Game of Thrones vs Attack on Titan

Aot isn't better than early game of thrones (1-4) let alone the much much better asoiaf books.

.................both are garbage

I remember seeing the HBO promo trailers and advertisements for Game of Thrones when it was starting in 2011. At the time I didn't start it because I was watching other shows (not anime - I wouldn't get into anime at this point for another five years) and just wasn't particularly interested in picking up a random fantasy show I didn't know much else about other than that it was based on a book series. I had never read the books. Nothing about the trailers especially stood out or grabbed me. But I started watching it right before the second season started airing in 2012. By then I guess there was more leaking of content from it onto the internet, I had seen one or two out of context clips, the infancy of its pop culture saturation trickling in, etc., so I became intrigued. I remember watching the first few episodes, then was traveling most of the year and didn't have access to a television so didn't watch most of the second season weekly, but finished it shortly after I returned home. Then I watched every subsequent season (the third season on) weekly as it aired until it ended in 2019.

What they did to the last seasons, beyond butchery - there are hardly words potent and punitive enough within the English language to adequately describe it. One of the worst betrayals of the viewership and an entire audience and fanbase of all-time. Certainly all-time in the history of television and maybe in all modern fiction as well. Just atrocious. But it cannot sully what came before. I still place Game of Thrones in my Top 10 TV Series of all time, at rank #6, just below The Sopranos and above Avatar - The Last Airbender, in a list in which I include both mediums of live action and Western animation/cartoons (but exclude most anime with the exception of one series due to its length). I just state explicitly the exclusion of seasons seven and eight from being part of that (especially season eight).

There were already some missteps and wasted or sloppily handled areas of the relaying of the story in seasons five and six. Definitely some instances of noticeably weaker writing there than what preceded it in the pinnacle of its writing in seasons 1 - 4, but there were still enough well-written enough individual scenes and moments which were emotionally resonant great payoffs and imparted that proper epic cinematic feel that I truthfully didn't care (examples of fantastic episodes and moments which made these seasons worth it would be the last two episodes of season six - BotB and WoW). Whereas with seven and eight (eight in particular), it just became too pronounced and atrocious so as to no longer be an occasional nuisance or distraction but led to total derailment.

Shingeki no Kyojin, I have a much less extensive experience with. When I began watching anime in the autumn of 2016, I watched six series from that September until the end of the year. It wasn't until 2019 I began watching series more regularly and back to back (and 2020 for some seasonals), so between all of 2017 and 2018, I only watched a small handful of series. Shingeki no Kyojin was one of those series in the summer of 2017. I liked various aspects of the first season well enough and some of its ideas and potential, but I became frustrated with the series as a whole and dropped it halfway through the second season, never to return. There I have left it.

Kinda my experience as well... loved GoT. Read the books initially before the show came around, watched and liked the show, was dismayed at the bad handling of the closure. SnK seemed interesting and I liked it. I got further than second season, but ended up kinda petering out on it and never finishing it. I can't even remember what season it was, but it's never a good sign when you are halfway through a show and just never feel like watching more so I'd have to vote GoT over it heh.

Interesting to know and interesting coincidence!

Keep in mind that while I allow in live action and cartoons unrestricted, I limit it to only one anime since I don't want my anime to take over half or more of the list since that would negate the purpose of a separate anime list for me, so I only allow in my #1 top anime and justified on the basis of its longer length (so in other words, close in length to some of the longer TV series).

Anyway, it's:

1.) Inuyasha
2.) Oz
3.) The Twilight Zone (original 1959 iteration)
4.) Six Feet Under
5.) The Sopranos
6.) Game of Thrones
7.) Avatar - The Last Airbender
8.) 24
9.) Quantum Leap
10.) Farscape

Game of Thrones committing suicide by poor writing in its last two seasons and season eight most of all wasn't enough to blot out all the good which had come before and so to eject it from the list, but the effect was moving it down a few slots from probably what would have been the fourth position to the sixth.

I'd be curious to know yours as well.

Beautiful - I never thought I would see Rome and Mushishi on the same list of anything, but I can tell immediately you have taste for a wide variety of things, as do I. Rome is actually just outside my own list! Probably would be #11 if I extended it. All my close runners-up are HBO's period piece shows from the mid-2000s which were treated egregiously badly and canceled prematurely and far too early - Rome, Carnivale, and Deadwood. You should check out the other two too if you haven't already.

Also, if I similarly allowed all anime on my list unrestricted, it would probably be closer to mirroring yours in the sense that my Top 5 anime would be about half the list - probably the first half honestly, and push everything else down.

And if you ever watch The Twilight Zone at any point down the line, just keep in mind two things. One is to go for the original which aired from 1959 - 1964 and had five seasons. All in black and white. Not the vastly inferior reboots from the 1980s, 2002, and 2019 (the 2002 one is actually decent and the only other one I've seen all of all the way through, but still can't hold a candle to the original).

And the other thing is that because it's an anthology series, the plot, setting, and even characters are different every episode, so while it holds true of every series I've ever seen that there are some episodes better than others or you personally like/favor some episodes more than others, and that is true even in a serial series (where it's like one long continuing story or giant-sized movie) or episodic series (like sitcoms that have the relatively self-contained one-off plots usually resolved within an episode, but the same characters and setting and some level of continuity), this is extra true for an anthology series, because each episode is really independent of all others.

The Twilight Zone basically laid the foundation for a lot of modern television and so many different series. Even including many I haven't watched. In 2017 I attended a convention for the show in the creator's hometown and there were various guests who were people involved in the industry talking about how so many famous and well-known as well as not so well-known series after it from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. wouldn't have existed without it. It's also good because since it's an anthology, it can play around a lot with exploring different genres. Some episodes are very Sci-Fi, some very fantasy, some horror, some lighthearted comedy, some just dramas or thrillers between a few characters with nothing supernatural involved in them.

Twin Peaks I've seen - Both the episodes from its original 1990 run and from when it came back in 2017. Yes, I agree that it's a solid recommendation for those into this kind of stuff. I also like a number of Lynchian films like Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Mulholland Drive, etc.

Carnivale is dripping with atmosphere from the 1930s Oklahoma Dust Bowl era. A great picture of the rural American south-central region at the time. The look actually reminds me a lot of the early scenes in The Wizard of Oz even though that was the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries and took place in Kansas. Just be aware that unlike Rome and Deadwood, it's also a dark fantasy and gets into a lot of religious symbolism and mythology. It's more like if Game of Thrones involved rural 1930s Americans and took place in our world instead of being a high fantasy.