Quote Originally Posted by noparlpf View Post
That's more than three times bigger than the UK, more than twice as big as Japan, and about 50% bigger than Madagascar. That's a pretty darn big island, but not quite continent-sized; Australia is about 9x bigger.

I also have no idea what real-world landmass it's supposed to be, though.
I am not saying this takes place in actual our world, but Paradise Isle looks mightly alike Madagascar off the coast of Africa.

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Note this is how it is presented in the manga, aka the tail of the contient of Paradise / Paridis is facing the direction we commonly call North on our earth made Maps.

But if the flip the map over you get an image that looks like this compared to africa.

Before I show Africa noticed that this image is flipped upside down in the 2nd version and that the writting looks all weird because of it.







We also see later on a map of greater Marley and the nearby continents and it looks like the nearby continents are part of Europe and Asia.

Note maps is politics, there is a great scene about this from the west wing.



From a biology standpoint what you assign to be the top and what the bottom in a map assigns unconscious biases in our heads without us even realizing it. This is because humans are biological creatures with hands and feats, and eyes, but we still have a universal constant which is gravity and the bottom, the horizon, rarely changes, yet the top often changes, and thus we look to the things in the north and assign them more importance if we make the north the top, but there is no reason why we have to make the north the top, the east could be the top, the west could be the top, the south can be the top. It is just so often we make the north the top, it has become an accustomed habit that we do not even think about it.

And thus I do not think Attack on Titan literally takes place on this Earth set in the past or set in the future. Instead it is more of a comment about our unconscious biases that we do not really even realize. Do we question our culture, our history, is it literally true, or is it a fabrication. It is very disorienting, like you turn the world upside down, if you suddenly question the culture you were raised in and if its true or not. For if its not true you have to figure out on your own merits what could be true, and what is not true, and it is just cognitively simpler...it is just easier...to be a machine and just listen to the history that you were taught even if the history is a lie.

Hajime Isayama, the author of attack on titan, by making the attack on titan world look very similar to our world, but slightly different like North is South (really what we call South is just the top of the map, but our brains sometimes forget the distinction of North and Top) it makes us question our own reality out of a sense of deja vu but at the same time the deja vu is OFF, it does not feel right, and thus we enter a stage of doubt that makes us reconsider our own past, to try to find the balance that makes everything feel like up is up, down is down, top is top, and so on.

Note the Gall Peters Projection has its own flaws even though in my opinion the Flaws are minor and the advantages are Major. That said the XKCD author disagrees.

See https://xkcd.com/977/ But understand he is not really hating the Gall Peters Projection, he is instead hating the arrogant people who think the Gall Peters Projection is without flaws, aka the people full of hubris for they are preaching something they do not really understand. Every form of map has flaws, you can't make a 3d map into a 2d map accurately. But people who say the Gall Peters Projection has no flaws has fallen to marketing. Aka see https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/ind...ap_Projections

This is actually a very big deal in philosphy and especially the philosphy of perception, memory, and motivated reasoning. It is called the map is not the territory (and vice versa). Human Beings actually are smarter for we do not try to accurately see and perceive reality but we can easily truncate information to make it easier to manipulate in our minds in a symbol / abstract way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2...itory_relation

If we did not do this, it would be too much data, we could not make useful decisions. Aka motivated reasoning (propaganda we tell ourselves) is the secret to human intelligence, both its virtue and its sins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

We actually even have a specific brain area called brodmann area 10 to deal with this idea of cognitive dissonance and motivated reasoning, but we only use this brain area when we feel we have to, and we do so in a non stress, introspective manner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brodmann_area_10 Note BA 10 is one of the biggest differences between us / humans and monkeys / and other primates, this area of the brain has had a recent expansion between us and other primates. Note there are also major differences between primates / monkeys and humans in the Inferior Frontal Cortex which is one of the brain areas that deals with language but also many other things.