Attack On Titan - The Big Rewatch
Ten years ago, prompted by random images online (not like that, smutty) I blundered across a strange phenomenon called Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin, lit. 'The Advancing Giant'). I’d never watched Anime (other than Akira and GITS, back in our CyberPunk days), and was absolutely gob-smacked, chain-gunning the entire first season (more than once) with my jaw hanging open, wondering what the hell I’d just found. It led me to buying my very first Manga, and into discovering FullMetal Alchemist, NGE and many more.
And so, it began.
A decade later (and up to my ears in Manga almost constantly), the final season is out on DVD (the only thing I still buy in solid state) and I’ve been watching the whole thing, right from the beginning, and getting blown away all over again. The shock-violence and body horror are utterly stunning, and only something that you watch in an animation (me anyway, don’t know about the rest of you), but it’s more than just the ‘wow’ factor. How has Isayama’s story become so hypnotic and important?
In March 2022, the final season episode Two Brothers was listed on IMDB as one of the top ten rated episodes ever. There’s been a lot more Anime since, but still, the sheer fist-in-the-face, emotional detonation of AoT is a hard thing to match.
The series, apart from its immediate fan-culture appeal (will come back to this is a tick) offers powerful, dynamic world-building, right from the start, setting up humanity in its tiny, threatened cage. We’re thrown straight into the story, with the arrival of the Colossal and the death of Eren’s mother and, from that point, we skid this way and that, with dramatic twists and turns, all underlain by a consistent narrative that seeds from the beginning (returning to the first couple of seasons has really brought this home, seeing those early hints and realising what they mean).
It also deals with some seriously complex issues, exploring warfare, morality and freedom (no spoilers). Erwin Smith, a favourite character, occupies an horrendous grey area somewhere between hero, psychopath and obsessively driven nutjob, and the named Titans reflect the monsters within us all.
Multiple perspectives help us have sympathy across the board, with the Titans themselves, and with the most murderous or difficult characters. This – along with the time-jump-flashbacks, threading plot lines back into the weave – is a really difficult thing to do well, but AoT has it nailed.
And it's suitably progressive, with strong, non-sexual women (though Mikasa would really have benefited from motivation that wasn’t just Eren-Eren-Eren). Zoe Hange, another favourite character, has no specific pronouns and is intended to be gender ambiguous. In Japanese terms, they use masculine first person pronoun ‘boku’, something common in Anime, though less so in Japanese culture.
More than anything, the crater of AoT’s impact exploded right across fandom, partially thanks to its massive international distribution, and partially thanks to its huge LGBT appeal and its endless ships, creating more collectibles/fanfic than you can shake your ODM gear at.
I don’t need a Levi body-pillow myself, you understand, but the series is still stunning.
And I did dig these fellows out of hiding :)
Reading: Anne McCaffrey’s Crystal Singer series, which haven’t quite stood the test of time, sadly. The concept is incredible, and the world-building is appropriately stunning, but the books are very dry, and the intervening years have given me much less patience with Killashandra’s arrogance. Having said that, though, I am still enjoying the re-read.
Playing: Another session of Al-Qadim where our luckless team (see previous newsletter) tried to get back out of the cave in the cliff face, and made nearly as much of a mess of it. We have now reached the dizzy heights of level two, though, so hopefully we’ll do a little better next session…