Review of Attack on Titan

It’s really easy to predict what’s going to happen in this series, at least short term. This is because you know that exactly the opposite of what they expect is going to happen. “These walls have protected us for a century, no way the walls will break”, and 5 seconds later the Colossal Titan kicks a hole through it. This type of thing happens again and again, which gets repetitive quickly. I for the most part like the mood. It’s a series that takes itself quite seriously and often shows people getting brutally eaten by Titans. When most series don’t take themselves seriously enough, thisis refreshing. But the problem here is instead that it shows these things way too frequently and you notice yourself thinking “The world is cruel and unforgiving, we get it. Move on already”. This takes time from either moving the plot forward or fleshing out the characters, and makes some parts painstakingly slow to watch.

The characters aren’t much better either. Eren is your typical shounen protagonist with a strong will, loud, innocent and naïv. Not that much to him, really. Then we have Mikasa which I so want to like. She’s strong and kind of cool but when she utters “Eren!” in every other breath it gets annoying. I for one actually like Armin. He started off helpless and unsure but grew and became competent later on.

Then we have a few characters which I question why they are like that. Miche has a good sense of smell and sniffs people he meets, weird. Sasha just loves food a bit too much, okay, not really funny. And Hange is just insane basically, which I find unrealistic. This is why I said that the series only takes itself “quite” seriously. It shouldn’t seriously expect me to believe that these kinds of people could actually exist.

And the final character I wanna mention is the female Titan. The two problems I have with her is one: that, even though she is basically the main protagonist of the second half of the season, we still don’t know her motivations. It’s difficult to care when they’re just fighting this crazy person for whatever reason. To top it off, the final battle is concluded by Eren getting furious and screaming, shounen style. The second problem is that it’s basically impossible to deduce who she is before it is revealed, which makes it a rather dull mystery.

Although we haven’t gotten many answers in the first season, the world is still interesting. There are so many questions for the show to answer, and it could be fantastic. But the explanations could also be bad or there could be no explanation. Let’s just hope the world building continues in a great way the next season.

Although the showing of the cruel world often drags on a bit too long, overall the series has a great mood. The animation and sound is also superb. And I can’t make this review without mentioning Levi: he’s cool. And I’m one of those people that still likes Itachi, if that tells you something.