Story:
Right away the story starts strong with a darker and more epic atmosphere, already backed up by its interesting premise. The mood was already set from the beginning but this show didn’t feel like it was good enough. In a way, the mood and atmosphere in Attack on Titan is like fog: the staff keep making the fog thicker and thicker until you can no longer see the surroundings.
In other words: The mood and atmosphere are so focused on that it gets in the way of the story. Although the story is still there, it likes to show despair over and over when it is no longer necessary to show it. Almost everything has to go wrong with a few exceptions so the story has to continue, people must die and we must always see them die or be told about how terrible it was until you get sick of it and we must always see people almost going insane with all this.
It is understandable that all of this happens in this kind of story and I don’t think everything should’ve been more positive, it’s just that I would rather see plot progression than despair. You could try to tell me that this was the show trying to be psychological and that it was not the atmosphere but that would still be badly executed because it accomplishes nothing and we get to see nothing in the minds of the characters.
Not only that but this show also loves sidetracking. The first few episodes had a visible goal but somewhere in the later episodes it is sidetracked by an event of the plot that wasn’t as important as the goal presented before, and that important goal was never reached. With that, the more interesting questions about the story were never answered and only raised more questions.
The final episodes of the show confused me further. Although they made me realize that this part was more important than it seemed, it failed to tell us more than that and in the end we’re left in the dark about all the more important points of the story. But that’s only about the story, we haven’t even gotten to the characters yet.
I liked the concept of the Titans but unfortunately we got to know anything interesting about them because of this show’s thing for sidetracking. One of the only solid things about this anime is its world-building as we got to see how their society differed from ours with its separate walls and districts to the roles of the various factions of this series. The fact that their culture was different from ours was obvious and I liked it.
The ending was very open: a second season is definitely expected from this. If that’s not the case then the ending is terrible. Only the part I mentioned above was “solved” (if you consider a final fight as solved) and the first goal we had in sight was barely touched upon.
Seriously, if this doesn’t get a second season I will take one point away from the score of the story.
Character:
The fog does not only affect the story: it especially affects the characters. The characters are so drowned in despair that I end up forgetting about them in the sadistic show that is Attack on Titan. This show loves showing as much despair as possible to the characters, and the only ones that have some sort of depth are only some the characters that matter (the ones that were focused on throughout the show; Jean, a supporting character, had a surprising amount of focus so I'm considering him as an exception that I won't mention here). Those that aren’t even supporting characters usually lack common sense and possibly sanity, being suspicious of everything and anything and having lost the ability to see something convenient and be clever about it.
By episode 13 my brother had even forgotten Eren’s name! We (my brother and I) could barely keep track of the names of the supporting characters and the show assumed that we had that good of a memory when surrounded by so much despair. There were so many character deaths that they pretty much became meaningless and by that point we were pretending that we knew the names of the characters and that they actually mattered. It’s hard to root for humanity when it mostly consists of idiots that don’t have the ability of rational thought and are possibly insane. I know I repeated that but I really want to emphasize this: Humanity was too stupid for me to care about whether they survive or not.
Before I make a ten page essay on how I thought the characterization in this show was not good, I’ll talk about our main characters or just the characters that matter overall, starting with Eren. Eren seems to be the angrier version of a shounen protagonist, having his focus on his revenge and anger towards Titans but also his desire to protect his friends. Because of this, he was never that interesting and all of the things happening to him just hinted at how special he is but we never get to know why because of the abrupt ending.
As most people might agree with, the most interesting character is definitely Mikasa but I ended up liking Armin more instead. He might seem useless in the beginning but he seems to be one of the few people in this world that has intelligence and common sense while there were many situations that could’ve gone worse (because I can’t say they went good since that’s almost impossible in Attack on Titan) if it weren’t for him being there and giving the characters a plan to follow. All in all, he had the most development in the show which is an outstanding feat considering Mikasa and the fact that there is barely any development at all.
When I said that Eren was special, I didn’t mean that he was the most special because Mikasa is introduced as being stronger than Eren right at the beginning of the show. She’s calm and stoic and she’s usually the one that keeps Eren in line. It’s pretty bad that in the later episodes, whenever I expected her to do something she would be absent or wasn’t able to since she was one of the better characters.
The last character I want to talk about, although you might not think he’s important, is Levi who I kindly renamed Dick.
…What? It’s a name! Isn't “Captain Dick” easier to say than “Captain Levi”? Anyway, his personality is pretty similar to his name and he’s also a clean freak and blunt. I didn’t hate him, and I still don’t understand his popularity but that’s something else. It seemed like he would barely matter at first but in the later episodes he was practically Eren’s pep talker, like the ones that say the crucial words to the generic shounen protagonists and it gets on their heads, that kind of thing. I have to admit there wasn't as much development from him but there was foreshadowing so I thought of that as a miraculous plus.
The important and supporting characters are passable in terms of making the plot move forward but that’s not all a character should have. The cast was large but not really that varied in personality with only a few exceptions, most just fading away into the fog and only seen when they die but by that point, I already forgot about their existence. I do have to admit that the mystery behind who the antagonist was in reality was really well done until the final episodes when they literally gave it away.
At least they gave it (the antagonist since I don’t want to give it away) depth but it was only in the final episodes where it was pretty much revealed although it’s depth nonetheless so it’s a miracle in my perspective.
Art and Animation:
I really like the show’s art style with actual noses (YES!) and fitting with the overall atmosphere of absolute irrefutable despair and the titan’s designs were really good. Although I do have to ask, why do they all have to have rape faces? I was told that they were meant to be scary but I only laughed my ass off as I saw them over and over, is this considered bad character design? The Titans always look so ridiculous too… I don’t really have a favorite character design so I guess I’ll say it was good and shut up about it.
The animation was pretty good… Pfft, who am I kidding, just look at them talking while they spiderman over trees! The rest was pretty solid though.
The Sound:
The soundtrack fits really well with the show’s overall epic and serious atmosphere, excluding the despair of course, but I have to admit that I barely noticed it except for that one soundtrack that has the loud female vocals but I don’t find it to be as good as the others. Despite my words, it is a very good soundtrack. The openings and endings of this anime are so good that I cannot pick my favorite out of all of them. They are that good. They are dramatic and epic and they all fit with the show perfectly, it’s absolutely impossible to choose.
In terms of voice acting, I was quite surprised when I found out that Mikasa’s voice actress Ishikawa Yui (In the eastern naming order) didn’t have many roles. She did that role so well that I just thought she was a mainstream voice actress but I guess not. She definitely needs more roles.
Enjoyment:
This is definitely an enjoyable show… Or that’s what I would say but I didn’t enjoy it that much. If I weren’t with my brother watching this and making fun of the fact that we barely knew any character from the show and giving stupid nicknames for them I would’ve dropped it after a while. It might be that action is just not for me but there isn’t that much action so I can’t really give that as an excuse.
It was definitely the despair. The oh so predictable and oh so annoying despair. The lingering fog of god-awfulness, if that’s even a word. You know when you can always predict that the shounen protagonists will win and everything will be alright? Reverse that and you have the mist. Nothing will be alright but it will end up being solved because the plot has to move on. It was so predictable in that aspect that every time something would happen I would have to go like, “Of course, it’s Attack on Titan after all…” with an apathetic face.
Overall:
Attack on Titan has been considered to be one of the best anime ever but it’s average at best, though it certainly deserves its hype more than the previous hyped show (I’m looking at you SAO…). Its story can hardly stand out due to the awful amount of unnecessary despair getting in the way and it sidetracks into something that wasn’t even fully solved to begin with, though it was very good at luring you in with its premise and strong start. The characters drown in despair, lacking depth and development with the exception of the most important characters and don’t even get me started on Humanity as a whole.
The music and visuals were very good but they couldn’t really carry the show anywhere because of the fog that is despair. My enjoyment was low but I can definitely understand why many would enjoy it. I can definitely expect a second season though and when it happens, I hope everything is solved there. I can recommend this to fans of more serious shounen and action and I guess those that don’t think about details as much as me.
