It is the symbol of freedom and what Eren is damned to endlessly chase after. Now, I don’t think that I have to go to great lengths to explain a bird flying into the sky, especially not in Attack on Titan of all things. Eren himself has yet to be symbolized as a bird, but does this seem not too far out of place. While the scarf is widely associated with Mikasa, the scarf itself belonged to and is in memory of Eren. The bird is also most likely not to be seen as Mikasa. I doubt the gold coloring of the bird has any more meaning, than the obvious contrast it provides to the cold and dark blue sky. I can’t make out if it is supposed to be a specific bird and it doesn’t look like one of AoT’s go-to birds like doves, wild geese and falcons, so I assume it is just supposed to be a generic bird™. Next up, the wind blows the scarf away from Eren, which then transforms into a bird.
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What I find is interesting is that all the poppies are white, a color normally reserved for the pure and innocent, though it is most likely due to young Eren’s naive world view that the poppies are all still white, as they change into color later. Falling leaves or petals, unless they are cherry blossoms, normally symbolize the end of life and with the flowers being poppies, who are used for consolation and, in flower language, mean remembrance and death, probably show that death, even as a child, was always around him. The next shot follows Eren walking forward through the field of flowers, while the same petals we saw in the first shot, fall against him.
![aot season 2 ed aot season 2 ed](https://i2.wp.com/4geekslikeyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/img_2706-1.jpg)
Subtlety is a tool for conveying your story, not a goal, and I doubt Attack on Titan would resonate as much as it does with a lot of people, were it any less brash about its themes. Attack on Titan is rarely subtle, but I also think it is at its best when it punches you in the face with its symbolism, as it tends to be at its most effective. I honestly have to applaud the utter audacity of this shot. A drop of blood flows down the knife and falls on one of the poppies, dying the petal from white to red. The next shot shows the lead up of all this. Close to the end of the story and we know exactly where it goes, now this time from his perspective and the way how his first time killing someone has shaped him internally to eventually take up the usurper role and fight for his vision of freedom himself. It also shows how Eren has changed from the kind boy that gave her his scarf to him being in the military and swearing revenge against those that killed his mother, almost as to ask where this change will lead him. The first ED focuses on Mikasa and how her encounter witch Eren changed her into the person she is today. This shot also bears resemblance with the very first Ending of Attack on Titan, using the same narrative motive, but this time from another perspective. The scarf and bloody knife are easy to pinpoint and pair it with the lyrics and we know that it is Eren from when he killed the murderers of Mikasas’s parents and realized that he has to fight in this world. The fact that Erens’s eyes are colored enforces the notion that Eren is in fact looking for something. They are obviously the way through which the characters see the world around them and reflections off the eyes are often used to show the viewer what the characters see.
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Eyes are a often used motive in Attack on Titan. Eren is almost completely unsaturated and the only things of color are his eyes, his scarf and the blood on his knife. We zoom out and while the void is still filling the background, we see that Eren is standing in a field of what I assume are white poppies. First, there were the obvious literal walls surrounding the inhabitants of Paradise, as well as the metaphorical walls they represent, there were the titans hindering the advance to outside the walls and at the of Attack on Titans’s first part, the ocean, over which not freedom but another enemy lies. Attack on Titan has introduced several false horizons over its run. We don’t know where Eren is looking, though knowing him it is his idea of “forward”. The ED starts off with a young Eren looking into the distant, while being surrounded by a dark void, though it is more accurate to say that this void obfuscates the view, as it is later cleared. I am more of a visual learner, so this will be the main part of this analysis. They essentially summarize Eren’s journey, from the innocent boy dreaming of freedom to picking up the knife and eventually walking the bloodstained path he himself created.