Additionally, I watched Shingeki no Kyojin simultaneously with Deadman Wonderland, which probably also dragged my view of this series even lower.
The Good:
I love this shadow-box style that litters the images of this anime. It's very unique and has a good gritty, old school feeling that is pretty much the sole reason I watched the whole first season.
The Bad:
The story is dreadfully lacking in character development, particularly in everyone but the female lead (who is very cool, I will admit).
Everything else:
There are some things that just sting like bees throughout each and every episode which unfortunately kept me from enjoying this anime.
As I said before, I live in South Korea, and giants attacking a small enclosed city has so much potential as a deep and meaningful metaphor in today's rather jaded society, but Shingeki no Kyojin lacks a great deal of elegance and instead shoves this metaphor down your throat. Unfortunately, so far, the anime has yet to come to any minor or major conclusion and drags on, just as real life, so it's a little too ... depressing. Depressing isn't always bad, but it just doesn't work with a cast of largely unlikeable characters. (Deadman Wonderland, which also brought a very depressing life to your front door, was extremely more elegant in how it handled character emotions and pulled together relationships. Since I watched these two together, Shingeki no Kyojin was relatively very poor in comparison).
I really cannot stand the the Star Trek red shirt syndrome this anime has. Those that have watched will understand, but I will not elaborate for fear of spoilers.
Along that same line, many of the relationships are overly forced and unnatural, which usually is not that hard to pull off in a military anime, but Shingeki no Kyojin still manages to have clunky relationships with strange personal battles that provide little progression in the story. They do create situations, but because of that, the situations are painfully forced and a little too contrived.
Overall, the styling is interesting. The dialog is forgettable. The characters are less-than-loveable with very little character growth. The story is fast but feels slow. It's a bit of a mixed bag, and I don't believe I will be watching any further.
