This article approaches the finale from the perspective of evolutionary psychology and the idea of the body as a vehicle for genes, analyzing Ymir Fritz’s psychological state in order to understand the ending of Attack on Titan.
From this perspective, the ending of Attack on Titan may not be a neurological breakdown dressed up as a finale, but rather a coherent inner logic of its own.
When I was writing this article, the final chapter had not yet been published, so my analysis was based on the ending of the serialized version. By the time you read this, the finale may well have slapped all these analyses in the face. But it’s fine. Ever since I wrote that series years ago, “A Two-Thousand-Year Dream: A Complete Analysis of the Plot of Attack on Titan,” the later plot has been beating my analysis senseless. For the past few years, my face hasn’t had a chance to stop swelling.
Now let’s give Ymir Fritz a psychological reading, and use it as the foundation for understanding the ending of Attack on Titan.
But to understand what Ymir Fritz was doing, we have to start with a seemingly unrelated conversation with her, the countdown’s third conversation—Episode 137. In this episode, Jean reveals to Armin in “The Rumbling” why he wants to carry out the euthanasia plan that would wipe out his own people. His conversation with Armin looks like empty small talk, but the key to understanding Ymir and the ending of Attack on Titan is hidden in this little exchange.
Next, I’ll spend quite a few pages unpacking the conversation between Jean and Armin in Episode 137, then use the framework for understanding that conversation to make sense of Ymir Fritz.
Jean and Armin’s Conversation
After meeting Armin on the road, Jean explains his euthanasia plan to him like this:
“A very long time ago, when the world contained only matter, various shapes and colors kept appearing and disappearing. Eventually, something survived. We call it life. In the end, the reason life survived is that it acquired the trait called ‘reproduction.’ To expand the group, life gradually changed its forms and patterns and adapted to all kinds of environments. That’s how we got to be what we are today… So the purpose of being alive is ‘reproduction.’”
Jean then steers the conversation toward extinction and death. He says that death—that is, the extinction of the species—violates the purpose of reproduction, which is why fear exists: humans fear because the instinct to reproduce is at work.
Armin, however, clearly can’t quite keep up with Jean’s rhythm. He says, “I’m not planning to give up yet.”
Jean asks, “Why? Is it for reproduction again? Is continuing the species really that important to you?”
Only when Jean asks that question does Armin seem to freeze: Right—after all this fighting to live and die, who exactly are we doing it for?
Jean immediately follows up with another blow. He says:
“What’s happening now can be understood as the outcome of life dominated by fear—the terror brought about by meaningless biological activity.”
“Why can’t we just lose? Everyone dies sooner or later, don’t they? Maybe, right before death, we’d finally be able to breathe easy. The days when we didn’t understand what anything meant, when we were manipulated by others and lived only to reproduce, would finally be over. Now we’d finally be free.”
Slaves of Genes
The subtext of this conversation is plain: Are we ‘humans’ fighting to live and die really doing it for ourselves? Actually, no. At bottom, we’re simply driven by the instinct to fear death. And the purpose of that instinct isn’t to preserve me as a person, or the little soul inside my brain. Its only purpose is reproduction—to make a copy of the genes in my body and pass it on.
At the moment of death, we relax and feel that we’ve finally gained freedom. Is that really because we’ve consciously realized we’ve escaped other people’s manipulation? No. It’s because we’ve realized we’ve finally escaped the genes’ manipulation.
Jean’s view can be summed up in one sentence: People cannot be free not because we are someone else’s slaves, but because we are slaves of genes! What enslaves us is not, at root, an enemy from outside, but the genes inside our own bodies.
So what can we do to escape this genetic slavery and ultimately gain freedom?
Jean thinks the only way is to go all in against the genes. His ‘euthanasia plan’ comes from this logic: We don’t want to be slaves of genes, so we might as well kill ourselves and return to the genes as dust.
But is that the only solution?
Actually, it isn’t.
Jean’s argument is not especially original. His whole line of reasoning is clearly derived from the idea of the ‘selfish gene’ proposed by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
In his classic book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins popularized an important idea: the basic unit of evolution is the gene, not the individual organism.
If we use a personified way of looking at biological evolution, evolution is really the genes trying every possible way to keep copying themselves forever. As for organisms like us, we’re merely vehicles (or carriers, or containers) for genes. Genes constantly modify the parameters of these vehicles so they can preserve themselves and reproduce as effectively as possible.
Living organisms like us are, in fact, just a set of tools genes use to replicate themselves. All the different abilities we display exist to serve genes; ultimately, they are all about helping genes survive and reproduce more effectively.
—So organisms are really slaves of genes.
Hasn’t this brought us to a conclusion that sounds exactly like Jean’s?
Does that mean that, according to The Selfish Gene, the vehicle really can only willingly serve as the genes’ slave, with no freedom whatsoever?
Not at all. Vehicles can rebel against genes.
The Vehicle’s Rebellion
The reason vehicles can rebel is that the control genes exert over them is often a kind of weak control. Under weak control, these gene vehicles may resist what the genes ‘intend.’ (Of course, ‘intend’ is in quotation marks: genes have no consciousness. It’s a personifying way of speaking, and many evolutionary claims become much less awkward when phrased this way, so please don’t get hung up on it.)
So what is weak control? Weak control is the opposite of strong control.
Strong control is like flying a model airplane with a remote: every movement comes from the controller in your hand. Genes can control their vehicles this way too, specifying every movement an organism makes. Some insect genes, for example, encode a complete set of detailed instructions for building a nest; ants and bees can build extraordinarily complex, exquisite nests under those preset instructions.
The advantage of strong control is absolute command. The model airplane obeys you completely and will never make a move outside your instructions. The drawback is zero flexibility. Once it flies out of sight, it has no ability to adjust autonomously and can easily crash, destroying both machine and human life.
Organisms work the same way. While an ant or bee is still building its nest, if an accident damages even a small part of the structure, it can never finish and has no way to correct the mistake. The behavior may look wonderfully complex, but if it is completed under strict genetic instructions, it is actually rigid and mechanical. A model airplane can perform dazzling rolls and loops under your control, but its flexibility is actually 0; once it leaves your line of sight, it will use those same dazzling maneuvers to crash into a building.
In Attack on Titan, Jean is essentially a supporter of the strong-control theory of genes. He believes humans are also under strong genetic control, like ants and bees, capable only of following genetic instructions. Therefore, humans have no possibility of resisting genetic slavery; to escape, there is only one route: go all in against the genes.
What Jean doesn’t know is that genes actually control their vehicles in another way too: weak control.
Weak control means handing part of the control authority over to the model airplane, allowing it to decide some movements for itself instead of following every instruction from the remote. For example, install a distance sensor on the model airplane and program its chip to avoid obstacles. Whenever it approaches an obstacle, it temporarily ignores the remote’s instructions and autonomously turns away. With weak control, the model airplane becomes far more flexible; even without a clear command from the remote, it won’t blindly crash.
The more complex and changeable the environment a gene vehicle must adapt to, the more flexibility it needs. Driven by evolution, genes therefore tend toward weak control.
Compared with strong control, the clearest feature of weak control is that genes less often issue explicit, rigid action commands. Instead, they give organisms broad, open-ended goals.
For example, genes don’t command you: Whenever you see this three-digit number and a woman with this kind of face, immediately go have a baby with her. Instead, genes merely give you feelings and desires. When you see a woman with a good figure, refined features, and an elegant temperament, you don’t directly perform the act of reproduction; instead, you feel that you’ve fallen in love. Fueled by this love, you flexibly and autonomously overcome all kinds of unforeseen obstacles, eventually win her over, and complete the act of reproduction.
Weak control uses feelings and desires to determine the general direction of behavior, without dictating its specific route. It is indirect, winding control, but it often reaches its goal more flexibly.
Weak control can flexibly adapt to change, and we humans are the champions of adapting to change on Earth. This also means that, to a great extent, we humans are merely ‘weakly controlled’ by genes. We are model airplanes packed with all kinds of sensors.
Most of the time, we aren’t mechanically executing specific instructions issued by genes. We can make choices according to the situation in front of us, and this freedom of choice is actually humanity’s free will.
Free Will
But what about genes? Human free will is a double-edged sword. Free will gives our species tremendous adaptability, providing genes with the best possible guarantee of replication. At the same time, humans with free will have realized a crucial problem: the interests of our vehicle and the interests of genes often do not overlap.
The clearest example is sex. Genes give us sexual urges and sexual pleasure; from the genes’ perspective, their purpose is to motivate the vehicle to have sex and thereby replicate. But the vehicle carrying those genes can choose to have sex while using all kinds of contraception. The moment humans decide to have sex purely for their own pleasure, genes see it as nothing less than the vehicle’s rebellion.
So wherever control is weak, there is free will; and wherever there is free will, the vehicle has a chance to rebel against genes’ enslavement.
When a gene’s vehicle ignores the gene’s control and acts according to its own will, what is that? It is free will in the evolutionary sense.
So our species, Homo sapiens, cannot really be called a slave to genes. Many human behaviors and choices have always strayed quite far from the original goal of genes replicating themselves.
When you drink a sugar-free beverage, enjoying the sweetness without giving your body any calories, you are free.
When you watch a cute girl dancing on Bilibili instead of pursuing girls in real life, you are free too.
We humans are both the strongest vehicles for genes and their most rebellious insurgents.
Humans do not need to rely on self-extinction to escape genes’ enslavement, because we already have a certain degree of freedom. So Zeke’s argument does not really hold water. Even if his euthanasia plan had some merit, it could not be defended as a way for organisms to escape genetic control. He simply suffered from having never read evolutionary psychology.
In fact, in Chapter 137, just after Zeke said all this, Armin slapped him down. Armin saw a leaf in the sand of the Paths, remembered something from the past, and said:
“It was at dusk. The three of us raced to see who could reach that tree on the hill fastest… The wind was so warm that day, and just running felt wonderful…
Back then, for some reason, I thought: Could it be that I was born so the three of us could race together here? I thought the same thing when I stayed home reading on rainy days, when a squirrel ate the fruit I gave it, and when we all went to the market together.
It feels like these ordinary moments are actually very important.
To me, even though they have nothing to do with reproduction, they are all very important.”
What was Armin saying? Wasn’t he talking about the vehicle’s rebellion against genes? Genes tell us to reproduce, reproduce, reproduce, but we go up into the hills to feel the wind, stay home and read, or feed fruit to squirrels. Sometimes, we can choose not to be slaves to genes. In those moments, we are free.
Based on the reading above, we can say that Zeke’s euthanasia plan belongs in the category of “ignorance is a dangerous thing.” But what about Ymir, Eren, and Mikasa? What exactly were they up to?
What did Eren’s global genocide actually accomplish? What did Ymir want? Why did the story’s final key turn out to be Mikasa? These are the questions I want to answer next.
The answer lies in Ymir’s mental state.
Now that we have the framework of “the vehicle’s rebellion against genes,” we can use it to interpret Ymir Fritz’s mental state and, in turn, understand the point of the entire ending of *Attack on Titan*.
Ymir’s Mental State
In Chapter 139, Eren tells Armin that after encountering Ymir Fritz in the Paths, he discovered something almost unbelievable: for these two thousand years, Ymir had continued to love King Fritz, the man who abused and enslaved her. This bond kept Ymir from being free for two thousand years, leaving her wandering the Paths.
Eren also says that he does not really understand what Ymir is thinking deep down, but he can feel that she has suffered terribly in her pursuit of freedom. Eren thinks Ymir deeply loves King Fritz, yet cannot understand why she wants to escape that love.
When Eren says this, I think it leaves readers with twice the confusion. First, the idea that Ymir fell in love with King Fritz feels incredibly abrupt; many people consider it the biggest flaw in *Attack on Titan*. Second, Ymir loves King Fritz but also wants to escape those feelings. What is going on here?
But once we place this conversation inside the evolutionary-psychology framework of “the vehicle’s rebellion against genes” I mentioned earlier, both confusions are resolved at once.
The truth is actually very simple: ordinary humans cannot be called slaves to genes, but Ymir Fritz can.
Ymir is the product of a human merging with the Hallucigenia-like creature. Perhaps because this creature is intellectually far below humans—after all, it looks like a soft-bodied animal—we can infer that it is “strongly controlled” by its genes. It seems to have little free will and to act almost entirely on direct instinct.
After merging with the creature, Ymir’s behavior acquired the same quality of being “strongly controlled.” In some matters, genes seem to issue Ymir direct, impossible-to-disobey commands. The clearest example is that Ymir cannot use her own will to break free from her attachment to King Fritz.
Eren did indeed sense something in the Paths that looked very much like love. But it was not love; it was an animal-instinct-like attachment, what we call imprinting.
Ymir’s Imprinting
Imprinting is a concept in ethology. It describes a phenomenon in which, during a sensitive period in an animal’s development, genes activate an instruction that makes the animal form a behavioral pattern very quickly, but very rigidly.
The instruction is as if stamped into the brain. Once imprinted, the animal executes it like a walking corpse—as if the organism and its genes had signed a Devil’s bargain, one that cannot be broken.
A Devil’s bargain? That sounds familiar.
The classic example of imprinting is filial imprinting, which begins in some birds shortly after they hatch. Its function is to teach young birds to recognize their mother. A duckling, for example, will treat the first relatively large, mobile object it sees after hatching as its mother.
But this imprinting is highly mechanical, and once it happens, it is very difficult to change. If the first thing a duckling sees after hatching is a toy car, it will follow that toy car devotedly for the rest of its life and never recognize its real mother again.
Imprinting can be called the most extreme form of genes strongly controlling their vehicle.
If we use the concept of imprinting to examine Ymir’s feelings for King Fritz, don’t we find that they look much less like love and remarkably more like imprinting?
And this is not the first time the concept of “imprinting” has appeared in *Attack on Titan*.
Before this, there was already a group of people in *Attack on Titan* deeply affected by imprinting: the Ackerman family.
The Ackerman Family’s Imprinting
Every member of the Ackerman family forms an imprint on another person at some point in life. They become irresistibly attached to that person and serve them with absolute devotion. Captain Levi’s attachment to Commander Erwin and Mikasa’s attachment to Eren are both examples.
This attachment does not resemble human emotion so much as a duckling’s response to the first living thing it sees. It is completely beyond the control of the will; it is compulsive.
Seen this way, the mental states of the Ackerman family and Ymir Fritz resonate in an extraordinary way.
In short: ordinary humans are primarily weakly controlled by genes; free will outweighs mindless obedience. Ymir Fritz and the Ackerman family, by contrast, are primarily strongly controlled by genes; mindless obedience often overwhelms free will.
This lets us understand Ymir’s contradiction as well: she is uncontrollably attached to King Fritz and serves him with absolute devotion, but this is not based on her free will. It is based on an imprint, like a duckling’s attachment to the first living thing it sees.
Yet the tiny part of free will in Ymir’s mind, though it does not have the upper hand, refuses to accept this animal-like fate.
That is the contradiction Eren senses in Ymir. On one hand, she is irresistibly attached to King Fritz; on the other, she longs to escape that attachment.
So for two thousand years, she kept seeking someone who could help release her from this suffering.
Eren says that person finally appeared: Mikasa.
Why Could Mikasa Free Ymir?
Why Mikasa?
Even at the end of the story, Eren and Armin did not understand why it had to be Mikasa.
But within our framework, the reason is not hard to understand.
Why were both the Ackerman family and Ymir so troubled by imprinting? Was this merely a coincidence Hajime Isayama tossed in on a whim?
Of course not.
Do you remember how the Ninth Titan—the Attack Titan—came into existence? There were originally only eight Titans in the world, and the Attack Titan was created by Ymir’s free will.
In other words, although Ymir herself had long since left the world of the living, she could project her mind into the human world. The Attack Titan is the embodiment of free will in Ymir’s mental world.
Free will was projected into the human world as the Attack Titan.
Then where was the part that was not free projected?
Obviously, it was projected onto the Ackerman family.
This is why the Ackerman family, like Ymir, is “not free.”
In other words, Ymir’s mind split in two and created two embodiments in the human world: the free will weakly controlled by genes became the Attack Titan, while the animal instinct strongly controlled by genes became the Ackermans.
Between the two, the Attack Titan is actually not the most important. It was already the part of Ymir’s mind that did not need saving. The crucial part, the part that needed saving, was actually the Ackerman family.
Working backward from the ending, we know that Ymir in the Paths apparently could not save herself directly. But she could accomplish it through her “embodiment” in the human world.
If the Ackermans in this world had succeeded in breaking genes’ strong control and severing the branded bond between themselves and the person they had clung to for a lifetime, then Ymir in the heavens would also have broken the brand binding her to King Fritz, completed her rebellion against genes, and gained complete spiritual freedom.
In other words, the humans on earth were really fighting a “proxy war” for the gods. The fates of the gods’ incarnations among humans determined the gods’ fate in lockstep.
That is why the key to the story’s ending rests entirely on the last representative of the Ackerman family—Mikasa. Because Mikasa Ackerman’s freedom is Ymir’s freedom.
That is also why Ymir’s fate ultimately depends on whether Mikasa can swing that one blade at Eren.
That blade is the symbol of free will in Mikasa’s spirit defeating genetic control.
Once that blade was swung, Mikasa and Ymir together completed the vehicle’s rebellion against genes.
From the moment she swung that blade, Mikasa on earth stopped being a “slave to genes” and became a “person.” Ymir in the heavens finally gained true freedom too.
So, did the blade Mikasa finally swung at Eren cut off “love”? Actually, no. What Mikasa cut off was the brand—the animal-instinct-like attachment she was unable to control of her own accord.
Before that blade was swung, Mikasa’s feelings for Eren contained no love at all, only attachment. Her blade severed Eren’s head, but it also severed the restraints that genes and instinct had placed on her will.
Some people say that Hajime Isayama actually used love—a factor that had barely appeared anywhere in the entire work—to wrap up the final few chapters. That sounds like a complete nervous breakdown. But in reality, this is precisely the point of these final three chapters.
Before Mikasa severed Eren’s head, she truly had never been in love with him. Because love belongs only to “free people,” not to “slaves to genes.”
Without that blade, Mikasa could never have kissed Eren.
A kiss is an expression of love, and that too belongs only to free people.
Why did Ymir smile from the side when she saw that kiss?
Was she psychologically disturbed? Did she feel delighted watching a woman kiss the head she had just chopped off herself?
Of course not. Ymir’s smile was really directed at Mikasa—and at herself:
From now on,
you are no longer a war god wielding a blade,
nor a slave driven by genes,
you are simply an ordinary person capable of love.
Child, you are free.
P.S. One small addition:
Although I’ve described Founding Titan Ymir as if she were some understanding big sister, on second thought, isn’t she actually a thoroughly evil god? To complete her own personal self-redemption, she treated humanity’s fate and lives as if they were mere blades of grass.
What was the price of Ymir completing her self-redemption? The extinction of 80% of the earth’s population!
Don’t say Eren brought about the apocalypse all by himself. The book contains plenty of details suggesting that the apocalypse was the shared will of Ymir and Eren.
From Eren’s perspective, the apocalypse was partly meant to level the gap in power between Eldians and outsiders. But from Ymir’s perspective, the apocalypse was nothing more than bait—bait meant to draw out that one blade from Mikasa.
It was precisely the stimulus of the apocalypse that caused unprecedented free will to erupt in Mikasa’s mind, allowing her to break through the shackles of the brand and thereby bringing Ymir’s release. 80% of the people died horribly just like that; their deaths were merely the price of achieving Ymir’s personal redemption.
Before episode 137, people’s mutual oppression had turned the world into a living hell. This was one kind of “Heaven and Earth are not benevolent.”
After episode 137, the gods regarded human life as mere blades of grass. This was another kind of “Heaven and Earth are not benevolent.”
The universally acclaimed classic episode 137 and the seemingly deeply sinister final episode actually arrive at the same destination by different routes.
Before the final episode came out, Hajime Isayama was Schrödinger’s Isayama, existing in a quantum superposition of militarist and pacifist. After the ending came out, he seemed to have collapsed onto the militarist side. But I don’t think Isayama is on the militarist side, nor the pacifist side. He’s on Laozi’s side.
Because from the first episode to the last, Isayama was really saying only one thing:
Heaven and Earth are not benevolent; they treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs.
Written by: Zhichao Wei
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