfectionism to make up for whatever is “wrong” about us.

defend ourselves from any insinuation that we might have done wrong, attempt to rationalize, or justify our actions.

blame someone else, try to divert responsibility, or shift the focus onto another.

attack anyone who draws attention toward the source of our shame, try to have power by dominating or shaming others.

numb through self-harming use of alcohol, substances, food, sex, technology, and so on.

Most of us use all of these strategies in different moments. Overaccountability and underaccountability are two sides of the same coin: “I can’t stand how bad I feel and can’t imagine making it right (overaccountability) so I’m going to hide that it (whatever it is) even happened, or lie about it or blame someone else (underaccountability).”]

Nathan Shara, Facing Shame: From Saying Sorry to Doing Sorry, from Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories From The Transformative Justice Movement

Why Mikasa and Armin are stagnant

Letting go of the past is something a lot of the characters in SnK struggle with. At a larger level, the royal family, Mare and the rest of the world do as well. You could actually sum up the whole conflict of this manga with that idea.

As the story approaches it’s conclusion, the people are starting to realize that this impending doom that is the rumbling is a consequence of them relying on an old hatred that should’ve stayed in the past, and begin feeling regret.

But where do Mikasa and Armin come into this? As I said, they can’t let go of their past, which is largely defined by Eren’s presence, so they struggle to go against him because they’re too used to fight for and rely on him to act, which in part made things turn out this way by not confronting Eren’s dark side, leading to their regrets.

Let’s start with Armin as people often don’t notice how as dependent as Mikasa he is to Eren. That’s not to minimize his bond with Mikasa, the whole point of him becoming a soldier is so that he can be with Eren and Mikasa, but his connection with Eren is deeper because they shared the same dream of seeing the outside world, as is Mikasa’s connection with Eren deeper as he was the one to show her beauty in a cruel world.

So, until recently, Armin’s reason for fighting was to live alongside Eren and Mikasa and fulfill his dream of exploring the world with his best friend. He had to grow up to be able to accomplish this, he would have to overcome his fears, to understand that he is also important and reliable to EM, that he has to make sacrifices, that this isn’t a world of good vs bad guys. 

In the final arc, many people complain about how useless Armin got, including Eren. While I agree that he’s far less efficient in the final arc, this is obviously purposeful. Our main characters see themselves in a situation where they don’t know if Eren is exactly on their side any longer. Eren keeps them in the dark, so they don’t know how to react or what to expect. It’s much more noticeable in Armin’s case, who’s not the fighter type, and to further emphasize his passiveness, hasn’t even used his titan in the final arc yet. 

Eren is part of his dream and reason for fighting, so when this person is possibly against you and the enemy is mostly innocent brainwashed civilians, Armin is stuck, and when shit hits the fan he blames himself for things even Erwin would possibly fail to deal with as well and reverts to his insecure state. He can only draw his full potential with Eren as a friend. He may be able to sacrifice others and most preferably himself, but sacrificing Eren’s a different story.

Mikasa is the most obviously stuck by her bond with Eren. She did grew considerably, from forming other bonds, keeping her emotions in check to an extent, relying on others, being less of a 2nd mom to Eren and giving more importance to the bigger picture. Still, her powerful connection to him makes her hesitate, ignoring the problem, clinging to idealistic solutions and leaving her decision to the very last moment (curiously similar to how she didn’t act on her feelings for him) because she’s cornered to a point where she has to choose between Eren against humanity and her friends. It’s too difficult a choice to make. She has to choose between two parts of her life she grew to love, one beauty for the other. This is her ultimate serumbowl.

Clearly, EMA still have more room to grow, and what’s in their earlier lives and  personalities that hold them back. For Eren, ironically, it’s his need to break free, to not being held back by anything, for Mikasa it’s her comfort in having a family and for Armin it’s his dream, which is inseparable from Eren. 

MA are growing in the direction of altruism and becoming their own people, independent from Eren, they shouldn’t need their lives to revolve entirely around him, while the latter is going in the opposite direction by succumbing to his flaws and not letting go of the past, although I’m hesitant to call Eren immature for that due to the sheer unfairness of the situation and lack of context from his side.

It’s very fascinating how both Mikasa and Armin have almost been there in the Trost arc, even before their developments in other areas in later arcs. The fact that they could live independently from Eren was always right at their faces and ours. 

After they thought Eren was dead in the Trost Arc, they broke down, succumbed to their weaknesses, that weakness for Mikasa being not having a home to go back to and for Armin, to feel like a burden resulting in them almost giving up their lives. What kept them going was realizing they still have their comrades, that life’s not just about their connection with Eren (Mikasa to a smaller extent, given how Eren’s message was the main reason, but still). 

But Eren came back, and so MA went back to their old ways. Mikasa would still be overprotective and putting him above the world later on, Armin would still fight fueled by his dream, panic and loathe himself for his shortcomings. I can’t blame them, they were still not mature enough in the other aspects. Eren is like a wall or a comfort zone stopping them from seeing or acknowledging the bigger picture. 

Eren’s writing in the Trost arc was kinda the opposite. When he’s swallowed by Santa Titan, he didn’t succumb, he lashed out irrationally, he didn’t even question his existence as a Titan either, if it’s something that helps him fight, so much the better. He didn’t want to deal with his weakness.

His big defining moment in the Trost arc explicit that his main driver was freedom, not hate, but it didn’t present a right path for him to choose later on. It was the path he would keep walking from the beginning until the end, and it’s reflected on him coming to understand his enemies and not hating them any longer, but still choosing war all the same. 

MA hit their growth limit with Eren at the center of their lives in the Return to Shiganshina arc. Armin was able to sacrifice his life and his enjoyment from his dream, but entrusts this dream to Eren, who gives meaning to it. Mikasa lets go of her second most precious family member and puts humanity before him. While still trying not to abandon Eren until the very end, the final arc forces MA to actively choose to let go of him, unlike Trost arc that took him away from them, while Eren doubles down and refuses to let go of his past, his family and his freedom.

Thank you! I'm glad I was able to help. What you've said about never seeing Eren as a bad person really resonated with me, the best way I can describe him and his story is that of a boy born a monster. I really like how you talked about those ideas, it felt like you were expressing something I struggled to, so thanks for that as well!

“They were just there wherever I looked from the day I was born. Those miserable walls.”

I think this is the most important line we need for understanding Eren. From the moment he was born Eren felt caged no matter what he did and he longed for release.

This desire was unconscious at first, but seeing Armin dream so passionately brought about the realization that Armin was seeing and believing in something that Eren couldn’t, and this brings about the realization in him that he’s restrained/caged from doing something.

He initially believes that this indignation from a sense of being caged is because of the Titans or oppressors but as time goes on and the circumstances change, Eren realises that this is something internal and the fact that it’s something that no one else experiences is one of the sources of his tragedy: he can’t communicate/share this desire.

(There’s probably some symbolism in the fact that Eren confessed his truest desires to a child that didn’t speak the same language)

At first, Eren associated release with the “sight” of the things in Armin’s book. He believed that seeing those things will give him the release and liberty he’s been longing for, though it should be noted that Eren says he doesn’t care what the particular sights *are* just that he sees them so I think he cares much more about the feeling of liberation that those things stand for than the sights themselves.

So I think that even though Eren might say that he’s disappointed that the world wasn’t what was in Armin’s book I think what he’s really sad about is that he didn’t feel liberated by the world beyond the walls, but because he associated those feelings with the sights in Armin’s book he uses them interchangeably(I think this is supported by the fact that Eren still feels caged and empty when actually seeing those sights in 139).

The reason Eren slaughters humanity beyond the walls is because from his perspective, *they* are walls/barriers obstructing his freedom. “That Scenery” is one of the most important motifs with Eren, it’s the liberty that comes with transcending or breaking a wall, but one of the ironies in 131 is that Eren is deluding himself to think that it’s freedom. Eren’s very nature demands that he cannot see beyond the “walls” and this is testified to by Eren looking unfulfilled immediately after the freedom panel and the fact that he still needs Armin’s approval. Besides Isayama deliberately contrasts Eren and Armin by saying that Armin still believes in a world beyond the walls, with a panel of Eren’s eyes closed.

Eren’s tragedy is that of a man born with the inability to look past the repression of life(or you could say he was born with the ability to see restraints everywhere). I think this solves all the contradictions I thought I saw in Eren’s character and addresses the “Problem of being a Slave” that Isayama once brought up.

Before I go there’s one last thing I have to say about the final chapter and this motif, Eren can’t see the dream Armin enjoys and he can’t see the future that lies ahead, but his love for his friend(s) let’s him transcend that nature by putting his hopes in them at the end. He won’t ever be able to see beyond the walls, that’s just how he is, but he can be at peace with the fact that his friends will.

Edit: I made this post mainly because I was tired of people rooting Eren’s actions in trauma or an ideological mistake or lack of development. Eren has developed enough as a protagonist, especially by chapter 100, his “mistakes” in the Final Arc are a result of his nature, I think that’s what Isayama wanted to convey.