My thoughts on Attack on Titan and why I disliked it

Simplistic Schlock:

Great anime is illuminating. The kind of show which shines light into the dark recesses of humanity, revealing the greed, hatred, and hypocrisy that fester there. Bad anime is often just as revealing: its existence and reception serve as a mirror reflecting the hearts of its intended audience. Attack on Titan is a classic example of the latter, in the flickering light of its bloody propagandistic glow, the downward spiral of modern anime stands revealed for what it really is: childish, self-absorbed, & morally unsophisticated dribble ready to be fleeced by the first flock of fans who come along and praise it for more than it’s worth.

“Attack on Titan” is typical battle action fare: a big budget spectacle, bereft of style, filled to the brim with heavy-handed moralizing and peopled with facile "characters" who exist only as cardboard cutouts for the ensuing morality play. Even the stories underlying subtext is the old - Us GOOOOOD, They BAAAAD.

The plot of Attack on Titan season 3 revolves around a simple moral question: is saving one life worth potentially sacrificing the lives of many? This fourth grade ethical dilemma is played out for nearly the entire show over the background of the brocage of normandy in the hours immediately after a Titan's rock landings, and is handled with battle anime’s usual wandering attention, ham-fisted lack of subtlety and babbling pop psychology. There's never any doubt how the question will ultimately be answered (hint: with one or more characters meeting a tombstone - because, obviously, those kinds of scenes weren’t manipulative enough when they were used in all previous seasons).

The anime opens with setup for the unremitting carnage as Titans assault the leads. The opening scene has been hailed for its intense savagery, but it is in truth one of the more cynically manipulative sequences in recent memory, full of irritating, disorienting jump cuts, pornographically gibsonesque attention to gory detail, camera tricks and special effects artifices, all accompanied by a deafening soundtrack designed to overwhelm our capacity to think about what is being portrayed on the screen and to push us to simply immerse ourselves in its reductive US vs. Them POV. Having bulldozed and buried any hint of the moral ambiguity of the Titans.

At this point, Attack on Titan becomes just another motley-crew-of-experts show. A team of caricatures is assembled: the tough-as-nails seargent; the feisty lead; the pious sniper girl; the sensitive boy - all led by Captain Everyman. Call them the Sanitized five. Battles ensue. Some of the caricatures die. The Titans never miss an opportunity to remind us how EVIL they are. But in the end it was all worth it. Cue the graveside maundering. AOT! AOT! AOT!

The problem with Attack on Titan is the problem with battle action anime. More broadly, it is the problem of the modern commercial anime. Lacking the courage of any real conviction, it cannot offer any challenge to its audience. Instead, it panders to that audience with easy answers, impressive effects, a soundtrack that booms and tinkles in all the right places and a nice mom's apple pie pat on the back for every fan. What's missing is even the faintest glimmer of awareness that the world doesn't break down neatly into heroes and villains, cowards and the courageous, us and them.

Overall: In the place of subtlety, it gives us spectacle, in the place of art, it delivers technically proficient gore.

Story - 3/10 Art - 8/10 Sound - 8/10 Character - 3/10 Enjoyment - 2/10 Overall- 4/10

Submitted September 11, 2019 at 04:29AM by odikurdi https://ift.tt/32z1xBN