Since Attack on Titan Chapter 134 came out, it's become fairly apparent that the final showdown is underway and the series will probably end within the next four chapters (around 138). It might be possible to stretch it beyond that, but there's so little left to explore, and if anyone had said at the start of the series that we'd be where we are now, I wouldn't have believed them.
Spoilers up to Chapter 134 from here on out. This is much farther than the anime series has broadcast, as of this writing.
I'd written before how Attack on Titan has been willing to change tone and genre and by and large its fan base has stuck with it even as it moved from being a grimdark fantasy to a more modern setting with trains, airships, and bowler hats. We know the truth about the titans, we know the truth about the world. It's not anything that anyone would have predicted given the incredibly limited knowledge the characters (and thus the audience) had about their world, but we got to make the discovery along with them.
When our protagonist, Eren, looks out at the sea in Chapter 90 and wonders if the island of Paradis will finally be free if they can get rid of all the people across the ocean who want to kill them, most readers can see it as a shift from his original determination to kill all the titans to wanting to kill the people responsible for tormenting the island with titans in the first place. And until that point, the people of Marley are portrayed as uniformly racist so there's not much reason to sympathize with them. Eren and company trade one set of antagonists for another.
But then things get complicated.
Being human, it turns out that Marleyans (and the people of other countries) are not uniformly racist. Sure, a lot are, and to varying degrees, but not everybody.
The Survey Corps tries to discretely find allies in the greater world, but they don't have a lot of luck. The island is too useful to the rest of the world as a scapegoat. Sure, some people of their Eldian ethnic group are to be pitied for being burdened by the sins of their ancestors, but not those folks on the island.
A lot of this is made more complicated by the circumstances under which the island came to be isolated in the first place, which I won't go into.
All of this leads to Eren's dilemma. He wants to protect the island he grew up on, but doing so in a world with many countries and many people would be a complicated endeavor with no guarantee for a lasting success. And he's not willing to shoot for anything less than a guarantee, which is bad.
Most of this final story arc has been told through the perspective of characters other than Eren, which is unusual since he's been our protagonist for the majority of the series. This is done specifically so the reader does not understand what Eren is doing or why until it becomes apparent that he intends to commit genocide in order to ensure that the islanders are never attacked again. Only by being so thorough that no survivor is left who could even contemplate revenge, can he be certain Paradis will be safe.
He doesn't make any bones about it, and he's upfront with his friends that he will fight them if they try to stop him. It's possible that he has a hidden agenda beyond what it looks like on the surface, but these past few chapters Eren has killed a lot of people in his purge (to the tune of using hundreds of thousands of titans to flatten civilization) so even if he has something else in mind, genocide isn't a bluff.
The reader isn't expected to agree with Eren, in fact nearly every other major character is on board to stop him. Chapter 134 ends with his friends and former enemies launching an combined attack against him in order to save the world. He's lost the moral high ground that most protagonists would keep, so I can't help wondering what the point of all this is.
Going back to my original thought for this post, I wouldn't have imagined this at the start of the series, and though it could be considered a natural progression for a character who's always been obsessed about killing every last one of his enemies (it was more acceptable when they were mindless monsters), it's not a symapthetic one. So why is this happening? Why take the protagonist down such a distant and dangerous route?
It might not be possible to answer that until after the series concludes, but I think the best Eren can hope to come out of this is by doing this intentionally to unite the world against him, so a combined team made of both people on the island and those abroad can defeat him, making it clear that the world has more to gain by working together than tearing each other apart. It would not redeem him, considering how many lives he's taken already, including those of children who he knows have nothing to do with his current grievances, but at least it would give him a more noble purpose beyond murdering most of the world just in case they might eventually hurt his remaining friends and homeland.
Personally, I'm not looking for Eren to be redeemed, and I feel like I already have the answer as to why he's doing what he's doing. I don't think he has an alternate agenda. His motives are what it says on the tin. There are arguably a lot of steps he skipped before deciding genocide is the only answer, but I don't doubt that he believes he's doing the appropriate thing, and series creator Hajime Isayama spends a lot of time making sure the reader understands that what Eren is doing is reprehensible. So the only question for me then, is why does Isayama want to go this route?
Showing posts with label attack on titan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label attack on titan. Show all posts
Monday, November 16, 2020
Monday, February 10, 2020
My Favorite Anime of 2019
Ironically, despite having more time to watch things in 2019, I actually watched less. I think that's because anime is usually a thing I'd watch after coming home from work, and ends up part of my daily ritual, but since I was sick so much of last year I didn't come home from work nearly as much. Most of what I watched was from the winter season (pre-cancer diagnosis), and I'm including season 2s and 3s as long as they finished their run before the end of the year.
Anime listed are not ranked, but presented in the order I watched them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
Run with the Wind *
I'm not a sports anime fan, even though I'm told people normally watch them for the characters and not what they're playing. But for me, I need at least some part of the sports element to catch my interest. Run with the Wind does that with running. The characters are a motley bunch that by rights should not even be trying to place in the Hakone Ekiden (a grueling relay marathon), but the training they go through is highly relatable for anyone who's ever done a bit of track and field, as are the moments they share along the way.
Dimension High School
This a completely zany series about puzzle solving which involves a group of students and their teacher from our world (depicted in live action) being sent into a 2D universe (depicted in anime) where they have to solve puzzles presented by a series of sphinxes in over to save the world. The puzzles are incredibly difficult and for the most part impossible for someone not fluent in Japanese to solve, but the whole premise is so screwball that it's entertaining from a camp perspective. They do explain the logic behind each of the puzzles when they solve them, so you can still follow along even if you can't participate.
Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka
There have been a lot of darker spins on magical girls ever since Puella Magi Madoka Magica became a hit, and Magical Girl Asuka's take is: magical girls in the military. The interesting thing about this one is that the international team of magical girls actually won their war a few years ago and are now trying to move on with their lives, some of them more successfully than others. The early episodes in particular deal with the fact that Asuka is still suffering from psychological trauma from having lost her parents and several friends during the war, but unfortunately the introspective parts fall by the wayside later to focus on more combat and some fairly graphic torture.
The Promised Neverland *
The Promised Neverland was my must-watch every week that it aired. I couldn't get enough of the twist in the first episode and how that impacted everything to come. There's a real sense of peril and helplessness since the protagonists are so young and they live in an orphanage so you know they don't have family looking out for them. But despite their age they're also extremely creative. Though the odds are against them, they earn every victory they get along the way. I also really like Emma, who gets to be such a tomboy and the face of the series, despite being in a manga that is ostensibly marketed to boys.
Real Girl Season 2
Though I really liked Real Girl's first season when I watched it in 2018, I found the second half much weaker, even though it eventually deals with why Iroha has to leave after six months. I don't know if the reason was planned at the start, because it feels rather contrived, as does the extended epilogue that follows. There are still aspects of the show I enjoyed, but it's better when the series is grounded in experiences that a teenager could realistically expect to go through.
Attack on Titan Season 3
Season 3 probably would have been one of my favorite views of the year, but they butchered my favorite story arc, most likely because political theater is not as visually interesting as fight scenes, and fight scenes are what the series sold viewers on when the manga made the transition to animation. As a result the first half feels rushed and some things don't quite make sense. The second half is a different arc and recreates the manga fairly faithfully. I'm also happy it's finally out because it makes the series much easier to talk about with people who have only seen the anime, now that one of the biggest twists is out of the way.
Psycho-Pass Season 3 *
It's no secret that Psycho-Pass is one of my favorite series, so I was quite happy to dive into the third season. It's a little shaky at first since it has an unusual hour long runtime instead of the standard half hour, and I don't know the writers were prepared to pace for that, but in the end that actually gives us sixteen episodes' worth of story. Though the on-screen violence has been dialed back, the storytelling is much improved from the second season and I really like our two new leads. The meat of the plot is surprisingly topical too, dealing with immigration, particularly of refugees, and those who will or will not welcome them. My primary knock on the season is that it's incomplete and will be wrapped up via a movie.
Anime listed are not ranked, but presented in the order I watched them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
Run with the Wind *
I'm not a sports anime fan, even though I'm told people normally watch them for the characters and not what they're playing. But for me, I need at least some part of the sports element to catch my interest. Run with the Wind does that with running. The characters are a motley bunch that by rights should not even be trying to place in the Hakone Ekiden (a grueling relay marathon), but the training they go through is highly relatable for anyone who's ever done a bit of track and field, as are the moments they share along the way.
Dimension High School
This a completely zany series about puzzle solving which involves a group of students and their teacher from our world (depicted in live action) being sent into a 2D universe (depicted in anime) where they have to solve puzzles presented by a series of sphinxes in over to save the world. The puzzles are incredibly difficult and for the most part impossible for someone not fluent in Japanese to solve, but the whole premise is so screwball that it's entertaining from a camp perspective. They do explain the logic behind each of the puzzles when they solve them, so you can still follow along even if you can't participate.
Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka
There have been a lot of darker spins on magical girls ever since Puella Magi Madoka Magica became a hit, and Magical Girl Asuka's take is: magical girls in the military. The interesting thing about this one is that the international team of magical girls actually won their war a few years ago and are now trying to move on with their lives, some of them more successfully than others. The early episodes in particular deal with the fact that Asuka is still suffering from psychological trauma from having lost her parents and several friends during the war, but unfortunately the introspective parts fall by the wayside later to focus on more combat and some fairly graphic torture.
The Promised Neverland *
The Promised Neverland was my must-watch every week that it aired. I couldn't get enough of the twist in the first episode and how that impacted everything to come. There's a real sense of peril and helplessness since the protagonists are so young and they live in an orphanage so you know they don't have family looking out for them. But despite their age they're also extremely creative. Though the odds are against them, they earn every victory they get along the way. I also really like Emma, who gets to be such a tomboy and the face of the series, despite being in a manga that is ostensibly marketed to boys.
Real Girl Season 2
Though I really liked Real Girl's first season when I watched it in 2018, I found the second half much weaker, even though it eventually deals with why Iroha has to leave after six months. I don't know if the reason was planned at the start, because it feels rather contrived, as does the extended epilogue that follows. There are still aspects of the show I enjoyed, but it's better when the series is grounded in experiences that a teenager could realistically expect to go through.
Attack on Titan Season 3
Season 3 probably would have been one of my favorite views of the year, but they butchered my favorite story arc, most likely because political theater is not as visually interesting as fight scenes, and fight scenes are what the series sold viewers on when the manga made the transition to animation. As a result the first half feels rushed and some things don't quite make sense. The second half is a different arc and recreates the manga fairly faithfully. I'm also happy it's finally out because it makes the series much easier to talk about with people who have only seen the anime, now that one of the biggest twists is out of the way.
Psycho-Pass Season 3 *
It's no secret that Psycho-Pass is one of my favorite series, so I was quite happy to dive into the third season. It's a little shaky at first since it has an unusual hour long runtime instead of the standard half hour, and I don't know the writers were prepared to pace for that, but in the end that actually gives us sixteen episodes' worth of story. Though the on-screen violence has been dialed back, the storytelling is much improved from the second season and I really like our two new leads. The meat of the plot is surprisingly topical too, dealing with immigration, particularly of refugees, and those who will or will not welcome them. My primary knock on the season is that it's incomplete and will be wrapped up via a movie.
Monday, December 9, 2019
Attack on Titan: Sometimes the Smaller Characters Matter
On occasion, I really fall in love with a secondary character. And I don't mean the fan favorite, the sort of character that has primary character potential. I mean a character that will in all likelihood live out their life in their secondary role. In a long running series (or game), they might only have a few scenes.
I'm going to talk about one of them from Attack on Titan, and be warned, there are spoilers for manga Chapter 124, which was released just yesterday.
One of my favorite characters in Attack to Titan is Nile Dok. I hesitate to call him my favorite out of all of them, because he's definitely not part of the main cast and isn't given as much breathing room, but he is definitely my favorite secondary character.
I like Nile because he's complicated, and in a setting where most of the primary cast is willing to lay down their lives for what they believe in, Nile is a lot more humble than that. He could have joined the Survey Corps like his friend Erwin (who eventually became the Commander of said Corps), but instead he decided to settle into a job with the military police and marry the woman he loved.
Though he considered it a bit of a cowardly move on his part, because out of all their classmates only Erwin survived, Nile does not regret it, because that decision allowed him to have a family that would have been impossible for someone in the Survey Corps (which is known for its high fatality rate).
Nile was not popular when he was first introduced, because he appears in an adversarial role. He wants to take Eren, the protagonist, away from the Survey Corps, a group of people who Eren (and by proxy the audience) highly respects. When everyone else is hiding away within their walled cities away from the titans, the Survey Corps explores the outside, hoping to discover the truth about their world and the titans that surround them.
But gradually, through his connection with Erwin, Nile's backstory comes through and he becomes a more sympathetic face among the leaders in the military. By the most recent story arc, he's willing to take a chance on peace by discretely handing off a child combatant from the opposing country to the boy's older brother. He's not supposed to do that, but he knows that the boy should really be with his family rather than in the middle of a warzone.
It's sadly the last good deed that he gets to do.
We know from earlier in the arc that Nile has been "infected" (for lack of a better term) with some spinal fluid that's going to turn him into a mindless titan when the antagonist gives the signal, and the signal goes off. He wasn't the only character infected, so narratively the transformation had to happen to avoid making it a toothless threat, so I'd made peace with the fact that in all likelihood Nile was going to die and never make it back to his wife and kids.
It's how he died that bothers me.
There are multiple named characters who are transformed by the signal, and the two who clearly die as titans this chapter are Pixis and Nile. Pixis is killed when the Titans in the city are led to the fort and they're collectively taken out by members of the Survey Corps. However, Pixis gets a few lines said about him and regrets expressed by those about to kill him. Pixis, at this point in the story, is the de facto head of the military and he's also the first sensible officer the series introduced, so it's not surprising that he would get a little bit of a send off before being slain by his own soldiers.
Nile is handled differently though. None of the primary cast has ever been in Nile's court aside from Erwin, who is long dead by this point. Any relationship has been a professional one. But we as readers still know Nile and that he was one of the ones who should have transformed, so it's not surprising that he appears post-transformation so we can learn about his fate. But it's not a reluctant send-off by those who care about him.
Instead, he's used as a prop to recreate the trauma Kaya expected when she saw her mother being eaten right in front of her. This allows Gabi to save her life (causing Kaya to see her in a new light) by killing Nile. Gabi and Kaya have no idea who Nile is. All Gabi knows is that it's a titan, and it's about to eat Kaya.
Gabi and Kaya have had it rough, Gabi being a child soldier and Kaya having lost her sister due to Gabi killing her during the invasion of Gabi's hometown. But Gabi eventually learned that Kaya's people aren't the heartless devils she thought they were, so she's learned to see them in a new light. Putting them in this situation where Kaya's about to get eaten allows the two of them to start talking again (instead of trying to kill each other).
I understand what the story was going for, but it was really hard to cheer for Gabi when she's killing my favorite secondary character in an incredibly heartless (but necessary) manner. From her perspective, it really could have been any titan, and the result would have been the same.
But for me, the reader, it wasn't, so the choice to put Nile there was purely authorial intent. For the most part, I think was simply a tidy way to wrap up Nile's fate, but there's a problem with that, because even though Nile isn't part of the main cast, he has been given enough depth that he's not simply a cardboard cutout. He has a life beyond his immediate function on the story, and he's been built up so that there's a reason to care about him.
Attack on Titan isn't a series that's kind to its characters, so I wasn't expecting survival, but I did expect closure, and for what Nile has been, it's a sad thing to go out as a character building prop.
I'm going to talk about one of them from Attack on Titan, and be warned, there are spoilers for manga Chapter 124, which was released just yesterday.
One of my favorite characters in Attack to Titan is Nile Dok. I hesitate to call him my favorite out of all of them, because he's definitely not part of the main cast and isn't given as much breathing room, but he is definitely my favorite secondary character.
I like Nile because he's complicated, and in a setting where most of the primary cast is willing to lay down their lives for what they believe in, Nile is a lot more humble than that. He could have joined the Survey Corps like his friend Erwin (who eventually became the Commander of said Corps), but instead he decided to settle into a job with the military police and marry the woman he loved.
Though he considered it a bit of a cowardly move on his part, because out of all their classmates only Erwin survived, Nile does not regret it, because that decision allowed him to have a family that would have been impossible for someone in the Survey Corps (which is known for its high fatality rate).
Nile was not popular when he was first introduced, because he appears in an adversarial role. He wants to take Eren, the protagonist, away from the Survey Corps, a group of people who Eren (and by proxy the audience) highly respects. When everyone else is hiding away within their walled cities away from the titans, the Survey Corps explores the outside, hoping to discover the truth about their world and the titans that surround them.
But gradually, through his connection with Erwin, Nile's backstory comes through and he becomes a more sympathetic face among the leaders in the military. By the most recent story arc, he's willing to take a chance on peace by discretely handing off a child combatant from the opposing country to the boy's older brother. He's not supposed to do that, but he knows that the boy should really be with his family rather than in the middle of a warzone.
It's sadly the last good deed that he gets to do.
We know from earlier in the arc that Nile has been "infected" (for lack of a better term) with some spinal fluid that's going to turn him into a mindless titan when the antagonist gives the signal, and the signal goes off. He wasn't the only character infected, so narratively the transformation had to happen to avoid making it a toothless threat, so I'd made peace with the fact that in all likelihood Nile was going to die and never make it back to his wife and kids.
It's how he died that bothers me.
There are multiple named characters who are transformed by the signal, and the two who clearly die as titans this chapter are Pixis and Nile. Pixis is killed when the Titans in the city are led to the fort and they're collectively taken out by members of the Survey Corps. However, Pixis gets a few lines said about him and regrets expressed by those about to kill him. Pixis, at this point in the story, is the de facto head of the military and he's also the first sensible officer the series introduced, so it's not surprising that he would get a little bit of a send off before being slain by his own soldiers.
Nile is handled differently though. None of the primary cast has ever been in Nile's court aside from Erwin, who is long dead by this point. Any relationship has been a professional one. But we as readers still know Nile and that he was one of the ones who should have transformed, so it's not surprising that he appears post-transformation so we can learn about his fate. But it's not a reluctant send-off by those who care about him.
Instead, he's used as a prop to recreate the trauma Kaya expected when she saw her mother being eaten right in front of her. This allows Gabi to save her life (causing Kaya to see her in a new light) by killing Nile. Gabi and Kaya have no idea who Nile is. All Gabi knows is that it's a titan, and it's about to eat Kaya.
Gabi and Kaya have had it rough, Gabi being a child soldier and Kaya having lost her sister due to Gabi killing her during the invasion of Gabi's hometown. But Gabi eventually learned that Kaya's people aren't the heartless devils she thought they were, so she's learned to see them in a new light. Putting them in this situation where Kaya's about to get eaten allows the two of them to start talking again (instead of trying to kill each other).
I understand what the story was going for, but it was really hard to cheer for Gabi when she's killing my favorite secondary character in an incredibly heartless (but necessary) manner. From her perspective, it really could have been any titan, and the result would have been the same.
But for me, the reader, it wasn't, so the choice to put Nile there was purely authorial intent. For the most part, I think was simply a tidy way to wrap up Nile's fate, but there's a problem with that, because even though Nile isn't part of the main cast, he has been given enough depth that he's not simply a cardboard cutout. He has a life beyond his immediate function on the story, and he's been built up so that there's a reason to care about him.
Attack on Titan isn't a series that's kind to its characters, so I wasn't expecting survival, but I did expect closure, and for what Nile has been, it's a sad thing to go out as a character building prop.
Monday, September 10, 2018
Attack on Titan: Historia Choosing Her Fate
First, this post has spoilers for Attack on Titan Episode 45 "Outside the Walls of Orvud District," which aired yesterday, so if you haven't seen it yet, go watch it before coming back here, because I'm going to talk about something that happens at the end of the episode.
I've mentioned before that there were a number of changes from the manga to the story arc for Season 3 of the anime. This was mostly to punch up the pacing, but as a result, some scenes were removed entirely, resulting in lost motivations and smaller details that would have made later scenes (which were kept!) more effective.
One of those removed scenes was when Historia finds out that part of Erwin's plan is to install her as the new queen. Originally, this happens shortly after the team tortures the Interior Military Police and learns that the Reiss family is the true royal family. Once Erwin learns this, he realizes the military can use Historia to overthrow the current government, which is currently using a false king as a figurehead. With Historia, they can spin their coup as restoring power to the true royal family.
Levi, Historia's captain, receives Erwin's instructions and tells Historia that she's going to become queen. And if you know Levi, he's a bit of a jerk, and doesn't bother sugarcoating anything, so he has zero sympathy when she hesitates in the face of this understandably enormous responsibility. He get that it is a lot to take in, but he doesn't have the time, and this results in him physically grabbing and shaking her to get her to make up her mind. Though he stops short of immediately ordering her, he essentially gives her a few seconds to either get the hell out or he's going to make her queen whether she wants to or not.
Historia agrees, but it's not from a position of strength, as she's obviously rattled and looks at it as just another role to play. She's pretended to be a kind of person she wasn't before, so this is no different.
The anime initially removed this scene. Historia is not at the cabin when they learn the truth about the Reiss family because she has already been kidnapped. Thus she is in the dark about Erwin's plan to make her queen until she is eventually rescued several episodes later, and during this time, she has a fair bit of character development and finally figures out the kind of person she wants to be.
As the Survey Corps prepares to face the largest titan yet, Levi informs Historia that she is to become queen on Erwin's orders and her fellow squad members protest about forcing her into that kind of role. I was surprised to see this scene here, because Historia is now a different person at this point in the story, and Levi shaking her would undermine everything she's gone though.
Fortunately, the scene has been rewritten--for the better!
Historia meets Levi's order on her own terms and agrees to become queen, with the admonition to her squadmates that it is up to her to decide whether or not this role has been forced on her. Moreover, she places a condition on her agreement, which as manga readers can guess, it's that she will participate in the upcoming battle.
The following scene has Historia striding into the strategy room, fully geared for combat, to take her place by her squadmates, to a sweeping and inspiring theme by composer Hiroyuki Sawano, and all I really wanted to do was root for this girl. She's come a long way, and it's even better having her so proactively choose this fate for herself.
Most of Season 3 I feel like the manga did better, but this was extremely well done and the best change I've seen so far.
I've mentioned before that there were a number of changes from the manga to the story arc for Season 3 of the anime. This was mostly to punch up the pacing, but as a result, some scenes were removed entirely, resulting in lost motivations and smaller details that would have made later scenes (which were kept!) more effective.
One of those removed scenes was when Historia finds out that part of Erwin's plan is to install her as the new queen. Originally, this happens shortly after the team tortures the Interior Military Police and learns that the Reiss family is the true royal family. Once Erwin learns this, he realizes the military can use Historia to overthrow the current government, which is currently using a false king as a figurehead. With Historia, they can spin their coup as restoring power to the true royal family.
Levi, Historia's captain, receives Erwin's instructions and tells Historia that she's going to become queen. And if you know Levi, he's a bit of a jerk, and doesn't bother sugarcoating anything, so he has zero sympathy when she hesitates in the face of this understandably enormous responsibility. He get that it is a lot to take in, but he doesn't have the time, and this results in him physically grabbing and shaking her to get her to make up her mind. Though he stops short of immediately ordering her, he essentially gives her a few seconds to either get the hell out or he's going to make her queen whether she wants to or not.
Historia agrees, but it's not from a position of strength, as she's obviously rattled and looks at it as just another role to play. She's pretended to be a kind of person she wasn't before, so this is no different.
The anime initially removed this scene. Historia is not at the cabin when they learn the truth about the Reiss family because she has already been kidnapped. Thus she is in the dark about Erwin's plan to make her queen until she is eventually rescued several episodes later, and during this time, she has a fair bit of character development and finally figures out the kind of person she wants to be.
As the Survey Corps prepares to face the largest titan yet, Levi informs Historia that she is to become queen on Erwin's orders and her fellow squad members protest about forcing her into that kind of role. I was surprised to see this scene here, because Historia is now a different person at this point in the story, and Levi shaking her would undermine everything she's gone though.
Fortunately, the scene has been rewritten--for the better!
Historia meets Levi's order on her own terms and agrees to become queen, with the admonition to her squadmates that it is up to her to decide whether or not this role has been forced on her. Moreover, she places a condition on her agreement, which as manga readers can guess, it's that she will participate in the upcoming battle.
The following scene has Historia striding into the strategy room, fully geared for combat, to take her place by her squadmates, to a sweeping and inspiring theme by composer Hiroyuki Sawano, and all I really wanted to do was root for this girl. She's come a long way, and it's even better having her so proactively choose this fate for herself.
Most of Season 3 I feel like the manga did better, but this was extremely well done and the best change I've seen so far.
Monday, July 30, 2018
Attack on Titan Season 3 Adaptation Thoughts
I've blogged about Attack on Titan multiple times before, so it should come as no surprise that I've been watching Season 3 of the anime.
This is the beginning of what fans generally refer to as "The Uprising arc" or "the political arc" and if people are going to complain about the series, this is generally the arc where they say everything goes downhill.
I liked it, but I can see why other people didn't.
For this post, I will only spoil up to the current anime episode (39), but I will be making several manga references and comparisons for events already covered.
Until this point in the story, Attack on Titan follows the pariah branch of the military, the Survey Corps (also called the Scout Regiment). Most of humanity lives behind a series of gigantic walls, to separate them from the man-eating titans on the other side. The titans can't climb the walls, so humanity (at least until the series started) was safe, and the Survey Corps consisted of the only fools crazy enough to go outside the walls and fight them.
Over the past two seasons, things got really complicated with the revelation that there are people who have come from outside the walls and they can turn into titans themselves. However, regardless of any plot developments, there was lots of titan fighting; soldiers fighting titans, titans fighting each other, and so on. The series is called Attack on Titan and there was definitely attacking and titans going on.
The Uprising arc is different. As anime viewers now know, the danger in the upcoming episodes has nothing to do with external threats, so much as internal ones. The government is now out for Eren and Historia, there's a secret royal family, and a badass squad of Military Police has been deployed to take out members of the Survey Corps.
This arc is a lot of humans fighting other humans, which is arguably not what the audience signed up for. Some people enjoyed it anyway. Other people hated the detour.
And it turns out that Hajime Isayama, who both writes and illustrates the original manga, didn't like how this arc turned out either. So he gave his blessing for the animation studio to revise it.
This is the curious part.
Rather than simply condensing the work, the anime is now juggling scenes. Both Episodes 38 and 39 pull from a total of six chapters each. For comparison, each episode of Season 2 was based on a single chapter, maybe two. And they don't pull six different chapters either, so there's a lot of overlapping. Part of Chapter 54 is in Episode 38, part of it is in Episode 39, and part of it isn't used at all (yet).
It's like someone threw the first nine chapters of the Uprising arc into a blender and just pulled the various scenes that came out. Some were rejected, some were placed into various episodes, but even if they were, they were not necessarily in the same order.
For instance, Kenny's introduction was originally after Sannes is tortured into revealing that the Reiss family is the true royal family.
The result is that the first two episodes cover a lot of ground and touch on multiple subplots, but we don't get to see anything in depth. I can see some justification for hurrying things up. In the anime world Attack on Titan is known for incredible action set pieces, and left to the original manga's pacing, we wouldn't get our first combat scene until the fourth episode at best (assuming two chapters an episode). For a primarily visual medium and to sell the series based on what has become its signature style, the anime needed to accelerate that scene to the first episode.
And it's a great fight. People like the new character Kenny, and his squad of elite Military Police certainly impress with how they take out members of the Survey Corps before they can even respond.
If the original complaint about the arc was that the pacing is too slow, that's gone now, but in its place is the fact that nothing has any depth either. The scenes are quick and they jump around a lot, following various groups of people and ever-changing locations.
Some of the characterizations suffer. Jean looks like he has a case of nerves rather than a well established aversion to killing people, and Dimo Reeves's change of heart no longer makes sense now that the story of how he helped Trost has been removed.
We have weird instances of knowledge traveling between characters with nobody actually informing the person involved. Hange bursts in on Erwin and announces that Eren and Historia have been kidnapped, without having been told that themselves. The scene occurs immediately after the kidnapping that same afternoon and I doubt Levi sent any of his squad off-camera to let Hange know because everything happened so fast.
And then we have the sleeping dart technology attached to a firearm that clearly should never have a shotgun-to-sleeping dart replaceable barrel. I might not be a gun expert, but I'm pretty sure that if you remove the barrel of a shotgun, you would not be able to add a narrower sleeping dart barrel and still have a weapon that works just fine. But the sleeping dart needed to happen to speed up Eren and Historia's capture.
None of these were issues in the original manga, but are the result of the blender approach to improving the pacing of the Uprising arc.
It's still possible that other issues I had will be addressed later in the season (there's definitely one scene that got truncated in what I thought was a meaningless fashion, to the point I think they should have removed it entirely if that's all they were going to show), but for these, the changes are in there and there's no undoing them.
I have to wonder what this is like for an anime-only viewer though. Is this too much, too fast?
At its heart, despite all the fight scenes and the increased sense of urgency, this is still a political arc that relies more on plot details than bombast. They're going to have to sit down and have a long talk at some point.
This is the beginning of what fans generally refer to as "The Uprising arc" or "the political arc" and if people are going to complain about the series, this is generally the arc where they say everything goes downhill.
I liked it, but I can see why other people didn't.
For this post, I will only spoil up to the current anime episode (39), but I will be making several manga references and comparisons for events already covered.
Until this point in the story, Attack on Titan follows the pariah branch of the military, the Survey Corps (also called the Scout Regiment). Most of humanity lives behind a series of gigantic walls, to separate them from the man-eating titans on the other side. The titans can't climb the walls, so humanity (at least until the series started) was safe, and the Survey Corps consisted of the only fools crazy enough to go outside the walls and fight them.
Over the past two seasons, things got really complicated with the revelation that there are people who have come from outside the walls and they can turn into titans themselves. However, regardless of any plot developments, there was lots of titan fighting; soldiers fighting titans, titans fighting each other, and so on. The series is called Attack on Titan and there was definitely attacking and titans going on.
The Uprising arc is different. As anime viewers now know, the danger in the upcoming episodes has nothing to do with external threats, so much as internal ones. The government is now out for Eren and Historia, there's a secret royal family, and a badass squad of Military Police has been deployed to take out members of the Survey Corps.
This arc is a lot of humans fighting other humans, which is arguably not what the audience signed up for. Some people enjoyed it anyway. Other people hated the detour.
And it turns out that Hajime Isayama, who both writes and illustrates the original manga, didn't like how this arc turned out either. So he gave his blessing for the animation studio to revise it.
This is the curious part.
Rather than simply condensing the work, the anime is now juggling scenes. Both Episodes 38 and 39 pull from a total of six chapters each. For comparison, each episode of Season 2 was based on a single chapter, maybe two. And they don't pull six different chapters either, so there's a lot of overlapping. Part of Chapter 54 is in Episode 38, part of it is in Episode 39, and part of it isn't used at all (yet).
It's like someone threw the first nine chapters of the Uprising arc into a blender and just pulled the various scenes that came out. Some were rejected, some were placed into various episodes, but even if they were, they were not necessarily in the same order.
For instance, Kenny's introduction was originally after Sannes is tortured into revealing that the Reiss family is the true royal family.
The result is that the first two episodes cover a lot of ground and touch on multiple subplots, but we don't get to see anything in depth. I can see some justification for hurrying things up. In the anime world Attack on Titan is known for incredible action set pieces, and left to the original manga's pacing, we wouldn't get our first combat scene until the fourth episode at best (assuming two chapters an episode). For a primarily visual medium and to sell the series based on what has become its signature style, the anime needed to accelerate that scene to the first episode.
And it's a great fight. People like the new character Kenny, and his squad of elite Military Police certainly impress with how they take out members of the Survey Corps before they can even respond.
If the original complaint about the arc was that the pacing is too slow, that's gone now, but in its place is the fact that nothing has any depth either. The scenes are quick and they jump around a lot, following various groups of people and ever-changing locations.
Some of the characterizations suffer. Jean looks like he has a case of nerves rather than a well established aversion to killing people, and Dimo Reeves's change of heart no longer makes sense now that the story of how he helped Trost has been removed.
We have weird instances of knowledge traveling between characters with nobody actually informing the person involved. Hange bursts in on Erwin and announces that Eren and Historia have been kidnapped, without having been told that themselves. The scene occurs immediately after the kidnapping that same afternoon and I doubt Levi sent any of his squad off-camera to let Hange know because everything happened so fast.
And then we have the sleeping dart technology attached to a firearm that clearly should never have a shotgun-to-sleeping dart replaceable barrel. I might not be a gun expert, but I'm pretty sure that if you remove the barrel of a shotgun, you would not be able to add a narrower sleeping dart barrel and still have a weapon that works just fine. But the sleeping dart needed to happen to speed up Eren and Historia's capture.
None of these were issues in the original manga, but are the result of the blender approach to improving the pacing of the Uprising arc.
It's still possible that other issues I had will be addressed later in the season (there's definitely one scene that got truncated in what I thought was a meaningless fashion, to the point I think they should have removed it entirely if that's all they were going to show), but for these, the changes are in there and there's no undoing them.
I have to wonder what this is like for an anime-only viewer though. Is this too much, too fast?
At its heart, despite all the fight scenes and the increased sense of urgency, this is still a political arc that relies more on plot details than bombast. They're going to have to sit down and have a long talk at some point.
Monday, January 15, 2018
My Favorite Games of 2017
My gaming backlog is something impressive, as I typically buy a few more than I can play in any given year, and then those extras build up. The result is that I rarely play any game in its year of release unless it's a part of a favorite series, and even then, depending on how busy I am, a much anticipated game might get postponed.
But I'm not adverse to playing older games. As long as the gameplay is still there I generally don't care. Maybe that's the same for you?
These are the nine games I liked enough to finish for the first time in 2017, in the order I finished them. (I think there could have been more, but I blame Persona 5 for being so long.) As I did with my book roundup, the three games I tagged with an asterisk (*) were my favorites of the year and definitely worth playing.
Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness * (PS Vita and Steam)
Fans of the anime series will get the most out of this dystopian cyberpunk visual novel. The player takes the role of one of two investigators tracking down a criminal that cannot be brought to justice in the way the system is intended to work. There are multiple endings based on the choices made, and a walkthrough will probably be needed to see them all. It's easily the best spin-off of the original (and better than the sequel anime) because it manages to be its own thing while playing within the rules of the first series, and it's good. It's not for series newcomers though. Even with a glossary it tends to assume players know the basics.
Attack on Titan (PS4, XB1, and Steam)
Having come out between the first and second season of the anime, it does a good job of extrapolating the story into three playable chapters; the battle for Trost, the Survey Corps expedition prior to being recalled, and the Female Titan arc. There is also an unlockable fourth chapter that vaguely covers the first half of season 2, but with minimal spoilers and a unique ending, so deaths and major plot revelations are withheld. The game does a remarkably good job of conveying the feel of using maneuvering gear and slaying titans is incredibly satisfying. One of the best media-based games I've ever played and even klutzes like me can beat it on Easy. The developers loved the property and it shows.
The Sims 2: Ultimate Collection (PC)
I'd forgotten that I downloaded this a while ago as part of a promotion on Origin. It's every expansion of the Sims 2 plus the base game, and despite the years since its original release, it's still really good and runs just fine even on a new computer with Windows 10. I'd played the base game years ago and this was a welcome trip down memory lane with some new content that I'd never played before (new jobs, university, vacations, oh my!). As always, the fun part for me is making a bunch of Sims based on characters I know (my characters, other people's characters) and seeing how they interact in the sandbox. One of the most hilarious things was Attack on Titan's Erwin Smith deciding that his life's dream was to become a World Class Ballet Dancer.
80 Days (Steam, iOS, and Android)
This came to me through a friend's recommendation. It's not something anyone's likely to play for hours on end, but as an afternoon time-waster it's pleasant enough. You play as Passepartout, the valet to Phineas Fogg from the Jules Verne novel Around the World in Eighty Days. As such you are constantly put upon to care for your master as all sorts of shenanigans occur on your trip around the globe. The player gets to pick the route, and there are some randomized events, so there is some replay value, but I found that two was enough to figure out how to succeed in less than 80 days. I ended up playing a third time though just because I wanted to check out how the same-sex romance was written versus the straight one. It's a fun, casual friendly game, but not something most players are likely to spend more than 4-5 hours on.
Persona 5 * (PS4 and PS3)
Persona 5 was my most anticipated game of the year. I've bought all the Persona games since the first installment (I'm old school) and placed my pre-order for the deluxe edition with all the trimmings. I was not disappointed as it continues the contemporary fantasy setting with a fresh layer of panache as the protagonists are now all phantom thieves. I've never seen heists integrated so well in a video game before, let alone an RPG, and the Persona-specific game systems involving the social aspects of getting through a year of high school are as good as ever. While I'm not sure if it will hold up against Persona 3 and 4 once I have more time and distance from it, at least at the moment it was one of the best games I played this year. If there's a fault I'd give it though, it's that it's extremely long, probably too long, even allowing for the fact the game has an in-game summary so you can catch up if you've been away for a while.
Collar x Malice (PS Vita)
Collar x Malice was my second most anticipated game of the year. It was giving me Zero Escape vibes (though sadly not the Zero Escape puzzles) with a female protagonist. Though this is technically an otome, it's not all fluff. Officer Ichika Hoshino spends as much time chasing a group of vigilante terrorists as she does potentially romancing various officers and ex-cops who are on the same case. It didn't reach the height that Code:Realize did for me, but the storytelling is more even between routes. Yanagi is route locked behind everyone else unfortunately, since his is the "real" route, which I wish Otomate would stop doing.
Plants vs Zombies: Game of the Year Edition (PC)
This came to me via one of the periodic freebies on Origin. I'd never played the original past the demo, but this landed in my lap at a time when I really wanted a puzzle game and it scratched the right itch. Being a puzzle game featuring cartoon zombies it's aged pretty well, though I was surprised when it forced my monitor down to a lower resolution. I didn't think it was that old. It's not too difficult by puzzle game standards and the game makes a point to introduce a new complication every few levels to keep things fresh. I think I only lost once, and that's because I was careless rather than being overwhelmed. I don't think I would have bought this normally though.
Dungeon Fighter Online * (PC)
This is a quirky online RPG that is like Diablo had a lovechild with your favorite side scrolling beat-'em-up game. It's 2D like Final Fight or Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara, but it's an RPG designed for small parties or solo players. You can perform attacks fighting game style, but there are also equipment drops, skill trees, dungeons, pets, guilds, etc. It's free to play, and amazingly, you can get through the entire leveling experience without spending a cent, and more importantly, without seeing microtransaction ads thrown at you every other screen. The Korean to English translation is a bit janky in places, but if you like retro games, and have a fondness for old school JRPG music, this an excellent bet.
Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth
I actually started this last year, but got derailed about a third of the way through due to This War of Mine. This is probably the closest thing to having a playable Digimon anime series. The player-named protagonist has an online encounter with a mysterious entity that leaves her (or him, I played as a girl) in a weird half-digital body while her real one is comatose. As a result she can jump in and out of the computer networks Tron-style. The story moves at a relaxed pace sometimes, but really captures the feel of the anime. Together with her human friends and their combined Digimon companions they try to solve the mystery behind the origin of the Eaters, why people are being found comatose from EDEN syndrome, and what the corporation Kamishiro Enterprises has to do with all of this.
But I'm not adverse to playing older games. As long as the gameplay is still there I generally don't care. Maybe that's the same for you?
These are the nine games I liked enough to finish for the first time in 2017, in the order I finished them. (I think there could have been more, but I blame Persona 5 for being so long.) As I did with my book roundup, the three games I tagged with an asterisk (*) were my favorites of the year and definitely worth playing.
Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness * (PS Vita and Steam)
Fans of the anime series will get the most out of this dystopian cyberpunk visual novel. The player takes the role of one of two investigators tracking down a criminal that cannot be brought to justice in the way the system is intended to work. There are multiple endings based on the choices made, and a walkthrough will probably be needed to see them all. It's easily the best spin-off of the original (and better than the sequel anime) because it manages to be its own thing while playing within the rules of the first series, and it's good. It's not for series newcomers though. Even with a glossary it tends to assume players know the basics.
Attack on Titan (PS4, XB1, and Steam)
Having come out between the first and second season of the anime, it does a good job of extrapolating the story into three playable chapters; the battle for Trost, the Survey Corps expedition prior to being recalled, and the Female Titan arc. There is also an unlockable fourth chapter that vaguely covers the first half of season 2, but with minimal spoilers and a unique ending, so deaths and major plot revelations are withheld. The game does a remarkably good job of conveying the feel of using maneuvering gear and slaying titans is incredibly satisfying. One of the best media-based games I've ever played and even klutzes like me can beat it on Easy. The developers loved the property and it shows.
The Sims 2: Ultimate Collection (PC)
I'd forgotten that I downloaded this a while ago as part of a promotion on Origin. It's every expansion of the Sims 2 plus the base game, and despite the years since its original release, it's still really good and runs just fine even on a new computer with Windows 10. I'd played the base game years ago and this was a welcome trip down memory lane with some new content that I'd never played before (new jobs, university, vacations, oh my!). As always, the fun part for me is making a bunch of Sims based on characters I know (my characters, other people's characters) and seeing how they interact in the sandbox. One of the most hilarious things was Attack on Titan's Erwin Smith deciding that his life's dream was to become a World Class Ballet Dancer.
80 Days (Steam, iOS, and Android)
This came to me through a friend's recommendation. It's not something anyone's likely to play for hours on end, but as an afternoon time-waster it's pleasant enough. You play as Passepartout, the valet to Phineas Fogg from the Jules Verne novel Around the World in Eighty Days. As such you are constantly put upon to care for your master as all sorts of shenanigans occur on your trip around the globe. The player gets to pick the route, and there are some randomized events, so there is some replay value, but I found that two was enough to figure out how to succeed in less than 80 days. I ended up playing a third time though just because I wanted to check out how the same-sex romance was written versus the straight one. It's a fun, casual friendly game, but not something most players are likely to spend more than 4-5 hours on.
Persona 5 * (PS4 and PS3)
Persona 5 was my most anticipated game of the year. I've bought all the Persona games since the first installment (I'm old school) and placed my pre-order for the deluxe edition with all the trimmings. I was not disappointed as it continues the contemporary fantasy setting with a fresh layer of panache as the protagonists are now all phantom thieves. I've never seen heists integrated so well in a video game before, let alone an RPG, and the Persona-specific game systems involving the social aspects of getting through a year of high school are as good as ever. While I'm not sure if it will hold up against Persona 3 and 4 once I have more time and distance from it, at least at the moment it was one of the best games I played this year. If there's a fault I'd give it though, it's that it's extremely long, probably too long, even allowing for the fact the game has an in-game summary so you can catch up if you've been away for a while.
Collar x Malice (PS Vita)
Collar x Malice was my second most anticipated game of the year. It was giving me Zero Escape vibes (though sadly not the Zero Escape puzzles) with a female protagonist. Though this is technically an otome, it's not all fluff. Officer Ichika Hoshino spends as much time chasing a group of vigilante terrorists as she does potentially romancing various officers and ex-cops who are on the same case. It didn't reach the height that Code:Realize did for me, but the storytelling is more even between routes. Yanagi is route locked behind everyone else unfortunately, since his is the "real" route, which I wish Otomate would stop doing.
Plants vs Zombies: Game of the Year Edition (PC)
This came to me via one of the periodic freebies on Origin. I'd never played the original past the demo, but this landed in my lap at a time when I really wanted a puzzle game and it scratched the right itch. Being a puzzle game featuring cartoon zombies it's aged pretty well, though I was surprised when it forced my monitor down to a lower resolution. I didn't think it was that old. It's not too difficult by puzzle game standards and the game makes a point to introduce a new complication every few levels to keep things fresh. I think I only lost once, and that's because I was careless rather than being overwhelmed. I don't think I would have bought this normally though.
Dungeon Fighter Online * (PC)
This is a quirky online RPG that is like Diablo had a lovechild with your favorite side scrolling beat-'em-up game. It's 2D like Final Fight or Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara, but it's an RPG designed for small parties or solo players. You can perform attacks fighting game style, but there are also equipment drops, skill trees, dungeons, pets, guilds, etc. It's free to play, and amazingly, you can get through the entire leveling experience without spending a cent, and more importantly, without seeing microtransaction ads thrown at you every other screen. The Korean to English translation is a bit janky in places, but if you like retro games, and have a fondness for old school JRPG music, this an excellent bet.
Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth
I actually started this last year, but got derailed about a third of the way through due to This War of Mine. This is probably the closest thing to having a playable Digimon anime series. The player-named protagonist has an online encounter with a mysterious entity that leaves her (or him, I played as a girl) in a weird half-digital body while her real one is comatose. As a result she can jump in and out of the computer networks Tron-style. The story moves at a relaxed pace sometimes, but really captures the feel of the anime. Together with her human friends and their combined Digimon companions they try to solve the mystery behind the origin of the Eaters, why people are being found comatose from EDEN syndrome, and what the corporation Kamishiro Enterprises has to do with all of this.
Monday, June 26, 2017
Anime Talk: Attack on Titan Season 2
You knew this was coming right? One last chance to talk about the Attack on Titan anime before Season 2 becomes a distant memory.
My non-spoilery review of Attack on Titan: Season 2 will be up at Diabolical Plots later, probably next month, so if you don't want to be spoiled, you check out my thoughts over there. What this post is about is the biggest thing I couldn't discuss.
Obviously, there will be anime spoilers, but I will refrain from manga spoilers.
I already talked about the earlier than expected manga flashbacks involving Ymir and Marco, and I still find those out of place.
But what I'd like to talk about here is Reiner and Bertholdt.
This is the season where the two of them become prominent characters. While they have always been around, they weren't part of the main trio of Eren, Armin, and Mikasa. Reiner did have some good moments the first season though, distinguishing himself early on as someone Eren wanted to emulate and being a big brother figure by offering to carry Armin's pack during training. He came out ranked #2 in the 104th Training Corps, and we're reminded of that when he faces the Female Titan during the 57th expedition. (Of course, we know now that it's unlikely Annie was trying to kill Reiner when she caught him.)
Bertholdt is a more passive character, so it's easy to forget that he actually came out ranked #3, so he's quite the capable fighter, but he didn't have any stand out moments in the first season. Most people knew him as Reiner's buddy, and some people (like my brother) figured he was one of those characters hanging around waiting for the appropriate Titan to stop by and eat him.
This season we find out that the two of them are the Armored and Colossal Titans respectively, which means that they are responsible for the loss of thousands of lives caused by the destruction of the gate at Wall Maria. Their arrival five years is the reason that protagonist Eren is on a rampaging path of defeating every Titan in existence.
While the audience was prepared to discover more Titans among the cast after Annie Leonhart was revealed as the Female Titan, Reiner and Bertholdt being the culprits was a surprise. Annie was a loner and we had reason to suspect her due to animation cues and a mistake on her part where she reacts to Eren's nickname, which only other members of the 104th Training Corps would know. She fit the profile we would expect of an enemy agent; capable, a loner, and working her way towards the powerful people in the interior.
Reiner and Bertholdt were meanwhile bleeding along with the rest of the Corps. When we meet them again in Season 2 they're among the unarmed recruits racing to warn villages of the sudden appearance of Titans. They get trapped in Utgard Castle along with their fellow trainees and participate in every way one would expect from an ordinary comrade. Reiner even saves Conny's life and is willing to sacrifice himself for the safety of everyone else.
These aren't the actions of a traitor. And we do get some reasoning for that later.
But the nutshell summary is that despite everything, we learn that Reiner and Bertholdt are not inherently bad people. They are doing, and have done, awful things for which they can never be forgiven, and they know that. Poor Bertholdt's face when his former comrades try to talk him down is heartbreaking. He owns up to everything and doesn't even try to justify his actions.
The two of them (three if you include Annie) have been living undercover for five years. Considering their ages, they have spent their entire teenage lives pretending to be who they weren't, all for the sake of their mission. And for three of those five years they slept in the same barracks as the people they are now betraying. It was impossible for them to not feel a kinship with their fellow trainees.
It's a hell of a burden to be carrying, and I'm not surprised that Reiner eventually breaks beneath it, both in his capacity to delude himself into thinking he really is a soldier and not an invading warrior, and how he eventually tells Eren flat out that he's the Armored Titan and he wants Eren to come with him. From his perspective, wouldn't it be so much easier if Eren voluntarily went with them so he and Bertholdt could stop pretending?
We still don't know what the stakes are for them and why the deaths of thousands is worth it in service of their mission, despite any guilt they might feel, but Season 2 really made me care about these two. You would think that someone willing to condemn thousands to a violent death, being alive by Titans, would be a cruel person, and the series intentionally goes out of the way to make Reiner and Bertholdt sympathetic. I'm fond of good characters who do bad things, and the two of them are prime candidates for that.
My non-spoilery review of Attack on Titan: Season 2 will be up at Diabolical Plots later, probably next month, so if you don't want to be spoiled, you check out my thoughts over there. What this post is about is the biggest thing I couldn't discuss.
Obviously, there will be anime spoilers, but I will refrain from manga spoilers.
I already talked about the earlier than expected manga flashbacks involving Ymir and Marco, and I still find those out of place.
But what I'd like to talk about here is Reiner and Bertholdt.
This is the season where the two of them become prominent characters. While they have always been around, they weren't part of the main trio of Eren, Armin, and Mikasa. Reiner did have some good moments the first season though, distinguishing himself early on as someone Eren wanted to emulate and being a big brother figure by offering to carry Armin's pack during training. He came out ranked #2 in the 104th Training Corps, and we're reminded of that when he faces the Female Titan during the 57th expedition. (Of course, we know now that it's unlikely Annie was trying to kill Reiner when she caught him.)
Bertholdt is a more passive character, so it's easy to forget that he actually came out ranked #3, so he's quite the capable fighter, but he didn't have any stand out moments in the first season. Most people knew him as Reiner's buddy, and some people (like my brother) figured he was one of those characters hanging around waiting for the appropriate Titan to stop by and eat him.
This season we find out that the two of them are the Armored and Colossal Titans respectively, which means that they are responsible for the loss of thousands of lives caused by the destruction of the gate at Wall Maria. Their arrival five years is the reason that protagonist Eren is on a rampaging path of defeating every Titan in existence.
While the audience was prepared to discover more Titans among the cast after Annie Leonhart was revealed as the Female Titan, Reiner and Bertholdt being the culprits was a surprise. Annie was a loner and we had reason to suspect her due to animation cues and a mistake on her part where she reacts to Eren's nickname, which only other members of the 104th Training Corps would know. She fit the profile we would expect of an enemy agent; capable, a loner, and working her way towards the powerful people in the interior.
Reiner and Bertholdt were meanwhile bleeding along with the rest of the Corps. When we meet them again in Season 2 they're among the unarmed recruits racing to warn villages of the sudden appearance of Titans. They get trapped in Utgard Castle along with their fellow trainees and participate in every way one would expect from an ordinary comrade. Reiner even saves Conny's life and is willing to sacrifice himself for the safety of everyone else.
These aren't the actions of a traitor. And we do get some reasoning for that later.
But the nutshell summary is that despite everything, we learn that Reiner and Bertholdt are not inherently bad people. They are doing, and have done, awful things for which they can never be forgiven, and they know that. Poor Bertholdt's face when his former comrades try to talk him down is heartbreaking. He owns up to everything and doesn't even try to justify his actions.
The two of them (three if you include Annie) have been living undercover for five years. Considering their ages, they have spent their entire teenage lives pretending to be who they weren't, all for the sake of their mission. And for three of those five years they slept in the same barracks as the people they are now betraying. It was impossible for them to not feel a kinship with their fellow trainees.
It's a hell of a burden to be carrying, and I'm not surprised that Reiner eventually breaks beneath it, both in his capacity to delude himself into thinking he really is a soldier and not an invading warrior, and how he eventually tells Eren flat out that he's the Armored Titan and he wants Eren to come with him. From his perspective, wouldn't it be so much easier if Eren voluntarily went with them so he and Bertholdt could stop pretending?
We still don't know what the stakes are for them and why the deaths of thousands is worth it in service of their mission, despite any guilt they might feel, but Season 2 really made me care about these two. You would think that someone willing to condemn thousands to a violent death, being alive by Titans, would be a cruel person, and the series intentionally goes out of the way to make Reiner and Bertholdt sympathetic. I'm fond of good characters who do bad things, and the two of them are prime candidates for that.
Monday, June 12, 2017
Favorite Fictional Commanders
I haven't written one myself, largely because I haven't gotten to the point where I'm comfortable juggling an ensemble cast, but in honor of Attack on Titan's Erwin Smith and his valor in the most recent episode, I figured I'd run through a few of my favorite fictional commanders.
They're not leaders of countries necessarily, but likely leaders of soldiers. These are the people that if I was a kid again, I'd say "I want to be like them when I grow up!"
Interestingly, I could not come up with any commanders from novels, so the ones below are all from animation or games. I'm not sure why that is, but I suspect it might be because a lot of military fantasy and science fiction is pretty gritty, and I tend to not idealize those commanders as much, though there is certainly one gritty commander on this list!
Optimus Prime (Transformers)
He is my ur-example largely because of the age at which I was introduced to him as voiced by Peter Cullen (and seriously, bringing Peter Cullen back was the best thing the Michael Bay movies ever did).
Optimus Prime cares about the soldiers beneath him, but is willing to make unpopular decisions if it's the right thing to do. I liked that he was always level-headed, never irrational, and most importantly, he could admit when he was wrong. You got the feeling you could trust him, even if he was a giant robot from another planet.
I don't think that I ever viewed him as a father or big brother figure, even in universe, but he was cool character to look up to and my favorite out of all the 80s Transformers. I even had his toy.
Commander Hawkins (Voltron)
Most people are not going to remember Commander Hawkins because he was in the "other" Voltron, the Vehicle Team. It probably didn't hurt that he was also voiced by Peter Cullen, who didn't change his voice much between Prime and Hawkins.
Hawkins was an usual character for me to latch on to as a kid, because he wasn't one of the Voltron pilots. He stayed on the command ship and gave orders, so he would be the guy the team would argue against when they wanted to follow their hearts rather than his instructions.
But even if they didn't like what he had to say, you got the impression that Hawkins was fair, and he actually pranked his disobedient team leaders once after a mission that only succeeded because they didn't listen to him. They were willing to take any punishment he was willing to give them, and the punishment they thought was coming, was actually more of a reward.
Robin (Dark Wizard)
If Hawkins is obscure, then Robin is downright forgotten. Dark Wizard was an old fantasy strategy game for the Sega CD, and Robin was one of four playable army leaders. I loved her for being a kickass female knight in functional armor.
Back then, and even now, it's hard to find games with female protagonists, and here's Robin who serves as knight on horseback with better melee stats than magic ones. This lady was all about leading her army into battle to retake the continent from the titular Dark Wizard.
If she picked up a love interest along the way and agreed to marry in him in the ending, why not. It's a bonus. He asked her to marry him if he won the duel at their victory banquet. She kicked his ass and basically said something like "WTF, did you think I wouldn't like you if you couldn't beat me? I like you anyway, let's get married." Teenage me loved this. (Actual dialogue was much cheesier, but that was the take home message.)
Xander (Fire Emblem Fates)
Depending on which version of the game the player is playing, Xander might never take on a real command role, but along the Birthright storyline, Xander is very much a commander and unfortunately he becomes the enemy one.
I played Conquest first where I totally fell in love with Xander for being my favorite type of knight character, who is stuck between his principals and his duty. As the eldest of the Nohrian royal siblings, he is heir to the throne of Nohr and shoulders the burden of a temperamental, maniacal father as well as the future of his nation. Though not blood-related to the player's avatar, he is adamant that they are a welcome part of his family.
The worst part of starting down the Birthright storyline was turning away from Xander and fighting against him, because I knew that I would have to kill him eventually. When the battle finally happens, Nohr is practically finished and he actually has lower stats than a boss should at that level, because he doesn't actually have the heart to kill the player.
Erwin Smith (Attack on Titan)
Last, but certainly not least, is Commander Erwin Smith from Attack on Titan, who inspired this post. I won't mention anything exclusive from the manga, but Erwin hits all the right respect buttons. He's saddled with the unenviable job of leading the least popular branch of the military into gut-wrenching odds, and yet he throws himself completely into his work.
Nothing gets in Erwin's way. If the best chance to capture an enemy spy involves endangering civilians, he will take it. He might not be happy about it, but if you want a person willing to do anything to ensure the survival of humanity, Erwin's a good pick for the job and his soldiers know that. Erwin can ask the impossible of them and they'll do their best to deliver.
And particularly in the anime, when Erwin bellows for his soldiers to "Dedicate your hearts!" you want to follow the guy into battle, even though you know there's going to be a body count. The opening song for the second season is taken specifically from his words.
Shinzou o sasageyo!
They're not leaders of countries necessarily, but likely leaders of soldiers. These are the people that if I was a kid again, I'd say "I want to be like them when I grow up!"
Interestingly, I could not come up with any commanders from novels, so the ones below are all from animation or games. I'm not sure why that is, but I suspect it might be because a lot of military fantasy and science fiction is pretty gritty, and I tend to not idealize those commanders as much, though there is certainly one gritty commander on this list!
Optimus Prime (Transformers)
He is my ur-example largely because of the age at which I was introduced to him as voiced by Peter Cullen (and seriously, bringing Peter Cullen back was the best thing the Michael Bay movies ever did).
Optimus Prime cares about the soldiers beneath him, but is willing to make unpopular decisions if it's the right thing to do. I liked that he was always level-headed, never irrational, and most importantly, he could admit when he was wrong. You got the feeling you could trust him, even if he was a giant robot from another planet.
I don't think that I ever viewed him as a father or big brother figure, even in universe, but he was cool character to look up to and my favorite out of all the 80s Transformers. I even had his toy.
Commander Hawkins (Voltron)
Most people are not going to remember Commander Hawkins because he was in the "other" Voltron, the Vehicle Team. It probably didn't hurt that he was also voiced by Peter Cullen, who didn't change his voice much between Prime and Hawkins.
Hawkins was an usual character for me to latch on to as a kid, because he wasn't one of the Voltron pilots. He stayed on the command ship and gave orders, so he would be the guy the team would argue against when they wanted to follow their hearts rather than his instructions.
But even if they didn't like what he had to say, you got the impression that Hawkins was fair, and he actually pranked his disobedient team leaders once after a mission that only succeeded because they didn't listen to him. They were willing to take any punishment he was willing to give them, and the punishment they thought was coming, was actually more of a reward.
Robin (Dark Wizard)
If Hawkins is obscure, then Robin is downright forgotten. Dark Wizard was an old fantasy strategy game for the Sega CD, and Robin was one of four playable army leaders. I loved her for being a kickass female knight in functional armor.
Back then, and even now, it's hard to find games with female protagonists, and here's Robin who serves as knight on horseback with better melee stats than magic ones. This lady was all about leading her army into battle to retake the continent from the titular Dark Wizard.
If she picked up a love interest along the way and agreed to marry in him in the ending, why not. It's a bonus. He asked her to marry him if he won the duel at their victory banquet. She kicked his ass and basically said something like "WTF, did you think I wouldn't like you if you couldn't beat me? I like you anyway, let's get married." Teenage me loved this. (Actual dialogue was much cheesier, but that was the take home message.)
Xander (Fire Emblem Fates)
Depending on which version of the game the player is playing, Xander might never take on a real command role, but along the Birthright storyline, Xander is very much a commander and unfortunately he becomes the enemy one.
I played Conquest first where I totally fell in love with Xander for being my favorite type of knight character, who is stuck between his principals and his duty. As the eldest of the Nohrian royal siblings, he is heir to the throne of Nohr and shoulders the burden of a temperamental, maniacal father as well as the future of his nation. Though not blood-related to the player's avatar, he is adamant that they are a welcome part of his family.
The worst part of starting down the Birthright storyline was turning away from Xander and fighting against him, because I knew that I would have to kill him eventually. When the battle finally happens, Nohr is practically finished and he actually has lower stats than a boss should at that level, because he doesn't actually have the heart to kill the player.
Erwin Smith (Attack on Titan)
Last, but certainly not least, is Commander Erwin Smith from Attack on Titan, who inspired this post. I won't mention anything exclusive from the manga, but Erwin hits all the right respect buttons. He's saddled with the unenviable job of leading the least popular branch of the military into gut-wrenching odds, and yet he throws himself completely into his work.
Nothing gets in Erwin's way. If the best chance to capture an enemy spy involves endangering civilians, he will take it. He might not be happy about it, but if you want a person willing to do anything to ensure the survival of humanity, Erwin's a good pick for the job and his soldiers know that. Erwin can ask the impossible of them and they'll do their best to deliver.
And particularly in the anime, when Erwin bellows for his soldiers to "Dedicate your hearts!" you want to follow the guy into battle, even though you know there's going to be a body count. The opening song for the second season is taken specifically from his words.
Monday, June 5, 2017
Attack on Titan: Mining Story Bits from the Future
I watched the latest Attack on Titan episode (Episode 35: Children if you're avoiding spoilers), which had some really surprising material that I didn't expect they would include. I know a certain amount of changes are made in adaptations, and Attack on Titan has been no different. Though it follows the manga closely in most respects, the series has had to pad on occasion to make sure that the TV run time is fulfilled.
In most cases, one chapter is equivalent to one episode, but sometimes it does not directly translate because one chapter might be very action heavy or it might be very plot heavy. A plot heavy chapter tends to fill an episode. An action one does not, because while two-page spreads are impressive in manga form, they are generally only a few seconds of animation. The series also had to contend with the fact that it needs this particular story arc to last exactly 12 episodes to comprise Season 2. No one wants to start the next story arc and abruptly end when it's just getting started.
As I watched Season 2 I could see the new bits and bobs tucked in. What had been a bubble of dialogue talking about a past event became a full blown flashback in one episode, and that was fine. Season 1 had similarly added anime-only scenes to fill out the run time and the added scenes have been pretty seamless.
Last week's Episode 34 signaled a bit of change though. It added some stuff that's from two story arcs ahead in the manga, but that was mostly okay, because even though the information was first revealed later in the story, the anime presented it as a flashback in one character's mind. It didn't change anyone else's perception of the past event. It does change the audience's perception, but in a small, abbreviated way. In the manga the scene is a fairly extended flashback, but in the anime it's a few seconds to make it clear that someone's death was not the accident it had appeared to be.
I was surprised to see it, but because it changed very little and showed what was going on in the mind of the character who was remembering, I felt that the payoff for using it was warranted.
Episode 35 does something strange though. And this is where the manga spoilers come in. They'll be discussed past this point.
Ymir gets an extended flashback in the middle of Episode 35. A really extended flashback. Episode 35 animates Chapter 47 of the manga. This flashback gives us her history from Chapter 89 of the manga, which is after the reader's awareness of the world has been expanded.
The reason I found her flashback strange is that it gives us our first glimpse of the world outside the walls. We knew that people existed outside of them because that's where Reiner, Bertholdt, and Annie came from, and we'd seen flashbacks of Annie's childhood, but we had no reason to think it was much different from the world inside the walls.
But the flashback raises a lot of questions the anime is not set up to answer. By the time we get Ymir's history in the manga, we already know about the truth of the outside world. We know that humanity flourishes out there and that the people of the walls are essentially backwater hicks that have been left alone for the past hundred years while being surrounded by their own people, who have been transformed into human-eating titans.
Because of this, learning that Ymir was a figurehead of a cult that worshiped her as the original Ymir reborn, was very easy to swallow. We already know who the original Ymir is and the significance she had to the Eldian people. We already know about the treatment of the Eldians as a minority ethnic group in the country of Marley.
The anime doesn't explain the significant of Ymir's name, but does show the cult, Ymir's capture by Marleyan authorities, and even her being taken to the seawall around Paradis. It stops short of showing the injection that transforms her into a titan, but it's clear that she and the others were transformed as punishment for their religious gathering, which opens up a whole can of worms that the anime is not going to address without getting to the truth that's hiding in Eren's basement, which isn't going to happen for another two story arcs after the current one ends.
My problem with including this, aside from the fact none of it will be addressed for another 20 episodes or more, is that we see far too much. While the cultists and Ymir are dressed shabbily and can pass for the same tech as inside the walls, the Marleyans are very distinct in their uniforms. The flashback shows that there are people outside the walls with the power to turn others into titans, and these people are more modern than the ones inside the walls.
And they're organized. We're not talking about small scattered villages as implied when Reiner and Bertholdt talk about returning to their "hometown." Those uniforms are things the soldiers of a nation wear.
When the series finally gets to the basement I don't think it's going to be a surprise for anime-only viewers that humanity is thriving outside the walls because they'll already be able extrapolate that from the Ymir flashback.
While the flashback does give some payoff by providing insight into Ymir's personality that wasn't there before, it does so at the cost of one of the series biggest reveals, and I don't think that's worth it. The worst part is that it feels they pulled the material in for run time, since there are only a few chapters left in the current story arc and the remainder are action-heavy so they need all the filler they can get.
In most cases, one chapter is equivalent to one episode, but sometimes it does not directly translate because one chapter might be very action heavy or it might be very plot heavy. A plot heavy chapter tends to fill an episode. An action one does not, because while two-page spreads are impressive in manga form, they are generally only a few seconds of animation. The series also had to contend with the fact that it needs this particular story arc to last exactly 12 episodes to comprise Season 2. No one wants to start the next story arc and abruptly end when it's just getting started.
As I watched Season 2 I could see the new bits and bobs tucked in. What had been a bubble of dialogue talking about a past event became a full blown flashback in one episode, and that was fine. Season 1 had similarly added anime-only scenes to fill out the run time and the added scenes have been pretty seamless.
Last week's Episode 34 signaled a bit of change though. It added some stuff that's from two story arcs ahead in the manga, but that was mostly okay, because even though the information was first revealed later in the story, the anime presented it as a flashback in one character's mind. It didn't change anyone else's perception of the past event. It does change the audience's perception, but in a small, abbreviated way. In the manga the scene is a fairly extended flashback, but in the anime it's a few seconds to make it clear that someone's death was not the accident it had appeared to be.
I was surprised to see it, but because it changed very little and showed what was going on in the mind of the character who was remembering, I felt that the payoff for using it was warranted.
Episode 35 does something strange though. And this is where the manga spoilers come in. They'll be discussed past this point.
Ymir gets an extended flashback in the middle of Episode 35. A really extended flashback. Episode 35 animates Chapter 47 of the manga. This flashback gives us her history from Chapter 89 of the manga, which is after the reader's awareness of the world has been expanded.
The reason I found her flashback strange is that it gives us our first glimpse of the world outside the walls. We knew that people existed outside of them because that's where Reiner, Bertholdt, and Annie came from, and we'd seen flashbacks of Annie's childhood, but we had no reason to think it was much different from the world inside the walls.
But the flashback raises a lot of questions the anime is not set up to answer. By the time we get Ymir's history in the manga, we already know about the truth of the outside world. We know that humanity flourishes out there and that the people of the walls are essentially backwater hicks that have been left alone for the past hundred years while being surrounded by their own people, who have been transformed into human-eating titans.
Because of this, learning that Ymir was a figurehead of a cult that worshiped her as the original Ymir reborn, was very easy to swallow. We already know who the original Ymir is and the significance she had to the Eldian people. We already know about the treatment of the Eldians as a minority ethnic group in the country of Marley.
The anime doesn't explain the significant of Ymir's name, but does show the cult, Ymir's capture by Marleyan authorities, and even her being taken to the seawall around Paradis. It stops short of showing the injection that transforms her into a titan, but it's clear that she and the others were transformed as punishment for their religious gathering, which opens up a whole can of worms that the anime is not going to address without getting to the truth that's hiding in Eren's basement, which isn't going to happen for another two story arcs after the current one ends.
My problem with including this, aside from the fact none of it will be addressed for another 20 episodes or more, is that we see far too much. While the cultists and Ymir are dressed shabbily and can pass for the same tech as inside the walls, the Marleyans are very distinct in their uniforms. The flashback shows that there are people outside the walls with the power to turn others into titans, and these people are more modern than the ones inside the walls.
And they're organized. We're not talking about small scattered villages as implied when Reiner and Bertholdt talk about returning to their "hometown." Those uniforms are things the soldiers of a nation wear.
When the series finally gets to the basement I don't think it's going to be a surprise for anime-only viewers that humanity is thriving outside the walls because they'll already be able extrapolate that from the Ymir flashback.
While the flashback does give some payoff by providing insight into Ymir's personality that wasn't there before, it does so at the cost of one of the series biggest reveals, and I don't think that's worth it. The worst part is that it feels they pulled the material in for run time, since there are only a few chapters left in the current story arc and the remainder are action-heavy so they need all the filler they can get.
Monday, April 10, 2017
Attack on Titan: When is it fair for a series to change genres?
Attack on Titan has been on my mind a fair bit lately, and I've been thinking: When is it fair for a series to change genres? I've been following the manga for quite a while, and as people on my mailing list know, I recently rewatched the first season of the anime and starting playing the console game a couple months ago.
I'm not normally a super-fan, but there's something about Attack on Titan that really grabs me, and has done so with a great many other people such that the manga is one of the bestselling series in the country. The second season of the anime is like a tornado diving into fandom. People can't avoid it. It's even being broadcast on Cartoon Network less than a month from its Japanese broadcast, which is pretty crazy considering the logistics involved, which includes redubbing the audio into English.
Now, I'm going to get into spoilers. If you don't care, keep reading. If you do, know that I'll be covering up to chapter 92 of the manga, which is what just came out this month.
Seriously. Spoilers. Stay out if you don't want.
Now then...
Attack on Titan begins with a relatively simple setup. The last of humanity has been forced into a small country-sized space surrounded by three concentric walls that are high enough to keep out the titular titans, who are unintelligent and whose only drive seems to be to eat people. The weapon tech is perhaps early 1800s with cannons and shotguns being known quantities, but there are no gatling guns yet. Both are inefficient against titans which can only be killed by removing a meter long section of the nape.
Most people are happy to live within the walls where the titans can't snack on them, and humanity has lived this way for just over a century. But some people want to venture back into the outside world, and they are the members of the Survey Corps. (I will be using Kodansha's manga translation names here, not Funimation's anime translations, because I'll mostly be talking about the manga.)
The Survey Corps is generally regarded as a bunch of madmen who waste taxpayer money because their typical mission involves going out beyond the walls, lots of them getting killed, and then not really learning anything about what the world beyond the walls is like. Still, they fight, which is why people think they're crazy.
Attack on Titan kicks off with the breach of the outermost Wall Maria, which causes humanity to once again know the fear of the titans and flee for their lives. The human population is drastically reduced because even though many people escape to the next innermost wall, Wall Rose, it's a much smaller territory and there's not enough food to feed everyone, so the excess are thrown out to be eaten by titans, for the good of everyone else.
This is not a nice series and this is where the main body of the story begins.
Our protagonists join up with Survey Corps for various reasons, and begin their push to successfully fight back the titans.
There are revelations along the way. Main character Eren Yeager has the ability to turn into a 15-meter class titan himself, retaining his intelligence, and though he knows his father gave him the ability, he doesn't know how. We also learn that there is a traitor among Eren's classmates from the Training Corps, and she also can turn into a titan.
And in the middle of all this, there's lots and lots of people valiantly fending off and/or being killed by titans. The Survey Corps does have lot of casualties, but those who survive their first few missions often become genuine badasses, because they have to be if they want to live, and the anime does an amazing job showcasing how even ordinary Survey Corps members fight.
(I haven't mentioned it yet, but the way people kill titans is with gas-powered maneuvering gear that shoots grappling lines into trees and buildings so the soldiers can fling themselves up to the heights needed to circle around to the back of the titan and cut out the nape with their specially crafted swords.)
It really feels like this is the tone of the series. Push against titans, they push back, wall breaches, lots of people die, OMG. And though there's stuff about traitors, and we don't know the motivation of the traitors, everything fits in the box of what we know.
What's really interesting to me, is what happens after the current plot in Season 2 of the anime. Though I can understand that production issues are the cause for keeping it to 12 episodes this season, Attack on Titan also undergoes a shift in its later story arcs that could potentially annoy the anime's larger fanbase.
We've come to expect that this is a series about the last dregs of humanity making a desperate stand against the monsters that would devour them, but the next arc barely features any titans at all. Which is a shock considering the title. I'm sure the animators are going to be scratching their heads trying to figure out how to create all those dynamic action scenes for what is essentially a political intrigue arc, but political intrigue is the game. There's still fighting, there's also a number of people dying, but for very different reasons.
I followed the arc because I loved seeing the Survey Corps being put out of their element and Commander Erwin Smith's ballsy plan to wrest control away from the ruling family. (Seriously, he initiates a successful and relatively bloodless coup that wraps up in less than a week.)
But barring a surprise titan appearance at the end of the arc, the fighting is human against human and the Survey Corps members are naturally unhappy about this, because it's not what they signed up for. It's not what the audience originally signed up for either, so I'm curious how this arc will eventually go down.
We're at a point where the manga is probably 30-40 episodes' worth of material ahead of the anime (assuming 4 episodes per volume), which creates a gigantic disconnect from people who are manga readers versus anime-only viewers, and surprisingly makes it difficult for the two groups to talk.
The anime-only viewer is currently worried about the possible breach of Wall Rose, which once again puts humanity on the back foot, especially considering the intelligent new Beast Titan that has show up.
The manga reader knows what the real battle is (or at least knows more of why things are the way they are), and it's nothing like what we've been led to expect. It's ridiculously hard to talk about anything the current manga reader is enjoying without spoiling and spoiling a lot of catch-up material.
For instance, much of Season 1 of the anime is spent trying to get back to Eren's basement. That eventually happens in the manga, but when my friend asked what the secret of the basement was, I couldn't explain the significance of it without explaining a lot of other things, otherwise my answer would have no meaning.
Attack on Titan is now a war story. It was a post-apocalyptic grimdark fantasy, then it was political intrigue, it went back into grimdark people with swords, and now it's World War I with titans, and there's no getting around that.
The basement really did shatter everything, because the truth of the world is that humanity has not perished outside the walls, but is actually going about business as usual, and it's the people living within the walled country who are the hinterland hicks who don't know anything.
For some series, this kind of revelation would happen at the end because continuing would make it a very different story. Because at this point, we've learned so much, about where the titans came from, how they are actually victims who cannot help what they do, and the series ceases to revolve around killing the titans and taking back their world. Most of the world is remarkably titan free.
The only reason there are titans where the protagonists live, is because they're on an island and their ethnicity is persecuted on the mainland for their potential to be turned into monsters. Dissidents are rounded up in the country of Marley, shipped off to the island, and forcefully turned into titans, ostensibly to harass and punish those who've sealed themselves away from the rest of the world.
Most of the outside world hates and fears the people we now know as Eldians, because of their transformation abilities that allow any individual to become a mindless weapon of war, and the power of the Founding Titan, which now resides in a dormant fashion in Eren, allows one to control all the mindless titans. No one wants to end up fighting an army of man-eating giants.
But... technology marches on, and the world outside has advanced. It has trains. It has blimps. It has navies that can fire a fair distance inland at a fort. Anti-titan weaponry has been developed, and while it hasn't rendered titan warfare obsolete, that day is coming.
Where is the space for people flying on grappling lines with swords to attack the nape of titans?
At this point, Marley is using Eldians in its army, both willingly and not (the willing ones make me think of the Japanese Americans who fought for the US even as the rest of their families and friends were placed in camps--they want to prove their loyalty) and so they'll probably send some more titans at the island once the next story arc starts up, but really, if Marley takes the capture of the Founding Titan seriously this time, we're going to see people with artillery and machine guns landing on the island and I can't see our protagonists being prepared for that.
This is a totally different story than the one I signed up for, but I'm still game. I like World War I, and seeing a secondary world version of it is interesting, especially seeing this world's version of an air raid, where Eldians can be dropped from the sky and transformed into titans to attack the enemy. It's hugely intimidating, and assuming the anti-titan weaponry is taken out, incredibly effective as well.
But will we still see swords and maneuvering gear? Is the situation on the island still desperate now that they know they aren't the last of humanity, or do they feel it doesn't matter as they've traded one enemy for another? Is there still a reason for the Survey Corps?
I don't have those answers, or the one to my original question as to when it is fair for a series to change genres. I know I'm still in for the ride, but I don't know how many will be lost if and when the anime gets to these points, and how many may have been lost already.
It's still a good story, and according to Hajime Isayama we're not nearly at the end of it yet. There's a good chance it'll jump again.
I'm not normally a super-fan, but there's something about Attack on Titan that really grabs me, and has done so with a great many other people such that the manga is one of the bestselling series in the country. The second season of the anime is like a tornado diving into fandom. People can't avoid it. It's even being broadcast on Cartoon Network less than a month from its Japanese broadcast, which is pretty crazy considering the logistics involved, which includes redubbing the audio into English.
Now, I'm going to get into spoilers. If you don't care, keep reading. If you do, know that I'll be covering up to chapter 92 of the manga, which is what just came out this month.
Seriously. Spoilers. Stay out if you don't want.
Now then...
Attack on Titan begins with a relatively simple setup. The last of humanity has been forced into a small country-sized space surrounded by three concentric walls that are high enough to keep out the titular titans, who are unintelligent and whose only drive seems to be to eat people. The weapon tech is perhaps early 1800s with cannons and shotguns being known quantities, but there are no gatling guns yet. Both are inefficient against titans which can only be killed by removing a meter long section of the nape.
Most people are happy to live within the walls where the titans can't snack on them, and humanity has lived this way for just over a century. But some people want to venture back into the outside world, and they are the members of the Survey Corps. (I will be using Kodansha's manga translation names here, not Funimation's anime translations, because I'll mostly be talking about the manga.)
The Survey Corps is generally regarded as a bunch of madmen who waste taxpayer money because their typical mission involves going out beyond the walls, lots of them getting killed, and then not really learning anything about what the world beyond the walls is like. Still, they fight, which is why people think they're crazy.
Attack on Titan kicks off with the breach of the outermost Wall Maria, which causes humanity to once again know the fear of the titans and flee for their lives. The human population is drastically reduced because even though many people escape to the next innermost wall, Wall Rose, it's a much smaller territory and there's not enough food to feed everyone, so the excess are thrown out to be eaten by titans, for the good of everyone else.
This is not a nice series and this is where the main body of the story begins.
Our protagonists join up with Survey Corps for various reasons, and begin their push to successfully fight back the titans.
There are revelations along the way. Main character Eren Yeager has the ability to turn into a 15-meter class titan himself, retaining his intelligence, and though he knows his father gave him the ability, he doesn't know how. We also learn that there is a traitor among Eren's classmates from the Training Corps, and she also can turn into a titan.
And in the middle of all this, there's lots and lots of people valiantly fending off and/or being killed by titans. The Survey Corps does have lot of casualties, but those who survive their first few missions often become genuine badasses, because they have to be if they want to live, and the anime does an amazing job showcasing how even ordinary Survey Corps members fight.
(I haven't mentioned it yet, but the way people kill titans is with gas-powered maneuvering gear that shoots grappling lines into trees and buildings so the soldiers can fling themselves up to the heights needed to circle around to the back of the titan and cut out the nape with their specially crafted swords.)
It really feels like this is the tone of the series. Push against titans, they push back, wall breaches, lots of people die, OMG. And though there's stuff about traitors, and we don't know the motivation of the traitors, everything fits in the box of what we know.
What's really interesting to me, is what happens after the current plot in Season 2 of the anime. Though I can understand that production issues are the cause for keeping it to 12 episodes this season, Attack on Titan also undergoes a shift in its later story arcs that could potentially annoy the anime's larger fanbase.
We've come to expect that this is a series about the last dregs of humanity making a desperate stand against the monsters that would devour them, but the next arc barely features any titans at all. Which is a shock considering the title. I'm sure the animators are going to be scratching their heads trying to figure out how to create all those dynamic action scenes for what is essentially a political intrigue arc, but political intrigue is the game. There's still fighting, there's also a number of people dying, but for very different reasons.
I followed the arc because I loved seeing the Survey Corps being put out of their element and Commander Erwin Smith's ballsy plan to wrest control away from the ruling family. (Seriously, he initiates a successful and relatively bloodless coup that wraps up in less than a week.)
But barring a surprise titan appearance at the end of the arc, the fighting is human against human and the Survey Corps members are naturally unhappy about this, because it's not what they signed up for. It's not what the audience originally signed up for either, so I'm curious how this arc will eventually go down.
We're at a point where the manga is probably 30-40 episodes' worth of material ahead of the anime (assuming 4 episodes per volume), which creates a gigantic disconnect from people who are manga readers versus anime-only viewers, and surprisingly makes it difficult for the two groups to talk.
The anime-only viewer is currently worried about the possible breach of Wall Rose, which once again puts humanity on the back foot, especially considering the intelligent new Beast Titan that has show up.
The manga reader knows what the real battle is (or at least knows more of why things are the way they are), and it's nothing like what we've been led to expect. It's ridiculously hard to talk about anything the current manga reader is enjoying without spoiling and spoiling a lot of catch-up material.
For instance, much of Season 1 of the anime is spent trying to get back to Eren's basement. That eventually happens in the manga, but when my friend asked what the secret of the basement was, I couldn't explain the significance of it without explaining a lot of other things, otherwise my answer would have no meaning.
Attack on Titan is now a war story. It was a post-apocalyptic grimdark fantasy, then it was political intrigue, it went back into grimdark people with swords, and now it's World War I with titans, and there's no getting around that.
The basement really did shatter everything, because the truth of the world is that humanity has not perished outside the walls, but is actually going about business as usual, and it's the people living within the walled country who are the hinterland hicks who don't know anything.
For some series, this kind of revelation would happen at the end because continuing would make it a very different story. Because at this point, we've learned so much, about where the titans came from, how they are actually victims who cannot help what they do, and the series ceases to revolve around killing the titans and taking back their world. Most of the world is remarkably titan free.
The only reason there are titans where the protagonists live, is because they're on an island and their ethnicity is persecuted on the mainland for their potential to be turned into monsters. Dissidents are rounded up in the country of Marley, shipped off to the island, and forcefully turned into titans, ostensibly to harass and punish those who've sealed themselves away from the rest of the world.
Most of the outside world hates and fears the people we now know as Eldians, because of their transformation abilities that allow any individual to become a mindless weapon of war, and the power of the Founding Titan, which now resides in a dormant fashion in Eren, allows one to control all the mindless titans. No one wants to end up fighting an army of man-eating giants.
But... technology marches on, and the world outside has advanced. It has trains. It has blimps. It has navies that can fire a fair distance inland at a fort. Anti-titan weaponry has been developed, and while it hasn't rendered titan warfare obsolete, that day is coming.
Where is the space for people flying on grappling lines with swords to attack the nape of titans?
At this point, Marley is using Eldians in its army, both willingly and not (the willing ones make me think of the Japanese Americans who fought for the US even as the rest of their families and friends were placed in camps--they want to prove their loyalty) and so they'll probably send some more titans at the island once the next story arc starts up, but really, if Marley takes the capture of the Founding Titan seriously this time, we're going to see people with artillery and machine guns landing on the island and I can't see our protagonists being prepared for that.
This is a totally different story than the one I signed up for, but I'm still game. I like World War I, and seeing a secondary world version of it is interesting, especially seeing this world's version of an air raid, where Eldians can be dropped from the sky and transformed into titans to attack the enemy. It's hugely intimidating, and assuming the anti-titan weaponry is taken out, incredibly effective as well.
But will we still see swords and maneuvering gear? Is the situation on the island still desperate now that they know they aren't the last of humanity, or do they feel it doesn't matter as they've traded one enemy for another? Is there still a reason for the Survey Corps?
I don't have those answers, or the one to my original question as to when it is fair for a series to change genres. I know I'm still in for the ride, but I don't know how many will be lost if and when the anime gets to these points, and how many may have been lost already.
It's still a good story, and according to Hajime Isayama we're not nearly at the end of it yet. There's a good chance it'll jump again.
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