Review of Attack on Titan

As someone who's only grown even slightly comfortable with large amounts of blood and gore in the last few years, plus past experiences having reinforced for me the idea of trying as hard as possible to take hype with a grain of salt, for a while I didn't think this was a series for me. For one thing, just seeing the Colossal Titan, a creepy and massive giant without any skin, was pretty unnerving. But eventually, a bunch of my friends convinced me to give it a chance, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. From a psychological and sociological perspective, just the idea ofa show where humanity is unquestionably no longer top of the food chain definitely grabbed my interest. How would seeing mankind's last bastion regularly endangered after a long period of relative peace and quiet affect our human society? Attack on Titan addresses that without pulling any punches, and I definitely respect it for that. As for the characters, the main trio of Eren, Mikasa, and Armin are distinct, likable, and complement each other well with their respective strengths as well as flaws. The supporting cast is a rather...interesting case in that those we get to know do wind up being rather interesting to watch develop and learn about. Beyond that, though, I can't say much else for fear of spoilers.

The art style, especially for the action sequences, is consistently strong throughout each episode from what I could tell, and the music...oh my goodness gracious, it is FANTASTIC! Both openings and closings are incredibly epic and memorable in their own ways, and I cannot do them justice by describing them here. If I had to think of some gripes, I can come up with two. One, however, is such a personal nitpick regarding a certain detail of how certain characters are drawn that stating it would result in a long, LONG tangent. The remaining issue relates to audio and writing. I've watched both the English subbed version on Crunchyroll and the English dubbed version on Toonami, and while the voice acting in both is phenomenal, the WRITING for the English dub is...strange and unnecessarily different. Had there been elements of Attack on Titan that would not really translate well from a cultural perspective, I could understand. But with how West-inspired the series itself feels to me, I think that many of the alterations in dialogue for the English dub are just plain odd. Maybe that's just me, though.

Attack on Titan is a fun series that is also pretty thought-provoking at times, which is really all one can ask for. But even if you're like me and hype and gore can be pretty big turn-offs, I still recommend giving this series a chance. Who knows? Maybe you'll be surprised like I was.