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After years and years of foreshadowing, teasing and promising great things, Attack on Titan is back and ready to reveal its mysteries. Was it worth the wait though?

*This review will mention parts of season 1 and season 3. It will contain spoilers for the whole show*

I remember the times when I was excited for a new Attack on Titan episode. There were problems back then too, sure, but I was able to enjoy it regardless. That is because for everything I watch there is a limit to the bs I can take. I know this is a review for season 3 part 2, but some ... problems are so big they can ruin the experience of watching the whole franchise. The last season of Game of Thrones is proof of that. So, what am I talking about?

The first example is way back in season 1 when the show tricked us into thinking it was about the unlikely survival of humans vs giant mindless zombies. Then Eren turned into a titan and it turned into a standard shounen where the MC is special and has a hidden power. "Ok, whatever, it could have been great, but I guess this is how it is now" I said to myself as I accepted this new standard. The second example is in season 3 part 1 when they revealed that the reason people inside the walls don't know anything is the massive MIND WIPE made by some titan power or whatever. This is very lazy writing, only written because the author didn't know what to do with the cards he already layed out on the table. DO. NOT. MIX. MAGIC. AND. MYSTERY. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying it's hard to do properly. Take death note for example, there is a magic notebook that kills anyone as long as you have their name. There were rules set at the start, and while new rules were added later it doesn't matter because the mystery only exists in the show. We, as the audience, know everything, the mystery is there for the characters. We get to watch them figure it out. Meanwhile, in AoT the story is constantly baiting you into getting curious about what happens next and then treating you like and idiot for not figuring out the new magic trick the author cooked up.
To summarize this paragraph: in a mystery show, you shouldn't suddenly reveal crucial story elements to solve the riddles. Every plot element should be revealed early in the story and the viewer should have the chance to figure it out by gathering information laid out by the author or just make it an in-series mystery like Death note. That's how you make a good mystery.

The reason I talked about all this is because it's very relevant to season 3 part 2. We finally got answers for what's in the basement, but at what cost? Surprisingly enough, all of the reveals make sense if you accept what has happened in season 3. As you already read in the last paragraph, I don't accept it. In spite of that, I will give props to the author for not making up even more BS on the reveal. However, the reveal itself was done in a lazy way with a flashback of 2 people sitting in a chair and info-dumping years of foreshadowing. Not to mention it's extremely convoluted, so much to a point that a friend who read the manga had to explain every detail of it for twenty minutes to me and my friends (who are anime-onlys) to understand it. Chalk it up to the three of us being stupid, but nobody got it right away. Additionally, memories can travel through time now and Eren gets memories handed to him when he touches Historia's hand. What a cheap way to reveal information, it's just more proof that magic has no place in a mystery show. The author can add whatever he feels like to the story and it doesn't need to make sense because it's magic.

Not only are crucial elements of the mystery made up on the spot, other easily avoidable things are aswell. I will showcase a few examples: the hand-missile thingys used vs Reiner. They seem to be very effective at taking down the armored titan, but why weren't they used vs regular titans years prior? And why do they work in the first place when they clearly showed us in the 1st season that cannons have very little effect vs titans because of their regeneration powers? Going in melee range vs a titan seems like an inferior idea than to just blind-them with hand-missiles and then slice them. You can call it new technology, I call it convenient. Another convenient thing is the "Titans can live for 13 years" rule. I don't have a problem with the rule itself, just the way it was implemented. The author couldn't think of a natural way to justify Owl giving Grisha the titan power so he made it easy for himself and just made Owl die from the convenient curse. Furthermore, he didn't know what to do with the regular titans anymore so he just made them dissapear. Just like that, with one sentence. "We cleared them all out in one year" says Levi. I can't think of a more lazy way to do this. It's annoying to watch a show that tries to cut corners at every turn.

The action in this show is bad. The strategies, the animation, the character power levels and the payoffs. Ok, maybe the animation isn't bad, it's just worse than season 1. There are noticable animation inconsistencies in almost every episode. Most of it is decent though, but we don't come to Attack on Titan for just decent animation, do we? At least it's not the disaster that was season 3 part 1, where they blew all the budget on one sakuga scene and then the rest of the season looked ass. Everybody knows about CGI colossal titan, so I won't spend any more time on this.

The strategies are mega bad though, at least from the good guys. Let me start off with the positive, I like how the beast titan just stood far away, out of everybody's reach, throwing massive boulders. That was smart, he didn't put himself in danger, he didn't "get cocky" as anime villains tend to do. He even set up titans around the whole area so the good guys can't escape. Very smart play, bravo! The good guys, however, oh boy... So the plan is to jump from titan to titan to get to the main bad guy and solo him. Am I the only one that finds this 99% impossible and extremely idiotic? Not to mention they risked EVERYONE'S lives for this. Let me break down why everything is wrong with this: first off, the terrain. I remember in season 1 characters used to make comments about how they couldn't traverse an area because they didn't have any buildings to hook onto. Now that restriction is completely broken since apparently titans are a viable source of movement. If you hooked onto a titan before, you better hope you deal the killing blow or else you'd become a delicious snack. Instead of this, we have robot titans that stand in place and don't do a god damn thing even though they are SUPPOSED TO BE LOOKING OUT FOR HUMANS AND EASILY SPOT LEVI. They don't even have to fight him, they can just move out of the way and the whole plan is ruined. And what better way to present this than not to show it on screen at all... I'm not even being ironic here, there isn't any possible way to portray this scene without showing how flawed the strategy is. Realistically, even if somehow this whole situation didn't fail miserably, the beast titan could just see Levi jumping across the titans. I know they rode out and died just to cover levi with smoke, I only have a problem with the presentation of this scene. It looks like the soldiers shot smoke vertically in the air just to distract the titan and not to cover Levi. If this is really what they were going for, that makes the good guy strategy even more impossible than it already was, and the beast titan should get glasses. Pick your poison.

The fights against armored and colossal titan were also a disaster. Reiner should have been killed several times. Apparently laying on the ground and covering your neck is a good idea, especially when the enemy displays their strong explosion weapons. And, of course, the good guys "can't finish him off" because using more explosions to blow up the rest of his head or hands is too much work. Furthermore, everybody prefers talking about killing reiner than actually killing him. This is another presentation problem, Reiner is on his knees with a blown up face and neck, but nobody does anything even though they could. You don't have to tell me it's better presented in the manga, because I believe you. About the colossal titan fight, we see another example of bad strategies. So their plan is: Armin jumps in like an idiot and distracts Bertholdt while Eren sneaks behind and surprises him. That's it. Question: why doesn't Bertholdt just squish or punch Armin and be done with it? Why does he start emitting steam to make himself vunerable when he's a 60 meter titan fighting a single human? Because of the plot, that's why. The ONLY reason the plan succeeded was because Bertholdt literally locked himself in place for no reason. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? Every time the good guys win, it is because the enemy made a mistake, therefore it feels cheap. Mistakes can happen, sure, but they shouldn't happen on a basic level. The mistake should be a flaw in someone's strategy and not, for example, forgetting to reload your weapon.

On to the characters, most of them are the same as they were before. Bland and not really anything special. Eren used to be angry, saw the world black and white, "Kill all titans!" (a.k.a. a stereotype). Now he is more pathetic, whiny and blames everything on himself (a.k.a. a stereotype). He just shifted the most common MC personalities and he doesn't do anything. Most of his actions are directly controlled by the plot, he rarely reaches conclusions himself, and when he does, they are mostly worthless. Armin stopped being so whiny, which is always a plus. He is still, however, a pretty basic character. They tried to give him some significance by making him the leader, but this is meaningless since it keeps being forced onto him even though it looks like he doesn't want it. He did have the will to sacrifice himself, so he is a bit better than before. Mikasa is the worst one. All she ever does it cling onto f*cking Eren. Eren Eren Eren Eren, only Eren. None of the decisions are her own, she isn't even worthy of being called a character in my eyes. You would think she would mature over the years, but nope, always the same. It's a shame, since she could have been a great character. Now she is even worse than Asuna from SAO. Levi is the same, but more overpowered. The whole beast titan strategy wouldn't even work if levi wasn't so unreasonably strong. None of the other chacacters even come close. It would be fine if he was smarter than everyone else, but he has superhuman capabilties at this point. What he is able to do undermines the threat and fear of the titans. Erwin was my favorite character and he's dead now. He became very dumb before his death, thinking Armin is more valuable than himself for the purpose of survival. Either that, or he didn't want to become a titan, in which case I guess he didn't care about humanity after all.

The plot armor: It didn't diminish, it multiplied. I hate it when every single conflict ends with a draw, and it's not only plaguing Attack on Titan, it's very common in many other anime. Even though I already talked about some, I will put all of the plot armor instances from these 10 episodes here in one place, just so it's easy to see how many there is. Reiner when he's on his knees. Why not finish him off? Because the plot still needs him. Armin when he's burned by the colossal titan. Why didn't he die? Because the plot needed him for the Eren vs Levi conflict scene. This also applies to Erwin for surviving that long with his wound, although it's not that big of a deal since it's much more believable. The beast titan when levi captured him. Why did he manage to escape? Because apparently smoke OP, it's totally impossible to hear that sneaky titan coming to save him! Let's forget that Levi has just solo killed like 50 titans AND beaten the beast titan. But Levi needs to not hear right now, because the plot still needs the beast titan to survive. Reiner. Again. Just like the beast titan, he got snatched by the fast one. And once again, impossible to hear him in a city full of crumbling houses. This was such an eye roll. I also hate it when every time they capture an enemy titan, instead of killing him, they want to "question him". This is fine from the characters perspective, however, every time they mention it, I instantly look around at who is going to save them. And lo and behold, they get saved every single time. Because of all this plot armor, the world starts to lack consequence and fights become meaningless.

I didn't pay much attention to the sound, I just noticed it was misplaced sometimes. Animation and sound problems don't bother me usually, unless they are awful. The first time I heard the opening it sounded like a worse version of the first opening. Over time it grew on me and I see it has some differences that give it its own flavor. It's no SASAGEYO, but it's nice.

In conclusion, Attack on Titan is a story with lots of minor and major problems. The author always puts himself in a corner and then introduces new elements in the same episode they are needed to get him out. Mysteries are resolved by magic tricks and asspulls. You can't even turn your brain off to enjoy the action because the strategies are extremely flawed any rely on enemies making basic mistakes. Characters never change in any meaningful way. The sound and animation are decent but not good enough for Attack on Titan standards. That's it, don't tell me that the manga is better because this is not a manga review, I'm rating the anime only.