It’s not really about sustained creativity, the anime just dragged because they wanted to milk the franchise as much as possible. Having like 4 seasons named the final season. They adapted a 139 chapter manga into nearly a 100 episodes.
It doesn’t help that Isayama himself wasn’t sure how to reaolve Eren’s character, he originally planned a tragic ending where everyone diea but changed his mind due to the popularity of the series. The timeskip and Eren’s 180 degree personality change was the biggest issues, it was implied that due the abilities of the Attack Titan he saw something and had some motivation to change. Unfortunately trying to write a reasonable motivation for the MC to commit genocide is pretty much impossible so the ending ended up being a cheaper and worse executed version of the Code Geass ending.
It’s not really about sustained creativity, the anime just dragged because they wanted to milk the franchise as much as possible. Having like 4 seasons named the final season. They adapted a 139 chapter manga into nearly a 100 episodes.
It doesn’t help that Isayama himself wasn’t sure how to reaolve Eren’s character, he originally planned a tragic ending where everyone diea but changed his mind due to the popularity of the series. The timeskip and Eren’s 180 degree personality change was the biggest issues, it was implied that due the abilities of the Attack Titan he saw something and had some motivation to change. Unfortunately trying to write a reasonable motivation for the MC to commit genocide is pretty much impossible so the ending ended up being a cheaper and worse executed version of the Code Geass ending.