Anime Review: Attack on Titan

[IamLEAM1983]

Y'know, being a guy, I tend to have a pretty select set of tastes when it comes to Anime. I'm not so much into the shônen spectrum, largely because despite that epithet's suggestion that its contents are “for boys”, there's usually a few ingredients in the plot structure that irk me. I'm much more a fan of classics like Ninja Scroll or Ghost in the Shell, especially if said production wears its predilection for the Rule of Fun on its sleeve. Just about the only exception to my own rule that I can think of is HellSing, seeing as the character designs just didn't do it for me.

Yeah, I'm a very picky Anime watcher, an even more selective Manga reader, and I rarely, if ever find stuff that appeals to me outside of the big mainstream releases sanctioned by folks like Manga Publishing or Sony Pictures Classics. A lot of what's out there feels excessively niche to me, seeing as I'm not the kind of guy who has specifics in mind, when thinking about that medium.

I know, right? It's contradictory. I'm picky but I can't stand the picky stuff. I gave Azumanga Daioh a fair shot, only to go “Meh,” two episodes in. The supposedly perfect masterpiece that is Madoka Magica doesn't do it for me either, seeing as I can't stand Magical Girl series or Anime that has its head stuck up its own ass. For the very same reason, Akira's tail end bothers me just as well.

I'm just not an Anime guy, I guess. Well, outside of Hayao Miyazaki or Satoshi Kon's works. I need structure, I need a teensy bit of envelope-pushing, and I need maturity. Obviously, stuff like High School of the Dead puts me to sleep without fail.

I mean, really? You're going to cushion that AR rifle against that high-schooler's improbably developed boobs?! And she's not going to be sore as Hell afterwards?!

Yeah, no.

For the past year or two, a lot of my usual haunts (the campus included) have been abuzz with praise for Hajime Isayama's Attack on Titan. Based off of a series of shônen manga, it's essentially based on the same premise as Godzilla or Pacific Rim, but with Extreme Pneumatic Cable-Assisted Parkour and lots, lots, lots, lots of teen angst. I've watched the first fifteen episodes of the Production I.G.-produced Anime adaptation, and I felt like talking about it.

So. Big Naked Dudes with Dopey Smiles Eating People Like They're Cheetos : The Series.

It's a hard view, honestly. There's a great effort at world-building and the entire premise feels at least moderately well grounded in its own reality; but the protagonists' internal struggles and inner demons take up far too much space.

The setup is as follows. Almost nine hundred years after the catastrophic emergence of towering humanlike creatures known as Titans, the world has been knocked back to a Dieselpunk-slash-Medieval standard. Only a few million humans have survived, and all of them have walled themselves behind a series of three concentric walls that stand up to fifteen meters tall. The walls Maria, Rose and Sina circumscribe an area that's rich in minerals, water and natural gas; so most of all of Mankind's needs is adequately purveyed within these still-immense confines. As you can expect, the area covered by Maria stands as the most populous one, with resources being more readily available inside Rose and Sina. While population disparity isn't observable in Dickensian proportions, it's obvious that the inner-country fops tend not to look too kindly upon outer-country rubes who stop by and mooch. The deeper inside you are, the more you're generally convinced that the walls are high and thick enough to keep the outside world at bay.

As to why the Titans are so dangerous, their lack of intelligence and simpleton-worthy features tend to suggest an animal's curiosity and a strange and exclusive appetite for human flesh that can't be explained by anything like dietary needs. Titans have no digestive tract, no genitalia, they don't regularly eat and don't sleep at all – this leads most people to think that chowing down on humans is more some sort of sick game played by idle beasts than anything associated with sustenance.

They simply are. They don't reproduce, and yet more of them always come. On occasion, Humanity finds itself facing an Abnormal; a Titan with an odd set of skills or strangely fortunate physical perks. The Armored Titan can bull through the perimeter gates, while the Colossal Titan is so big as to be able to simply press against the city's walls, in order to break them open. Sometimes, it's more a con than anything like a pro. Some Titans flail about madly with no real sense of purpose, others are borderline catatonic. They'll walk through the created breaches, wander around and then leave. In either case, Humanity's surviving biologists are baffled.

In this, we follow the trials and tribulations of young Eren Jâger, the walled-city equivalent to a country bumpkin that happens to live in Shinigashima, a walled-in extra-muros cipher of Humanity that basically exists as Titan bait – much to the ignorance of its residents. All is well that ends well for himself, his foster sister Mikasa and his father and mother until, after a century of peace, the Colossal Titan blows through Shinigashima's outer wall like it's made of tissue paper. His mother is killed in the assault and his father is presumed K.I.A., the blow of these two losses pushing the young lad over the edge.

He'll kill every last Titan with his bare hands, he swears; and he barely is ten years old as the Anime opens.

As you can imagine, Carla Jâger's death is graphic. She's munched in half and torn apart to weepy violins and the slow-mo shot of Eren being forcibly carried to safety, all the while shouting Okasan! and producing Anime Gravity-Defying Floating Tears.

And see, them's the breaks. Tragedy allows the writer to build on top of it, to slip extra strengths and weaknesses onto a character that is still in a developmental process. Tragedy, however, needs its quiet moments in order to be effective. Contemplation and general action are required, in order for the inner turmoil suffered by the protagonist to amount to something. Attack on Titan doesn't deliver on those grounds. Eren is given several buttloads' worth of character-building moments, but he seems to be permanently set in that initial moment of raw, gnashing weeping rage. Tinny voiceovers to shots of Eren's eyes gleaming as tears stream down his angry face are a dime a dozen, and I can't even fall back to the Manly Tears defense. Eren is never moderated by anyone, especially not by his walking contrast of a sister, Mikasa. Due to circumstances the Anime draaaags ouuut in a way it assumes is clever, Mikasa is the requisite Deadpan Conscientious Objector who counters Eren's borderline homicidal tendencies with Dexter-worthy focus. She's cool as a cucumber, even as dozens of her friends horribly die around her. Nothing fazes her stony mask of sheer determination – except for the sight of seeing her brother's itchy trigger finger being about to cost him his life.

Which, obviously, happens far too often.

What sucks is that we're intended to empathize with Eren, and the payoff that is thrown at us about halfway through feels like a half-hearted admission by the original mangaka that we came here to watch naked sexless Godzilla dudes throw down, yo.

Once that happens, stock Disaster Movie characters crawl out of the woodwork. The Scared and Mousey Lieutenant who can't recognize salvation when it's staring him in the face and who'd rather follow suicidal orders; the Bell-Ringing Doomsayer that walks the streets spitting out a Liturgic Japanese take on The End is Nigh, the Blind Businessmen and Aristocrats who don't mind stepping on top of the corpses of innocents if that means they (and their profit margins and posts) won't become Titan chow; the requisite Badass Field Commander who's far too badass, far too quirky and far too cool for his own good – and the Woobie. Oh yes, the Woobie.

Sasha fucking Blouse. If you're like me, you'll come to hate her. The script mostly shoves her in right after moments heavy in Eren Having an Emotional Blowout Content, and plays her apparently bottomless stomach for laughs.

Eren : “WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE TO DIE OH GAWD IT'S SO UNFAIR LIFE SUCKS SO MUCH AUGH!”

Sasha : (a few heartbeats later) “I'm hungryyyy again, it hurts so much even though I just ate three whole servings five minutes ago! Excuse me while I double over in exxagerated hunger pains and fall off my chair for comedic effect!”

Eren : “KILL ALL DEM TITANS, HRRKGRRKGLLKSOB. IF I GNASH MY TEETH MORE I'M GONNA SHATTER MY MOLARS!”

Yeah.

Determined to wipe every Titan off the planet single-handedly, Eren enrolls in the military and applies for the Recon team. Cue Training Montage, of course, and Eren obviously emerges as the angsty spitfire of Humanity's ten absolute best users of 3D Gear. No, that isn't a competitor to the Oculus Rift, it's actually a set of pneumatic cables to be used in graceful and extremely fast movements. Imagine a gyroscope or the harness Hollywood A-listers have to slip into during CGI flight sequences, crossed with Spider-Man's web shooters. It looks slick and utterly reckless, and I'm absolutely certain the high-flying sequences of the movie have driven traceurs and ninjas of this world into fits of cavernous depression.

Unfortunately, everything else mentioned above gets in the way of the fun. It feels like every time Eren lands on a rooftop, it's to start gnashing his teeth and giving the horizon a stare of absolute, pure, congealed rage. A tinny voice-over starts, natch, and we get yet another reminder that the Titan-killing business is super SRS BSNS for Eren. Giving a bit of a jolt to the proceedings is that abovementioned payoff – but even this is effectively lessened once it becomes a trump card explaining away each and every one of the Abnormal Titans we've encountered. The concept is interesting – think Voltron meets Hellraiser – but it wears thin rather quickly. One particular Titan of note springs up, nobody seems to realize it's actually a hollow shell being “driven” by a human pilot within, while clues are practically being thrown at you.

The Titan-centric brawls are fun, thankfully. When these creatures duke it out, they do so without the least bit of care for self-preservation. They are out to destroy their opponent, and their limited regenerative abilities and low intelligence combine to create a set of dimwitted juggernauts that only looks vaguely puzzled if human artillery reduces their stomach to gaping holes.

So how does the series end?

With a cliffhanger, of course. Stick around for Attack on Titan 2, on air whenever Isayama-san is done delaying obvious plot point resolutions with MOAR TEEN ANGST!

As that's one thing that bothers me about Young Adult-oriented Manga productions. If the market is largely feminine, it's School Life and Boys. If the market is masculine, it's all about the unending agony of growing up in an uncaring world that piles on challenge after challenge.

It's basically a long, slow, even sometimes plodding take on Pacific Rim that seems to be doubling on itself to try and find ways for key characters in the world's hierarchy to behave in the most idiotic of ways possible, only to handwave it away on existential doubt or sheer terror.

Told you I was picky.

The entire Universe is gushing for Titan, DeviantART is crawling with Eren and Mikasa fanart, you can find Fanon Titan designs pretty much on any art portal, and the setting has such a schmaltzy core I wouldn't be surprised if someone wrote up a Mary Sue that soothes all of Eren's turmoils, the sweet, sweet angel.

I think I'll go back to Ninja Scroll's casual Eldritch raping scenes and Ghost in the Shell's brilliant-if-slightly-clunky intellectualism.