Attack on titan(Shingeki no Kyojin) is a series that will, most likely, be forgotten in the next decade. I will admit that attack on titan is extremely popular as of this moment of time, but never did it reach the status of most popular. The 3 sections I will be going into depth are story, characters, and enjoyment. Art and sound are more subjective to the viewers tastes and when the work was made so they will have smaller parts in the review.
story-
To a viewer that has not watched anime made pre 90's the story may be exciting and amazing, but if you have watched
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pre 90's, then you might have watched a series called zeta gundam. Zeta gundam has a couple of similarities to attack on titan. First off, they are both very dark stories. In attack on titan, humanities is in fear from the titans that are beyond the wall. In zeta gundam, on Kamille's(the main character of zeta gundam) colony, the titan faction of the earth federation are abusing their power and are taking advantage of the civilians. Other similarities are both main characters moms are killed by their series titans, their dads are never around, both main characters find out they can pilot(control) a large humanoid object through a life or death scenario, and the obvious point, both enemy factions are called the titans. There are more but they would be considered spoilers. The point being made is that, for me, this is not the first time i've seen this story, they are fairly similar that I was having relapses to zeta gundam and remembering it, but in the defense of attack on titan, why fix something if it isn't broken?
Art-
Art is a very hard thing to put a number too as its all personal preference. I will say for this that, for individual frames, its great, for animation on the other hand, its very hit and miss. The 3D animation with the maneuver gear is amazing, but when it comes to face to face conversations, the only thing really moving is the characters mouth. That shouldn't be really acceptable now a days since everything is digital. When it was cell painting(hand painting) it was much harder to have many things happening at once with the budgets they had and how each frame needed to be hand painted. While now everything can be done through a computer so you can have hair movement while they are talking and have other things going on. There is a pose with levi looking to his side, and over the course of his scenes, when ever they had him looking to his side with the same clothes on, they just changed the background, reusing the pose. This is a prime example, like evangelion, of poor budgeting, sure the first few episodes looked great, and so did some ending pieces, but the center you could see where they cut corners.
sound-
By far the better portion of the series, the openings were very energizing, the soundtrack was good. The vocal tracks in the series are very good, while everything else just was there. The endings for me were forgettable. The majority of it is just personal preference, which it did fit my preference so it worked for me.
Characters-
Oh the characters. This issue comes along with the story problem i had, the characters seem like rips from zeta gundam. Eren is almost an exact replica of Kamille, Mikasa is what would happen if you mixed Fa and Emma together. Captain Erwin and armin to an extent are much like Quattro Bajeena. There are a multitude of examples i can list off here but i feel ive made my point. But at this moment in time, it feels like Armin is the most original character I've seen.
Enjoyment-
Now this is where i believe is the most crucial point of any series, did you enjoy it? I could care less if it has the best visuals, the sharpest sound, best story or what else, if I didn't enjoy it, then I didn't like it. For Attack on Titan, i enjoyed PARTS of it, but not the whole thing. The pacing of the series really jarred me because not only do they have episodes that take place over years, but they have episodes in real time, which when you combine the fact that they never tell you how long its been between gaps, it feels like you are never fully amerced into the show. And the "read the manga" ending really killed it for me.
overall-
Like I explained in the enjoyment section, enjoyment is what really matters to a show, so enjoyment is always the overall grade of the show. Now given that this is the Wit studios first series, they are learning how to make a good anime, and they picked probably the best manga to make an adaptation for, but you'd think they'd learn from the gainax's animation spiral for evangelion. If they had taken their time and spent the budget better, then it would have looked much better then just throwing thick black lines at us.
final words-
If you are new to anime or love shounen then attack on titan is good for you, but if you've been around a while and watched certain series then you might start noticing certain aspects that might make it look less appealing.
If you wish to give CONSTRUCTIVE criticism about the review feel free to comment on my profile, If you wish to discuss a particular aspect of the review feel free to message me. Reminder that this is an opinionated review of attack on titan. Everyone will have a different opinion of a work based off of personal preference and anime experience. Because of my anime experience, I do not see the appeal to attack on titan, but maybe you do.
May 3, 2014
Shingeki no Kyojin
(Anime)
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Attack on titan(Shingeki no Kyojin) is a series that will, most likely, be forgotten in the next decade. I will admit that attack on titan is extremely popular as of this moment of time, but never did it reach the status of most popular. The 3 sections I will be going into depth are story, characters, and enjoyment. Art and sound are more subjective to the viewers tastes and when the work was made so they will have smaller parts in the review.
story- To a viewer that has not watched anime made pre 90's the story may be exciting and amazing, but if you have watched ... |