There are some things that caught my attention more than others at the SnK final manga exhibition, and I want to write down my thoughts about them, in the hopes of making sense of it all. I’ll begin with what I dubbed as the “Paths Room” and probably write something about the others, too, in the near future.

The Paths Room is the last room before the Final Sounds Room, which should chronologically (in the manga’s story) be the last one. See, the exhibit is structured in a sort of chronological order, starting from the beginning of Eren/Reiner’s life, leading to the main events of the manga, the characters, this Paths Room and the Final sounds.

At the entrance of this room, there’s one of Kruger’s lines written in white on a black wall (top, left corner):



“Anyone can become a God or a Devil. All it takes is for someone to claim it for it to be true.”

After that, the room is organized this way: the wall on the opposite side has the “paths world” spread out. The one on the visitors’ immediate right has some lines and moments lined up in a very specific way, as if they want to tell us something important.

It’s like a sort of journey through some pivotal points of Eren’s story. It feels like an omniscient being is guiding Eren - and the visitor - to a final dilemma, which is also what the story is at, at this point, imo (it’s been there for some time, to be honest). I had the feeling that the “omniscient being” could be the girl in the Paths, but enough of my speculations. Let’s get into the room!

From right to left (on the white wall): “By now you already know. That in this world there isn’t just one [Truth].”

On the black panel that leads to Eren’s conversation with Reiner, there are Eren’s words in chapter 100: “I’m the same as you. Inside the walls and on the other side of the ocean…we’re all the same”

(On the white wall again) “There’s only one sure thing, and that is that you were born here. That’s why, keep choosing your own truth. That’s why, keep advancing until the life you were given will have exhausted its flame.”

Then another black panel, before leading to Eren’s “if we don’t fight, we can’t win” scene in chapter 106: “Maybe, I’ve been like this since the day I was born. I will keep advancing, until my enemies are destroyed.”



(Again on a black panel) “And that’s because since the day we were born, we are free.” Eren’s defiant glare from chapter 117 is placed in the middle of it.



Then, moving along to the Paths wall, Carla’s page is accompanied by two white speech bubbles: “This child is already great. Because he was born into this world.”

And finally…at the end of the wall, there are two black speech bubbles, they are Eren’s words in chapter 115, the ones he parrots back at Zeke: “There’s no greater salvation/relief than never being born into this world.”

So, the black parts inside the room read like this:

“I’m the same as you. Inside the walls and on the other side of the ocean…we’re all the same. Maybe, I’ve been like this since the day I was born. I will keep advancing, until my enemies are destroyed. And that’s because since the day we were born, we are free.”



Then, the Paths/”dilemma” part:



“There’s no greater salvation/relief than never being born into this world.”

In white, which are the parts I feel are a message from a divine being (or a demon, the Devil of all Earth?):



“By now you already know. That in this world there isn’t just one [Truth]. There’s only one sure thing, and that is that you were born here. That’s why, keep choosing your own truth. That’s why, keep advancing until the life you were given will have exhausted its flame.”

Then, in the Paths:

“This child is already great. Because he was born into this world.”

My conclusion? The duality of Man. Eren (and everyone, really) has the potential to be a positive character, but he has also a darker side. Well, Isayama has shown it plenty of times - about everything, not only Eren.



And I’ve always felt that what Kruger said about Gods and Devils was fundamentally important and one of the focal points in his conversation with Grisha, because it really is true. More specifically, in regards to the story and Eren, because I thought (and still think) Eren would end up being seen as either a God or a Devil, depending on how his story is told. And I mean by the characters in the story, and the readers. At this point I don’t think Isayama wants to give us an answer about it, I think he really wants to represent this duality of the truth (this is something that came up throughout the exhibition, but I’ll make another post about it).

We have seen this “duality of the truth” a year and a half ago during Willy’s speech. As everyone already probably knows, Willy’s play was animated, voiced and projected onto a big wall, it felt like we were really there in Liberio.



I found the whole play laughable and distasteful when reading the manga, and while listening to it at the exhibit, while Willy was proclaiming it at the top of his lungs, it rekindled the anger I felt when reading the chapter. Now maybe even more so, because Isayama has been trying (a bit too) hard to paint Eren as evil, and some parts of the fandom even gobbled it all down, using the same manipulating speech Willy used - probably without even realizing. The whole point is that the Truth is easily manipulated. We have seen this during the Uprising. We have seen this again with Willy. And I see it in fandom. I see it in the current manga, everyone is following desperately their own interpretation of the truth. Everyone has their own reality. I think some philosopher talked about this very same issue, but I forgot who it is.



I also find it quite meaningful that Kruger’s line prefaced a whole room based on opposites: blacks and whites are the colours used, and the themes are pretty contrasting as well, as there is acceptance vs rejection of life, the need to kill for the right to live, the same entity as a God and a Devil. Reality is one, but the truths are many, because they are subject to interpretations, and choices.

And it ties in with Eren’s character, I think. The room is mainly about him, after all.



Eren has been wrestling with all of this, alone. He has seen and experienced so many perspectives in his mind and he needs to choose for himself. He probably already did.



The text on the white wall, as if it was a message from an inhabitant of the Paths (of life?), at the end of the day basically says: “The truth is fickle, it depends on who retells it. So keep choosing your own truth, stay true to yourself and go on, until the very end.”



Finally, from his body language during his conversation with Zeke in chapter 115, it seemed pretty obvious to me that Eren doesn’t really agree with Zeke’s stance on life. So I really do wonder what’s the deal with those final parting words at the end of the wall. They made me feel uneasy. Perhaps, those black bubbles were mainly visual and textual contrast with Carla’s words, a clash of ideas. It was pretty cool and it gave me the chills, so it was a success, afterall.

