It Was Always a Love Story, Actually

🚨 MAJOR SPOILERS for *Better Call Saul* and *Attack on Titan*.

Japanese Manga artist Hajime Isayama always has been a magpie for pop culture. He sneaks [*Game of Thrones* cameos](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/game-of-thrones-cameos-found-in-attack-on-titan-ma/1100-6452347/), [silly Internet memes](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShingekiNoKyojin/comments/lvuvev/meme_references_in_aot/#lightbox), and whatever crosses his desk that week into his acclaimed series *Attack on Titan*.

There's one reference I want to point out. Somewhere in the back half of the *Attack on Titan* manga, tucked into a panel, Isayama drew [a Titan with a side part and a cheap suit](https://comicbook.com/anime/news/attack-on-titan-manga-cameo-better-caul-saul-meme/).

It is an unmistakable cameo of Saul Goodman.

And I'm thankful for this. The two universes I'm about to discuss together have already touched. A cartoonist drawing the end of the world looked up from his desk, and thought of the sad attorney in the back of a nail salon.

I can't imagine how thin the Venn diagram is of people who will appreciate this analysis, but I feel compelled to write it nonetheless.

You see, I can't stop thinking about the parallels between the ending of *Attack on Titan* and *Better Call Saul*.

I already know what you're thinking, *these two pieces of media could not be further apart*, could they? A fourteen-year shonen epic about giants eating the world, and a six-season slow-burn about a strip-mall lawyer talking his way into Hell.

Yet, they converge at the end. The blood and bodies and legal paperwork and monsters are all secondary. You see, these both are love stories.

## I. The Mirrors

In the finale episode of the crime drama spin-off *Better Call Saul*, Kim Wexler visits Jimmy McGill (Saul Goodman) in prison. The two intimately share a cigarette leaning against a wall, [identical to the framing of the first episode](https://static0.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Better-Call-Saul-Series-Finale-Smoking-Callback-Pilot.jpg). A callback bordering on liturgy. Slippin' Jimmy first [successfully talked down his sentence to seven years, a plea deal in a minimum-security facility with a golf program](https://punditweb.com/better-call-saul-why-did-saul-take-the-86-years/). An ending Saul Goodman would have crawled through glass for.

Then, he completely rejects it. He stands up in court and confesses on the record to Chuck, to Howard, to how drug kingpin Walter White couldn't have done it without him. He ensures Kim is there in the pews to witness it. He asks the judge to call him James McGill, not Saul Goodman. And he is rewarded (if that's the right word) with eighty-six years in a supermax ADX Montrose [To *eighty-six* means to strike it from the menu, to be done