When I first watched Attack on Titan (literally translated as "Advancing Giants," a less catchy but far less misleading title), I recommended it to friends as a spiritual successor to Neon Genesis Evangelion. In retrospect, I don't really know what I was thinking. Other than some fairly superficial similarities-- a last-bastion-of-humanity situation (not really the case in Evangelion), and an attack by a relentless enemy with no known origin (not really the case from Attack on Titan, if what little I've heard from the manga is true)-- the two shows are radically different in their storytelling approaches, universes, and characters. What I think I meant to say is that Attack on Titan represents a monumental achievement in anime, the scope of which can only be compared to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Evangelion to me represents when anime broke out of the boring merchandise-pushing mecha anime genre, most iconically represented by Transformers, as well as the hollow and formulaic nonsense of fantasy series like Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon. Our protagonist was not a huge tough guy, a powerful giant robot, or a magical girl with eyes and breasts the size of oranges and melons, respectively. He was a sad, lonely, severely depressed adolescent boy, who struggled with self-loathing and an abusive father. It was a show in which there were no heroes, only flawed, vulnerable, complex human beings. It was a personal show, one which delved fearlessly into the subjects of suicide, child abuse, adultery and rape, and was the result of its auteur's own history with depression. In Evangelion and Shinji Ikari, pitiful little creep that he is, Hidekai Anno redefined the way that an animated story could be told.
Attack on Titan is an achievement of a different, perhaps less profound kind. First, and most obviously, it became really popular with international audiences very quickly. Second, it represents a revolution in distribution: Attack on Titan came out in 2013, and in the same year it appeared on Netflix in the original Japanese with subtitles. This is the first time in my lifetime that audiences on either side of the Pacific are both eagerly awaiting the next season of an anime series. And finally, it has the finest animation of any anime series I've seen to date, outstripping even the glamorous Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood with its flawless integration of CGI to create the dazzling three-dimensional fight scenes. Just as the Vertical Maneuvering Gear lets the courageous Survey Corps move in new ways, Attack on Titan boldly and dazzlingly brings anime into a deep, three-dimensional world.
But these achievements should not overshadow what is also just an excellent season of television. The first 25 episodes of Attack on Titan are a nearly flawless portrayal of a richly imagined universe, memorable characters, and a deeply intriguing plotline; one which does not drive the story but provides an exhilarating undercurrent. As anyone who has seen the last frame of Episode 25 knows, there's a mystery behind the Titans, the Walls, and Eren which is yet to be uncovered by the characters, but we're eager to be right there with them when they do.
It's the animation which first draws us into Attack on Titan. These scout troops, their mission, and their dialogue are not intrinsically intriguing, but it's what they are chasing (obscured for now, but the grotesque and terrifying design of the Titans will be revealed by the end of the episode), and the way they are chasing it ("Don't break formation! Ready your Three Dimensional Maneuvering Gear!" the captain barks) which is important to us and them. These characters are (mercifully) not our heroes but representative of a central theme of Attack on Titan: as we are bound to learn, these men are all going to die, and we as the audience aren't going to care. Life is fragile, so fragile that sometimes we can't bring ourselves to care about people dying. It's part of the brilliance of Tetsuro Araki's direction (in shining form, far outstripping his at-times clunky work on Death Note) which shows us both the difficulty to understand casualty numbers as human beings, and the surrealism of knowing someone for a day, a week, or a lifetime, and that person no longer existing a second later.
Attack on Titan's first episode also shows its hero from the side of the grown-ups, the common-sense folk, and then shows how much of conventional wisdom is based in cowardice. Eren is irritating, brash, and loud. He thinks he's tough when he's really not. And guess what? The little bastard is absolutely right. Living in a cage is not only humiliating, but unsustainable. He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither, and as it turns out, he gets neither. But Eren's no better for it. Everything he knows and loves is destroyed in mere minutes, and as he screams and cries, hating his child's body and his inability to save his mother, you can tell than inside he wishes that all this time he was wrong and poor Kalura was right.
Warning: Spoilers up to Episode 25
Eren is essentially (Evangelion protagonist) Shinji Ikari's inverse. Eren is all externalized emotion, all animus and machismo. His confidence is a self-fulfilling prophecy, as with an average build and intelligence he graduates 5th in his class. He might have some hangups with his father, but he's got more serious shit to worry about. He's a born leader, dragging nearly all of the other top 10 graduates (as well as his best friend/conscience Armin) into the dangerous and unpopular Survey Corps. But we also see in this boy not only the confidence, the leadership, and the dogged determination of a hero. We see his psychotic, violent nature; we see a boy who is not quite yet a man struggling with issues we'd never want to place on our worst enemy, let alone a 16-year-old. It's because of this that it's so appropriate that Eren is what he hates the most: a Titan. His resolution to kill all Titans is as basic and instinctive as the Titans' desire to eat humans. It's telling that when he finally breaks through and beats Annie, his internal monologue takes a bizarre and terrifying turn, like a drunk spilling out a long-kept secret: "I am free! I will eat everything! I will destroy the world!"
This leads to perhaps the one and only immediately recognizable flaw in Attack on Titan: Eren and Mikasa's backstory. Although at first extremely realistic in a way you hadn't thought of before, exploring the results of the concentration of different ethnicities into one nation-state as well as the rise of mobs (specifically sex slavery) in a post-apocalyptic world, the sequence goes from terrifyingly realistic to downright silly in a matter of seconds. It just barely functions as an explanation for the weirdness of Mikasa, the show's favorite freak show.
Mikasa and Eren's relationship is fraught with childhood trauma. But Eren seems to have a more or less healthy regard for her. Although sometimes when he's pissed off he'll say she isn't, he considers her his sister. She's one of the people in his life who reminds him of what it's all for. After all, once all the Titans are dead, what's his life going to be without her? In Mikasa, however, we have an ostensibly strong, determined and independent woman who in fact has an identity which is totally conditional upon Eren. Her motivations are based solely on his interests, her actions always mirror his actions. When she's not fighting Titans, she has no agency. Eren mentions her hair's getting long and she cuts it. Why? Because he said so. She's lucky that at least in this sense Eren's not abusive, but at this point, would she even know the difference? It's my sincere hope that the second season actually seeks to answer this question, and more. After all, the show is hardly squeamish. A look at the possibility of Mikasa's quasi-incestuous feelings for Eren with a sympathetic eye could add another layer to its already excellent character development.
In this fashion, I think Attack on Titan actually takes the opposite approach from Evangelion. In Evangelion, the drama was internal: these characters' inner trauma and psychological issues were played out on a massive scale. The fate of the world hangs in the balance, and it's up to Shinji to get over his abandonment issues. In Attack on Titan, we see the effects of physical devastation, the loss of family members, and feelings of hopelessness and loss on the characters' personalities. Armin, who is the most grounded and psychologically normal of the central characters, is the series' Shinji. He's the coward in all of us; he's not always what he like about humanity, but he's what most of us are. Most of us probably would stand there in terror until the last possible second, while the suicidal bastard tried to save our lives. Conversely, Armin is admirable in confronting the grey areas and unpleasant ethics of war. In the best sequence for the character, he hatches a fake plot with Annie, attempting to rope her into the Survey Corps' grasp. The only reason why the Corps went along with it in the first place is because of a cynical power play to gain respect as the true creme de la creme of the military; the only reason Annie goes along with it is she maybe pities the weakling. "If I do this, will you think I'm a good person?" she asks. Armin's response could very well be the show's mantra: "Good person. That's a term I don't care much for. I feel like those words are simply what people use to call those who are convenient to them."
Attack on Titan has come under some hot water in South Korea and among Japanese progressives for militarist themes. American audiences may be quick to draw comparisons between the Titans and Godzilla, and the hopeless situation of the city's military and resources may be seen as a parallel to Japan's near the end of the Second World War. I really can't say what the political ideals of (manga writer) Hajime Isayama or Tetsuro Araki are. All I know is that the satire of religion and portrayal of the king (or perhaps Emperor stand-in) as a bumbling idiot out of touch with his people are not common facets of conservatism. If it is indeed militaristic or conservative in its politics, it's nothing if not idiosyncratic in this regard.
For instance, I was at first skeptical about Levi. He's something of a trope in anime: the reserved, talented cool guy. It's unfair to this character that I immediately thought of him as the series' Sasuke Uchiha (major character and fan favorite in the Naruto series who works well as Naruto's foil but not much else), and I was not swayed by the tiny detail that he's a germophobe. The whole character seemed like a lazy trope fusion, as his skill often serves as a deus-ex-machina to the plot as well. But as the show placed him and Eren in an unusually close relationship (in proximity if not in relation), he became one of the show's most important characters, representing the complicated relationship between authority and the individual. "I don't know which option you should choose," Levi explains. "No matter what kind of wisdom dictates you the option you pick, no one will be able to tell if it's right or wrong until you arrive to some sort of outcome of your own choice." If you choose to defy authority, you are asserting your agency. But in following authority, one cannot shake off the burden of agency: the choice to follow is still a choice. As Eren and Levi's entire squad dies around them, Eren learns just how true his words are: Levi might be a powerful soldier, but he's only human. When Levi first breaks his cool veneer, unable to tell Petra's parents that she's dead while learning, quite possibly for the first time, that she was in love with him, it solidified in my mind that stereotypes and brusque characterization are beneath Attack on Titan's station.
It's the death of characters like Petra and Marco who make the brutality of Attack on Titan real and harrowing. Their detail and their inherent likability make them seem like important characters who cannot be killed. After Eren's eventual resurrection (somewhat predictable once you really started to think about it, but still handled in the most badass, imaginative way possible), it seemed that perhaps the show would relent in its slaughter of beloved characters, eventually settling into a formula. But once again, the writing (led by Yasuko Kobayashi) proves itself above tropes and formulas: the battle constantly changes and evolves. Despite the amazing model for fight scenes with the Vertical Maneuvering Gear, the conflicts change in setting and scope. As in a real war, conflict is but just one part of the enterprise, as strategy, politics and personal drama are all handled deftly. It's the kind of show where I wouldn't be surprised to see Levi die in the next season (in fact, it may be a wise move) because that's what makes the show satisfying: rather than merely fulfilling our expectations with excellent execution, it defies our expectations and the execution is even better than we had hoped for.
Although she's not a major character (though she may indeed become a central character in the coming seasons), I can't end this post without talking about my favorite character: Zoe Hange. Once again, Attack on Titan rises above playing to tropes and stereotypes. Hange is quirky and unsettling to others, but she's not the nutjob or village idiot. On the contrary, she's the most intelligent character in the show. She's utterly fearless; so fearless that she actually feels empathy for the freakish Titans, a trait which Eren would have hated her for beforehand, and now has (potentially) saved his life. When they talk through the night and into the morning, Eren finally begins to understand who she is and what she wants: victory does not come from mere might and violence, it comes from understanding your enemy. There might be hope for the little psycho after all. But back to Hange, she is everything Mikasa is not. She simply does not take shit from the chauvinistic men at the higher ranks of the military. Why would she? She's smarter than them, she has ideas, and she's not afraid of 30-meter titans, let alone some 16-year-old with an attitude. I love Hange because she's a feminist character in what is in no way a specifically feminist show, and when she hatches a plot or runs a test, or whispers "I'll tear those secrets right out of you" into the terrifying Female Titan's face, I can see that she's going to be the real hope for humanity.
As I said, I think Attack on Titan is, so far, essentially a perfect season of television, with few obvious flaws. It is notoriously difficult to improve on perfection, but I feel confident that with such a richly imagined universe, future seasons will be able to change the show's dynamic. We've already had violent, harrowing disaster scenes, exhilarating action scenes, and political drama. Further insight into the supporting characters' lives as well as unveiling the mystery of the walls, the Titans and Eren should be next on the menu. With the way Season 1 wrapped up, it seems like that's exactly what Araki and co. plan to do, if not until 2015. Oh well. As Mikasa says: "The world is merciless, and also very beautiful."
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