Art: The art style of AoT is probably the strongest point of the anime. One thing it does a good job of is setting the mood, and delivering instant contrasts. Characters can be in a gorgeous, flowery meadow on a bright sunny day in one scene, and be fighting for their lives in a fiery, blood-soaked city in the next scene. The animation is smooth and the character art is sharp. The action scenes are well-done. You can usually always tell what is going on. No ambiguous bullshit.
Sound: The sound is well-balanced. You will never be listening to a character talk, and then be blasted in the face with music making it impossible to hear what they're saying. The background music is never louder than the characters, nor is it too loud. The sound effects are great too. All of them fit with whatever action is being performed on screen. The music is...okay. It's not bad. Most of it is just forgettable. There are probably about three memorable tracks in AoT, including the intro theme.
Now it's time for the bad, and unfortunately, these are some of the most important elements to have in an anime...let's start with the-
Characters: Our three main characters are your typical stock characters. The frontman has a short temper, the girl is always serious and is horny for the frontman, and the third is a whiny nerd. I can generally roll with that, but the secondary characters are even worse. You have your stock badass, stock mad scientist, stock commander, stock asshole who realizes he's an asshole very early on, stock person who eats a lot but miraculously doesn't put on pounds, etc. There wouldn't be anything wrong with this if there was SOME kind of trait that sets them apart, (as most animes tend to do) but you will not find that here. Whatever they are, that's what they are. Nothing about them ever changes. They don't seem to learn anything and frankly, you can't help but feel annoyed when an unimportant character dies and a main character flies into an emotional rage. The audience feels alienated because they never really even knew the character or cared about them. Overall, really boring characters.
Story: *Sigh* You really can't describe how bad the story to AoT is without spoiling anything. Really I would be doing anyone who hasn't seen this anime a favor by spoiling it, but since I'm a fair person I'll do a spoiler free review of the story: It's a disgusting mess that is so ridiculous and laughable, it almost plays out like a bunch of elementary schoolers trying to LARP. Now what do I mean by that? The story feels improvised, stupid, and meaningless with so much over-the-top action moments thrown in that make the "everything is hopeless" personalities seem quite ridiculous. For example, a character will monologue and whine about how hopeless everything is, and then turn around and kill titan after titan, while a character who vows to kill "ALL THE TITANS!!!" seems to ignore all the training he went through, and instantly gets killed. Overall, the story is a broken mess that is laughable at best.
Enjoyment: A turd could have a beautiful aesthetic (art), and make a great splash (sound), but it's still a turd (story, characters). So yeah, enjoyment was almost nonexistent, a two is all it's gonna get.
Overall: I wouldn't go so far as to say there is no anime more overrated than this one, but it is up there. If you haven't seen this anime and you're thinking about watching it, I will help you decide. If you enjoy intelligent stories, with likable, and unique characters, THEN STAY AWAY FROM THIS ANIME!!! If you like bland, angsty animes with well thought out action scenes and really nothing else, then you'd probably enjoy it very much.
Also, I don't really blame the people behind the anime. It is based off the manga, so to be fair, I blame Hajime Isayama.
