Attack on Titan review

Alternate Titles: Shingeki no Kyojin

• Staff

  • Director – Tetsuro Araki Also directed High School of the Dead, Guilty Crown, Death Note, and Aoi bungaku  (This guy loves dark shit)

  • Creator – Hajime Isayama (based on a manga that is still running and is serilized in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine

• Story

  • The Story of Eren Jaeger who lives inside a city surrounded by gigantic walls.  The walls exist to defend the last of humanity from an enemy force known as the “titans”.  These walls are all that stand between the Titans and humanity’s extinction.

  • City has three walls

    • The richer more affluent people are located at the center because it has the most protection

    • Eren lives in the outer most wall, which gets invaded in the early going of the story

  • After the outermost wall is breached, there is a lot of chaos.  Eren’s mother is killed right before him, a defining moment for his character, and a lot of additional carnage occurs. Eventually, Eren and Mikasa and friends join the militia inside the city the help defend humanity and take revenge on the titans.

• Aesthetics

  • Music

    • There are a number of great themes used throughout the show.

    • The openings are – of course – awesome

  • Production and Animation

    • Production was a huge problem in this show.  There were some episodes where there were upwards of 8 – 9 minutes of still frames, panning, reused cells, or non-animated lip flap sections.   There was also a recap episodes in the middle of the show that I believe might have been used to allow the production studio to catch up on the production.

    • The fight-scenes showed strength in their animation with the 3D maneuver gear

• Strengths and Weaknesses

  • Strengths

    • Certainly the uniqueness of the story is a big plus

    • Good action sequences but ones that I felt honestly, became a little redundant after the show went on.

    • Fantastic atmosphere and dread, especially in the beginning.

    • Great moments of tension and sorrow

  • Weakneses

    • Pacing.  The shows pacing is Dragon Ball Z esque.  It takes this show forever to do anything; LONG drawn out chase scenes, 5 episodes to move a boulder, and wordy as hell

    • The show often times would disrupt the most intense moments with LONG background information blurbs.  They would be able to get killed by a Titan, and suddenly, an 8 minute flashback about how Eren should trust his comrades, or a huge section about scientific experiments on the Titans.  These flashbacks always seemed to occur at really unfortunate times and it really pulled the viewer right out of the moment.

    • The dread and helplessness that the Titans generated early on TITAN dissipates by the middle of the season.  The Titans go from being monstrous, unbeatable, sources of fear to easily killable and unnoteworthy.  (For awhile, “special” titans aside, you see more titans getting killed than people)

[starrater]