A deconstruction.
Preface:
You see, a guy named William Shakesman once said, “brevity is the soul of wit”, so I’m not going to waste anybody’s time with a garbage two sentence “OMG THIS IS THE BEST ANIMU EVAR I HEART EREN SO MUCH 10/10 EVERYTHING” review.
Nope, you fanboys want the truth? You can’t handle the truth. But I’m gonna lay it out here for you anyway.
I’m going to break this thing down into three parts. The “tropes lifted from every zombie media Setting”, the “cliché Characters”, and the “Circuitous, Shonen Storytelling”.
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The Trope Filled, Every Zombie Media Setting
A while back, monstrous humanoid giants hell-bent on destroying humans struck. All but a few thousand humans were wiped out, waging a futile war against an enemy they neither understood, nor knew how to fight. Present day, there's one human settlement left, protected by three 50m high concentric walls, the largest among them 300 miles across, making it about the size of Germany.
Okay so, a little more info on these human killing giants, right? Because that was pretty vague. They have 3 qualities.
1) They kill and eat humans. They do not need to eat humans for sustenance, they just do it because the plot demands it of them
2) Nobody knows where they came from, or why, and it doesn’t matter. I’m sure there will be some BS pseudo-scientific explanation for their existence later, because these type of shows ALWAYS take one of three paths:
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1. Scientists did this! Biological weapon/genetic mutation experiments, who cares? It’s all vaguely scientific and intellectual sounding, so that’ll fool the teen demographic
2. A Wild Virus Appeared! Some mutated microbe that’s unaffected by any drug affects all but some small number of populace who, by plot convenience, don’t contract the illness
3. Who the hell cares! Zombies are here and we have to shoot, maim, kill, and destroy them to survive!
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4) They are notoriously hard to kill… you can hack and slash on them all day long and they’ll still swat you like flies. *whispers* wait, I’m getting some breaking news. You can KILL them by attacking the neck/head area, just like some other TV shows and movies involving the undead… hmmmmm
Titans are just zombies. Face the facts. This is a zombie show. It premiered during the height of zombie craze, and through shrewd marketing and an impeccable sense of timing, a hit was born. Did it have to be substantive? Heck no, all it had to do was prey on these little fragile children’s emotions and “OH MY FEEEELZ” by killing off a few characters that we still know nothing about, nor formed any attachment to, along with throwing in a Gary Stu blank slate of a main character onto which these angsty teens can project themselves.
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The Stupid Setting Part II
Oh wait, did I say Germany? It’s plainly obvious that AOT is ripping off any and everything late medieval German Gothic and Renaissance styled architecture. Oh, and if the names and races of the characters didn’t give it away, I don’t know what would. Eren Jäger? Braun? Bertolt? Kirstein? Zoe Hänge? Also, it’s quite amazing how these characters all speak fluent Japanese, given that they’re all, except our token Asian character, Mikasa, German. Now wouldn’t that be an innovative anime- one with Deutsch spoken and subtitled in Japanese?
Now that I’ve started listing names, it’s time to get to the
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Cliché Characters Section!
We've got the not-so-subtly named main character Eren I'm-Going-Kill-Titans-Don't-Tell-Me-What-To-Do-You're-Not-My-Dad Jäger, who's hell-bent on the destruction of the oppressive titans who show up to wreck his life... talk about teen angst, sheesh. Eren’s sole means of expressing himself in this show is “GRRRRUUUAAAAHHHH I hate titans I’m going to kill them all!!! (in order to keep X tragedy from happening again, because remember kids, NO shonen protagonist is complete without family tragedy!)”
Wait, where have we heard this before? What’s that? Every shonen series ever?
Let’s take a small cut from the block of trope that makes up the shonen genre, shall we?
Rin Okumura: “I’M GOING TO KILL EVERY DEMON, AND SATAN TO SAVE MY BROTHER!”
Kazuto Kirigaya: “I’M GOING TO KILL ALL THE BADDIES TO SAVE MY FRIENDS!”
Ed/Al Elric: “WE’RE GOING TO KILL ALL THE HOMUNCULI AND SAVE EVERYONE!”
Shiro Emiya: “I’m not going to kill anyone, but I will SAVE EVERYONE!”
Ken Kaneki agrees with Shiro, and they meet up with Shinji Ikari to hide.
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Mikasa My-Plot-Armor-Is-Stronk-But-My-Sword-Arm-Is-Stronger Ackermann is our leading lady. She personifies the Silent Strong type. She only says two lines in the whole show: “Eren you idiot, I always have to save you because you’re the main character and you can’t die!”
And “Why did I sign up for this job, again?”
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Rounding out our trio, we have He-Man's midget brother, Armin I-Use-My-Mind-Not-My-Muscles Arlert. He’s also hiding out with Shinji and Ken.
When someone dies in this show, it’s like watching someone kick a little puppy. They show you some little scene about the character and their life before, and how they’re never going to go home to hug mom and their fish are going to starve now because they’re not going to be around to feed them. We never get any attachment to characters who die because they’re never given enough screentime to be relevant, or anyone we should care about. Of course, nobody that matters to the plot dies, either.
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Just when you thought this was about to get into some “Circuitous, Shonen Storytelling!”, HERE COMES THE “Circuitous, Shonen Storytelling!”
Attack on Titan isn’t a 700 episode series like Detective Conan or One Piece… yet. With this pace though, and the ever intangible, nebulous goal (straight ripping off the fantastic David Fincher movie, “Se7en”) of “WHAT’S IN THE BASEMENT, MANNNN?” Otaku on Titan takes a turn for the molasses.
When it isn't taking a 3 episode sabbatical of dialogue (in typical shonen fashion), the show does move pretty quickly… to boredom. If you’re not getting angsty teens shouting at each other over why they have to kill stuff, or that they don’t want to do it anymore, or crying over their lives; it’s them killing stuff, then crying about their lives.
I didn’t forget to remember to mention that AOT is just a cheap ripoff of Neon Genesis Evangelion, did I?
Plot basics:
1) Humanity fights an enemy it doesn’t understand, is whittled down to a tiny populace, and is poorly equipped to handle the threat, until one day… A HERO EMERGES!
2) Hero has daddy problems. Hero’s female sidekick(s) also have parent problems
3) Hero loses loved ones which causes them to have to fight, even if they don’t want to
4) Conspiracy!
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Here it is. I committed the ultimate sin and rated the beloved Attack on Titan a 5. "Why? why would you do this, LawlMartz?" "Why would you give Shingeki no Kyojin a paltry 5 and not the 10 it so effortlessly achieved and deserves??" they ask me. To this, my answer is simple. “Children, Attack on Titan is like any movie made by Marvel/Disney recently- sure, it's fun, it looks nice, and the masses love it, but at the end of the day, you didn’t see anything new and it didn’t leave a lasting impression on you, other than how immensely angsty it was.”
Attack on Titan is honestly just too vanilla to really hate. It borrows from countless other shonen before it, and puts all the tropes in one pot, and comes out the anime equivalent of a hot dog… pretty good if you have no expectations or never had one before… but then you want something better afterwards.
Let’s just call it Otaku on Titan and call it a day.
