Shingeki is an anime that is acclaimed by its themes and tension, as I said before, but I see Shingeki as a work of hype, a show, a fantastic perspective about how beautiful the violence can really get, epicism, mystery, treason, war is life kind of thing. You get people getting destroyed, eaten, impaired, all of that in a matter of seconds, gracefully, shiny, it is like being in a rollercoaster, an amusement park, it is just pure entertainment. And that is because this season, and any other season, is nothing but an exploration about the reasonings of fighting, because the author loves fighting, because violence is extreme, ugly, fueled with adrenaline, striking, attractive, taboo. That extreme focus to such exploration makes the wide array of characters from Shingeki uninteresting to say the least, I can’t say that I know how it would be to take a coffee with Eren or Mikasa, the show shows their themes, the purpose, and their place, but they normally don’t feel human, with the exceptions of a counted number of characters like Gabi or Reiner (One can say that such is a feature since it develops their themes and they have no time to develop their characters in other aspects, but many anime do both through actual writing quality). And that is pattern on Shingeki no Kyojin, every character feels human during their backgrounds, because they don’t have a clear reason to fight, and after that they are just a cartoonish form of themselves. Now, I’m clearly deviating here, how does that apply to this season?
During the fourth season we got into two factible paths, both leading to genocide and mass killings. And while I don’t mind the idea of an anime portraying the idea of genocide, why is such that there is no other realistic option? Gabi said in the second episode “They were not devils, they were people”, saving the world from racism and doing a rather pointless remark, but if both sides are people, how can’t they find a common ground? How can two sides not be able to surpass their shortcomings? Is there anything wrong with that? We get that in reality, wars are somehow unnecessary, the current Ukraine-Russia affair is just Putin swinging his cock, there is nothing natural or of necessity there. Where is the root of this bias? To understand that we should take two problems. The first problem is a widely known pattern at this point, Isayama likes way too much his characters, and as such is the situation, this liking severely damages the narrative of the story, as anyone who have seen the finale knows. The second problem of this anime is that the human nature is biased into the thoughts of Hobbes, Homo homini lupus, appealing to totalitarianism as the only solution to this sort of conflicts, as presented in season three and continuously during the present seasons. That idea is controversial, and it leads to some ugly notions about the world, which are even against the own evolutionary advantages, and serves nothing to the society, as presented by Foucault. Such thoughts delve into a clear state, dialogue is beautiful, but violence is the way, and that works for this kind of fiction. The world is hence a dichotomy, even if good people are the ones that play as enemies and friends during that theatric act, the enemy is just an enemy by no ugliness but by pure circumstances, wouldn’t you try to preserve your life? If you mix both ideas and the exploration of fighting, then you get that since Eren should have some redeemable reason, then the idea of genocide from the perspective of Paradis should have a redeemable reason, and since the idea of genocide should have a redeemable reason, then the world should be painted in a thin veil of paranoid thoughts, a fantasy politicism that doesn’t serves realistically to our day by day, but a fantasy politicism that portrays itself as the way to understand the world, a somehow dangerous perspective. The series constantly talks about how we must look past the violence and leave it, so the next generations stop suffering from that, a discourse that is great in vacuum but just serves as a message to the public, and not as a statement that works inside of the world that have been built.
The problem with creating this pantomime is that everything that is supposedly serious easily evolves into a laugh track, one after the other, because the thoughts of a person are related to the politics of their environment, and the politics of Shingeki are risible. The speech from Armin, the thoughts of Gabi, the voices of Yelena, all that go south when the world itself is not complex at all, when all of it is obvious at hindsight, there is no deepness but echoes of paranoia. The worst part is that the solution to such problem was just giving this narrative more time to cook or make the characters more imperfect in terms of defending their own bases. That is frustrating because the story seemingly touches the in-between of a fanfic and a real story, the fans get what they want, the stakes are not useful when the story itself decides from the beginning who will survive and who will die, the possibilities are severely reduced, and the impact is artificial, you know that the reasonings behind killing any character is not a natural evolution, but a going for the impact decision. If I could go further with my read about my experience with Shingeki then I would go harsher, to say that sometimes I feel nausea while watching some expressions and apparent realism is downplaying my perspective, but I acknowledge that a read is a read, and that is beyond the review.
Now, going into this season. The pacing of the season is questionable, but that is a problem that have always been in Shingeki. The problem of the anime comes from the same reasons told before, it builds up hype with characters that are not that interesting, elongates speeches with words that are not as strong, and then releases it all in a full blown action scheme with a shock after shock, twist after twist. This is the saving grace of the anime. The problem is that the adaptation of MAPPA is not as dynamic as the one of WIT, which develops into fights that are way more rigid, titans that look out of a PS2 game, conversations that are visually boring, and shots that are unnecessary. Some scenes are nonetheless impactful and eye-grabbing, the sequence of the third episode was a whole ride, which denotes the fact that the production could have been better with a longer time, and that the amount of worth to be watched scenes will be counted by hand, sequences that will get a better treatment as a resource allocation scheme. The symbolism and dialogue of the season are also heavily overhanded, but I wouldn’t go to far with that, after all the purpose of the anime is not to make something that must be read with a full-blown analysis, but that can be easily digestible by the general public and impress the masses through technicalities.
In conclusion, if you happen to not like the past season, then the start of this season will have some redeeming qualities and some extremely dull parts too, if you liked the past season then you would like this because you love the series so it doesn't really matter. The problems of Shingeki are deeply rooted in fear and anachronic thoughts, so they won’t get fixed, the good thing is that the anime keeps is interesting appeal to edginess and violence through it, and one can and should enjoy that if you get this far into the plot.
