r/AttackOnRetards

I genuinely don’t know how anyone can watch the entirety AOT and come out of it saying Annie never showed any remorse or guilt for her actions even though it’s objectively not true. There are so many scenes of it and you have to actively ignore the scenes because of your bias or straight up skipping over them.

The amount of misogyny for this is character is just ridiculous because in the same show their are male characters who did even worse things then her and don’t get nearly enough hate. And people say oh she didn’t suffer like what? Did you watch the show? Her whole life was suffering she was literally physically abused by her dad so she could turn into a weapon. And was forced on a mission that mind you she didn’t even want to continue. But somehow she enjoys killing people but simultaneously doesn’t want to continue the mission that allows her to kill more people make it make sense. Not even just that she was stuck in a crystal for 4 years CONSCIOUS. That is absolute torture to be stuck in your body aware of your surroundings unable to move for 4 years, but people downplay it because she’s a female.

People talk about the yoyo scene. Can any of you even give me the name of the scout she did that to? Since y’all care so much about it. Have you ever once thought that she did that as a an intimidation tactic or that she was doing this as way to cope with what she’s doing. The hate that Annie receives for that scene is so performative like you guys act like one scene defines a whole character. Same thing when Gabi kills Sasha, y’all act like that one scene defines her whole character and there’s no turning back. Just another example of misogyny.

People say oh they forgave her to easily. Can you show me a single scene or panel in the whole show of any character from the alliance forgiving Annie. Nobody forgiven her their deciding to work together because they have no other choice and need as many resources as possible. In fact when they’re on the wagon headed to the port Annie asked Jean if he forgives her and he doesn’t even respond back.

Most of the people on the alliance didn’t even witness the horrors Annie did or had emotional ties with them other than Levi’s squad, marco. And Marco doesn’t even count because Reiner was the one who forced Annie to do it and took accountability of the situation. You really expect Levi to chastise Annie for what she did when Levi knows that she was a brain washed child solider being manipulated by the Marley government. Levi is way more mature than that. Levi himself when he was young was in a similar situation and was killing people and committing crimes. Moral of the story everyone has blood on their hands. It’s makes no sense for the scouts to punish Annie for what she did in S1 when the scouts just recently did what Annie did to their to hometown to hers raiding Libero. There even.

Where was the outrage when Erwin said out of his own mouth he was sacrificing his own comrades for his selfish dreams. Where was the outrage when Reiner broke down the wall and killed thousands of people way more than Annie. And kept continuing and killing more people for his own selfish goals because wanted to be hero and gain respect. Where was the outrage when armin nuked a whole port and killed thousands of innocent people. Where was the outrage when Eren was actively committing the most horrific act in the history of humanity.

All these character have something in common and it’s that they were men. I could get into how this same misogyny applies to Gabi and mikasa but that is a whole different conversation. People, especially some people who watch AOT cannot comprehend flawed/messy female characters. If a female Character is even slightly flawed or edgy or not morally perfect she’s just downplayed and hated but if a male character has the same traits there are praised to no end for their amazing writing.

Yep, let’s have one of the sweetest/innocent characters in the show who rebelled against a corrupt government and rebelled against her corrupt dad. Later down the line throw all that development out the window to support a corrupt, fascist regime and send them all to kill her best friends. 10/10 writing👏

This is my character analysis of Eren, mostly as it relates to his inhuman drive towards negative freedom and the rumbling.

Eren as a child leads a boring life. He doesn't have any dreams or grand purpose, and his life feels dull to him because of it ("I wish something would happen" is what he says as a child, staring off boredly. It's made even clearer in the joke manga that Eren would have nothing without his struggle for freedom and would simply be bored). He is not special, exactly as Shadis tells both Eren's mother and father. What does "special" mean here? Not leading a boring and unfulfilling existence. One day Armin comes to him with this book, and in his eyes Eren sees a sparkle, a sublime feeling. Armin is special; he does have a drive: to see the world. Eren is enamoured with this feeling of sublimeness that Armin's drive seems to give him.

Eren searches for something that can become his drive. He makes a crucial observation: sure, he's bored most of the time, but he gets a real kick from asserting his negative liberty, i.e. fighting back when someone or something tries to impose constraints on him and limit what he can do. The problem with making this his drive, the difference from Armin's drive, is that while Armin's drive is self-defined and an end in itself, the drive towards negative liberty is a means and defined by others. What does Eren want to do with his elusive freedom? Nothing specific. Imagine all their enemies disappeared this second. Armin would now finally get to do what he really wants while Eren would have no idea what to do, he would be paralyzed. Negative liberty comes from others' choice to act (to constrain Eren); if Eren remained while his enemies disappeared, his drive would disappear with them. Because of all of these deficiencies, this drive towards negative liberty that Eren is proposing can never fulfill the role for him that Armin's drive to see the world plays for Armin. In this sense, it's a "non-drive."

Despite the obvious structural weaknesses of this non-drive, Eren cannot stand the prospect of living a boring, driveless life (and, to a lesser degree, the insult of someone trying to take something from him, even if Eren didn't care about this thing before it was taken from him). Rather than choosing to live a boring, driveless life, he chooses to force this non-drive to become his drive. He desperately tries to secure a version of Armin's sublime wonder for himself by taking the only thing he has available to him, even if it means trying to fit a square through a circle.

This is exactly how I read the beach scene. Armin experiences this wondrous, sublime feeling because his is a real drive, but Eren does not because his is a non-drive. Now disappointed and even more desperate to feel the wonder that a genuine drive brings, he doubles down. Maybe what didn't work before will work if he just pushes harder. Maybe he just needs to push his non-drive harder ("If we kill all our enemies, will we be free?" Read the last phrase as: Will I finally feel sublime wonder?)

I personally find further confirmation of this reading in Eren and Armin's final conversation. When Eren says he finally understands why he did what he did, it's because he is a "garden variety idiot". It's an admission that the ultimate cause of his actions is an internal deficiency, which I've identified as a non-drive born out of an internal lack. Being a non-drive, the most Eren can do is make space for other people's dreams, like Armin's, to make their dreams his own and live through them. This might be part of what Armin means when he thanks Eren at the end. It also ties back to how Eren is almost a non-character in the first seasons, or at least remarkably one-dimensional.

This also fits into the duality between Eren and Reiner. They are the same ("I'm the same as you, Reiner"). Both of them want something terrible, feel guilty about it, but continue moving towards it while agonizing over every step. For Reiner it's becoming a Marleyan war hero while feeling guilty about killing his Paradis comrades. For Eren it's destroying the world while feeling guilty about Ramzi. This absurd and insulting cycle of guilt is why they both call themselves "half-assed pieces of shit" (Reiner on the wall and Eren when talking about Ramzi): neither can be single-mindedly devoted to their terrible primary goal. The psyche is a chaos of competing and conflicting drives, even if one eventually comes to dominate and organize the others. Reiner's care for his comrades and Eren's care for Ramzi are not lies; they're simply weaker drives that must make space for a more dominant and more terrible one.

Inspiration:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AttackOnRetards/comments/o8ko9v/eren_and_his_yearning_for_freedom_are/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6GmVCD7cxk&t=3596s