Attack on Titan (Updated)

One day, long ago, the world ended.
Huge giants just showed up and started...eating people. This seems to have coincided with a near complete technological collapse as society is now sporting renaissance era tech.

Society, furthermore now consists of a walled area of Europe that looks to be a bit smaller than Andorra. The walls, over 150 feet high seem impervious to the giants. As a hedge, there have been built two secondary walls protecting progressively smaller areas. For 100 years there have been no breaches and humanity has developed a sort of pleasant if neurotic normalcy within its' prison.

Within this womb of denial reside these three young misfits. Left to right we have...

  Armin, a bookish nerd who dreams of seeing the outside world.This heretical notion as well as his socially unacceptable belief that humanity is becoming too complacent about its tenuous hold on existence gets him beat up a lot. Fortunately for his longevity he is friends with...
  Erun, an athletic young man, who excels at fisticuffs and hangs out with the wrong sort of people (see above). As a result of this antisocial influence he has read the forbidden geography book Armin has squirreled away and dreams of seeing the ocean. When he gets old enough, he wants to join the Reconnaissance forces and explore the outside world. His parents do not approve, as the recon forces have a horriffic attrition rate. He's something of a hothead with a bit more idealism than sense. fortunately this is often tempered by his close proximity to...
  Mikasa, an orphan who is his adopted sister. Her parents were refugees from some mysterious, far away land called "Asia" so naturally, this being anime, she is cool as a cucumber and good at everything.  Having suffered through great loss, she does NOT want to loose her adoptive family and she strives to assist in extricating Erun from his many self-inflicted challenges with a fervor that borders on co-dependency.

Well, as you can see from the expressions on our protagonists faces, in the course of the first episode things go downright pear shaped. 


OK,  the end of episode 1 and most of episode 2 involve a particularly large giant 3-5 times as big as any others showing up and kicking in the gate to the walled territory. The smaller giants then swarm into the city where they begin devouring the populace. Meanwhile, the military, who would find this situation tough in the best of times, is very nearly useless due to having become complacent and confident behind their walls.  The soldiers are routed and most that are not devoured flee. A few take the time to to assist the civilians  like Hannes here.



We first saw him in episode 1 drunk at his post and generally not displaying a good military bearing.  In episode 2 he runs in to engage a giant, takes one look at it, realizes he is drunk, unfit to fight and heads for the hills. However, he somewhat redeems himself when he returns  to save the kids, wrenching them from their mother as they attempt to extricate her from the rubble of their house. He pulls them out kicking and screaming as the giant he did not engage devours their mother in front of them*.  (I'll spare you the screen cap).

As mentioned before there are 3 walls. They are called Rose, Maria and Sina...in the course of episodes 1&2 the territory between Rose and Maria is overrun. The gates of Wall Maria have to be closed to save those inside and 1/3 of the human population is lost.


^{* We see Hannes later in episode 4. He's still the same friendly guy, but he's gotten his act together and has become the very demanding captain of the gate guard for Wall Maria. Hannes is determined to never repeat his mistakes and ensure others don't either. An interesting theme of redemption from a frequently dystopic show.} 

 Attack on Titan actually has had quite a bit to say about the dangers of complacency,  the utter contempt ruling elites can develop for those in the hinterlands, the necessity of freedom in healthy human development and the cancerous rot that results from its absence...and it often says them in the most graphically unsettling ways possible.

This show has has some extraordinarily disturbing visuals. If it were a live action film it might get an NC-17 rating. There is just something nightmarish on a primal level about people being eaten by big, naked, implacable giants that look like otaku.
Actually, nightmarish doesn't begin to describe it.

This is a gut wrenching show and difficult to watch but it is actually pretty interesting.
With a  structure, that evolves into something very much like a war story, it successfully captures the horror and dread of going into combat in a way that few shows have. The show is full of surprises and there's already been some decent character development. I do like the fact that Erun, while very much a shonen lead arch-type is NOT possessed of some awesome power and is not really the best at anything...getting by instead on his wits and tenacity. 

Episode three has a 5 year time skip. There is a brief flashback revealing that due to most of the croplands being between Maria and Rose there was a famine. This was alleviated by the straightforward method of organizing the adult males fom the overrun portion into a militia and sending them out with a small military force and some engineers to retake the occupied territories...and then locking the gate.
Other than that 3 and 4 are boot camp stories. Our heroes have enlisted and the cast triples in size as they deal with basic training and exposition on the shows signature martial art, a complex ballet involving swords and swinging through the air on wires. The other takeaway is that while one can apply for any position one wants.  only the top 10 percent can get into the military police, only those with the best academic scores can get into the gate guards (it involves engineering) and the lowest performing  end up in either the scouts or the regular guard force. This, as Erun points out is in fact ass backwards as everyone is striving to hone their giant killing skills to get as far as possible away from the giants in the interior compound. The front-line troops are set up to fail.

Erun, to the astonishment of everyone (except Mikasa and Arun, who know he's a loon) signs up for the Recon forces he strove so long to join. When questioned on the sanity of this he gives an impassioned speech that inspires several others to do so as well. Graduation day comes and the cadets are running about their duties on the wall in anticipation of their new assignments, when a 60 meter giant just...sort of...teleports in and kicks down the gate to Wall Maria.

And then things get bad....
 

Be advised that Attack on Titan does not shirk from showing women perishing in combat with all the same gruesomeness as the men.  However, the series has several likeable and strong female characters, including Potato Girl here.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:12 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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