Review of Attack on Titan

To begin, I mostly stumbled across AoT because of its high rating and under that premise assumed that it has to be somewhat decent, which it is. On the whole though, it didn't strike me as spectacular as some people made it out to be for reasons I shall explain below. Story/Pace: 3/10 To be honest, the first couple of episodes had a wonderful fast pace as the main protagonists advanced, more about their strange world and titan relationship was revealed e.t.c. However, like most animes who give it their full right away, it ran out of ammunition very soon and a good 1/3 of all episodesas of ep 12 (I didn't check, so I may be off) were recaps and comparatively generic giant-vs-human action. So while the story was initially very gripping, I spent the last few episodes grinding my teeth, while hoping for something other than human group A being slaughtered by giant group B to happen and was sorely disappointed. If I only had taken into account the first dozen episodes, this would be an 8-9, but given this endless drawing out, the anime really does not deserve that.

Characters: 4/10
The characters of this anime had their boons/banes, but by tendency, need improvement. Our protagonists are a bit very stereotypical, but made interesting mostly because they keep dying/almost-dying. Generally, all characters are very dramatic and are constantly on the verge of/at a nervous breakdown. Although this would typically annoy me, the anime does deserve credit for making the most convincing war environment I have ever seen (making it much more preferable to those creepy ones where people just casually brush off that their friends just got butchered).
This unique aspect does however trip and fall horribly among the sidecharacters, who both spawn and die like flies. They show up and some of them die 3 episodes later which is very realistic, but perhaps a tad too realistic. I seriously struggled keeping track of all of them and at some point simply gave up on doing so. There are a few more important side characters who will likely survive, but on the whole I find that they all lack depth. One sees too little of them and when one does, they are either killing titans or mourning their friends, which makes it hard to learn new things about them and understand them.

Art: 8/10
I must agree, that a good part of the artwork in this anime is phenomenally well done. The colours have a nice glow to them and the various phyiscal features are appropriate. In that aspect, the anime deserves substantial credit. I did however, notice a number of moments where the animated component was missing and the characters were shouting at the top of their lungs while statically standing there. Other scenes on the other hand move incredibly smoothly, so it seems a bit lazily done at times. Still on the whole, very good.

Sound: 7/10
The music of the anime was decent and created an epic feel for the combat scenes. This has however, been done thousands of times and it didn't really stand out among the other animes that practice this. The voice-acting is harder to judge as I am not fluently Japanese, but seemed appropriate. On the whole the sound is good, but nothing special.

Enjoyment: 4/10
I did enjoy the beginning of this anime, but it then quickly became disappointing due to aforementioned reasons. Towards the end I just felt like skipping ahead to where something interesting was revealed, but the anime ends with ultimately telling little more than what can be garnered from the first few episodes. I did also enjoy the titan fighting, but can say that the 1st titan fight was substantially more impressive than the 30th and as that was the content of all of the episodes, I bored quickly.

Overall: 5.2/10
On the whole I feel a bit bitter about the plot's speed, but for those who enjoy action with high-definition picturesque imagery and epic music, I would recommend it. If you care more about a deep plot with lots of mysteries, don't bother.