The art of these series is pretty great. The titans look menacing (when they are not running around stupidly), the characters have, while not the most unique designs, designs that do at least look different enough from others that they still seem real, and I can tell them all apart. I don't really have much else to say other than I really love the looks of the Colossal, Armored, and the other unique titans. 8/10
The music in this series is so god damn good. The first opening itself is fantastic and iconic to the series, but I prefer the second opening, which has a more hopeful feel given what happened in the episode prior to it being first used. Other than that, the music that plays in each scene is just so amazing. Especially during the Trost arc. The music fits each scene perfectly, and matches the intensity of scene. 10/10 on this one.'
Well, we couldn't keep of this streak of fantastic things for long, now could we? That's not to say that all of Attack on Titan's characters are awful, but most of them are. Our main character Eren, I did like, at certain points. But most of his time is just yelling about trust and fighting the titans, that it just gets boring. I especially did not like his naïve thinking that he could kill every titan and take back Wall Maria. Not only that, but he was just an asshole most of the time. He frequently calls people who don't want to fight the titans (which Eren also acknowledges how dangerous the titans are and that most people would die when they fought one) cowards, and people who want to join the MPD cowards. So, clearly, Eren thinks the Scouts are the only justified path. However, when Armin and Mikasa say they want to join the Scouts, Eren discourages this. He also gets very angry with Mikasa for trying to make sure that he is okay after fighting with titans. I get that this is just Eren's character traits, but he's our main character, so I would like to see something about his personality that makes me want to root for him to win. Luckily, Eren does become much more bearable in the second half of the series. Continuing on is Mikasa, our main female protagonist. Basically, she is great at everything, and the only thing on her mind is "Is Eren okay?". Yeah, I did not like her at all. Armin was a pretty good strategist for the group (in the first arc at least before he was shoved to the sidelines for a new strategist), but his constant whining did not make me like him all that much. Moving on to the only other two characters I want to talk about, is Jean and Levi. Jean is probably my favorite character in the series, because he is actually a good leader and is the only one to call out Eren about his guilt tripping and naïve determination. Levi is basically just the badass who always is never there when the group needs him. Anyway, moving on from specific characters into Attack on Titan's biggest problem. It tries to make you care about characters without giving them proper development. Some of these I can let slide like (SPOILERS) Eren's mom. Some of these though, are not excusable. I honestly don't even remember the character's names but at the beginning of the Battle of Trost, a whole ton of characters die, and the show makes is seem like this is incredibly sad moment. Sure, it may be sad for Armin and Eren, knowing these people for three years, but for the audience, we knew them for 3 episodes. I can't get attached to a character if you are going to kill them that quickly. Then there is another character who's name I do know, and who's death is towards the end of the Battle of Trost. The problem is, I only knew this character's name because people say it like 20 times after they died. Once again, Attack on Titan fails to give a character sufficient time for the audience to care about them before they kill them off. These same problem continue on into the second arc, but I think I'll cut it off there. 5/10.
I honestly did enjoy Attack on Titan. The action scenes were brilliantly directed, the music was phenomenal and there were many moments that I could look past all of the bad characters and really just enjoy watching this anime. Despite all of its character problems, this anime is definitely worth checking out if you somehow haven't already. Overall, I would give Shingeki no Kyojin a 7/10.
