When we’re first introduced to the Titans, we don’t feel a shred of sympathy for them - they seem to be grotesque, mindless, heartless monsters who kill for the sake of killing. The world revealed in Chapter 86 is the final fruit of the steady dissolution of prejudice which has been working its way through the story’s narrative. What other world could the Warriors, the dark parallels of our protagonists, have come from? It needed to be a world which stirred as much hatred for humanity as the Walled World stirs for the Titans. To see the people with the blood of the Titans controlled and oppressed by human society - using Walls, no less - in Chapter 86 flips the first two chapters on their head.Įven 86′s title ‘That Day’ is one word away from Chapter 2′s ‘On That Day’! The father and the son, and the respective worlds they belong to, are not simply parallels, but mirror reflections of each other. Grisha fights to save the Titans from humanity. However, there is one crucial difference between their storylines.Įren fights to save humanity from the Titans. Even their parents become hysterical in their efforts to quell this dream (except, of course, for Grisha):īoth find groups filled with like-minded people to devote their lives to:Īnd both are motivated by a desire to avenge a beloved family member who was brutally devoured at the hands of the enemy: Because doesn’t this…Īs the chapter progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Grisha’s dreams and struggles serve as a direct parallel to those of his son. Both are filled with curiosity for the outer world and refuse to let their walls, metaphorical and literal, confine them:īoth have dreams vehemently rejected by wider society as a quick way to get yourself killed. Despite being exposed to so much new material within this chapter - a civilisation beyond the walls, Grisha’s family, the true history of the titans and the struggle between the Eldian and Marleyan races - Grisha’s trials and tribulations were all too recognisable. Aside from the sheer ecstasy of finally unravelling the mysteries of the SNK universe, my experience of Chapter 86 was marked by a sense of deja vu.