Shingeki no Kyojin Movie 1: Guren no Yumiya

This is a recap of episodes 1-13, so the story is essentially the same as that. I watched the series a long time ago now, but having caught up with the manga and knowing what I know, I felt like a lot of the characters have distinct personalities that make a lot of sense for their future decisions, and I felt like this held up well against the original.


The art style, as always throughout this series, is simplistic at times, but in a way that that fact just makes it more unique and beautiful. The colouring and angles used are all amazing, the only issue ... being that during movements, some of the faces look a bit strange, and there doesn't seem to be a point where you can pause it when the characters are moving and it actually looks normal.


Everybody knows and loves the theme for Attack on Titan, but I feel that not enough credit or attention is given to the actual sound effects. From the footsteps of titans to the simple sound of breathing.


Experience such characters like: Armin Arlelt, the smart one who nobody knows if he is actually called Armin Arlert.
Eren Yeager, the suicidal blockhead who can grow into a big angry boi when he bites himself, nobody knows how he figured that out, either.
Mikasa Ackerman, the one making everyone say "it doesn't matter if they are family, she is unrelated".

Attack on Titan is the very popular manga nowadays. It inspired some anime adaptations: 26 episode long overrated TV series, OVAs and movies. The movie I am going to talk about is the recap of 1-13 episodes. Is it a nice recap that can be enjoyed as much, or almost, as the original adaptation?

No.

This movie should be watched only by fans in order to remember the story before watching the upcoming second season. Because creators had to put 13 episodes in one film, they didn't include important moments that are necessary to develop characters:

1) The movie DOESN'T show how the relationship between Eren and Jean ... was shaped during military training. Their conflict considering how to live and what to do in the world was shrinked to from-time-to-time quarrels.
2) The movie DOESN'T show a well done flashback about how Mikasa was saved by Eren, which gave the audience explanation why Mikasa feels strong for Eren. The movie only shows pictures of memories and Mikasa's inner thoughts about this matter. If a newcomer were to see this movie before finishing original TV series, he or she would be left with a lot of questions.

The movie is really fast paced. It provides a lot of action and less mystery about the world that characters live in. Their development was thrown away. And surely this movie was created to gain more money from fans (it seems that selling t-shirts, hoodies, coats, hats, figures ON EVERY CORNER is not enough).
I don't say that the movie is bad. But remembering how Gurren Lagann was recaped, especially the second movie, I conclude that creators didn't put much effort into production. Yes, the art is very good but only it.

Thank you for reading.

<Potential Spoilers>
I can’t help but think about how unnecessary this movie was.

I find this movie so unnecessary that I’m forcing myself to write this review. To summarise this movie it is a highlight of all the moments from the first half of season one of Attack on Titan. Serving as a summary film. So all the animation and sound design is good, but it’s just a mega rushed version of the first half of season one.

The story of movie one summarises the entire first half of season one. As a result of cramping 13 episodes into two hours, the film is rushed. Viewers will see ... a important and amazing character moment only to be rushed into another important and amazing character moment. I can’t help but be annoyed at this. As a result, the film has really good story moments that have no emotional weight or any level of building up or pacing. In summary the story of the movie is just season one’s incredible narrative and story crammed into a two hour time frame. I don’t want to talk about the key moments in the movies because I’ve already talked about them in my review of Attack on Titan season one.

The animation of this movie is shit. The animation itself is amazing as it is some of Wit studios best animation. But the film is just recycled clips of season one. The only editing done in the film was splicing clips from the actual anime and putting them all together. Which is pretty difficult if you are splicing and stitching clips into a two hour time frame. But compare splicing clips to actual animation is comparing high school science to nasa level science. So the only animation present in this film is just recycled clips from the actual anime. At the very least the animation is really good and it’s pretty good watching Wits animation. Even though the film doesn’t have any true unique animation.

The sound design is the only thing in this film that was recycled and was ok. Attack on Titan has an instantly recognisable soundtrack that conveys the world of Attack on Titan and the emotion of the scene. The sound effects are still pretty good. The voice acting was just recycled, the only good bit of voice acting was the narration cause that was the only aspect of the film that wasn’t recycled. I won’t comment any further on the sound design as it is the best part of the movie but only because you can still recycle a soundtrack and there was a part of the sound design that was an original creation.

The characters portion doesn’t deserve talking about in this film. I discussed the character aspects of season one in my review of season one. And because of the pacing. Important character moments across 13 episodes are crammed into two hours, so any emotional weight that these character moments had is voided and forgotten about. As we go straight from Jean considering his soldier life, to the Survey corps expedition outside humanities territory.

If you want a quick summary of the first half of Attack on Titans first season, then I definitely have the film for you. Otherwise, this is just an unnecessary mess of recycled clips of the original series.

Overall, I rank this 4/10.