Having fallen behind the anime scene some years ago, I didn’t know quite what to expect when a friend lent me one of the most popular current series, Attack on Titan.
Despite a title that sounds like it belongs to a forgotten A.E. van Vogt military thriller, this series based on the hit manga takes place in a half-medieval, half-Edwardian parallel world. And instead of straight sci fi, Attack on Titan blends elements of every genre from dark fantasy to kaiju films to mecha. A couple episodes even go full gunslinging Western. Its plot and setting also lend themselves to any number of real-world allegories, one of the most germane to this blog being intergenerational conflict.
It’s almost impossible to say more without at least brushing up against spoilers, though I’ll try not to divulge too much, but be warned.
Perhaps the greatest strength of Attack on Titan is its dedicated attempt to avoid overreliance on predictable, repetitive anime clichés. The series draws on Western fiction tropes to get past these dead ends. AoT’s commitment to innovation also gives rise to its biggest weakness, since the plot usually fails to break through those dead ends.
The show’s setup can be explained in simple terms. Cannibal giants have driven humanity into hiding behind a system of colossal walls. One day, the hundred-year peace is shattered when a sudden titan assault breaches mankind’s only defense. A small band of war orphans vow to get revenge on the titans while protecting each other.
That sounds like a simple premise, but the fact that they got four seasons out of it should tell you all is not as it seems. A lesser series would have featured episodic plots wherein the military engage the kaiju of the week, only to fail but get bailed out by the superpowered hero. To be sure, AoT’s protagonist does get superpowers, and you can see the production team trying their hardest to resist taking the low-hanging fruit. But for all their skill, the solutions they come up with almost always turn out less satisfying than just letting the hero beat the bad guys.
At this point, we need to address AoT’s main character, Eren Jaeger. He ticks a lot of boxes on the shonen hero checklist. Specifically, he fits the “aggressive mediocrity with a chip on his shoulder but limitless resolve” archetype to a T. He gets a strong motive, complete with oft-repeated “I want” statement, right away. We soon start to root for him when he’s shown to have zero talent but graduates boot camp through sheer determination.
The Japanese penchant for elitism soon steps in to sort out the pecking order. Eren comes to resemble fan favorite Naruto character Rock Lee, whose similar combination of low status and iron will landed him in traction. The Western way to resolve Eren’s arc would be for his hard work and gumption to pay off. To bend Brand Zero discipline by way of illustration, think of pre-Ground Zero Peter Parker winning against impossible odds because “Must … do it for … Aunt … May!”
But anime and manga have a cultural allergy to dirt people showing up their betters, so AoT gives Eren superpowers.
To their credit, the show’s creators saw the aforementioned “Form Gundam ZZ to beat this week’s monster” problem looming ahead. But once again, they can’t quite come up with an interesting storytelling solution, so they put their thumbs on the scale to keep Eren from using his power to solve his problems.
I hate to get all Sandersonian, but Brandon’s First Law applies to AoT. One reason why the protagonist can’t use the show’s magic system to reliably solve problems is because the viewer doesn’t understand the system enough. Because a sufficient explanation of the system would spoil the overarching mystery box plot. (Which, to AoT’s further credit, they do eventually resolve in a satisfactory manner).
It wouldn’t be so bad if Eren just gave it his best shot and came up short most of the time. But since AoT was written by a member of Gen Y from a nation as overrun by herbivores as his secondary world is by cannibals, Eren has to take his repeated failures in the most beta way possible.
That’s right. Not only is Eren constantly thwarted, he is surrounded by strong independent women™ eclipsing his wire fu with their superior waif fu. The writers do get around to explaining how 90 pound girls can trounce men twice their size hand-to-hand, but it comes off as ad hoc and too little, too late. Worse, always needing bailouts from the Teen Girl Squad makes Eren look like even more of a loser.
Brief but pertinent aside: Some call Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion the most cringeworthy anime protagonist. This is false. Eren Jaeger is an order of magnitude more pathetic. Yes, Shinji is an introverted wimp who wastes time contemplating his navel when he should be saving mankind. But Eren is an extroverted wimp who somehow spends more time up his own ass than Shinji. If I had a nickel for every time AoT’s plot goes: *Something happens. Eren stands there whining Why ME!? until after the commercial break* you wouldn’t be reading this, because I’d have retired to a tropical island.
A deeper dive into both characters reveals:
- Shinji’s sense of self-worth is derived from his father’s approval. Eren’s worth is derived solely from his usefulness to women.
- Shinji is a competent cellist. Eren is explicitly said to have no talents.
- Most telling of all, Shinji racks up more combat victories, some unassisted, outshining his female teammates. Eren exists only to validate his female teammates.
The final analysis: Shinji = incel. Eren = beta.
Yet Eren’s betahood follows from the setting’s internal logic. Other commenters have seen AoT as a parable for everything from the Holocaust to Communism. But I’m taking a different angle more in line with the general cultural insights of this blog.
The plight of the humans dwelling within the walls is analogous to the dynamics at play among the last several generations of Western civilization.
Consider that AoT’s human population has spent a century in a walled garden isolated from the outside world. This situation echoes the formative experience of many in Gen Y, the Millennials, and Generation Z, who had sheltered childhoods overseen by helicopter parents. Note also that these people’s history has been stolen from them. No one knows what the titans are, where they came from, or how the walls were built.
I don’t have to tell you which real-life generation maps to the elders who destroyed mankind’s history and traditions in AoT.
As for the others, some lament their confinement but seek comfort in consuming alcohol and playing games. They crumble when faced with serious challenges. These overgrown children are Gen Y.
Still others revel in the memory hole, rejecting anything that came before as evil and potentially disruptive. The complacent and terminally uncurious wall-dwellers are Millennials.
Those like Eren who yearn for liberty they can’t even imagine but were denied the wisdom they need to break free are Zoomers.
Attack on Titan does have important wisdom to share, though. When you get down to it, the Zoomer squad keeps taking L’s for two main reasons:
- Failing Sun Tzu 101
- They don’t want victory as much as the enemy.
Point 2 stems from the series’ lack of anything more than superficial religiosity – a condition sadly shared with its country of origin. And all too many Western Zoomers. Retail nihilism can’t beat a foe who’s sure that not only is there a moral order, they stand atop it.
This review may have come off as negative, but there’s plenty to like about Attack on Titan. It’s one of only a couple current anime series whose aesthetic has managed to move past the post-Ground Zero descent into sterile computer animation. The battle scenes make for spectacular, well-choreographed set pieces. And irritating though many characters are, the writers nail their characterization in terms of differentiation and goals.
There’s also much to be said for a series that at least tries to muscle its way out of the faded pastel maze of tired anime tropes. And while AoT’s dark tone gets oppressive almost to the point of apathy toward its characters’ plight, it gives just enough glimmers of hope to warrant continued watching.
To be honest, if this were a universe where a Soul Cycle anime could get made, AoT’s creative team would rank high on my list to make it happen. As it is, I recommend you read it instead.
IIRC the author’s opinions on WWII is one of the main reasons the series is so controversial over here.
I’ve never managed to get into this one. Much like Madoka, I only needed the premise and the plot description of the first episode to know what it was like, and was proven correct. Though I heard the staff behind it did a great job with the adaption. I would absolutely recommend watching their adaption of Vinland Saga. They’re a great studio.
My main issue with most modern anime is how overly formulaic a lot of it is and how reliant they are on herbivore MCs and lines no one can cross. Series like No Guns Life and Hell’s Paradise become breaths of fresh air. Even Demon Slayer allowing the MC to outright kill enemies was shocking enough. There are so many things you’re simply not allowed to do anymore that came second nature back in the ’80s and ’90s. Fist of the North Star could never be made today, for instance.
Just look at their movies. From Venus Wars, Metropolis, Akira, Golgo13: The Professional, and Crusher Joe, to typical slice of life premises with the same tired anime tropes, it’s inarguably a step down from what once used to be made. The ambition is completely gone. It’s all insular now.
The west has this problem too, though. Hopefully something can come along soon to shake this all up.
The tragedy of Attack on Titan is that the creative team consciously ditched those tired formulas, only to find they didn’t know how to resolve a plot without them.
JD
Same here but it’s the manga. I read the French translation and I didn’t like it. I dislike the esthetics, the storylines and the dour, bummer attitude. So I wasn’t interested in the anime although I watched an episode and nope.
xavier
If you’re going with the anime, I don’t know if I can seriously recommend continuing beyond season 2. It’s not really the resolution of the central mystery in season 3. I do think that that stuff gets pretty dumb, but that’s more in how people react to things after the mystery is resolved and what you see in season 3 itself is perfectly fine. But the first half of season 3 gets bogged down in the dumbest political intrigue up to that point, while the second half of season 3 contains battles that are ridiculously implausible in their resolution that its impossible to take things seriously from that point onwards.
On the positive side of the equation, one plus about the anime is that it has one of the best soundtracks of the last decade or so. Part of why people get so inspired by the show even way past the point where it becomes clear that it is not meant to be inspiring is that the music always conveys an atmosphere of valiant deeds being performed against impossible odds.
I should note that I only say “if you’re going with the anime” because that has clear separations between seasons. If you’re interested in Attack on Titan at all, go with the anime.
SPOILERS:
The funny thing about this point in the series is that none of this had to happen if the outside world had left them alone.
The Rumbling: “Should’ve let us grill.”
Yeah, and the rationale for invading Paradis comes off as grasping at straws after the fact.
“The nations we already conquered have weapons tech on par with titans, so we need to invade the one place that’s repeatedly repelled us so we can get more titans.”
A couple officers even bring up the glaring flaw in this logic, and their objection is handwaved away with muttering about natural resources.
Really? These mofos control the rest of the globe. They can’t get iron and natural gas anywhere but Monster Island?
I found Eren to be far more likeable than Shinji. Eren may have whined, but he was a man of action and was always DOING things. Shinji spent the vast majority of NGE doing nothing.
I would strongly recommend reading the manga. The first season of the anime might be a good entry point, but the manga is just gorgeously drawn. Not even Berserk had this many amazing 2-page spreads. The manga is also very well paced. You can read the whole thing over a weekend. https://imgur.com/a/PLgeIII#GJsYmNm
I think the anime isn’t worth watching after season 2. The art and animation just pales in comparison, and the anime didn’t do the manga scenes justice.
Shinji is the prodigal son. He runs from his duty at first but finally comes back and wins.
Eren is a beta bitch. He charges headlong into hell because he doesn’t appreciate the risks. Then he loses and spends the end of that episode and the beginning of the next one berating himself for being useless.
At a glance, Shinji looks like the effete pansy, and Eren looks brave. But under the surface, Shinji has more masculine virtue. Eren isn’t brave. He’s rash and emotionally incontinent. Thus more effeminate.
Interesting. I knew very little about AOT other than the most basic surface level features, so this was genuinely an interesting review. I was especially surprised about Eren. That’s a topic that is somewhat interesting to me – I feel uncomfortably like I could have ended up like that, but for the grace of God. I feel pity for such men – I wish I could help them sometimes.
That was my takeaway on the character after watching the series. Eren is not to be loathed, but pitied.
I couldn’t even finish the first episode. I saw absolutely nothing that interested me. My admiration on the fortitude on keeping going. Thank you for the confirmation of my suspicions.
You are welcome. Thanks for reading.
What I really respect about Attack on Titan is that the author had a plan. He clearly wasn’t making it up as he went along, and simply by avoiding LOST Syndrome, this series deserves some credit. People who like lore and mystery-driven fantasy fiction will love it.
I found the middle section of AoT to get bogged down in boring political drama, but from the second half of Season 3 onward it’s been excellent. For a while I thought the philosophy of the series was boilerplate edgy nihilism, but by the comic’s endgame I realized that it’s actually about the futility of ethnic (and intergenerational) grudges, which only perpetuate bloodshed and sorrow.
This is a salient point in our time, but I suspect that flew over the head of the typical BLM-indoctrinated Zoomer. That the series sets up neither Eldia nor Marley as the “good guy” or “bad guy” in the last act lends AoT a refreshing degree of vicissitude lacking in most western pop media, where such depictions usually boil down to Nazi Stand-In vs. Globohomo Good People.
AoT gets full marks in my book for not breaking promises to the viewer, re: the mystery box plot. It’s also subtly based about politics.
Gundam has done gray and grey morality/the real villain is war since the 70s, though.
I remember that’s one of the things that annoyed me about Gundam Wing. Characters would make speeches about the meaning of war or the horror of war, but the show was written for an audience whose country hadn’t actually fought a war in forty years. The guy who wrote Gundam Wing was born in 1961, while his initial audience of teenage boys was born between 1975 and 1985.
Never cared much for the series but I still got some interesting insight, especially when you compare Eren to Shinji. Good post, maybe you find out why it resonates so much with people (I pretty much never got it).
AoT’s core audience are Millennials with no personal memory of pre-1997 anime. They have zero experience with stories that don’t default to boutique nihilism and can’t conceive of masculine protags.
One can tell a lot about a society by what types of protagonists are considered “cool” or acceptable.
As an example, one of the best from the 1980s is Chirico Cuvie from Armored Trooper VOTOMs. The premise of the series is one Ryousuke Takahashi conceived as what an eternal Vietnam War situation would be like to a protagonist that couldn’t seem to die even as those around him did. As a result, Chirico’s stoicism and attempts to find meaning clash against his lack of home (long since obliterated) and tunnel vision in the field of war.
Modern audiences in Japan see this as not cool. He has no vapid catchphrases. He isn’t an edgelord laughing pointlessly at the dark. He isn’t an anti-hero/asshole. He is a normal man trying to find his humanity in a universe that seems to be programmed towards death and destruction.
The difference is that VOTOMs is a series that realistically wants to find meaning in a universe that doesn’t seem to have one (which it, probably inadvertently, actually does, though explaining how involves heavy spoilers) and the main character doesn’t shirk or cry in the face of conflict. He goes out and makes change happen. (Which ends up tying into the theme, but again, I can’t really say more than that)
Eren is like every other modern anime MC that isn’t a Shinji clone. An asshole who gets his face pushed in repeatedly and has no plan except a one-track mind to do something vague that doesn’t extend two feet in front of his face. He isn’t Chirico because the audience would be terrified of having to connect with a character like that these days. Just give them the popcorn option that will be forgotten two seconds after the episode ends.
It’s exactly this that is shocking to me. I was born after Evangelion and yet this kind of protagonists isn’t dear to me, while I love Chirico. I guess it’s a result of different upbringing, being exposed to older media and personal character, I don’t know, but it feels weird for sure: I don’t understand why people my age like losers.
Because a lot of younger people have been influenced to become so narcissistic to believe that any character that isn’t a reflection of their own failings and fears born in this very specific frame of time is somehow “unrealistic”, which is dumb, and stupid, and wrong.
“Most telling of all, Shinji racks up more combat victories, some unassisted, outshining his female teammates.”
Interesting theory. Let’s go to the videotape:
Sachiel: Defeated by Shinji and Yui (arguably Shinji would’ve been killed without Yui). Anytime Eva-01 goes into “berserker” mode I give Shinji credit for getting into the Eva but it’s Yui who defeats the Angel.
Shamshel: Shinji. This is Shinji’s one unassisted victory.
Ramiel: Shinji but with crucial assist from Rei.
Gaghiel: Asuka and Shinji
Israfel: Asuka and Shinji
Sandalphon: Asuka and Shinji
Matarael: All three Children following Asuka’s plan
Sahaquiel: All three Children
Ireul: Ritsuko
Leliel: Shinji and Yui (berserker mode again).
Bardiel: Dummy plug: Rei/Yui. No berserker mode this time but the dummy plug is discarded Rei material which then syncs with Yui.
Zeruel: Shinji and Yui (berserker mode again).
Arael: Rei
Armisael: Rei and Shinji. Without Rei II’s self-sacrifice, everyone dies.
Tabris: Shinji. Shinji only defeats Tabris because Tabris allows himself to be killed after learning the truth about NERV.
So, Shinji does have one unassisted victory, but so does Rei, and so does Ritsuko (unless you count Ritsuko getting help from her mother). I’m not even sure how much help Shinji gives Rei against Armisael, but he does hurt the Angel, so I guess that counts as an assist.
Thank you for proving my point.
Shinji’s record surpasses Asuka’s to the point of giving her a nervous breakdown.
Eren can’t compare to either of them. He loses almost every time.
Shinji wins exactly one battle unassisted. Three of his wins on his own wouldn’t have happened without Yui.
And of course, Asuka does have an unassisted victory (two if you count the conventional UN forces as a discrete enemy) in _The End of Evangelion_. Her win against the Mass Production Evangelions is my favorite fight scene in the whole story. It’s not her fault that she didn’t know they were all equipped with dummy plugs.
Even by your own count Shinji has almost twice as many victories as anyone else in your list.
I’m ambivalent about AoT. At times it can be so frustratingly nihilistic, and then you have those rare epic moments of courage and self-sacrifice.
I’d recommend you take a look at Saihate no Paladin (Wayward Paladin). It’s amazing. Best depiction of a fantasy paladin I have ever seen animated.
A sound analysis, the comparison especially. It certainly explains well why Shinji is ultimately victorious (even if by a small margin) while Eren isn’t (and actively makes things worse for everyone).
If I might add people probably don’t like Shinji because he is a) a poor soldier (shirks his responsibilities as a pilot and doesn’t hide the fear in front of the enemy etc.), b) isn’t a maverick genius. Eren is just incompetent one, which is generally excusable.
(As a side-note I can’t really agree that Spider-Man is exactly a common man. The “with great power comes great responsibility” is an aristocratic ideal).
In a fight between Shinji in Eva 01 and Eren as the Attack Titan, I know who I’d put my money on.
But yes, I do grant that Eren is the superior soldier.
Regarding your point on anime and manga being allergic to dirt people showing up their betters, how does Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z reinforce or counter this?
I can see reinforcement in Goku being Saiyan (Though this becomes more of the case after Z comes around, when he’s revealed to be a Saiyan, which leads to a hindsight recontextualization for readers), yet I could see a counter where Goku’s being able to fight/beat several of his enemies comes only as a result of training, and even in certain pivotal fights like the one against Kid Buu, it required him to get aid from everyone else.
Trying to understand things more. This article has been an eye opener for me in regards to certain things I’ve seen/noticed in Manga/Anime/Light Novels of the more contemporary stripe and I doubt I could unsee those things.