Attack On Titan Fans Think This Character Has The Worst Fate In The Entire Series
"Attack On Titan" is easily one of the most popular and recognizable anime series of all time (via Polygon). Melding medieval fantasy with visceral horror and disturbing violence, the series explores fascism in one of its most devastating fictional variations around. It is a story filled with compelling characters facing complex, morally gray choices in a political world full of strife and intrigue.
What makes even the most powerful "Attack on Titan" characters especially interesting, however, is how relatable they are in terms of their motivations. In this series, even the villains have very understandable and logical reasons for the plethora of horrible acts they commit.
The modern Ymir (Saki Fujita/Elizabeth Maxwell) from the scout corps has had a devastating lot in life, as have Levi Ackerman (Hiroshi Kamiya/Matthew Mercer) and Erwin Smith (Daisuke Ono/J. Michael Tatum), for that matter. From making awful choices about who lives and dies to leaving your family behind to give them a better chance in the world, "Attack on Titan" is a series filled with these types of sad and tragic tales.
Fans think Ymir Fritz has had a horrible existence
In particular, Ymir Fritz (Miura Chiyuki/Yu Apphia) has a tremendously sad life over the course of the series. Ymir first appears as a strange young girl within the mind of Zeke Yeager (Takehito Koyasu/Jason Liebrecht). However, this character is no mere dream or simple construct of imagination. In fact, Ymir is the founding titan and the source of the cursed fate that has remained on Eldians for so many millennia.
On the r/attackontitan subreddit, u/hope_this_is_better created a thread looking into the terrible history of Ymir. "I'm not even talking about her time on earth, which is also f***ing horrifying," the user elaborated. "Being a slave her whole life, being raped by a man who uses her power to take over the world, even though she could crush him and his army with ease."
The user is referring to Ymir's devastating backstory as revealed in Season 4, Part 2 of "Attack on Titan." It's particularly troubling due to its many trigger points, from marriage under duress to slavery to cannibalism to bloody conflict. This is just the start of Ymir's suffering, as she becomes bound to the earth from another realm where she must serve the holder of the coordinate forever.
The user went on to clarify what made the fate so horrific. "When Zeke first said that Ymir built his body back together, I imagined it being like a godlike thing where she just makes his body whole again," they said. "But no, she literally builds bodies out of sand using only her hands. And not just human bodies."
It's deeply sad to be confined to an eternity alone in some ethereal dream space, building giants out of sand for the rest of your days. Hopefully, Ymir Fritz is finally free from her terrible fate after all of these years, at least.
There are many awful fates in Attack on Titan
In a sense, the name Ymir itself seems to almost be a curse in "Attack on Titan." While Ymir Fritz was forced to wile away eternity, her modern successor, Ymir of the Scout Corps, had a similarly awful existence. Sacrificed by her village after trying to help them, she was turned into a titan and roamed the plains of Paradis for ages until she ate one of The Nine and regained her humanity as a result. Thrust back into the world after hundreds of years of mindless wandering, with nothing and no one, is a bad enough time without being taken back to Marley and executed again so you can pass on your powers and finally die in peace.
Reiner Braun (Yoshimasa Hosoya/Robert McCollum) has also had a rough go of it. Constantly despised and looked down on by his comrades after he joined the Warriors, he lived a traitorous existence to save his family from torment and starvation. After this, he became so morally paralyzed by how far he'd gone to survive and help his people that he formed two separate versions of himself in his mind in order to cope. Finally, he begged for his life when Eren Yeager (Yuki Kaji/Bryce Papenbrook) came to destroy his city, before just laying in a pit and waiting to die.
Ultimately, we could explore the sad lives of the characters of "Attack on Titan" all day long, but these examples, along with the aforementioned Ymir Fritz, are certainly among the most devastating and heartbreaking.