I absolutely love Attack on Titan and it’s one of the best anime’s I have ever seen. Even the clown show ending from the manga has been fixed to an great extent in the anime. The anime has so many excellent moments which are some of the best written scenes in anime.
The fanbase is insufferable though. It’s either full of “Eren is literally me” mfs or glazers with no sense of reality and I’m pissed at liking the same thing as them.
It reeked too much of barely constrained fascism, both in the media itself, and in the fanbase, for me to stick around for longer than half of the first season. Having learned about how hardline a nationalist the author is, that doesn’t surprise me-- but I also can’t tolerate it myself
It’s supposed to be a dystopia in a sense. Paradis is a regressive island stuck a hundred years behind a already backwards world. It’s pretty much set in what would be the 19th century in the real world. I don’t think it’s really about Nationalism in the first three seasons.
me everyday people post AoT when they could be agitating for a new Beserk OVA.
Berserk is cursed just like Guts. I don’t think anyone except MAPPA will make an anime for Berserk now.
I enjoyed it very much. It still bothers me that it does blood libel though.
Great worldbuilding but ultimately it is ruined by it’s childish politics.
spoiler
The deus ex machina they gave the attack titan (literally omnipresence!) also ended up ruining it for me, show lost the little seriousness left it had.
I would have liked it less if it was the “I win” button that got slapped in every fight. But sliding it in at the very end as a plot-hole filler was lazy but ultimately fine.
spoiler
There are a number of scenes I enjoyed. The choice over who gets saved by the Colossal Titan investiture and the passing of the Jaw Titan was great. The various betrayals have been well-motivated. And I genuinely like the origin story of the Titans, as these things berthed from an ultimately used up and abused slave people.
The idea of power as a social construct is what resonates through the whole storyline. Memory manipulation as a stand in for mass media is a bit forced and lazy, but the value of history as a motivating force is appreciated. The Eladians getting a very straight line drawn to jewish ghettoes is overused, but the various turncoats expressing their rationales for siding with this or that group remains compelling.
It is, all in all, a well done story with strong and enduring themes that resonate across the entire narrative arc.
The endless fixation on “Is this anime fascist?” is exhausting. Because it is, at the end of the day, a Young Adult cartoon. And these cartoons always end up embracing childish politics because they are stories for children.
But the history and the setting and the various lead characters all create the kind of space that is fun to think about and explore. I suspect we’ll see its influence resonate through the storytelling medium for years to come.
i don’t think that fascism should allowed to slid because its ‘for children’
I don’t think guys with green magic rings doing stunts in airplanes is fascist.
That’s all the kids see
Has there ever been a better OP then season 1 of AoT?
Space dandy was the shit. I didn’t know it was a different director each ep the first time thru, i need to rewatch
Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, every season of Kaguya.
Edit: Chainsaw Man, Oshi no Ko.
I like bebop, its up there. Eva never clicked w me. “Love is war” is top tier. Ill go check chainsaw and oshi no ko haven’t heard those yet.
Ok i got a couple for you. what do you think of chobits op? Read or die? (I also love 1 punch but duh everyone loves that one, right?)
I’ll be up front and say that I like my music big, stupid, and energetic. In that regard, Chobits and RoD are both decent starting points to build from but imo they don’t go far enough. Chobits especially has some moments where there’s a clear route to go higher energy but it stays low instead.
And yeah agreed on One-Punch, though I forgot to mention it lol. Some other stuff now that I’ve had some sleep:
- Gurren Lagann
- Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-Kun
- Nichijou (both, but especially 2)
- Mob Psycho 2 and 3
- Baccano (Cromalin is right)
- Spy X Family S1 (小莱卡 is right as well)
Honorable Mentions:
- Hunter x Hunter at 1.1x speed
- My Next Life as a Villainess (both)
- Summertime Render
Cowboy Bebop was a fun series of vignettes without a strong overarching plot. Also, lots of comedy.
AoT is high drama with lots of mystery and gore inside strong narrative arc. Far more in line with Eva and Chainsaw Man.
Even then, Eva is incredibly slow-paced, particularly at the beginning. Its far more psychological, on par with Elfin Lied or Monster. AoT and Chainsaw Man both hit the ground running, don’t shy away from intense action scenes, and present the mystery as part of direct human conflict rather than some cryptic intrigue read on the edges of the narrative.
And the world building in AoT is much denser. Comparable to Twelve Kingdoms or El Hazard. There’s so much more there there. It isn’t just a handful of main characters grappling with their own inner demons.
As an epic story, it feels like Naruto minus the interminable filler. Not nearly as visually artistic as your picks, but richer as a setting and less reliant on a small set of lead characters that you need to empathize with.
Baccano a great show, I should rewatch…
some more:
Code Geass OP 1 (JIBUN WOOOOOO)
I have a soft spot for most of the Eureka 7 OPs, but that’s probably just me.
Scrapped Princess OP Anything from Jam Project, TBH (Soul Taker, One Punch Man)
rewatched code geass recently and the existence of a second op in season 1 had completely slipped my mind. i had completely memoryholed it in favor of colors, which just blows op 2 out of the water
