I absolutely love Attack on Titan and it's one of the best anime's I have ever seen. Even the clown show ending from the manga has been fixed to an great extent in the anime. The anime has so many excellent moments which are some of the best written scenes in anime.
The fanbase is insufferable though. It's either full of "Eren is literally me" mfs or glazers with no sense of reality and I'm pissed at liking the same thing as them.
It reeked too much of barely constrained fascism, both in the media itself, and in the fanbase, for me to stick around for longer than half of the first season. Having learned about how hardline a nationalist the author is, that doesn't surprise me-- but I also can't tolerate it myself
It's supposed to be a dystopia in a sense. Paradis is a regressive island stuck a hundred years behind a already backwards world. It's pretty much set in what would be the 19th century in the real world. I don't think it's really about Nationalism in the first three seasons.
me everyday people post AoT when they could be agitating for a new Beserk OVA.Berserk is cursed just like Guts. I don't think anyone except MAPPA will make an anime for Berserk now.
I enjoyed it very much. It still bothers me that it does blood libel though.
Great worldbuilding but ultimately it is ruined by it's childish politics.
spoiler
The deus ex machina they gave the attack titan (literally omnipresence!) also ended up ruining it for me, show lost the little seriousness left it had.
I would have liked it less if it was the "I win" button that got slapped in every fight. But sliding it in at the very end as a plot-hole filler was lazy but ultimately fine.
spoiler
There are a number of scenes I enjoyed. The choice over who gets saved by the Colossal Titan investiture and the passing of the Jaw Titan was great. The various betrayals have been well-motivated. And I genuinely like the origin story of the Titans, as these things berthed from an ultimately used up and abused slave people.
The idea of power as a social construct is what resonates through the whole storyline. Memory manipulation as a stand in for mass media is a bit forced and lazy, but the value of history as a motivating force is appreciated. The Eladians getting a very straight line drawn to jewish ghettoes is overused, but the various turncoats expressing their rationales for siding with this or that group remains compelling.
It is, all in all, a well done story with strong and enduring themes that resonate across the entire narrative arc.
The endless fixation on "Is this anime fascist?" is exhausting. Because it is, at the end of the day, a Young Adult cartoon. And these cartoons always end up embracing childish politics because they are stories for children.
But the history and the setting and the various lead characters all create the kind of space that is fun to think about and explore. I suspect we'll see its influence resonate through the storytelling medium for years to come.
i don't think that fascism should allowed to slid because its 'for children'
I don't think guys with green magic rings doing stunts in airplanes is fascist.
That's all the kids see
Slapping a sticker on a vehicle does not make it fascist. That's entirely superficial.
Superman does not become more or less fascist based on whether he crash lands in Kansas or Ukraine. Spiderman does not become more or less fascist based on whether he's swinging through New York City or Shanghai or Jakarta or Rio. There's plenty to criticize in Green Lantern, particularly when it leaned into the Space Cops motif. Just pointing at the plane Hal Gordon was crashing when he got his ring and saying "Fascist because American" doesn't cut it.
If the worst thing John McCain ever did was crash an F-16 in New Mexico while colliding with magic jewelry, he wouldn't have earned that tumor.
Space dandy was the shit. I didn't know it was a different director each ep the first time thru, i need to rewatch
Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, every season of Kaguya.
Edit: Chainsaw Man, Oshi no Ko.
i dislike evangelion, but it is undeniable tha the opening is one of the GOAT.
Edit: ill add demon slayer entertainment arc, SxF s1 and blue lock.
I like bebop, its up there. Eva never clicked w me. "Love is war" is top tier. Ill go check chainsaw and oshi no ko haven't heard those yet.
Ok i got a couple for you. what do you think of chobits op? Read or die? (I also love 1 punch but duh everyone loves that one, right?)
I'll be up front and say that I like my music big, stupid, and energetic. In that regard, Chobits and RoD are both decent starting points to build from but imo they don't go far enough. Chobits especially has some moments where there's a clear route to go higher energy but it stays low instead.
And yeah agreed on One-Punch, though I forgot to mention it lol. Some other stuff now that I've had some sleep:
- Gurren Lagann
- Monthly Girls' Nozaki-Kun
- Nichijou (both, but especially 2)
- Mob Psycho 2 and 3
- Baccano (Cromalin is right)
- Spy X Family S1 (小莱卡 is right as well)
Honorable Mentions:
- Hunter x Hunter at 1.1x speed
- My Next Life as a Villainess (both)
- Summertime Render
Cowboy Bebop was a fun series of vignettes without a strong overarching plot. Also, lots of comedy.
AoT is high drama with lots of mystery and gore inside strong narrative arc. Far more in line with Eva and Chainsaw Man.
Even then, Eva is incredibly slow-paced, particularly at the beginning. Its far more psychological, on par with Elfin Lied or Monster. AoT and Chainsaw Man both hit the ground running, don't shy away from intense action scenes, and present the mystery as part of direct human conflict rather than some cryptic intrigue read on the edges of the narrative.
And the world building in AoT is much denser. Comparable to Twelve Kingdoms or El Hazard. There's so much more there there. It isn't just a handful of main characters grappling with their own inner demons.
As an epic story, it feels like Naruto minus the interminable filler. Not nearly as visually artistic as your picks, but richer as a setting and less reliant on a small set of lead characters that you need to empathize with.
Baccano a great show, I should rewatch....
some more:
Code Geass OP 1 (JIBUN WOOOOOO)
I have a soft spot for most of the Eureka 7 OPs, but that's probably just me.
Scrapped Princess OP Anything from Jam Project, TBH (Soul Taker, One Punch Man)
rewatched code geass recently and the existence of a second op in season 1 had completely slipped my mind. i had completely memoryholed it in favor of colors, which just blows op 2 out of the water
Removed the Armin "Thank You for becoming a mass murderer for our sake" and replaced it with Armin taking responsibility for creating Eren and not downplaying the severity of the situation which is far better imo and feels inline with his character.
Idk about AoT, I bailed after a person got eaten, but can't all anime be described as having an insufferable fan base? I literally don't talk about it IRL. If someone starts the conversation, maybe I'll join in, but only when it comes to mecha. Average people don't give you as much side eye if you're talking giant robots. I won't talk about all the other shows I watch bc they associate that with weirdos. It's true, I am a weirdo, but at least I know when to keep my mouth shut about it.
I hear a lot of people say AoT is fascist, but I've never seen it and only know the most basic details (medieval setting, giants attack fortress city, heroes fight them off). Can someone fill me in.
the guy who wrote it is fash
and it has a dogshit holocaust metaphor where the jews are actually monsters who kill 85% of life on the planet
i've also never read it though
true dat, WIT fight scenes were goated and MAPPA wasn't bad either
but
did they fix the utter plot armor given to the heroes during the final battle? Like they fought multiple powerful titan shifter clone thingies at once and yet none of them died.
!The plot armor in the final battle was, in Eren's words, intended by him. Everyone was supposed to live once he got power but he accidentally let Sasha and Hange die!<
I'm a big fan of worldbuilding and historical lore in shows, so I was pretty impressed with Attack on Titan, plus the characters all seem to have rational motivations, and it was fun to piece together everything on a re-watch.
I'm a bit confused about the claims that the author is fascist. I admit I haven't looked into in great depth, the biggest evidence I've seen is that the character Pixis is based off of Akiyama Yoshifuru, an imperialist general, and that the author has stated he admires him greatly. Granted, that's not a good look, but I'm not entirely sure about the context on this, for all I know, he might admire him the same way one might admire Genghis Khan, not based on any sort of moral compass, but rather on a "Wow, that's a lot of conquering."
But I digress, regardless of the author's views, just from watching the anime twice with at least a modest amount of literary analysis ability, I can't see how the show can be interpreted as anything other than anti-fascist. Eren Jaeger is not sympathetic at all once he goes genocidal. Marley is basically a stand in for Nazi Germany and is portrayed as barbaric and monstrous. Most of the atrocities committed by the Titan Holders is based in trauma and is the direct consequence of military indoctrination and nationalistic fervor. I must admit, Armin justifying the slaughter of thousands of civilians left a bad taste in my mouth, I do wish the show went further into exploring his traumatic change in character. As it stands, he's usually portrayed as the level-headed one, so people might think of him as morally justified. But all in all, it seems like the thesis of the show is that trauma begets trauma, and nationalistic attitude is the root cause of most of it.
I mean, please correct me, I definitely do not want to be militarist apologist, but I've heard this sentiment quite a lot on the internet, and I don't think it's been satisfactorily explained to me yet.
Armin justifying the slaughter of thousands of civilians left a bad taste in my mouth
When did Armin do this? From what I remember, he was always against violence. Even when he nuked the Navy, he was clearly distraught from that.
Eren Jaeger is not sympathetic at all once he goes genocidal
Assuming you're talking about Eren after the rumbling started. Because during the duration of season 4, he was genocidal(wanted to start the rumbling) yet had great character development and moments when I sympathized with him. I didn't agree with him but seeing him evolve into a villain because of his never ending trauma was genuinely great to watch.
