Attack on Titan Introduction
The world of anime is filled to the brim with hundreds and thousands of awesome action-packed series that will keep you up at night for hours. But nothing comes close to what Attack on Titan has been offering its viewers over the course of its four seasons. Attack on Titan is unlike any other show I’ve ever watched, everything from the slow-burn non-linear story to exceptionally meticulous details hidden in plain sight are nothing short of a cinematic masterpiece.
Attack on Titan is unlike any other show I’ve ever watched, everything from the slow-burn non-linear story to exceptionally meticulous details hidden in plain sight are nothing short of a cinematic masterpiece.
Attack on Titan, AKA Shingeki no Kyojin, is an anime adaptation of one of the highest-selling Manga written and illustrated by Hajime Isayama. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, AOT features a dark, horrendous story where human civilization is on the brink of extinction, forced to live inside a walled city to protect themselves from man-eating monstrosities called Titans!
Having watched the anime one too many times, I am here to share with you my personal opinions and a general recap of all four seasons of Attack on Titan, without getting too much into spoilers. Fair warning, there will still be mild spoilers along this review so read on at your own risk.
The Beginning of the End
It starts off just like any other anime series portraying a good side fighting the bad one… but turns out, it’s far more complicated than you could ever imagine. The story revolves around the life of Eren Yeager, the main protagonist of the series, who witnesses his mother getting ripped apart and eaten alive by one of the Titans after their invasion of Walled City. Following the gruesome murder of his mother, Eren swears to get revenge on Titans by killing each and every single one of them.
But being a human (at least for now), even he needs to have some means of fighting these colossal monsters freely roaming the face of Earth. So, he decides to join the Elite Survey Corpse, a military group specially trained to fight Titans outside of the boundary walls. He is joined by Mikasa Ackerman, his adopted sister, and Armin Arlert, his childhood friend, in this wild adventure. Till this point, the story seems to be progressing quite linearly with little to no twists at all.
But things take a drastic turn when Titans attack Wall Rose, the second wall, to invade the city of Trost. It’s at this point that Eren realizes that he holds a mysterious power within himself, which helps him to protect the city of Trost from facing the same fate as his hometown. His new-found ability almost cost Eren his life but not before the memories of his past make him realize that the truth about their world is hidden in the basement of Shiganshina.
Eren, with his new-found ability, becomes part of a Special Operations Squad led by none other than fan-favorite Levi Ackerman and Hange Zoe. On their expeditions together, they uncover some mind-boggling secrets that slowly but surely change the course and pace of the series, making it completely different from what it started out to be.
From Murder to Mysteries
My first impression of the series when I started watching Attack on Titan as a complete newbie was that it’s a gore-filled action-packed anime that focuses on gruesome battles between the last of humankind and these gigantic man-eating humanoids called Titans. It was kinda true, to some extent. The first two seasons of AoT were filled with intense battles between our “heroes” and the Titans. The story looked linear, for the most part, and even if it stayed that way, I would have been satisfied. But as the story unfolded, I was hit with plot twists, one after the other that changed the whole dynamic of the series.
Attack on Titan switched from this epic showdown of survival between good and evil to something completely different by the end of Season 3. The anime was no longer confined to the boundaries of black and white, good and evil, it became much more psychologically complex than any of us had anticipated, and for good reasons. Season 3 of Attack of Titan switched from heavily relying on intense battles to internal politics, where fans were left unsure of where they stood and what side they were on.
Attack on Titan takes all the time it needs to build up the backstory and personality of each character in the long list of characters.
It was no longer about Humans vs Titans, it was humans against each other fighting for titans. If it were any other season, Attack on Titan would have ended up with Eren Yeager being this chad protagonist defeating the most powerful Titan to ever exist… but where’s the fun in that? Attack on Titan takes all the time it needs to build up the backstory and personality of each character in the long list of characters, all while leaving fans with many unanswered questions throughout the first two seasons.
And even if it does take a while to get there, when these questions are finally answered, you are hit with this super rewarding a-ha moment, where the story just clicks and all the puzzle pieces seem to snap right into their place. Especially, season 4 of Attack on Titan, where you finally get the answers to some of the series’ most well-kept secrets and mysteries. For someone who has watched all the episodes starting from the first one, I could tell, the difference between the first season and the last season is HUGE!
You don’t see this happen much often in the anime industry, especially when we talk about Shonen anime. It was a significant change of pace (emphasis on significant) and I literally had to pay a lot of attention to the smaller details to get what was going to solve the puzzle inside my head. All those questions as to where these monsters came from, why are they attacking humans, and what’s the deal with cannibalism, all get answered in the third and final season of Attack on Titan.
And none of these a-ha moments were cheap; they were meticulously planned and well-executed till the last moment. The anime even captured the feelings of human soldiers who were up against these man-eating monstrosities for the very first time in their lives. All these little things make up for the ultimate emotion-packed roller coaster ride with highs that touch the sky and lows that can make you cry.
Conclusion
Attack of Titan is without a doubt one of the most captivating anime series I’ve ever watched. Everything from epic fight scenes to mind-boggling mysteries and even the character development throughout the series were totally on-point. The change of pace from the first half of the season to the last half might catch you off-guard but it’s totally worth letting it sink in. I really can’t recommend this enough; even to people who are not into anime!
Summary
Attack of Titan is without a doubt one of the most captivating anime series I’ve ever watched. Everything from epic fight scenes to mind-boggling mysteries and even the character development throughout the series were totally on-point.
