5 Things About ‘Attack on TItan’ TV series That Made Zero Sense and 5 Things About It That Made Perfect Sense

‘Attack on Titan’ builds a world with strict rules about Titans, bloodlines, and technology, then pushes those rules to the limit. The story spans walled cities, secret histories, and a power that connects people across time, which gives the series its huge scale and constant reveals.

That scope also leaves a trail of puzzles. Some ideas are airtight and line up cleanly with what we see on screen. Others introduce gaps that the narrative never fully closes. Here are ten focused entries that lay out what fits neatly and what creates head scratching contradictions, alternating between Zero Sense and Perfect Sense.

Zero Sense: Paths causal loop

Eren uses Paths to influence Grisha in the chapel, which directly leads to the fall of the Reiss line’s control and the eventual access to the Founder. The Attack Titan can view memories from future inheritors and that specific ability lets a future Eren push a past Grisha to act. The sequence creates an event that depends on itself with no earlier starting point.

Because the action originates from a future inheritor who needed the result to exist in the first place, the loop has no independent cause outside the system described by Paths. The story presents clear mechanics for memory sharing and royal blood requirements, yet it leaves the origin of the loop without a first cause that exists beyond the loop itself.

Perfect Sense: Titan inheritance rules

The series sets fixed constraints on who can inherit a Titan and for how long. Only Subjects of Ymir can gain a Titan power and the term limit is defined as thirteen years from the moment of inheritance. If a shifter dies without passing the power, the show states the ability finds a newborn Eldian, which preserves continuity of the nine powers.

Transfer mechanics follow consistent triggers. Ingestion of spinal fluid enables forced transformations and eating a shifter transfers that specific power. The show uses these rules to explain battlefield conversions, Warrior selections, and the controlled creation of Pure Titans, and it uses the same rules later to resolve contested inheritances.

Zero Sense: Years of covert Warrior infiltration

Reiner, Bertholdt, and Annie live inside the Walls for an extended period under new identities with access to training, rations, and military facilities. They blend in as displaced youths after the fall of Wall Maria and enter the 104th Cadet Corps without any documented origin beyond vague rural backgrounds that match the refugee crisis.

The setting presents Interior Police scrutiny, noble surveillance, and a culture of documentation inside the Walls. Even so, the story never shows how identity papers, language quirks, and hometown records were reconciled for three foreign operatives over multiple years, which leaves a large gap in vetting and record matching procedures.

Perfect Sense: The three Wall layout

The concentric Walls named Maria, Rose, and Sina create a clear social and logistical structure. Agricultural districts sit near Wall Maria to support food production, crafts and stockpiles concentrate in Wall Rose, and leadership and sensitive knowledge cluster inside Wall Sina. Evacuations follow the rings inward, so each fallback line preserves people and supplies.

The layout also explains troop deployment and equipment stockpiles. Garrison units prioritize gate defense and signal networks along the outer rings, while the Survey Corps stages expeditions from towns with proximity to breach points and resupply depots. The design matches how labor, grain, horses, and gas canisters move along protected roads between districts.

Zero Sense: Ackerman awakening rules drift

Different characters describe the Ackerman condition in conflicting ways. One account claims Ackermans awaken by imprinted service to a host while another source states their power is a bloodline trait that activates under survival stress without any obedience compulsion. Levi and Mikasa demonstrate independent judgment even when their supposed host stands opposed to their choices.

The series confirms Ackerman immunity to memory alteration and Titan powers, which should make their behavior stable across situations. The mixture of imprint claims and autonomy examples leaves the activation trigger and loyalty mechanism without a single consistent explanation that covers every scene in which an Ackerman makes a consequential choice.

Perfect Sense: Marley and Eldia power systems

Marley’s internment zones, Warrior program, and honorary status create a coherent method to control Eldian subjects while exploiting Titan powers. Children are tested, selected, and trained, then families receive privileges in exchange for service. Criminals and political targets are punished by injection and exile as Pure Titans, which doubles as a weapon against Paradis.

Propaganda and military logistics connect. Marley deploys shifters as shock units to break fortifications, relies on artillery and fleets for conventional power, and manages public opinion by attributing fear to outside enemies. These structures explain both the strategic use of Titans abroad and the internal social pressure that keeps Eldian communities compliant.

Zero Sense: Serum scarcity versus mass conversions

On Paradis, the military holds only a few vials of Titan serum with unclear manufacturing capacity and no local formula. At the same time, Marley converts large numbers of Eldians into Pure Titans for battlefield use and for dumping onto the island, which implies steady production, storage, and transport without spoilage during long campaigns.

The story confirms that spinal fluid must remain viable and must be delivered carefully to avoid accidental transformations. It never specifies shelf life, cold storage, or production scale limits. That leaves a gap between the extreme scarcity on the island and the routine mass use on the continent, with logistics that are described in broad strokes only.

Perfect Sense: Gear and weapon R and D

Vertical maneuvering gear relies on replaceable gas canisters and paired grapples, and trainees learn blade maintenance, anchor placement, and gas management as core skills. Blade metal is designed to snap in controlled segments, which allows quick replacement mid fight and keeps balance consistent during long engagements around rooftops and forests.

Thunder Spears arrive after research into hardened Titan armor. The weapons combine explosive payloads with timed fuses and shaped penetration, giving units a way to breach the Armored Titan’s plates during city fights. Anti personnel variants of the gear appear with revolver carbines and shoulder stocks, which explains how urban squads counter human threats inside narrow alleys.

Zero Sense: The rapid tech jump after the timeskip

Paradis shifts from limited industry to rail lines, improved firearms, and early aircraft prototypes within a short window while under external pressure. The island captures enemy equipment and crews, studies engines and metallurgy, and reorganizes labor to build workshops and depots, yet the timeframe compresses training, tooling, and supply chains that usually take longer.

Hizuru support and Marleyan defectors accelerate progress, and the island has forests, ore, and coastline for timber and iron. Even with those advantages, the development pace bundles multiple industrial steps into a single period without showing intermediate failures, large scale foundry expansion, or widespread technical education, which keeps the leap only partially documented.

Perfect Sense: Rumbling mechanics and hardening reversal

The Walls contain countless Colossal class Titans encased in hardened material that blocks sunlight and movement. Access to the Founder lets a controller issue commands through Paths to all Subjects of Ymir, and royal blood contact with a Founding power bearer unlocks full use of that command authority. When hardening is undone, the Wall Titans wake and begin marching.

The global hardening reversal also frees Annie from her crystal. The result lines up with prior rules about hardening and with the link between the Founder and all Eldians. The event chain follows established requirements of possession, bloodline contact, and intent, so the narrative outcome matches the stated system that governs Titan behavior and materials.

Share your own picks that left you puzzled or perfectly satisfied in ‘Attack on Titan’ in the comments.