For over a decade, Attack on Titan wasn’t just an anime it was a cultural monolith. It promised a gritty, high-stakes mystery that would redefine the medium.
But now that the dust has settled and the rumbling has ceased, we have to be honest with ourselves. It was a bit dull and up it’s own arse. That’s our own, independent, initial reaction and it’s stayed with us for a long time.
Here’s why the series struggled to stick the landing. And why we’re (perhaps foolishly) about to hit play all over again.
Attack on Titan
The biggest hurdle Attack on Titan faced was its own ego.
Somewhere between the visceral horror of Season 1 and the political maneuvering of the final arcs. The show stopped being a survival thriller and started trying to be a philosophical treatise on the human condition.
While ambition is great, the show often felt like it was shouting its themes at the audience.
It took itself so incredibly seriously that any sense of levity or organic character growth was crushed under the weight of its own bullshit.
When every conversation is a life-or-death manifesto, the emotional stakes actually start to feel lower because there’s no contrast.
Sluggish Pacing
We all remember the attack on Titan highlights. The reveals, the betrayals, the ODM gear animation. But what we often forget is the interminable slog required to get there.
Dialogue Deadlocks: Characters would spend three episodes standing on a wall or in a forest, debating morality while the plot remained frozen in amber.
The Info-Dump Problem: The series relied heavily on flashback-heavy exposition. Instead of showing us the world evolving, we were frequently treated to chalkboard-style explanations of Eldian history that felt more like a history lecture than a narrative.
Attack on Titan gives itself plenty of time to tell its story. That’s great, but there’s such thing as too much.
Interesting Ideas, Miles Apart
Attack on Titan had brilliant flashes of genius. The concept of the “basement,” the moral ambiguity of the Marley arc, and the subversion of the “chosen one” trope were all fascinating.
However, these beats were separated by vast oceans of filler-adjacent brooding.
By the time we reached the “Final Season: The Final Chapters: Special 2,” the momentum had been fractured so many times that the payoff felt more like a relief that it was over rather than a satisfying conclusion.
We’ve never had a series feel so easy to drop-off from as Attack on Titan, and that includes all the filler in Naruto and Bleach!
The “Ani-May” Redemption Arc
Despite our grievances, there is a nagging feeling in the back of our minds. Did we miss something?
Did the fragmented, year-long waits between Part 2 and Part 3 of the final seasons ruin our perception of the flow?
Crunchyroll is currently running a massive Ani-May deal, making the barrier to entry lower than ever. Because we believe in the Dying Art of giving creators a fair shake, we’ve decided to do the unthinkable.
We are going back to Shiganshina.
We’re going to binge the entire series, start to finish, without the years of hype and hiatuses to cloud our judgment.
Maybe, when viewed as a singular, cohesive work, the sluggish dialogue will feel like “slow-burn tension” and the self-seriousness will feel like thematic consistency.
We’re prepared to be wrong. We’re prepared to realise that Eren Yeager’s journey was a masterpiece all along.
Or, we’ll just confirm what we already suspect: that it’s a lot of screaming about nothing.
Attack on Titan must be revered for good reason, right? That nagging feeling of being wrong hasn’t gone anywhere, so it’s time to see.
