I’ve said before that the Spring season of 2013 was one single worst spring season in more than a decade. I still stand by that. But holy crap: the epic action series that it brought forth is rivalled by only very few series! I kept hearing that in the manga, this was the point where it got stale and all. If that’s true, then the creators of the anime are doing a mighty fine job at hiding it!
Holy crap these three episodes were just amazing! Production IG really put in effort in order to make the action as riveting as possible. The animation, music and story worked together wonderfully here, and it just kept on going. And it wasn’t just dumb action: everyone here used their heads, even the stupid titans were trying to learn (even if it’s just a small thing as trying to climb trees).
Here it really was established that the traitor could turn into the big female titan at will. And I love how she’s strong, yet not overpowered: she actually got caught in a lot of traps, and she really had to be creative in order to escape those. I really like that. She too ended up tired, although it was shown very subtly.
Also, after watching 21 episodes, I have to say: Shingeki no Kyojin for me is a very strong contender for the best soundtrack of the year.
Rating: 6,5/8 (Amazing)
We shall have to see about that soundtrack of the year, since Sawano Hiroyuki is also doing the soundtracks for the upcoming Kill La Kill anime so we shall see if he can top the soundtracks he did for SnK in KlK!
The series only really gets better, unless you’re allergic to the whole titan shifter plot point.
I just think they used that card way to early. It demerited for me the 3D
weapon system.
Also it’s a wild card for keeping necessary characters alive.
I would say Winter 2013 was worse than Spring. :/
Whoever told you it gets stale is a goddamn idiot. The only way you could find it stale or boring is if you just want to dislike the series because it’s popular.
It’s a very well written series and continues to be good past this point. The bad news is it’s a monthly manga so many stupid people forget the passage of time within the actual story and complain about things going to slowly.
No offense Asuron but I happen to be one of those idiots. Yes there is plenty of intrigue and action but the character building never quite adds up to what it was in the first dozen episodes. Heck we haven’t even seen an emotional background to most of the training squad that survived in the manga. We know what makes Mikasa, Armin and Eren tick with some of the best placed back story moments I have seen.
Perhaps it is because the first five volumes did it better than any action series I have ever seen , and of course they couldn’t redo a training arc with every new character.
I do think that for a first manga Isayama is brilliant and really just needs editing. But until the manga gets deeper into revealing the major conflict I don’t know.
I’m not quite sure what manga you read, but the characterisation was never strong from the start. The strength was in the story and always has been.
“Heck we haven’t even seen an emotional background to most of the training squad that survived in the manga.”
Uhh…*MANGA SPOILER ALERT!!* – Don’t read below if you haven’t read the manga!
Um…what about in the 3rd arc [after this arc], where it showed mostly the side characters in Class 104? I mean, there was a lot about Christa and Ymir’s past and their interactions, Sasha and her dad’s conflict about the their village and survival, Connie wanting to be in the top 10 to join the Military police to show his family/village that he wasn’t a good for nothing person, Connie again going back to his village and saw what happened there. Reiner and Bertholt always talked about wanting to return to their village. Jean already had quite a bit of development since Marco’s death.
I suppose they may not be ’emotional background’ for you…but at least they exist. Maybe because they’re ‘side characters’ and thus can’t develop as much as the main trio?
Also, friendly reminder that SnK is heavily story driven. I assume that if the backstory is not relevant within the context of the main plot/story, then it probably won’t be shown.
I wasn’t really understanding all the hype in the first half of the anime because it was way too overdramatic for my tastes and most of the main characters annoyed the crap out of me. But after the first half, it started to change. Shingeki has now become my favourite anime of the season. The action is top-notch and the characters grew brains!! The animation and the soundtrack are also outstanding. I’m so happy I stuck with this one.
I think im starting to see why the Manga went stale, its forever one step forward two steps back and theres only so long you can tolerate a narrative where your charachters continually get further and further from their objective.
Except it didn’t get stale. It’s had pretty much the same pacing from the beginning. Like another poster said above, it’s ‘fans’ who read all the scanlations in a day or 2 and once they caught up and had monthly releases, started crying about the pacing and stagnation. There’s still the same despair with a trickle of hope, epic action, and military tactics that the series has always had. Heck, look at the latest chapter.
Shingeki is a victim of it’s own success. It’s always fanshionable to be contradictory to something popular.
Im not refering to the pacing but to the narrative. They are continually getting further and further from the objective of seeing what was in the basement.
This is correct, This is why it got stale, but that doesn’t happen until the arc after next (which probably wont be shown this season). This arc was actually pretty good. The next arc gets really good too. but the one after. . .he pretty much goes “one step forward, five steps back” in regards to the story. It feels like he doesn’t really have it planned what he wants to do with the story and is stalling for time while he tried to figure it out (i.e. what happened with Naruto).
Also, I wouldn’t listen to people who say stuff like “it wasnt because you’re a hipster/hate on what’s popular/*random ad hominem attack* or whatever. People like that will never listen to you anyway, because they are so set in their ways that they lack the maturity to actually take a closer look at some of the flaws people are pointing out(or things that people are praising).
I’m a huge fan of the series, and of many series, but I do know when they are “bad” at some points, and I do recognize that series that I do not like at all (penguingdrum for example) have their major good points that people latch on to and make it a good series.
A lot of people in the Anime community lack that maturity, and want to lash out at people that don’t like or dislike what they like or dislike. It’s easier to just ignore people like that and continue your discussion. eventually someone will come forward that has the maturity to discuss something as one human being to another.
also in that arc I mention where it gets stale, there are a few tidbits that hint to the overarching part of the story, but those two tidbits, could have been put anywhere, anytime (that one character that showed up for a few pages, and that one scene that was a page or two in length) the rest of the other things he puts in in that arc are by that point pretty much already discernable by the reader. Even the character development parts there could have easily fit somewhere else without taking all the time he did in that arc. It definitely does not fit well pacing, nor story wise. This pretty much goes on for a long time. To the point where I can safely say: “They are not going to get to the basement in 52 episodes.”
It’s going to be a LONG time before Anime-only viewers will be getting any substantial answers to push the story forward.
When Authors do that, people start to ask: “Well if he’s procrastinating on the “reveals” set up since the start of the work, how is he going to treat the ‘what comes after’ part of the story? This is the most crucial part! The last work that I’ve read/watched that pretty much went down the exact same road was claymore. . .
That turned out extremely bad. To the point of ruining the work.
This is why I like to watch shows that have source material already finished.
But since the initial 3-4 arcs are so good + the awesome animation I don’t mind donating to Crunchyroll to support/watch it.
I agree that the soundtrack to the series is one of the best. The opening themes were recently transcribed for two pianos:
http://youtu.be/NqRPg_0Xdqk
I’m happy I have lighthearted series like Ro-kyu and DxD around because SnK is heavy.
I’ve done a dam good job of not spoiling myself here. I’ve only been watching the show. Still, its easy to see where things are going and I’ll post some blind predictions. Obviously there is a major internal force working for the titans to keep the human population down due to food shortages and urban overpopulation. Obviously the royalty and wealthy benefit the most from having the population oppressed.
Based on the way the king is drawn he is obviously in on it. I have a feeling the non-thinking titans are just biproducts of creating the thinking ones. Failed experiments. Arins dad defected from the forces that are producing the titans and created Arins powers to get back at them.
On a wild wild wild guess…. is the femail titan Armin’s mom?
Highlights:
The scene with the little kids seeing the recon corps come back
Levi finally getting some action
Human inside Titan on Human inside Titan battle
Gore…
I’m in the same position as you and if we assume that human-turned-kyojin look the same gender as they become, then I’m going to guess it was either Christa or, I feel more likely, the one girl who supposedly left the group for the other squad to “survive on her own.” Aside from looking very much like her, she seems to use the same kind of martial arts and is just that step above Erin. We have seen a lot of her on-screen, but she’s not gotten a lot of actual development. We’ll either get that development later or she’ll turn out to be the kyojin and be killed or get away or, for the sake of the story, maybe even captured. And besides, Christa was with the group on the outskirts of the forest when the big female titan was running after Erin. Unless they can control their bodies from afar, it’s likely she wasn’t the one behind it… though didn’t someone say they couldn’t find her? I assumed they meant she disappeared at around the time she found Jean’s horse and joined up with Armin and the others…
no
Just give it a fucking 7/8 already!!
This series is highly overrated:
no character development, boring characters, tons of anticlimactic moments. It wants to do so many things and ends up doing not much.
It’s a shame. It had potential.