The Attack of the Titans! – An Alpha Omega Review

THE ALPHA OMEGA REVIEW ATTACK ON TITAN

Hey this Alpha Omega and I bring you the Alpha Omega on the Phenomenal Anime, ATTACK ON TITAN!!!

It has been quite a while since an anime has gripped the entirety of the otaku community and those outside of it particularly those of the Western world. To which I applaud director Testsuro Araki for managing to make his project incredibly hyped and pull it off with such success. I don’t how that man does it however I can say that Attack on Titan is without a doubt his most ambitious and biggest project since his past work Death Note.

The anime itself in its opening scene showcases itself as an apocalyptic world with a dark fantasy twist where humans are no longer at the top of the food chain and live in fear of the Titans who are in my opinion giant naked man eating zombies. The humans have developed the 3D maneuver using a hook that is fired which propels them and using a set of blades to pierce the Titans weak points, this is humanity’s main offensive weapon. Despite humanity’s weapon it is rather weak compared to the Titans advantage in size and strength which further showcases the tragedy and despair all through out the anime. This is evident throughout the course of the series where we repeatedly see death and destruction throughout the series where it drills into your mind the struggle between the two species.

The first element about this anime that grab’s the viewer’s attention is it’s visuals as they are gorgeous and detailed although the thick lines style is a bit bizarre but after getting used to it grows on the viewer and adds to the unique animation. The best pieces of animation within the show are the 3D maneuver gear scenes as they look fantastic and capture the freedom and excitement perfectly as if you were in them. As gorgeous as the visuals are the animation is sporadic with the animation quality not remaining consistent. To elaborate this the animation in with 3D maneuver gear and the battle with titans look and feel fantastic while outside of those scenes the quality seems to be downgraded not meeting the same animation standard. An example of such is during the Battle of Trost arc where the characters were walking down a flight of stairs where all animation was thrown out of the window in the scene and the viewer was simply given an image with the characters voiced in the background.

Another problem with the visuals were the Titan character designs although for the majority the designs managed to portray the dread and terror that they gave off. However for the minority, the character designs were simply off as we were given a Kawaii Titan and as the show progressed we simply encountered more and more of the abnormal types of Titans and hence the Titans in the latter part of the show were no longer the giant beasts of terror and instead appeared more as giant naked running retards.

Like seriously what were they thinking???

The characters that were presented did somehow come of across as real human beings while our protagonist Eren Jaeger came off as a shounen lead role where the majority of his moments of accomplishments were having his ass handed to him. His nature seems rash and hot headed like that much shounen protagonists but nevertheless you couldn’t blame for acting that way due to the horrific scene witnessed at the end of the first episode.

With amazing visuals, a gripping story and a fair share of interesting characters there would be high expectations for the soundtrack. The music can only be described as in your face and perfectly complementing each scene as each piece adds to the atmosphere that had been building.

However the biggest flaw with Attack on Titan lies with its pacing, it’s too sparse. The first few episodes cover the course of three years and the next arc covers what I believe to be one to a few days in the Battle of Trost Arc however nothing will prepare you for the arc near the end of the anime. It is where the anime reveals that it had been only one day after the viewer believing from the pacing to be it to be the course of at least the likes of a week.

Attack on Titan while aesthetically fantastic it is rough around the edge with its story and characters but it is no doubt a gem among the sea of today’s mediocre anime. This is an anime that anyone can get into quite easily and is one where anime fans would have had had to watched at least once.

Score: 8/10

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p>For my reviews I will be scoring them and as such I follow my own code to the scores I give. I will always score shows out of 10 and the first and most important aspect to my scores is that 7 is not average. In fact a 7 means that show is actually pretty good. 5 will be the score for flat line average anime, its right in the middle of 10, a 5 would normally be given to show such as Naruto (To all you Naruto elitists I have to point out that it is not the best show in the world even you want to disagree by starting up a needless argument) and the likes of Sword Art Online. If you feel I rated an anime too low I will point out my reasoning.