Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan) - Review

The three military branches' icons in SnK [From right to left: the Garrison: troops stationed for defense within the walls, the Military Police: stationed in inner wall to protect king, keep order, and collect taxes, and finally the Recon Corps: those who venture outside the walls in hopes of researching and eventually overcoming the titans. (Image take from: imgur.com)

Just yesterday the first season of Shingeki no Kyojin, or Attack on Titan, ended. While there was no definite announcement in the anime itself that a second season was imminent, I am 99.9% sure a second season will come as they left it off in the last episode, and, well, I've read ahead on the manga, but that's a different point. Anyways, Attack on Titan is about humans, whom built extremely tall walls and live inside them, on the verge of extinction due to the human devouring monsters outside the walls called titans. Titans are several times larger than humans and as such, much stronger and faster in almost all cases. As such, the humans live in fear of those titans and resort to living life within the walls, trapped from the outside world. A young man, Eren Jaeger, along with a girl he'd saved while young, Mikasa Ackerman, witness their mother (not really Mikasa's mom but still..) being devoured by a titan. Even prior to witnessing that, Eren saw the Recon Corp members as heroes, but after being thrown to despair, Eren put his foot down and set out to get to the Recon Corp. Through his trainee years, Eren is faced with a few conflicts, even one that revealed to him, along with every other human who lived through the titans breaking through the walls a second time, that humans could transform into titans, or at least Eren could. From that point on, Eren is questioned to be a friend or enemy, and questions run around about whether he was the only human with such an ability.

Eren in human form going on the attack against the Colossal Titan (Image taken from: shingekinokyojin.org)

I honestly felt that SnK was a fantastic anime. Again, the genres weren't really my favorites, but the action along with the constant mysteries revealed kept me going. Also, the animation for the 3D maneuver gear that standard foot soldiers are equipped with blew my mind. I mean, I know similar animations have been used, but the gear itself is unrealistic and probably would never actually work out, but it was realistic enough that it left me with the question: "What is those actually were a thing?" Anyways, in my first RAP I posted the two OPs for this anime: Guren no Yumiya and Jiyuu no Tsubasa. Those two songs were just fantastic for their placement in the series. Guren no Yumiya expresses the mood of an uphill struggle, seemingly impossible to overcome. The arc in which that song was the OP was exactly that. The humans seemed absolutely powerless still, yet they still struggled, and still held their ground as best they could. Jiyuu no Tsubasa, on the other hand, expresses the more of a 'we've learned, and it's our turn to fight back' type of mood. Just like with the first song, Jiyuu no Tsubasa was the OP for when the humans started to push back at the titans. They were starting to gain knowledge, even if minimal, most of the members of the 104th trainee corps were going into the Recon Corps, and Eren was accepted as an ally to humans and thus utilized to fight back and gain more knowledge on titans in general.

Several of the members of the 104th trainee squad pictured with the high officials of the Recon Corps (Image taken from: sankakucomplex.com)

Ruri's Rating: 9.5/10

Suggestions: Code Geass, Guilty Crown, Btooom!