My TV Show Review/Extreme Rant of Attack on Titan · 9:38pm Mar 10th, 2021
Yo, what's up, Kemosabes?
This is your friendly film, TV show, and episode reporter here with another review.
Today, for my 29th TV show analysis, and as requested by my good friend on FiMFiction.net, BradyBunch, I'm gonna give you guys my take of "Attack on Titan".
Here's the rundown of this series:
After his hometown is destroyed and his mother is killed, young Eren Jaeger vows to cleanse the earth of the giant humanoid Titans that have brought humanity to the brink of extinction.
I'd like to be honest, I was initially reluctant to ever give this series a look. It was primarily because of how intense this show appeared to be among others and due to lack of experience with anime-related shows and films.
However, I later decided that this was something I wouldn't be able to get off my back if I didn't review it, especially because of how often Brady asked me to review it in the past. I also figured that if I could handle watching other films and shows that were pretty intense, then I could surely handle seeing this show.
So, what do I think of this program personally?
Well, after simply watching the first two episodes of it, I'm gonna come clean by saying that "Attack on Titan"...is nothing but an unbearable pile of dung heap!
On one hand, I can tell that the people behind this program were obviously quite ambitious. But, none of that was ever able to overcome how infuriating I found it to be and the numerous flaws I spotted, and that's even coming from a guy who's seen his first anime program.
For instance, the voice acting, characters, and character development were openly less than stellar.
Accompanied by headache-inducingly stilted, forced, and wooden dialogue, the way the performers portrayed their characters made them sound like they were always either angry or uptight no matter what sort of scenes they were featured in, especially that of whoever was playing Eren Jaeger. To top it all off, the characters themselves were extremely bland and unmemorable. Hardly any of them had much in the ways of personality, relatability, or likability. And yes, I did see that many of them had growth, but it certainly wasn't strong enough to get me to like them or think any differently of them.
The overall quality of the concept and direction wasn't to my liking either, if I may add.
From the very start, I was unable to get engaged by what was being presented due to how disjointed and confusing things often seemed to get. As I watched the first episodes via Hulu, I noticed that everything basically felt like scrambled plot pieces crammed together at the last minute, and the way everything was executed seemed to openly cause the narrative flow to get clunky and questionable. Of course I knew that the titans were going to break through the wall somehow and that the characters were going to have to face them, but that prospect was basically predictable from the moment I started watching it.
I get that the show was likewise obviously made to be a dark-disaster-drama, but the tone was something I've found myself having issues with too. In every way, the show was dark and dramatic in an infuriating kind of way, and because of the large focus put into making it such the production team didn't take the time to help it have personality and heart so that it wouldn't seem bare (something that's similarly the case with Russell Crowe's "Noah", if I may add). Every time I personally even found myself gaining an understanding as to what was happening, there would be these unnecessary fact letters that ultimately distracted from the concept.
Finally, the animation was literally some of the worst I ever saw in a modern day cartoon.
Throughout my time watching it, I saw that there were stills of pictures with characters that were obviously made to show them moving, but they weren't moving at all. It was like the animators didn't take the time to bring to life whatever storyboards they were given and just merely shoved in what was drawn by the artists at the last minute. In addition to this, the designs of the titans were quite honestly hideous, the cinematography was jarring, and the frequent use of blood splattering everywhere made everything repulsive to look at. The worst part is that it was more cheesy than artistic.
In conclusion, in contrast to however many think "Attack on Titan" is the greatest show ever made or have them in the favorite list of shows, I found this program to be nothing but a hunk of junk that does not deserve a fanbase, recognition, awards, or acclaim. It's lifeless, bland, and pretty much the very definition of what shows like "Avatar: The Last Airbender" are not.
So, I rate "Attack on Titan" zero out of five stars.
And before anyone asks:
Yes, because of seeing it, I'm pretty much anti-Attack on Titan and I'm now both embarrassed and ashamed to have ever seen this atrocity.
I get the impression you aren't familiar with a lot of the tropes of anime. The static style you allude to is a key feature of Asian art; conservation of colour and frame, which you don't really see in Western animation. Furthermore, the acting sounds stilted as they're having to translate dialogue from Japanese to English, a language with more sylabbles and concepts that don't exist in the English language. I would personally suggest watching a sub for comparison.
5472250
No thank you. I’ve already had enough of a painful time watching the dubbed versions.
I got the gist of your review and forgive my bluntness, but I think you were a wee bit immature about your conclusion.
I wouldn't say I'm a die hard fan since I have to catch up, but I at least seen three full seasons.
I'll admit the anime doesn't draw you in, in its first two episodes, I'll say it takes a good 5 to 10 episodes to maybe a full season.
You don't have to watch any more if you don't want to, but I do recommend watching some non spoiler reviews on YT, because it is actually a good anime with a story of the true enemy type of troupe
5472269
Ah well. Attack on Titan probably wasn't the best place to start with anime, though I suspect based on your review you have no intention of touching the genre again.
5472275
Honestly, I’m unsure about it. Perhaps a more family-friendly kind of anime would be something I’d look into.
5472277
I'd suggest asking BradyBunch for suggestions, as he seems to be quite knowledgable on this topic (I haven't viewed much anime myself!).
5472277
There's lots of family friendly, but it's mainly slice of life, romance, or comedy.
I only know one that's pretty family friendly and that's "Ouran Highschool Host Club"
Black Clover might be more your speed
Dragon Ball might also be for you, family friendly, but some blood and swears
Other animes I know are either ecchi, action, or bloody and gorey. Though those ones do have an engaging story
5472277
One place to start would be Big Hero Six: the Series, as that very much has an anime style, but is probably more in the family friendly direction you're looking for. Another posiblility would be the 2013 film Pacific Rim and its sequel, both of which are very much live action anime in tone, but noticably less bleak than Attack on Titan.
While I've only watched one episode of AOT, doesn't two episodes seem a bit soon to form an opinion on something?
Then again, there are plenty of shows that can draw an audience in just from two episodes alone (especially if the episodes are a two-parter), with Friendship is Magic being the perfect example.
Uh...pretty sure that's the idea considering they're big scary monsters.
5472308
I normally go three episodes, sometimes more
5472308
Yay, but do they have to look like naked people?
5472317
Good point.
5472313
When it comes to watching shows, I usually go from start to finish.
That said, since time is of the essence and there were some cases where episodes were unavailable, I have skipped a couple of episodes of a couple of shows. And what counts as finished honestly depends on the show and if I grew up watching it on TV and DVD since SpongeBob, The Simpsons, and Family Guy are still going and yet I haven't watched a full episode of either of those ever since I had WiFi installed in my house.
5472288
Dragon Ball is a good place to start, I agree.
I have to say, this is just wrong. You can't form anything even close to conclusions like these from just 2 episodes, or with this show, even the entire first season. Especially when it comes to things like character and plot development. It is anything but hastily put together, and this becomes more obvious the longer it goes on. As someone who has watched the entire thing up to the most recent episode, it is a modern-day masterpiece in my view, and I do not say that lightly. One of those shows that only gets better the longer it goes on, like Breaking Bad.
I know which moment you're referring to, and I saw no problem with it. It wasn't even really a scene, it was more of a brief montage. They don't use great animation on every scene, when they use it extensively on the moments that actually matter. It's actually one of the best animated modern series.
Haha, you actually won't find much disagreement from the fanbase about this. Eren gets made fun of a lot in the first 2 seasons for his anger and rage. Thankfully he changes quite a bit after that.
5472269
The subbed version is indeed much better.
You went outside your comfort zone to see what the fuss was about and gave it a shot.
+respect
5472599
What’s so special about the subbed version when it’s just consistent subtitles for dialogue?
5472599
Technically, this isn’t the first time I reviewed a show after seeing just one or two episodes. “The Looney Tunes Show” was another I reviewed after doing just that, and believe me, it’s terrible.
5472669
I have a question:
Do you think I was reasonable in this review?
5472698
Generally speaking, when watching a show voiced by the original Voice Actors: the emotional state of the characters and other nuances are better represented since they are working more directly with the writers, whereas when translated into other languages, the Voice Actors are working independently of the creators after the fact, which results in some details being lost.
Even more so when the translation is censored or altered to make it more ‘presentable’ to a different audience.
A famous example is when Pokémon was translated to English, there is a scene one of the characters holds up a plate of Rice Balls and is excited sharing them with his friends, but the translating VA talks about how delicious his ‘jelly doughnuts’ look. Since the company that took the job of translating it to English figured that kids wouldn’t know what Rice Balls were, they went ahead and replaced the lines but didn’t edit the animation, which makes for a pretty jarring scene for anyone watching it.
And it happens a lot more than one might think, due to other censoring standards, localization choices, and when dealing with words that don’t translate well into other languages.
5472599 Eh, except I called it from the first episode.
Things I nailed BEFORE episode 1 was even finished: 1. Eren's gonna turn out to be one of the Titans. 2. The Titans are weapons that humans transform into, rather than just mindless monsters. 3. There are a bunch of other cities out there, with varied tech levels, all perpetually at war. 4. The heroes will become the baddies at some point, because the gist of this series will boil down to, war is suxxorz and you become monster from fighting monster, blah blah. 4. Pretty much everyone's gonna die at some point, because this genre does that.
And somehow, SOMEHOW, I just knew 5. The walls have Titans inside them. I dunno how I knew, but it just felt like the walls were too obvious a plot device to NOT have a weird twist like that.
For me, the most annoying thing was the 'magic' behind it all. These things just poof out of nowhere, but they don't have real mass.... but their physics behaves like they DO have incredible mass... and it just turns off and on in a second... and it just BUGS THE HELL OUT OF ME!! Mass can't just appear and disappear like that! I CAN'T BUY IT!! Ya need some BS explanation for how that works! Like chakra or something like that!
5472786
In the context of it being your personal opinion: that’s more of a question for you to ask yourself. I’m not you: so I can’t objectively say whether or not you’re being reasonable about your interpretations or outlook on the show.
It’s clearly a biased review and the show’s image suffers in the eyes of anyone who reads your review before watching it themselves; but you’re within your rights to say what you want: just remember that anyone who disagrees has the same freedom as you.
5472854
Thank you.
Of course after watching the first two episodes, you'd say this much. It's like reading the cover of a book and saying it's garbage. Give it a chance. I even made a blog post about it giving reasons why it's great. You'll find yourself agreeing with it all if you get to the end.
5473611
From the very moment I saw the episodes, I knew where things would be going. If that isn’t an example of a story being predictable and bland, I don’t know what is.
I have no interest in giving it another chance, and I’m already getting a headache just thinking about it.
Why do you even watch it when it’s exactly the kind of thing Jesus would want us to guard our hearts and minds from due to the things it contains?
5473626
The reason why you knew what was going to happen was because those were the establishing episodes talked about in the description. You know nothing about what's going to happen.
What's in the basement that Grisha talked about? What's up with the Colossal and Armored Titans? What was the injection that Grisha gave Eren? Will Eren succeed in his training? What friends and enemies will Eren make in training? Is the government keeping a deep secret about their world? How many titans will he actually kill? Will another wall be breached? How many other unique titans will appear? What's beyond the walls? Where do titans come from? Why do they want to eat humans if they have no digestive or reproductive systems? This show is anything but predictable your first time watching. The second time you watch, you're aware of the little things, the small hints scattered throughout. I implore you to keep going.
5473626
Gotta go with 5473705 on this one. I remember one time in school when a friend of mine said Peter Capaldi's portrayal of the Doctor from Doctor Who sucked. But, after her and I spent a good portion of last year watching (and in some parts rewatching) the majority of the Doctor Who revival on BBC Iplayer, she came to view him as one of her favourite Doctors. Obviously, not the favourite Doctor (that honour goes to David Tennant, who just so happens to be my favourite too) but certainly somewhere in the top three.
Point is you should give it another chance. And if you don't like it...well...that's fine. Everyone's allowed to have their own opinions. It'll be just like Fluttercord considering it's another thing you loathe and yet everybody loves. Well, not everybody but certainly a large majority.
PS: Capaldi's in my top three Doctors too.
5473705
5472274
5472250
5472599
5473718
You wanted my opinion on this show no matter how many times I said no, Brady. Well, you got it. I saw it and said what I said about it, so now you've got it. And as you can see, I don't think the same as you or others about this show as you've likely expected.
I have no interest in giving it a second chance because the first episodes gave me enough of an idea of where things would be going from there, and frankly...nothing about the concept or the characters got me interested in seeing what sort of things would be coming next because of how bland everything was.
All I really want now is to just move forward in life. I hope that's something both you and the others can understand.
5473718
Funny thing. I actually just watched a clip or two of other episodes today.
Regrettably, though, I found them to be as agonizing as the episodes I already saw in their entirety.
5474032
pa1.narvii.com/6855/6f5bed51409eb4511f1463b1f695228aaadbf891_hq.gif
And yes, I am aware of the irony of me using a Starlight Glimmer GIF despite my dislike for her post-redemption.
Still, if you don't even like watching clips of it, then who am I to force you to watch a show that I've only seen one episode of? I know I wouldn't like it if I was forced to sit through all the Twilight films.
5474037
You're not the only one.
5474479
Want to know what's really ironic? Despite my desire to never watch the Twilight films (or read the books for that matter), my favourite character in MLP is named Twilight Sparkle.
5474516
An old internet joke ('still a better love story than Twilight') takes on a completely new meaning in MLP.
I’ve never watched it.
Mostly cuz I was scared of the titan
5472277
Would the anime 86 be to your tastes?
I'm not a fan of Attack on Titan nor I cared about it, despite that I'm a casual anime fan. However, no offense, but I think you're receiving angry Attack on Titan fans.
5527801
I know. Talk about being a sore thumb in the world.