Review of Attack on Titan

Shingeki no Kyojin, or Attack on Titan. Everyone knows this series by now, but I figured I'd use it as my first review's victim. Back then when I started watching it, it was because a friend nagged me to no end because it is the best thing ever or something pretty close to that, and eventually I gave in. I wanted to know what the ruckus was about. I picked it up around the time episode 20 or so was being aired. As the score suggests, I did enjoy it, quite a bit. There are some reasons why it's not higher, though. Story = 7 The story picks upreally fast during the first two episodes, and I still find it quite interesting despite knowing what's going on. It makes very good use of driving questions. I really wanted to know who the hell that huge titan was, and started to formulate all sorts of theories on it before knowing that I was doing it.
Despite how well it starts, it slows down to a snail's pace for many episodes before interesting things happen again.
The pacing, however, is terrible. It hurts me to say it because sometimes I want to watch it again but I end up skipping chunks of episodes altogether. It isn't enjoyable on a second run due to how inconsistent the pacing is.
Even with such a setback, it manages to still be memorable and I highly respect it. I shouldn't forget that the few sad moments it has are very effective. It really knows how to kick your feels and then kick them while they're down.
Since I don't like spoiling twists, I won't do that, but I'll say that some of the twists are so overdone and cliched that they truly take away from the experience that the other, actually good twists achieve.
This may just be me, but I felt that the jokes were really forced. Perhaps I've been spoiled by funnier shows, but I rarely did more than snicker at the show's attempts at humor.
TL;DR: All in all, the story does nothing really new because the whole human against invaders theme has been done to death, but it does it in an original way. The 3D maneuver gear is a brilliant concept all in all.

Art = 8
The art style they went with to tell this story at first felt very out of place to me, because in dark stories like this one I tend to expect something more akin to Berserk. Even so, the style grew on me at least to the point where it doesn't bother me anymore. If anything, the animation during some scenes is so beautiful it left me in awe. Other than what I initially thought, it is a quite well achieved visual style, with the line thickness varying and the backgrounds showing (not sure if this was intentional or not) high amounts of red. To me, all the red in the backgrounds really added to the general feel of the show.
There is a lot of visual language in it, and I had my fun analyzing the tricks that the director used in a few scenes that stuck with me. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I'll skip on that.
TL;DR: Very good drawings and animation. I didn't like the shounen style at first but got used to it.

Sound = 8
Just like the visuals are pretty good, the sound that accompanies them is also noteworthy.
Sometimes the choice of BGM is unbelievably bad (coughepisode6allovercough) but during the most important moments it is impeccable.
I can't talk too much about the English voice overs because I was instantly turned off by it and decided to skip it altogether, even when I usually prefer watching things in English. The Japanese version, on the other hand, is magnificent. Eren and Armin especially have very good actors. Other than a handful of really stupid choices of BGM, the sound is great. The titan roars are crazy good. A specific titan in the forest of giant trees does a chilling scream that I still go back to rewatch every now and then.
About the OP and ED... my opinion is very unpopular. I think the first OP is very overrated and the second should be given more of a chance. At least, I liked it more. The EDs are both good in my opinion.
TL;DR: All around great, save for some funny music that's out of place.

Character = 5
This is where I felt disappointed to no end, because some characters had so much potential.
Eren Jaeger is a complete copy of Edward Elric, and being a very big fan of FMA I really disliked that. I wanted Eren to be his own thing, not some whiny kid that doesn't even compare with Ed. He just wants to be Ed.
Mikasa reminded me way too much of Lan Fan from that same show and that's also not good at all. She was to Eren as Lan Fan was to Ling Yao. Very very bad thing to do. There's a lot of ways to make characters, but plain making clones is unacceptable to me.
The rest of them are more debatable. Armin did remind me of Al but I'll let it slide because I liked Armin more than anyone else in the show.
I should admit that at least the main trio makes stupid mistakes and overall they have weaknesses unlike other shounen heroes.
Most of these characters felt very underdeveloped. I didn't really learn anything about any of them that I hadn't guessed after taking a glance at them first. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I found Levi boring. Other than his insight on life, such a superhuman-like character really broke the whole atmosphere of dread and hopelessness the show had achieved until he appeared. It really made me wonder why the survey corps don't just send Levi alone on expeditions since he's so goddamn untouchable.
Other characters like Jean were more interesting but they were nothing memorable either.
TL;DR: Predictable, one dimensional characters. Incredibly forgettable.
But hey! At least Eren gets his ass kicked a lot, unlike other shonen heroes!

Enjoyment = 9
For a first time, at least, it is something impossible to stop watching. I ended up binge watching it in the middle of a college term. I plain couldn't stop thinking about what the hell was going on. Once you watch all this season, then maybe coming back for some small groups of episodes every now and then is a good idea but rewatching all of the exposition and blabbing sounds unthinkable to me. Either way, the first time around it's great and a lot of fun. After that it's just finding flaw after flaw.

Overall = 8
I recommend it to people generally, if they ask me what they should watch and I know they like action. I showed it to my sister and she became a fan really fast. She doesn't watch anime generally and would rather watch sitcoms instead.
This series became popular so fast it's almost funny, and I can understand why. It uses (admittedly cheap) tactics that get inside a person's head, like themes of humanity against something. That crap works like wonders and that's why it's been done so many times in zombie apocalypse stories.
I would have gone more in depth but I'd much rather avoid spoiling anything too important.

Just go watch it. If you like the first two episodes, chances are quite high you'll enjoy the rest. Expect boring ass pacing though. You've been warned.