Review of Attack on Titan

I've had it put to me at times that a show is bad because it's "just generic shounen," or a movie is bad as "it's just a tear jerker." I for one am usually then left waiting for the actual complaint behind these bland descriptions. Even while I myself seem to be rather choosy in my media, often (though not always) finding my own experience to deviate from the one at large, both of these things seem to tell me nothing about a show. What's wrong with shounen itself? What's wrong with the idea of sweet sorrow? And then enters Attack on Titan. There were plenty ofmoments in the show where I questioned it's usual categorization under shounen. In fact, I still question it now, unable to make up my mind. While it's understandably just a description of a targeted demographic, we all know there are common themes we're referring to when we describe a show with the moniker. Teams of disparate talents. Generally one leading protagonist who brings out the best in the surrounding cast. Revolutions around battles, and the evolution of the main cast, and themes about the indomitable nature of the human spirit. Really it's the super hero stories of anime.

But Attack on Titan is no super hero story, even as it technically hits a lot of the check boxes.

It's a story of loss after loss, and senselessly. In 25 episodes it never really gives you a glimpse of what's being fought for, just assures you it's something and you should put up with it. Maybe one day it will pay off. And the only real hook is the sense nothing could possibly explain this setup and so you really should stick around because won't it just blow your mind if they somehow pull it off.

But in the meantime it's going to pretend there's something worthwhile in sitting in the brutality of it all. Perhaps I'm wired differently, but despite the fact I've often misted up in shows, or wondered who was chopping onions and how they got into my house while I read a comic, and relished in my sympathies with the characters, Attack on Titan elicited no such reaction from me. It wanted it too much. It didn't understand that the role of a story is to find beauty in the drama. It didn't ask for my tears, it demanded them at times, and so it earned not my sorrow, but my resentment, as I stared angrily at the screen because the writers dared to want me to cry seemingly just to prove it was a thing they could do to me.

And there's something of a theme there. Again and again watching this show I pleaded for it to get to something, anything, meaningful. To not be trapped in yet another monologue on futility, and it's conquest, that of course again ends with another beheading because isn't life cruel. To not have to be stuck in yet another scene where every involved person is just a caricature of what they're supposed to be in that scene, even as the actual lines and actions behind the forced occurrences are entirely devoid of logic.

For Attack on Titan has no logic. What it has is misery, and pretentious, in spades and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Art and animation was decently neat, no thoughts one way or other on sound.