Attack on Titan has become my personal 5 stages of grief, because of my expectations. I checked out during the third season but I continued to watch this long anticipated show to find out how it ends. Attack on Titan is a battle shonen first and foremost, not a deep intricate character drama as I thought. And aside from Chainsaw Man is the only shonen I enjoyed immensely. It's like watching Demon slayer or JJK but everything between battles doesn't suck an enormous whale's dick, only a guerrilla's dick. This franchise never fails to grab your attention, presenting a new hook every season and increasing the stakes. This approach of storytelling renders all plot holes unnoticeable, they are still there but it's easy to ignore them.
Prior to the ending there were a lot of bizarre elements especially in the OVAs that I just happened to blank on because it had never brought up again. The ending, however, embraces that weirdness, which is presented as meta. By using that the author successfully wraps up the major storylines but this approach doesn't feel satisfying. Also the in and post credits scenes left me an impression that the author decided to put everything that was on his mind into the ending even if it has nothing to do with the rest of the show.
Change of the studio was insignificant. The action scenes are basically the same, the direction of non-battle sequences is still worse than battle sequences: there was a dialog scene where all of a sudden instead of showing faces of those who is speaking it started showing branches. Even if it supposed to be some sort of metaphor, that choice was still strange. The significant downgrade was the music: this time it was mostly Yamamoto instead of Sawano, his music isn't bad of course but it doesn't match up to Sawano's tracks.
Was AoT fun to watch? Hell yeah! Will I forget about it in a year? Hell yeah! Was it worth waiting 5 years for it to be finished? Absolutely no.
