Breaking the Cycle of Hatred: The Deep Themes in Attack on Titan

Let’s be honest, Attack on Titan is not just an anime. It’s a philosophical war epic disguised as a show about giant, man-eating humanoids. Sure, the Titan fights are cool, and yes, Levi flipping through the air is peak animation, but if that’s all you took away from AoT, you might have missed its most haunting message:

Hatred is an endless cycle. And breaking it? That might be the hardest battle of all.

Throughout the series, Hajime Isayama drags us through a brutal world where revenge fuels revenge, oppression breeds more oppression, and nobody, not even our so-called heroes, are truly innocent. AoT isn’t about good vs. evil. It’s about perspective, generational trauma, and the cost of freedom.

So, let’s dive into the show’s deeper themes and why its take on war and hatred hits way too close to home.

The Eldians and Marleyans: A Never-Ending War

At first, Attack on Titan sets up a simple story: Titans = bad, humans = good right. Wrong, by Season 3, all that went out the window. Suddenly, we realize that this isn't just a fight for survival, it's a history lesson in oppression.

The Eldians were once conquerors, using the Titans to conquer the world. The Marleyans, after overthrowing them, decided to return the favor by throwing Eldians into ghettos and treating them as second-class citizens. And what happens when people are treated like monsters? They eventually become what the world expects them to be.

Eren's journey is the perfect example of this. He starts as a kid who just wants revenge for his mother’s death. But by the final season? He’s become the very thing he once hated. The victim becomes the oppressor. The cycle repeats.

Eren Yeager: Hero or Villain? Or Just a Product of War?

Eren’s transformation is one of the most brilliant and terrifying character arcs in anime. He begins as an angry but naive boy, swearing to "kill all the Titans." But when he learns the truth, that Titans were once his own people, manipulated and used, his rage shifts.

His new enemy? The entire world.

And here’s the scary part: his logic makes sense.

After years of oppression, suffering, and betrayal, his solution is simple, end the problem at its root. If the world sees Eldians as devils, then he’ll give them the devil they fear. If the only way to break the cycle is to wipe the board clean, then so be it.

But is Eren truly evil? Or is he just doing what countless others before him have done, fighting back in the only way he knows how?

This is where AoT refuses to give us easy answers. We watch as Eren commits genocide, but at the same time… can we really say he wasn’t pushed into it? In truth, I felt like I would have have made the same choice.

And that’s the whole point. The world of Attack on Titan is built on moral ambiguity or ethical uncertainty. There are no true heroes here, only people trapped in a system of hate that existed long before they were born.

Revenge vs. Redemption: Can the Cycle Ever Be Broken?

The show doesn’t just highlight the problem, it also gives us potential solutions.

Armin and Historia represent a different ideology. They see war and vengeance for what they are: a cycle that only ends when someone decides to stop it.

Even Reiner, once a brainwashed Marleyan soldier, eventually realizes that he was just another pawn in history’s endless cycle of violence.

And this is why the ending of AoT is so tragic yet fitting.

Eren, despite everything, chooses destruction. He believes true freedom can only come from erasing those who hold on to the past entirely. But his friends? They choose to live with the past and move forward anyway.

The cycle of hatred can be broken, but not through force and not through domination. It breaks when people choose to understand instead of retaliate. It breaks when people choose to remember history instead of rewrite it.

And that? That’s a message far more powerful than any Titan battle.

Final Thoughts: What Attack on Titan Teaches Us About Our Own World

AoT might be fiction, but its themes? Painfully real. We see it in history, in politics, in every war that ever was or ever will be. The hatred between Eldians and Marleyans is the same cycle of violence that has existed in the real world for centuries.

And just like in the show, the hardest part isn’t fighting the enemy, it’s realizing that the enemy isn’t so different from us after all.

So, was Eren right? Was he wrong? Or was he just a product of the world he was born into?

I’ll leave that for you to decide.

What do you think? Did Attack on Titan challenge your views on war and morality?