[EN][ESSAY] Philosophy of Attack on Titan

15 Aug, 2026

What is up, my fellow prisoners of existence. Today we are dissecting a colossal series filled with unparalleled kinetic action, an absolute surplus of weeping cowards, and gargantuan, steamy Ken dolls - Attack on Titan.

Many anime properties treat death as a plot device, but very few ruminate on the visceral, inescapable reality of it quite like this show. In a purely Heideggerian sense, Titans are the physical personification of our Being-towards-death - walking, grinning reminders of human mortality that force an existential confrontation with our inevitable demise. It is utterly horrifying.

However, the darkest element of the series isn't the eerie introspection on mortality, nor is it the chilling biological reality that Titans lack genitals. The true horror lies in the socio-political construction of the walled society itself, operating simultaneously as a love letter to 20th-century European fascism and a thinly veiled manifesto for modern Japanese nationalism.

Upon closer academic inspection, the political ideology of this walled society perfectly aligns with the theories of one of the most brilliant and notoriously reviled philosophers of the 20th century: Carl Schmitt. Schmitt was a card-carrying, unrepentant Nazi. The man was, in highly technical philosophical terms, a piece of shit. Yet, the show functions as a terrifying exploration of his ideas in practice, deliberately layered over the post-WWII anxieties of its creator, Hajime Isayama. It dares to ask a deeply provocative question: in a profoundly dystopian world, is it possible that a horrific, fascistic political philosophy is the only thing keeping the fragile fabric of human society from complete collapse?

Spoiler alert for the anime. Let us dive into the bleak, Schmittian nightmare of Paradis Island and its underlying nationalist agenda.

• The Hobbesian Nightmare and the Inevitability of Inequality Central to Schmitt's philosophy is "The Political." For Schmitt, a stable society rests on the grim acceptance that conflict is inescapable, building heavily on Thomas Hobbes's concept of the state of nature - the bellum omnium contra omnes, or the war of all against all. When a young Mikasa witnesses a praying mantis devouring a moth, she has a profound realization of Schopenhauer's "Will to Life" - the world is a blind, ravenous striving where strength preys on weakness. Because humans are essentially awful, Schmitt argues that it is entirely pointless for politics to try and fix social inequality. Attempting to engineer a utopian society is a distraction from the state's actual job: survival. We see this spatially mapped in Attack on Titan through a rigid caste system. The peasants in Wall Maria are fodder, while the aristocratic elites in Wall Sina are safely tucked away playing chess. Schmitt - and the government of Paradis - views this severe inequality as a necessary feature of order.

• Article 9 and the Architecture of Xenophobia To fully grasp the subtext of these walls, we must look at the real-world rhetorical situation Isayama is responding to: post-WWII Japan. After its defeat, the Allied Forces imposed Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, stripping the nation of a standing army and forcing a reliance on Western defense. This birthed an intense ideological rivalry. On one side are the shosha, the minority embracing liberal multiculturalism. On the other are the tenno, the conservative, nationalist majority who oppose foreign influence, defend Japan's imperial history, and wish to repeal Article 9 to rebuild military might. In this light, the walls of Paradis are not just Schmittian mechanisms of control; they represent Japan's ocean borders and its incredibly strict immigration laws, designed to protect a fiercely homogenous society. The Titans roaming outside are a dual-layered metaphor. On one hand, they represent an ethnocentric, xenophobic view of foreigners as mindless, encroaching beasts. On the other, their terrifying size and regenerative power symbolize the looming nuclear and military threats of neighboring nations like China, Russia, and North Korea.

• The Friend/Enemy Distinction and Imperial Nostalgia The absolute core of Schmitt's political theory is the distinction between friend and enemy. A legitimate political community only exists when it can clearly define an external "Other" to struggle against. The Titans provide an existential threat that unifies a fractured society, preventing humanity's baseline savagery from resulting in a civil war. If you want a masterclass in how this distinction is operationalized into nationalism, look at the season one opening theme. The operatic rock anthem, set against images of soaring military might and Germanic architecture (heavily inspired by the real walled city of Nördlingen), is borderline Leni Riefenstahl Triumph of the Will propaganda. It is a rallying cry for a defeated people to find meaning in militarism. This imperial nostalgia bleeds directly into the characters. Isayama notoriously modeled Commander Dot Pyxis after Akiyama Yoshifuru, an Imperial Japanese Army general accused of massive war crimes in Korea and China.
  

Considering that "Pyxis" is a Greek constellation representing a navigational compass, the subtext is painfully clear: this historic avatar of imperialism is literally pointing the direction toward Japanese strength and a nationalist revival.

• Sovereignty and the State of Exception The final element of Schmitt's theory is the power of the sovereign. In his 1922 book Political Theology, Schmitt famously wrote, "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception." A true sovereign isn't bound by the law; they can suspend it, declare a state of emergency, and sacrifice populations for the survival of the state. Democratic bickering is a luxury you cannot afford when a 15-meter naked giant is kicking your door down. We see this brutal sovereign math applied flawlessly after the fall of Wall Maria. To solve a massive food shortage, the government orders a "reclamation mission," which is actually a state-sanctioned culling. They send 250,000 refugees to be slaughtered by Titans. The philosopher Giorgio Agamben later built on Schmitt's work to describe Homo Sacer, the concept of "bare life" - citizens stripped of political rights who can be killed without it being considered murder. The refugees are reduced to bare life, sacrificed by the sovereign to maintain the caloric stability of the interior.

As dark and twisted as it sounds, the walls of Paradis hold up precisely because they operate on these deeply cynical, fascistic principles. The sovereign maintains the right to murder its own, the class system stabilizes the populace, and the Titans serve as the unifying external enemy.

Attack on Titan is a masterclass in political theory masquerading as a monster-slaying Shōnen. It is simultaneously a terrifying simulation of Carl Schmitt's political theory and a Japanese conservative's wet dream of abolishing Article 9 to return to imperial military glory. It forces us to look at the darkest parts of human societal organization and asks if, under the right pressures, we wouldn't all beg for a little fascism to keep the monsters at bay.

Stay critical, keep your omni-directional mobility gear oiled, and I will see you next time.

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