Review of Attack on Titan

The plot is simple enough, for season 1, titan onslaught. Military needs to kill man-eating titans. There are breadcrumbs that lead to greater details about the world but nothing really goes into it too deep. Visual direction: Impressive art and animation. Mostly good cinematography, a bit exaggerated at times but still good. Narration and expository dialogue is not necessary. A majority of the episode is spent using expository dialogue to world build or characterize. The dream Eren has seems to be a collage of precognitive events and it's gruesome. The entire conversation with garrison guards for example. From explaining that the guys get drunk tomentioning that Eren's dad is a doctor that saved the town, to explaining how tall the wall is and how "impenetrable" it is, to explicitly telling us that the guards are not able to fight in the condition they are in. It's all expressed in an unnecessary way. Even the show acknowledges the power of visuals when Hannes is explaining why it's okay to act in the way they do. Hannes basically says as long as the people have the ability to voice their complaints, it proves things are fine because if things aren't actually fine, their would be such chaos, the people wouldn't be able to complain. It'd be in front of them. The conversation ends with Eren explaining that living in the walls is more like surviving and being like cattle waiting for slaughter which seems like a brash attempt at foreshadowing. The initial return of the survey corps tell us everything we need to know about their unit. We also were told by Mikasa that Eren wants to join the survey corps. You can see Eren's face light up as the "heroes" return as he puts it. While I don't think Eren wanting to join the scouts should have been verbally expressed, at least they make it visually expressive and obvious that he does. However it is short lived because the show must continue with exposition that there were more men before and they were eaten. They continue with an excessively visually dramatic scene with a woman asking about her sons whereabouts since he was in that unit. The scouts give her her son's dismembered arm. She cries out and asks if her son died in vain and the leader says he really did since they learned nothing important about the titans. The following scene is abruptly juxtaposed with a commoner speaking ill of the military in which Eren hits him with a stick. Mikasa pulls him away as the animations transitions to the angry goofy villager screaming at Eren. When Armin is introduced, Eren is running towards him and yells for his bullies to get away from him. They get ready to fight him until they see Mikasa behind and they run away. This is a good moment of visual characterization however it is followed by dialogue that sullies the moment. Eren is pleased to see bullies run away when they see him much to his ignorance. This is where Armin goes on to fulfill his role as exposition dumper. Armin explains that they ran because of Mikasa, not him. Armin also explained the argument he was having that caused the bullies to beat him up. He said humanity should eventually leave the walls. Armin answers all of Eren's questions, even if Eren should know these things or was rhetorically asking them. Armin explains that the walls have provided safety for 100 years and regular traffic around the walls would risk the titans getting in. So the royal government declared interest in the outside taboo. He basically predicts the future and says just because a breach hasn't happened in 100 years, doesn't mean it can't happen today. Lightning strikes, the ground shakes, people gather near the source of an explosion and the colossal titan appears. A good scene for demonstrating the uncertainty and power behind what is happening. Instead of just looking, Eren asks what everyone is looking at like a moron. The colossal titan does exactly what Armin said and kicks a hole in the wall. The impact kills many and titans come through. A good scene. Eren worries about his mother and goes towards his house, Mikasa follows as Armin trembles in fear and exclaims that the titans are going to take the city. No shit sherlock. Eren talks about where his house should be as he runs. A pointless detail. Hannes appears. He says he'll slay the titans and talks to himself about his debt to their family. A fact that was already cited by him earlier. Eren's mom is eaten as Eren watches, which is a pretty good scene. Eren then repeats the opening line about how humanity remembered they were in a cage which didn't need to be said at all. The episode chose to rely mostly on verbal, whether it be narration, introspection or dialogue and repeated itself a lot. Despite this it didn't actually do much despite talking so much. Overall, I'd say the first episode is capable of having visual direction but it regularly spoils what could be a higher quality experience with needless and repetitive additions.

World building: For an episode that spends majority of it's time with expository dialogue, I'd hope we'd learn something about how this world works. We learn that the world is filled with man eating titans, people have lived inside 50 meter walls to protect themselves for one hundred years, hardly anyone leaves the safety of the walls. The military has a survey corps that ventures outside the walls and returns ravished with few troops, many injured or dead. The Garrison is an internal corps that doesn't take their job seriously and get drunk, leaving them unable to do defend (despite doing nothing else to indicate their intoxication beyond their blushed cheeks and expression of drinking alcohol, they function normally). People feel a sense of security and routinely criticize the government for stealing taxes since the military do seemingly nothing of value. We learn that Eren's dad is a well respected doctor. Last but not least, we know that Eren's dad has a secret basement. As far as world building goes, it's based around simple concepts which make it effective.

Characters: I enjoy Eren's honorable attitude. He meets dishonor with aggression and violence. Eren also seems to be concerned with having a tough bravado. Eren also has a precognitive dream montage. Hopefully that gets expanded upon. Eren's motivations and perspective is blasphemous and insane. Eren treats the matter of titans seriously despite having an atmosphere of security. He not only wants to be able to defend against titans but he wants to eventually expand outside the walls. He views the walls as a barrier to inevitable slaughter. Eren's thoughts are a bit too complex for his age. About Eren, when him and Mikasa return home and dump the wood, Eren's mother exclaims that Eren worked hard for a change which indicates that he is normally lazy. Eren says "Yeah" sheepishly and his mom pulls his ear then says it turned red therefore he's lying and it means Mikasa helped (which makes no sense) implying that he is a regular liar too. It makes him a bit of hypocrite when he chastises others for not being responsible and diligent but he isn't either. I suppose it could be easily stated that he doesn't work hard at anything because he doesn't have a passion for it. Also, Eren being a liar kind of hampers his honorable perspective. Armin is set up a the meek intellectual despite not coming to any greater conclusions than Eren. For the brief period of time Armin is on screen he just explains everything to Eren (or in reality, to the audience). Mikasa gives off a placid and intimidating personality but is underscored to Eren. Everyone else is such a minor character that are given none or next to no personality traits as flat characters. Eren's mom just cares about Eren. Eren's dad despite having few lines is placid, intelligent and even somewhat wise. Hannes is lazy and irresponsible. That's all iirc.

Soundtrack is good

Themes are yet to be seen