Review of Attack on Titan

OK, don't get upset if this is your favourite show. I might have been a little harsh before, so I'll go with a 7 and revise this a bit. This show had me hyped and it is not bad by any means. It kept me pretty much hooked for season 1, which is over 20 episodes, except some episodes fell flat. I know it has achieved a popularity that is quite mainstream so I came in with some preconceived notions after not watching much anime for a while. Let's start with the English title - "Attack on Titan"; I thought it was some sort of spaceor futuristic war because "on Titan" sounds like that. I think I get what they were going for though to mimic the cadence of the original Japanese title. The setting is actually very medieval and somewhat like a myth with giants, magic, etc. I knew that it featured soldiers in training and it does, but these soldiers are just young volunteers because everyone has to fight.

It is also not a very adult anime. It's driven by a main character named Eren who is entirely emotional and his go-to is basically to yell and stand up to every injustice. The core character group actually is somewhat intelligently designed as a friend group that taken as a whole could actually comprise a very well-rounded human being: besides Eren, who is all passion, you have the Brains... named Armin, and the more self-reflective but powerful Mikasa.

For the first season - PROS: vibrant art with good direction, interesting and detailed world, stuff to geek out over like schematic diagrams and jargon, pretty good characters, and it's got heart
CONS: some episodes are not good, dips into unavoidable immaturity (see main character) while in contrast being (mature?) brutally violent at parts

To be honest, the one thing I remember the most (besides the first episode which stood out for being awesome) is strangely the episode sequence where {LIGHT SPOILERS} the elite squad is being chased by the intelligent female titan through the forest {/SPOILER}. This almost ruined the show for me. It was just very drawn out, predictable and uninteresting and detached from the tone of the show prior and after. I think this is why it stood out because it was a different setting and feel.

But like I said the first episode is like an 8 or 9. The aforementioned part is like a 3 or 4 for me. For a show people like so much, I didn't expect it to be so variable, not just in episode quality and pacing but in certain other respects too. And I'm just now realizing that the shallowness of some of the characters bugged me; Armin is getting on my nerves, he's not developing much at all just yet.