Like any medium in entertainment and art anime sometimes produces something which reaches completely ridiculous levels of popularity which rises above all competition, becomes a cultural icon symbolic of the time period from whence it was created and even transcend the boundaries of the hardcore fan base to be totally mainstream. Typically critical opinion is divided on such juggernauts with some critics attributing its overwhelming success to it being a brilliant work within its genre while others considering it to be a cash cow that calculated a formula to agree with the minds of every hardcore entertainment devourer. It has certainly happened before in anime from Code Geass(2006-8) to Sword Art Online(2012), the former being rather decent and the latter being a disgusting trainwreck. It would seem then that there is no real formula for what is hyped an the process is rather random. However, as popular and hyped as those previously mentioned shows were, none of them has quite matched the monolithic purge of today's subject Shingeki no Kyojin. Since is it impossible to live up to something that is by definition exaggerated I will at least attempt to discover with this review what makes this cash cow tick and how it managed to captivate so many wide eyed audiences, anime fans or not.
STORY-.The main premise of Shingeki, while not original, is interesting enough to create some good mystery and ideas right off the bat. Its a simple idea of man being threatened by a greater force which taps into a rather primal fear that we all share that perhaps one day we may no longer be on the top of the food chain like we have for so long. It does however leave the series with quite a simple end goal to work towards: kill the giants before they eat us. Because of this Shingeki has to do something else with its concept to keep people watching and it does this by adding layers of mystery and intrigue on top to keep itself fresh while relying on heart stopping cliffhangers and tension to make the whole fighting giants shtick more intense.
Despite this sounding all very fine in theory I would be lying if I said that Shingeki executes its blend of action, tension and mystery perfectly. Probably one of the reasons Shingeki made its rather unusual sounding premise more exciting and appealing to shounen watchers as well as fans of more mystery based dark fantasy/horror anime is by over utilizing the plot twist as a narrative device. If all there is to do is kill giants then you obviously have to pull some twists but Shingeki milks this. It applies an 'everything you know is wrong' attitude to each story arc and episode where it will flip your perception of where the story is heading and change everything you thought was going to happen regardless of whether it makes sense or not. Shingeki's main mysteries are not actually that difficult to figure out with 2 of the most notable ones being flat out guessed by the viewership when the show first aired. Its is the progression of the plot however that is unpredictable which is both a positive and a negative for it and that is down to a few factors. The first of these factors is something that the fan base give Shingeki a lot of praise for and that is removing or lessening the shounen trope of 'plot armor' meaning that more characters die in this series and stay dead than in other shounen series. While this is a refreshing idea these people are slightly deluded as the plot armor removal in Shingeki only applies to the secondary characters, the main characters still have ridiculous plot armor, even escaping from situations that seem impossible or highly improbable to escape from. Yes, despite the initially horrifying and intriguing premise and setup, Shingeki opts for quite a few bad narrative mistakes which sometimes diminish the believability of the show and break immersion with its dark and serious world. One of these mistakes is the previously mentioned asspulls which attempt to justify some of the series more brutal twists and turns. Though while these asspulls are definitely there, they never flat out ruined the tension of the show for me, they just made me question what the writer was thinking in pulling them and subtracted from realism.
The other issue is the pacing which is rather hit or miss. The pacing at the start is very fast and that really works in the Shingeki's favor, giving a real feeling of desperation and excitement and really gets you hooked. After a few episodes the show slows the pace down for a rushed training arc which breaks all the feeling of adrenaline that the first few episodes give. Luckily it picks up again afterwards for the next arc which feels a lot more fleshed out and kept me engaged much better. The pace does noticeably slow down as the show reaches the second half, with more focus being given to slower plot progression that breakneck tension before picking up again for the finale. I felt like the show could never really decide on what it wanted to do with its pacing and feel so just messed around. There were parts where it was balanced and really matched the tone of the story such as episodes 1-3, 5-13 and 17 onwards but there were hiccups that can't be ignored. If there's one place where I have to give credit where it is due it would have to be that for only a 25 episode series Shingeki has pretty impressive worldbuilding. The rudimentary social, political and historical aspects of the world are touched upon within the series which is something that I enjoy seeing in post-apocalyptic anime like this. Though, while impressive, it is by no means groundbreaking and I personally feel the series should have been longer or spent time to go into more detail on this good backdrop.
Despite all my negatives though, Shingeki is still a solid action/thriller series with some good tension and always keeps you coming back for more. The nitty gritty details don't always make 100% sense and if that bothers you then you're probably going to dislike this show. Though for me they were never tension breaking issues and i'm purely trying to point out the flaws of the series to the kind of blind fanboys that so often cloud the review section here on MAL. Similarly, detractors of the series, usually harsh critics into complex, realistic stories like me tend to ignore the series' merits. To me, having great tension, worldbuilding and pacing like Shingeki has at its best is a narrative success worthy of due merit and certainly explains some of the show's wild popularity but Shingeki is by no means a perfect execution of its initial concept.
Story-6.8/10 Good concept and tension, very gripping but asspulls, over using twists and pacing hiccups drag it down
CHARACTERS-Shingeki's characters are much like its plot, a lot of potential with some good and bad results in execution. I'm going to be talking about the main 3 characters as well as the supporting cast. Firstly, I have to discuss possibly the biggest issue Shingeki has with characterization and that is what I like to call character over-saturation. Shingeki has too many characters to handle! I know that such a detailed world needs lots of people to populate it and make it feel alive and realistic but its all about how characters are used more than the characters themselves. Fullmetal Alchemist(2003) and its remake Brotherhood(2009) for example also have a very detailed fantasy world and many characters inhabit it but all the characters are used well in the plot. They add character to certain areas and parts of the story and many of them have an active role in it. Many of Shingeki's characters end up feeling like titan fodder rather than entities that have an impact on the plot which can be an issue. It would be fine if these were background characters being used in this way but a lot of them are actually recurring secondary characters. It gets to a point where you can't remember many of the characters names because they only appeared for 5 minutes in one episode about 5 episodes ago and you were meant to remember them because OMG THEY JUST DIED. This makes it hard to care about many of the deaths in the show as only a few plot important characters die in the series while LOADS of the other unimportant secondary characters die and at first it works as a way of enforcing the feeling of danger and fear the show wants you to feel but after a while it gets kind of boring. Beside that though, this can be ignored if the main cast are good, so are are they? ehhhhh kind of...
Of the 3 main heroes of the story I believe 2 of them to be well characterized but I feel as though I have to start with the primary problem, our main character, Eren Yeager. Eren's initial characterization and personality I will admit is not bad and kind of understandable if a little cliche and similar to other shounen protagonists. He longs to be free of the walls that bind humanity but after they take away his home and family he swears to obliterate them from Earth. He is certainly a frustrating character to watch for the first 15 episodes as his single minded desire for revenge tends to lead to his actions mainly being reckless and without regard of consequences. This would be fine IF the story had Eren learn that this leads him to unforeseen consequences and greater suffering, a character progression which would fit the theme of humanity working together to fight a common enemy. But instead Eren is constantly rewarded for being a reckless douche and punished any time he attempts to be more calm and collected in the face of danger. This is possibly the weirdest execution of a revenge character progression that I have ever seen and needless to say it doesn't really work and feels contrived. It dosen't help that Eren is practically insufferable as a character for the majority of the show due to previously mentioned reckless douche persona that he never gets over. So if a series royally screws up its main character, can the others make up for it? Actually, they kind of can.
Eren's friend Armin Arlert is a rather tired archetype of the shy kid with not much confidence in himself but thankfully his character progression is handled much better. He shares Eren's desire for freedom but has no confidence in his own abilities. His friends and various events throughout the story help him come out of his shell and start to help the fight for humanity with his talent for strategy. The progression is by no means original but its handled well here and the development of his character is both justified and clearly visible throughout the series, a huge step up from the characterization of Eren.
And saving the best for last we have Mikasa Ackerman, possibly the most complex character Shingeki has to offer and also the one that the fanbase latched onto when they saw it. She is Eren's adopted sister and a complete badass in every sense of the word but thankfully the writers didn't limit her character to that and actually gave her quite a bit of depth. She was one of the only characters to be given a full backstory of events prior to the start of the series and a very dark one at that. Her dark past has seriously warped her worldview causing to be both overprotective of her remaining family and also very apathetic towards the overall situation of the war against the titans. The story's first major arc after the training arc really gives her some great character moments and pulls throws lots of curveballs to the viewer about what she really cares about and what she lives for. Unfortunately after about episode 9 the show kind of just stops developing her and instead just keeps re-iterating what we already know about her which is quite disappointing. However, she still remains pretty much the best thing about Shingeki character-wise and I hope the second series has some more development for her.
As far as the other major characters go, there are the members of the trainees which get introduced to the story early on and some are more important than others. The more interesting ones include Annie Leonhardt, a mysterious girl who has some conncetion to the plot but who hasn't had much individual focus on her character yet and Jean Kirchstein, a cadet who initially wanted a peaceful life within the walls but then becomes a leader after witnessing the horror of the titans. He's actually quite a believable character and probably would have been a better protagonist that Eren. A lot of these other characters have quite interesting personalities but don't get much focus so I can't judge them as characters but they certainly do their job well in the story in providing a good backdrop for the detailed world Shingeki has constructed.
Characters-7.0/10 Good supporting cast(if a little neglected), 2 of the main characters are good, DAT AWFUL MC THO, character 'over saturation' is a slight issue.
ART-Remember what I said about giving credit where it is due? Well now I have to give a whole bunch of it because this show LOOKS AMAZING. This is to be expected as it is co-produced by Production I.G, the geniuses behind bringing Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex(2002) to life and always have top notch production values. The art style is very effective in conveying the kind of dark, gloomy feel that Shingeki attempts to conjure up with its bleak color pallete and very foreboding atmosphere is constantly reflected in the designs of the cities and landscapes which look like a world on the edge of collapse. The character designs are fairly standard stuff but the designs of the titans are truly terrifying and definitely whack up the creepy factor of the show's concept. Some of the landscapes are totally breathtaking such as the fields outside the walls and the buildings of Trost which conjure up a medieval feeling but are also totally unique to Shingeki's world and add to the richness of the worldbuilding itself.
The animation while nothing special most of the time really pulls out all the stops when the 3D maneuver gear is involved. These sequences, especially during the fight scenes look absolutely jaw dropping almost to the point of being distracting but mostly do nothing but add to Shingeki's sense of breakneck tension. The animation in the 2 opening sequences is also rather noteworthy for being pretty top notch as well and also matching the 2 opening themes. Shingeki is also pretty well directed, something I often notice as an editor an media student. I would expect this of course from its director Tetsuro Araki who directed Death Note(2006) which despite being mostly dialogue driven had its fair share of fantastically directed scenes. Araki brings his epic, sweeping directing style to Shingeki which is totally the right show to receive this treatment given the premise resulting in some of the best singular scenes I have ever seen in TV anime.
Art-9.6/10 Breathtaking art style, animation and direction
SOUND-Ah i'm really not making a particularly balanced case for this but Shingeki's aesthetic qualities are all pretty flawless. The soundtrack by Hiroyuki Sawano can be summed up by 1 simple 4 letter word and that is: Epic. And I mean epic in its original sense of being grand in scale, not in the internet sense of being anything on the level of a cat playing piano or an episode of Naruto. Not all the grand orchestral pieces, sweeping choirs and rock ballads are instantly memorable but damn are they effective in conjunction with the show's epic conflict and battles. They are also masterfully timed with what emotions the show wants you to feel. The show wants you to feel hopeful and pumped BAM it plays the engrish rock ballad 'The Reluctant Heroes' to aid that feeling.The show wants to create a sense of scale and make a battle seem epic BAM it plays the sweeping 'Counter Attack Mankind' complete with choirs and fast paced electronic beats to place you there on the battlefield for mankind's freedom. The 2 opening themes are also worthy of credit. The fast paced and so gloriously OTT 'Guren no Yumiya' along with the symphonic, German inflected 'Jiyuu no Tsubasa' literally bleed adrenaline through the screen and are one of the reasons that Shingeki glues you to the screen.
The voice acting in Japanese is mostly fine, general stuff really. I will give special mention to Yui Ishikawa as Mikasa who manages to capture the character's equally stoic but unstable demeanor perfectly. The dub was something that I did not have particularly high hopes for when I saw the trailer as the voices sounded like Funimation's usual bunch doing their usual thing and I feared that effort had not been put in to make the dub anything more than passable as happened with Soul Eater(2009) and other recent productions. However I was quite surprised at the outcome after buying the DVD and sitting down to watch the dub with some friends. Bryce Pappenbrook actually does a fairly decent job of making Eren a more understandable character and actually made him easier to put up with(which trust me is not easy). Josh Grelle did a good job as Armin if a litte prone to play to the archetype. Trina Nishimura's portrayal of Mikasa seems to go the other way from the japanese track and makes the character practically overflowing with emotion which I felt was kind of cheesy and a bad ADR decision which is a shame as it was a very strong performance otherwise. The supporting voice cast are all pretty good, mainly playing to the characters basic archetypes but having enough range to carry all the emotional and more complex scenes the show has at points.
Sound-9.0/10 Epic OST, good voice tracks both Japanese and English, some questionable perfromances, mind blowing openings
Enjoyment-Some would say this is the most important factor in deciphering Shingeki's popularity and I would totally agree. The narrative issues and characterization shortcomings are things I just had to point out seeing as this show has an absurdly high rank on this site and people's reviews do not seem to be pointing out its issues. I first saw Shingeki when I was just getting into anime and it was being hyped to no end. Not knowing much about the medium, I thought it was the most awesome thing I had ever seen. As a much more seasoned watcher now I can recognize it flaws but I certainly cannot deny its impact upon first watch. It was a show with a great premise, kickass action, nail biting tension and some notable characterization and worldbuilding for only a 25 episode series so far. The story iteslf always keeps you watching if you are willing to overlook some of the more questionable plot elements. Some people who demand realism and have a fervent distaste for plot holes may find their engagement and immersion broken on many occasions. If you can just let yourself be caught up in its epic scope then you may find the mystery, tension and detailed world brought so brilliantly to life in animated form enough to patch over its narrative shortcomings and you will certainly enjoy it.
Enjoyment-8.0/10 Very enjoyable experience due to tension, premise and world executed with more epicness than any hollywood blockbuster has to offer, not too great if you go for close analysis
Final scores
ONS(Overall narrative score, Story+Characters/2)=6.9 Grade: C
OAS(Overall aesthetic score, Art+Sound/2)=9.3 Grade: A+
OFS(Overall final score, average of all categories)=8.08 Grade: B
Conclusion-I find myself torn on this one. Here I have a show that had an awesome concept, kept me riveted throughout and had a lot going for it to climb into the pantheon of anime greatness. Upon first look it really seems to get there at least moreso than other overhyped garbage like the subject of my last review Mirai Nikki(2011) but upon my close critical analysis after mulling the series over in my mind after re-watch I realize it could have been so much more without some mistakes in key areas. Shingeki no Kyojin is not a great show, but it is a good one which is more than I can say for a lot of things that get hyped by this community.
I am EvaGeekDewayne and this has been my opinion, please do remember that, it is the key to co-operation in this barren land we call the internet.
