Anime Thoughts: Attack on Titan
Oct. 28th, 2014 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerA while ago now, as Kodansha Comics was just getting really started selling manga over here, they began promoting a new title called "Attack on Titan," as I recall pushing it pretty hard so far as manga goes in this market. It was easy enough to pick up on the general storyline of "people trapped inside walls by monstrous giants start fighting back." However, it also happened that at that time they were attracting a lot of negative attention for "getting off to a cheap start," and in particular I remember seeing one picky fan proclaim he wouldn't buy the manga because he'd been offended by the bonus pages being left out of the back of a late volume of Negima. (He since seems to have vanished into that ether that claims anime and manga fans consumed by disdainfulness of the "localization industry.") I can't say that was the sole factor in my not buying that manga either, but stay away from it I did even as I recall happening to overhear a major "spoiler" about the cliffhanger ending of the first volume.
After a few more volumes, though, it began to register on me that Attack on Titan was still attracting attention and selling well. Even so, by that point "catching up" had begun to seem a significant obstacle what with all the other manga I had got bit by bit to the point of trying to keep up with. There was also the little detail that the most positive thing said about its art seemed to be "crude vigour" as opposed to just "crude" or maybe "well, you don't read it for the art..." Then, I managed to hear there was going to be an anime adaptation. When I heard Funimation had licensed it, though, I supposed I'd just have to wait for the release on video, what with the constant complaints of others about their streaming site and a memory or two, from before I'd started hearing those complaints, of having started to watch series they'd just licensed only for them to wind up so unpopular with everyone else I just dropped them partway through. Then, however, it was announced the series would also stream on Crunchyroll, another clear suggestion of just how big it was getting, and yet by that point I'd already overheard complaints about the animation going "off-model," so I decided to keep waiting on the hope scenes would be reanimated for the video release and that improved animation would also be released over here.
That was another long wait. The anime and the manga just kept getting bigger; now, I was hearing they were the modern equivalent of the "breakout hits" that used to be talked about a decade ago before fans just bunkered down, obsessing at times over how anime now just seemed to be pitched to that narrow slice of sure-thing purchasers on the other side of the Pacific. At a holiday sale, I did manage to get the first five volumes of the manga, but I put them at the bottom of a pile with the thought I'd wait and watch the anime first, as I usually do. At last, though, I managed to surprise myself by not waiting for both halves of the anime release to be vetted by other people before at last buying them on sale with a sufficient quantity of other stuff to get free shipping; by avoiding that, I'd got a box to hold the deluxe releases I'd previously planned not to get. As I started into the first half of the series, however, I was conscious it had become popular to the point where some people now felt free to dismiss it for a multitude of identified sins; there'd even been a case or two in recent years where I'd started watching some "popular" series (if not quite as popular) only to decide they didn't work for me where they had for many others.
I was impressed by it, anyway. If the anime had indeed looked "off-model" as often as I'd imagined, it seemed to have been quite reworked, and while I remembered complaints the series was rather free with "still frames," whatever money might have been saved there did seem to have gone into some pretty impressive-looking sequences. I also found myself realising I hadn't quite overheard everything about the setting and mechanics yet. Beforehand I'd wondered if the setting would be a "dark fantasy" to the point of the world within the walls (which encircled more space than I'd imagined) somehow being "all there'd been" and whatever lay beyond them only just being entered in the course of the series; I'd also wondered (aware of the title of the first chapter of the manga and the first episode of the anime) if there might be a discovery beyond them that they were the expiring effort of a technologically advanced civilization with a troubling resemblance to ours. Neither of those possibilities had come to pass by the end of the anime, but I suppose there might be surprises yet. (I also suppose that second speculation might have been inspired by "From the New World," or maybe by Planet of the Apes.) It even happened I'd managed to more or less forget that first "spoiler" until the end of the episode just preceding it.
It was possible that some of the interest I watched with, however, was simple speculation about what made the anime appeal to other people. The story was fine, of course, but the general worldbuilding details also got me thinking. What might have seemed "interestingly foreign" in Japan could seem "closer to home" over here; just about all of the characters have European if not Germanic names. (However, Mikasa Ackerman, the lead female protagonist and the "skills" person in between "smarts" and "sheer determination" characters, just happens to be descended from people from the Far East who managed to get inside the walls.) The army uniforms, with their short jackets with their big regimental patches and the elaborate leg strappings to go with their "manoeuvring gear" (I'd thought beforehand the big metal boxes slung off the thighs somehow had "rockets" in them, but it's more a matter of shooting grappling hooks and reeling cables in; there's a scene or two where some characters have awfully long conversations in transit between firing their grappling hooks, though) also looked interesting without seeming too outlandish. That a good number of "competent older" characters joined in along the way could also have made it a bit easier to accept for a few more people, too. I took notice of how the Titans could only be killed by hacking at the backs of their necks by wondering just how many other "big adversaries" in anime have had lone vulnerable points at least since Neon Genesis Evangelion, but some later developments connected to that did get me thinking that, just as I was convinced I'd overheard, there was something impressive to the story structure after all.
As I got into the series, a quick sight gag in the latest Halloween episode of The Simpsons where the Simpsons were supposed to be instantly recognisable as "anime characters" included, among the references to "big titles" Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Pokemon, and Spirited Away, Lisa wearing one of the Attack on Titan uniforms. As much as that made me a little more aware of a show I haven't watched and haven't dwelt on not watching for quite a while now, it also helped convince me I'd managed to get around to a rather large show later than a lot of people. In this case, however, at least I'm not regretting the whole chain of events. On finishing the anime (which had included some late developments that might even make things to come that much more interesting) I wondered if the manga was getting to the point where there was enough of it to begin adapting another anime series (along with the fresh concern it might wind up feeling stretched out so long as it was selling), and then I started reading it anyway. The art was indeed not that great to start with, and yet, along with thoughts that for once I wasn't thinking too much of character designs getting "the character smoothed out of them for animation," I did find myself thinking more of the black and white comics of the 1980s than of manga, even if I've mostly seen them in the context of excerpts to be gaped if not smirked at. It's easy enough to imagine people thinking "well, everyone else must have bought it for the story..."
After a few more volumes, though, it began to register on me that Attack on Titan was still attracting attention and selling well. Even so, by that point "catching up" had begun to seem a significant obstacle what with all the other manga I had got bit by bit to the point of trying to keep up with. There was also the little detail that the most positive thing said about its art seemed to be "crude vigour" as opposed to just "crude" or maybe "well, you don't read it for the art..." Then, I managed to hear there was going to be an anime adaptation. When I heard Funimation had licensed it, though, I supposed I'd just have to wait for the release on video, what with the constant complaints of others about their streaming site and a memory or two, from before I'd started hearing those complaints, of having started to watch series they'd just licensed only for them to wind up so unpopular with everyone else I just dropped them partway through. Then, however, it was announced the series would also stream on Crunchyroll, another clear suggestion of just how big it was getting, and yet by that point I'd already overheard complaints about the animation going "off-model," so I decided to keep waiting on the hope scenes would be reanimated for the video release and that improved animation would also be released over here.
That was another long wait. The anime and the manga just kept getting bigger; now, I was hearing they were the modern equivalent of the "breakout hits" that used to be talked about a decade ago before fans just bunkered down, obsessing at times over how anime now just seemed to be pitched to that narrow slice of sure-thing purchasers on the other side of the Pacific. At a holiday sale, I did manage to get the first five volumes of the manga, but I put them at the bottom of a pile with the thought I'd wait and watch the anime first, as I usually do. At last, though, I managed to surprise myself by not waiting for both halves of the anime release to be vetted by other people before at last buying them on sale with a sufficient quantity of other stuff to get free shipping; by avoiding that, I'd got a box to hold the deluxe releases I'd previously planned not to get. As I started into the first half of the series, however, I was conscious it had become popular to the point where some people now felt free to dismiss it for a multitude of identified sins; there'd even been a case or two in recent years where I'd started watching some "popular" series (if not quite as popular) only to decide they didn't work for me where they had for many others.
I was impressed by it, anyway. If the anime had indeed looked "off-model" as often as I'd imagined, it seemed to have been quite reworked, and while I remembered complaints the series was rather free with "still frames," whatever money might have been saved there did seem to have gone into some pretty impressive-looking sequences. I also found myself realising I hadn't quite overheard everything about the setting and mechanics yet. Beforehand I'd wondered if the setting would be a "dark fantasy" to the point of the world within the walls (which encircled more space than I'd imagined) somehow being "all there'd been" and whatever lay beyond them only just being entered in the course of the series; I'd also wondered (aware of the title of the first chapter of the manga and the first episode of the anime) if there might be a discovery beyond them that they were the expiring effort of a technologically advanced civilization with a troubling resemblance to ours. Neither of those possibilities had come to pass by the end of the anime, but I suppose there might be surprises yet. (I also suppose that second speculation might have been inspired by "From the New World," or maybe by Planet of the Apes.) It even happened I'd managed to more or less forget that first "spoiler" until the end of the episode just preceding it.
It was possible that some of the interest I watched with, however, was simple speculation about what made the anime appeal to other people. The story was fine, of course, but the general worldbuilding details also got me thinking. What might have seemed "interestingly foreign" in Japan could seem "closer to home" over here; just about all of the characters have European if not Germanic names. (However, Mikasa Ackerman, the lead female protagonist and the "skills" person in between "smarts" and "sheer determination" characters, just happens to be descended from people from the Far East who managed to get inside the walls.) The army uniforms, with their short jackets with their big regimental patches and the elaborate leg strappings to go with their "manoeuvring gear" (I'd thought beforehand the big metal boxes slung off the thighs somehow had "rockets" in them, but it's more a matter of shooting grappling hooks and reeling cables in; there's a scene or two where some characters have awfully long conversations in transit between firing their grappling hooks, though) also looked interesting without seeming too outlandish. That a good number of "competent older" characters joined in along the way could also have made it a bit easier to accept for a few more people, too. I took notice of how the Titans could only be killed by hacking at the backs of their necks by wondering just how many other "big adversaries" in anime have had lone vulnerable points at least since Neon Genesis Evangelion, but some later developments connected to that did get me thinking that, just as I was convinced I'd overheard, there was something impressive to the story structure after all.
As I got into the series, a quick sight gag in the latest Halloween episode of The Simpsons where the Simpsons were supposed to be instantly recognisable as "anime characters" included, among the references to "big titles" Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Pokemon, and Spirited Away, Lisa wearing one of the Attack on Titan uniforms. As much as that made me a little more aware of a show I haven't watched and haven't dwelt on not watching for quite a while now, it also helped convince me I'd managed to get around to a rather large show later than a lot of people. In this case, however, at least I'm not regretting the whole chain of events. On finishing the anime (which had included some late developments that might even make things to come that much more interesting) I wondered if the manga was getting to the point where there was enough of it to begin adapting another anime series (along with the fresh concern it might wind up feeling stretched out so long as it was selling), and then I started reading it anyway. The art was indeed not that great to start with, and yet, along with thoughts that for once I wasn't thinking too much of character designs getting "the character smoothed out of them for animation," I did find myself thinking more of the black and white comics of the 1980s than of manga, even if I've mostly seen them in the context of excerpts to be gaped if not smirked at. It's easy enough to imagine people thinking "well, everyone else must have bought it for the story..."