I might be a little late to the party posting about this since I'm sure many fans of anime are probably already aware of this show. However its not the people who are already watching anime that I want to recommend this to. This show is great for fans of all stripes, being an amalgamation of fast paced action, fantasy, and even a little horror.
Attack on Titan is one of the few animated series that I find palatable, and I have tried many of these shows, I nearly always watch one or two episodes and then never turn it on again. With Attack on Titan I watched the entire first season in less than a week, all 25 episodes.
The basic premise of the show is this: In an alternate universe/the distant future all of humanity lives within a massive walled country, outside the walls are sexless, near invulnerable and seemingly supernatural beings known as titans. Seemingly the titan's only purpose or imperative is to eat humans at every opportunity. After the outer wall is breached and the titans destroy his home town Eren Yeager his adopted sister Mikasa and their friend Armin find themselves refugees, and humanity at war with a near insurmountable enemy.
I can't really explain any more without giving away massive spoilers so here are a few reasons I dig this show and why it standouts from a near endless field of mediocre anime offerings.
- Great Characters: The Characters are fleshed out pretty well over the course of the season, the show creates a real sense of high stakes and tension, characters seem to be in real lethal danger often, and I cared what happened to them.
- Avoiding anime girl tropes: This show has strong female characters, which is common in anime, however these characters stand out because they don't wear outfits that expose 80% of their flesh, or school girl uniforms, there is nothing I am more sick of than the anime cliche of a super hot, super powerful teenage girl wearing next to nothing.
- Imaginative story: The story is crazy, but its not next-level anime crazy. It never gets so nutty I lost my suspension of disbelief. I don't need a flowchart to track the plot, and it doesn't throw too much stuff at you too quickly like many shows in the genre.
- The Animation: The animation is gorgeous and they rarely rely on money saving animation measure like still frames, or repeated frames. There are a couple instances but not many.
- No Rapey stuff: to fans of anime this needs no explanation. To someone who doesn't watch anime this needs some explaining; often times there are disturbing sexual overtones in many anime, if not overt depictions of sexual assault and rape, don't ask me why this is, its just how it is. This show has none of that.
- The Action: This show has plenty of it, the soldiers who fight the titans use a pneumatic belt with grappling hooks to fly around like spiderman all the while trying not to get eaten while they maneuver in to hit the titans' single weak spot, it makes for some great action scenes.
- The Antagonists: The titans referenced in the show's title are creepy and weird, they act like giant bipedal sharks, eating everyone who is too slow to get away and they are nearly unstoppable. For most of the show the desperation facing humanity is palpable. There is enough mystery about them to keep you guessing and to enable the writing to deliver some real surprises.
The show does have a couple of downsides, some of the episodes can be heavy in exposition and drag a little bit, and there are also some really corny speeches delivered by the protagonists, but these are easily overlooked. The first (and only) season is available on Netflix streaming and I highly recommend it.
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