ATTACK ON TITAN: MORE THAN AN ANIME.

 

Photocredit: Pinterest.

Hey, Movie Lover!

It's been a while in this genre. Mara's Classic Movie Collection (which I began with the year) has suffered minimum published reviews and heaps of uncredited movies. These days, I just rant about my latest watched(s) on my status updates. So far, the movie industry has been thriving and enjoying good reviews, and frankly, I've been more thrilled than disappointed by 2025's catalogue of culture shifting releases.

Photocredit: Game Rant.

It's not too late to make an epic comeback with an epic series that is too golden to be simply ranted on. It isn't relatively new but hey, classics are always new.

On that note, I give you...

ATTACK ON TITAN

(前進する巨人)

This is an anime written and illustrated by Hajime Isayama. What started as a silent manga with blade wielding comic characters soon became a voiced, dubbed and subbed anime. The real name sans interpretation is Shingeki No Kyojin which means literally, The Advancing Giant.

The genre is action, dark fantasy and post apocalyptic. It was originally run on the Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine from September 2009 to April 2021. After major success, it was made into a TV series and ran for 10 years, from 2013 to 2023. It's so good it has novel versions, manga spin-offs, video games and multiple awards. It also has a live remake.

The anime had fans buzzing and placed it with the likes of One Piece and the infamous Kimetsu No Yaiba - Demon Slayer, having over two million copies sold. It was also in the New York Times Manga Bestseller List for 81 weeks! It would have come to a predetermined end sooner, but Isiyama wanted to give fans little heartbreak at the end of the series, so some storylines were altered to prevent a tragic uproar. Just saying, if all the characters had ended up dead, I would not take it quietly.

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The dystopian world in which it is set is slowly unravelled along the course of the series. Picture a country named Paradis encircled by large protective walls. The walls are a symbol of Japan's isolated and enclosed culture. The time setting is the 800s. The technology unique to the time are also interesting and show mechanical ingenuity. I'm talking omnidirectional maneuvering gears that work with gas propulsion and retractable grappling hooks. The gear helps the soldiers reach heights twenty times their sizes and aim for their foes' weak spots too; the nape. It's not easy to use, but it's lovely to know that with some training, everyone can be Spiderman.

The enemies, titans, have an intriguing mystery, but not much is revealed in season 1 which is the focus of this review. We do know that the Colossal, Armour, Female and Attack Titans are unique from the other mindless titans, and that they are controlled by shape shifting humans. There's more...

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Set in the land of Paradis in some dystopian past, three walls are towering, one within another within another. These circular walls confine the lives and dreams of the Eldian race. It also protects them from titans, large humanoid creatures with an unquenchable thirst for flesh and blood.

For hundreds of years, the Eldians have thrived in peace, thwarting the titans without firing a single cannon. All that changes when a colossal titan, towering 45 meters above the regular titan, breaks through the wall of Shinganshina district and breaches the gap between life and death.

Picture Credit: Sound Cloud
"They are the preys and we are the hunters!"

There were many many young boys living in this trapped freedom, but our eyes are drawn to Eren. Unlike his peers, he is not enamoured by the simple life within the walls. He craves for freedom, for the untold and forbidden beauties outside the walls, and meets an unforgiving wish grant. His mother dies. His house is destroyed. His home is desolated and all survivors flee to the second wall, Rose. Wall Maria has fallen. The titans are conquering. What is the fate of humanity?

Find out in this hair-grabbing anime.

MY TWO CENTS 💰

Loved it.

Attack on Titan is probably my debut into the anime fandom. Before then, it was childhood endearing Old Generation animes with the likes of Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh! This was a glimmer of light, a hint of an endangered yet proud community of animé-ted manga lovers. It was obsessive. It was tense. It was unpredictably shocking. There were so many questions after season one, and so much hopes of more gruelling truths and mysteries.

There were also some beautiful life lessons which I want to focus on in this review. It may be a bit philosophical, but truly, you learn to appreciate life more when you see it through the eyes of endangered men. The titans weren't just mindless monsters. They were symbols of destruction, death and everything in-between and lacking in the ordinary life. The walls are the defences we build to protect ourselves from them. The soldiers pose the question, why be defensive when you can be offensive? Why hide from your fears when you can face them, erase them? Why be normal when you can be free?

There are many reasons people watch movies. Some for entertainment. Others due to curiosity over internet hype. I watched AOT because the cover illustration on the DVD was catchy, promising. It turned out to be more than the entertainment I expected. I left with a few life lessons summed up in original quotes from the animation.

 

1. If you win, you live. If you lose, you die. If you don't fight, you can't win.

- Eren.

Eren is not the only character with a dark past. Mikasa too has her scars.

Born to a happy and peaceful family, Mikasa Ackerman watches her world bleed on a lovely day. She is kidnapped by a notorious kingpin and arranged to be sold for a high price due to her oriental descent. Fortunately, Dr Jaeger, Eren's father was to meet with the Ackermans that day, and Eren was fated to tag along. Right from childhood, Eren was never one to let justice take its due process. He takes the blade into his own hands and singlehandedly assaults two of the kidnappers. Operation save Mikasa is nearly a success, until...

Photo Credit: Reddit.
Craziest scene happened here!

Danger is the mother of courage, but Mikasa is just a little girl holding a knife and watching her saviour get strangled. "She lacks the nerves..." but Eren's strangled words change everything and unleash the fearless warrior in her.

Fight. Fight. If you win, you live. If you lose, you die. If you don't fight, you can't win.

Looking past the impaled villains and the rude shock of two killer kids, there's a gem in Eren's words. If you take it and hold it against the light of contemporary society, you'll find that there's still so much to fight for in our non-fictional world. Not titans, not villains, but the everyday obstacles that keep us from our dreams. Fear is the titan. Doubt is the villain. Our courage is the sword that deals the blow. Although our fingers may grip it tentatively, we nonetheless have two options. Watch it kill our dreams, our hopes, what we live for... Or fight. To some, the battle for dreams may be perilous, difficult, full of sacrifices, but the fact remains, "You can't win if you don't fight."

It's a beautiful cruel world, where dreams are fleeting and happiness is a choice. The only way to live in it is to fight for it.

Photo Credit: Amino World.
It's a beautiful world, Mikasa.

 2.  Those who can't abandon anything can't change anything.

 - Armin.

In the battle of humans against titans, certain soldiers are changed to lead the defense divisions - the Garrisons, the Survey Corps (or Scouts which sounds catchier) and the Military Police. The success of each division in their missions rests on these men, these leaders, and on the trust their subordinates place in them.

The Survey Corps has it the hardest in the series because most of their missions occur beyond the walls, in Titan land. They are also out to put an end to titanic oppression, not just to quell it. The stakes are high everytime the gates usher them to their deaths, and the survival rate is uncertain. Victory always hangs from a thread, but the fight must go on.

With these circumstances, who better to lead the Scouts than the notoriously ambitious Commander Erwin Smith? He owns the trust of his men. He leads the soldiers in every charge. He's a leader in every way, even in the dark stuff of leadership they don't teach in the textbooks; the ability to risk it all.

Photo Credit: blogcrisbruch.com
Commander Erwin Smith.

It's hard, almost cruel to imagine a man throw away the lives of brave soldiers at a single command. In warfare, there is a battle front, and the men that decide who stands there are really monsters. Why, you'd wonder if you haven't already fallen to hate them. Armin sees it, and his truth is very bitter.

Those who can't abandon anything can't change anything.

This is not the sweetest motivation, but real motivation has never been the feel-good starry quotes we see on the net these days. The road to success has never changed. It is hard. It is stony. It is cruel. It takes sacrifice. It's in the line of the saying, nothing goes for nothing. Huge goals, big dreams, they come at a cost, and as the leader of your life's mission, you have to be willing to let some things (and people) go. We can find this in motivational reads that say, let that addiction go, get rid of the comfort zone, lose the deadweight bad friends. The bigger the sacrifice, the greater the reward. Also, it's not success if it was given on a silk cushion. Come to think of it, old money has no value. It's hard to appreciate the things we never worked for, but when it comes to our blood and sweat, we care. We weigh the sacrifices. We count the losses. We own the victory.

 3. This is just my pet theory, but I think pain and discipline go hand in hand.

 - Levi Ackerman

Ackerman has to be synonymous to dangerously cool because what is all this action and charisma packed in a single character?! Well, the strongest characters always have the fiercest titan kills, and the darkest pasts. That explains why Levi never smiles, maybe. He's still handsome though.

Photo Credit: Pinterest.
Ahhh.

Enough fawning over Levi who is the single most vicious brave charming wickedly attractive Scout! Fast forward from our first shoot of him being openly admired by the junior soldiers while about to embark on an expedition with the Survey Regiment, to his major scene in the Emergency Trial (episode 14) where he saved Eren from the Military Police by brutalizing him. Literally. If there's something to admire from this violent scene (besides Mikasa's agressive attempt to protect Eren), it's Levi's own words after dealing Eren a devastating blow. His voice, quiet and nonplussed, still hold the weight of a remarkable quote.

This is just my pet theory, but I think pain and discipline go hand in hand.

Skip the part where he beats up our protagonist and rewind to his expedition outside the walls earlier that day. His strategy and calm mean that he's been in the soldier business for a long time at least. His passionate vow to a dying soldier show his frank and unstoppable determination to avenge the deaths of all his men by completing the mission they laid their lives for. Levi is a soldier with rank, but he didn't just rise to the spotlight. He bled for it. He stared death and failure many times in the face but kept fighting. That's what makes a legend. You have to keep going even if you fear failure. You never lose sight of your purpose for fighting. You risk it all. It won't be easy, but trust me, it's way easier than attacking a titan.

Photo Credit: Ebay.
This your calling? Sign up, soldier.

So to those going through the pain of discipline, waking up early every day, eating less than desired, burning midnight candles and dreaming big, discipline takes pain... And pain brings gain.

 4. To raise above monsters, we have to abandon our humanity... become fire with fire.

 - Armin.

This is a very controversial statement, and it's very easy to misunderstand. On surface value, it says repay violence with violence. How you're probably thinking it is not what I believe the true message is. A deeper look at it and you'll actually see that it's a rephrase of all the quotes we've seen so far.

The titans, the enemy, don't care about their losses. They are relentless and go for their desires regardless the obstacles. It was what kept them clawing the walls for a hundred years. To defeat them, it was necessary for humanity to match their energy and fight fire with fire.

To raise above monsters, we have to abandon our humanity.

Humanity in this context means weakness, complacency, moral laxity. Before the titans attacked, humanity was so comfortable with life that they never imagined a life outside their safety. Unlike Eren and the Scouts, they weren't ready to dream big, higher than the walls of home and wilder than an attacking titan. It was enough that the danger was away for some time. It was enough that fear would take a while to reach them. When they eventually had no option but to fight, they had to let go of their past stagnation and be as relentless, even more, than their enemies.

This could be you. Unsure of tomorrow but unconcerned. Aware of your aspirations but unwilling to act on them. Your dreams are daring, your aspirations are bold! The dangers and challenges that come with them are fearsome, but will you be frightened by fear or frighten your fear? Will you let your dream slip past your consciousness or will you make a grab for it? Will you be fire, or not?

 5. Tatakae!

 - Eren.

No episode is as piercing as episode 13 where humanity register its first victory against their invincible foes and reclaim their homeland. It was a battle as good as lost seconds after it began, but the beautiful truth of life is that love and life are unconquerable. Your dreams are immortal. Their realisation are a decision away. Should I take the first step? Should I face the pain? Should I dare to try? Should I watch Attack On Titan?

Photo Credit: Chen's Corner.

Thank you so much for reading this review. This is my take on the AOT season 1 which I absolutely loved, and have loved for a long time. Good series just have a way with words and life lessons, and sometimes cartoons are deeper than they seem (forgive me, animé community). The original quotes from the anime by Isiyama are worth memorizing, if not anything else. Even if you didn't enjoy this anime, never forget Eren's lesson to all of us.

Tatakae! Fight!