Envy Chapter 5
Greetings my mighty loyalist,
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The Attack Titan’s spirit and Mitch Horowitz’s human chasm.
[SPOILERS FOR ATTACK ON TITAN AHEAD]
Philosophy never ceases to amaze me, nor does our tendency to find and betray patterns. One such connection I have discovered is between the work of Attack on Titan and the author and philosopher Mitch Horowitz.
Being a regular reader, you’ll know that there are two things I really love: magick and Attack on Titan. And I don’t just mean magick involving ritual and bone, though there is that, but also synchronicity, phenomena, and parapsychological paths. Attack on Titan is filled to the brim with these notions, too. Consider Eren’s retrocausality, the paths and coordinate stuck within infinity, and the Titans themselves as manifestations. See Hange Zoë’s explanation of a Titan’s head feeling weightless when kicked and then evaporating in Season 1, Episode 15. How Hajime manifested this epic in his early 20s is beyond me.
So is Mitch’s book, Practical Magick. It contains substantial exercises for manifesting a true self and an argument for the invisible world’s potential. Mitch’s work is still very new to me, unfortunately, but nevertheless came into my life just in time as I create my comics. I also listened to his later book, Esoterika, depending on when you read this. It holds keys to self-discovery, perhaps a little more intimately. I love his evaluation of “satanic” and “Satanist.” I highly recommend listening to him on any number of podcasts just to get his vibe.
How does one move from the spirit of the people and into the heart of the individual? It is the same fight Eren must contend with: the horror and guilt of what he does to those beneath his many colossal feet, weighed against whatever aligned him with the inevitable path he helped orchestrate.
Obviously, I am a massive Attack on Titan fan. I have watched it inside and out, three times over. I have read most of the manga, though admittedly, I’m still working on that. Mitch, as well, has struck me in recent months. I have listened to his appearance on The Why Files twice and have been reading his books Esoterika and Practical Magick. Still, compared to my familiarity with Attack on Titan, I feel but a tadpole in the vastness of what Mitch has published. I know enough, I think, and so we get into the meat of thought.
“There is a chasm between conviction and conduct.”
— Mitch Horowitz, The Why Files, released August 17, 2026, on Spotify and YouTube.
Hajime Isayama is the author and creator of Attack on Titan. This series was birthed in 2009 and came to its pinnacle conclusion in November 2023. This conclusion prompted mixed emotions over how exactly it stuck the landing. Even with the insight I hope to share, the ending does have its problems. Two are what the aftermath of an event like the Rumbling would really look like and how comparatively many of Eren’s friends survive the final confrontation. And I mark the end of the anime rather than the end of the manga because the anime had some writing adjustments. But those issues are not what people have a problem with. It’s Eren’s decision to continue the Rumbling despite knowing the horror it would cause. Why could he not stop it?
This, obviously, doesn’t sit well with an author. As one, no matter your success, you always feel behind or unworthy. Isayama is no different. So, to hear that your ending is “meh” can be really crushing. Personally, I loved the ending, and now I love it even more because I’m exploring the depths of the philosophy Eren’s decision prompts through this observation of Mitch’s philosophy. Humanity is broken. It’s broken.
It is multiplicative, and this is just my interpretation, but here’s my proposal. Eren was possessed by the will of Ymir, which compounded the already existing convictions of each holder of the Attack Titan. Ymir, in turn, was also possessed by the ancient need to survive, compounded by her trauma. Essentially, Eren does not know why, but he MUST do what he did. I think there is no greater trauma you can represent than knowing that you’re the arbiter of the apocalypse, that you can see and feel everything about it, and that you cannot change it. What is strange is that everyone thinks Eren could have changed his trajectory. That is a valid consideration, and I think this is where Isayama fell short in his depiction. This is not Eren’s decision. It’s the spirit of the Attack Titan. Not even the Hallucigenia knows why it must crush. It must. As the quote above goes, there is a chasm between the spirit, the psyche of the masses, and the individual’s wants. Forces propel us, not me, to war. Eren was reeling with guilt and sorrow for years, knowing what was coming, yet he still moved forward. This illustrates something a little less meta, but still pertinent.
“We traverse life with a menu of, say, twenty responses, and claim selfhood.”
— Esoterika: Formulas Against the False Self (G&D Media, 2026), introduction.
Eren was strapped so tightly to the pursuit of freedom that he wasn’t free. This is less of a question in the community but still relevant to the philosophy beneath, entwined in the show. Now, this little tidbit has sparked similar questions about myself. I am so strapped to becoming a renowned comic artist that now I question: am I free to do anything else? The great Carl Jung said it best:
“Everyone knows nowadays that people ‘have complexes.’ What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.”
— C. G. Jung, A Review of the Complex Theory, Collected Works, Vol. 8, §200.
I could not agree more. When I get a story to produce, it possesses me. I cannot do tasks in life without thinking about the story I have to interpret and create. It’s a double-edged sword, even more so when you have multiple stories. For Eren, freedom is less like an idea and more like a conviction that locks onto him. This is the radical conviction the spirit of the Attack Titan savors and exploits. Maybe I have the conviction of many spirits like Envy and OPAL.
At what point do these branches fail? Still, there is retrocausation. Is this the future speaking to us? Is this the future spiraling a destiny? Was it the spirit of the future Attack Titan bringing forth Ragnarok? I think so. The story offers plenty of examples: Kruger knowing the names of people he’s never met, suggesting that the future was already inside him; Dina passing over Bertholdt, sparing his life so that his purpose could be fulfilled while Eren’s mother was eaten – all before Eren inherited a Titan; Eren’s dream reaching back through time, again before he had the ability; and Eren’s father seeing his sons as adults, even though they were not physically present in his time. It’s very, very dense.
So, again, I stress: I do not think Eren had a choice in the matter of activating the Rumbling. We are broken, and that coalesces against the individual.
Thank you everyone for joining me in my dissection and reading. Again, this is just because I feel that the ending of Attack on Titan and Eren are greatly misunderstood. Feel free to disagree.
