Genuine discussion on this. What is the verdict? Was AOT actually just peak and high level and people just didn't like the conclusion/theme? People say that Isayama had no idea what he was doing but there seems to be a bucket load of evidence that he actually had an idea of plan of where the story was heading. But I DID read an argument that admittedly convinced me that he was just following trends and started following game of thrones but switched to marvel. But sometimes "arguments" can seem "reasonable" because they're setting up the facts and perspective for you to view things in such a way, and not because they're actually considering all the facts and context.
So I'm wondering...what's the real deal? Because I'm trying to justify this anime being worth watching fully through due to how shit TV is. Attack on Titan peak genius thought out storytelling? Or moronic Shonen marvel Isayama had no idea what he was doing slop?
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AOT seasons 1 to 3 were highly enjoyable to me. Season 4 (post-reveal of Eren's basement) was enjoyable but less so.
My theory on AOT is that the shows primary enjoyment hinges on the successful staging and pacing of the basement mystery, everything hinges on keeping the audience highly interested in figuring out what the frick is going on. But there are costs to stretching out the mystery for so many seasons - people will invent ideas that suit their own tastes, and inevitably rhe real reveal won't be as exciting and interesting as compared to most of those ideas, so the show inevitably must undercut itself.
>real reveal won't be as exciting and interesting as compared to most of those ideas, so the show inevitably must undercut itself.
what ideas or theories did people have that were superior to the real reveals?
I don't have an exhaustive list. And inherently the problem is subjective, since people fill in the ideas that excite them the most. For me personally, I would have found the direction more interesting if humanity really was mostly wiped out beyond the walls, rather than a sprawling technologically sophisticated world.
It's like if I spend 6 months hyping a gift for you but ultimately have low odds of tailoring a gift for your personal tastes, the gift reveal is likely to be lackluster in comparison to your own personal imagination.
Another way to put this is that, prior to the reveal, AOT had infinite directionally to bend into whichever genre seemed possible due to the mystery, which made it possible to intrigue and please a maximal audience.
Revealing the mystery collapses that range of possibility into a single direction (world war), reducing the maximally pleasable audience. But it must be done, because stringing out the mystery forever loses audiences too.
>If you can rationalize eren crying about mikasa getting with another man despite the fact that he's spent literally the entire series sisterzoning her
That just seems like believable nip male behavior, it's the country whose 20 somethings won't frick after all
>That just seems like believable nip male behavior, it's the country whose 20 somethings won't frick after all
Eren isn't a Japanese herbivore male, you're as dumb as a bag of bricks if you think that it's good characterisation for someone who at this point is a mass-murderer willing to kill his friends to free his people was actually a beta schoolboy inside the entire time. It's nonsensical.
>Eren isn't a Japanese herbivore male
No, but the core audience for Eren is.
You're just talking out of your arse.
>That just seems like believable nip male behavior, it's the country whose 20 somethings won't frick after all
yeah, because they live in a neo-feudalism society where you're busy slaving for your boomer corporate overlords all day and dont have the time/money/upwards momentum in society/land to actually raise a family
anyway none of that has anything to do with the character "eren yeager", who is explicitly not asian because mikasa is the only asian in the whole setting and that's why she's really strong and cool. instead of a herbivore japanese male eren spends most of the series as a half-moronic berserker that doesn't let anything get in the way of what he desires and the entire final act of the series is about how he's in the middle of genociding most of the human race - but actually he just wanted to kiss the girl that's been licking the ground he walks on for fricking decades now. its insane and the fact that you need to resort to such obviously stupid bullshit excuses like this means you're admitting that this series and the man that wrote it is insane
>its insane and the fact that you need to resort to such obviously stupid bullshit excuses like this means you're admitting that this series and the man that wrote it is insane
Ftr, I think it's stupid too, it just doesn't surprise me given the target audience. Nips do immensely impressive things in terms of business and assertiveness but measurablynfail on the whole romancing thing as a trend.
I engaged in no speculation online and did not seek out meta or spoilers, at least until after the reveal.
that's the opinion of someone who has no life and spends all day thinking about anime. just watch the episodes when they come out and go do something else with your life instead of overanalyzing and obsessing over analysing shows. it's that simple:
Don't engage with the fandom
Don't read spoilers
Don't read the comic books
Watch in your native language (English dub only).
It made my experience seem 10 times more enjoyable than all of the other miserable c**ts online.
embarassing bait
He just went out of his way to have a happy ending in ending where 3/4th of the world gets destroyed. There's no realistic way for remaining characters to have such an ending where Marleyans (who now have even more reason to hate Eldians since pretty much all their horrors got confirmed) or Eldians (remaining main characters are all race traitors who realistically should be shot on sight by Yeagerists, the only explanation is that Historia prevents that, but again, the political background isn't established, why would Yeagerists listen to essentially symbolic figure head whose government they overthrew?) wouldn't just kill the Avengers that stopped Eren, so it feels unearned and almost like Isayama actively justifies Eren being a mass murderer. It's not even a morality issue, it just contradicts the world he himself created.
>so it feels unearned and almost like Isayama actively justifies Eren being a mass murderer. It's not even a morality issue, it just contradicts the world he himself created.
yeah, fair. that seems like a genuine plot contrivance assuming there isn't any missing context. but other than that, is anything actually wrong with the rest of the shit? is there anything that ACTUALLY indicates Isayama didn't think about his story, beyond making analogs to marvel or game of thrones?
Personally, not really. I just don't get only one thing, it's ridiculous to assume that not one Warrior or Titan holder in general never held multiple titan powers. So, let's assume a Warrior has multiple powers, there's no way Marleyans wouldn't feed that Warrior to an inheritor right, which means the inheritor will once again inherit all the powers the holder kept and risk of losing the power to some random born Eldian is too high they obviously wouldn't take it. It makes me wonder if he ever thought about that issue even.
There were some shifting lore points here and there (like how Eren couldn't have turned into attack titan after getting eaten by a titan in first season or how Bert should've nuked Eren after he became a survey scout) by keeping establishing new rules that contradict each other retroactively, but they aren't very distracting, I can turn a blind eye to those personally because I am genuinely not a nitpicky person.
>I just don't get only one thing, it's ridiculous to assume that not one Warrior or Titan holder in general never held multiple titan powers. So, let's assume a Warrior has multiple powers, there's no way Marleyans wouldn't feed that Warrior to an inheritor right, which means the inheritor will once again inherit all the powers the holder kept and risk of losing the power to some random born Eldian is too high they obviously wouldn't take it. It makes me wonder if he ever thought about that issue even.
I also noticed this. Titans have been around for hundreds (thousands?) of years but there's never been any that merged? Despite constantly being at war with each other? If so how do they de-merge?
>People say that Isayama had no idea what he was doing but there seems to be a bucket load of evidence that he actually had an idea of plan of where the story was heading
I don't doubt that he had planned out well in advance how the titan mechanics works, the paths/coordinate thing, even the Marleyan thing. But I think that the kind of storytelling starting in season 4 was out of his depth. AoT is at it's peak when there is just the factionalism inside the walls, there is mystery about the titans and the walls, there are clear objectives like retaking Wall Maria and finding the basement, spies/invaders that are fricking up their progress. By season 4 most of that is resolved, and instead becomes an anti-war drama showing that "both sides are victims" and basically everything is super complicated and nuanced and blah blah blah. Which I don't think that specific concept is bad storytelling per se, I just don't think Isayama was good at it. Probably would have been kino if the titans WERE actually demonic beings from the forest that wanted to destroy humanity.
>If so how do they de-merge?
I think it's explained that if one of the nine titans dies without being eaten, it will just respawn into a new Eldian. So if there were an Armored+Jaw merged titan that dies, two random Eldians would inherit each titan (at birth).
>Which I don't think that specific concept is bad storytelling per se, I just don't think Isayama was good at it.
Fair, yeah. So execution was the problem. Sad that I've seen this so many times with Japanese people. Silent Hill 2 actually has a really honest and deep story about two people, who loved each other, and simultaneously couldn't stand each other because of a debilitating illness, but other than the literal final words of the game. Everything is just such utter garbage execution, that the rare time I see a relationship get depicted honestly without feeling cringe or preachy, it's just lost to the fact that morons want to wank about how "subtle" the game where James literally awkwardly says to Pyramid Head "I wanted you to punish me for my sins".
The whole "subtlety" meme killed the game, because it allows one to excuse and justify so much stupid shit it pulls.
>I think it's explained that if one of the nine titans dies without being eaten, it will just respawn into a new Eldian. So if there were an Armored+Jaw merged titan that dies, two random Eldians would inherit each titan (at birth).
It works only if there were no prior Warriors who had multiple titan powers. Think about it rationally, imagine one Warrior ate another, as a Marleyan what do you do, do you keep feeding that Warrior to new inheritor or you let him die just in hopes that one of your most valuable assets just happens to not be reborn elsewhere. And lottery would include Paradis.
Nta, but it's likely the Marleyans never ran into it because the did everything in their power to prevent it, because it's better tactically for them to have 2 separate titans than 1 combo titan. If it happened, it'd be a big frick up in their eyes.
>Cinemaphile - television and film
I don't think there's any doubt after watching the big interviews Isayama did after finishing AoT is that his writing style was entirely style over substance, and that the series ultimately fell apart because he was a cargo-cultist taking things from "serious" series and using them without really understanding how and why they work. He has big set-ups that pay off later because he thinks that's good writing. He kills off established characters because the other shows of the 2010s like Walking Dead and GoT were doing it, and that seemed like a serious plot point to him. He even said that he wanted to focus on big themes like war and genocide because it's something that "good" fiction does, not because he actually had a point to make. Even Naruto has a "point," but AoT is utterly hollow at is core. I love the series, but it was essentially a happy accident that Isayama was able to pull it off for as long as he did, because it's all ultimately about as deep as a puddle.
fellas, how fair a take is this?
>Even Naruto has a "point," but AoT is utterly hollow at is core. I love the series, but it was essentially a happy accident that Isayama was able to pull it off for as long as he did, because it's all ultimately about as deep as a puddle.
As ridiculous as implying Naruto having a point means anything, not that I disagree, but I'd argue anyway that AOT was always a series more about the characters and narrative than themes. Just like not every story actually needs a plot and can be an episodic series of little "adventures" (generally trash in my opinion, but there's one show I know that does it well). So too, can stories have little themes beyond set dressing, or contextual backdrop.
Some stories are character focused. Some are plot focused, Some are thematically focused. And some are all 3. I consider these personally the 3 cores of any story, and you only need to focus on one really well, to be good.
If you can rationalize eren crying about mikasa getting with another man despite the fact that he's spent literally the entire series sisterzoning her without even a single moment of mask slippage that showed he actually was interested in her all along then I will accept that isayama is a genius and planned it all out
Isayama knew what he was doing as AoT was on its way to become the GOAT show. But israelites threatened him after seeing where the show is going and being a little dicked cuck that he is, he gave in and fricked up everything in last 2 seasons. Instead of cementing his name in history as the GOAT, he will now forever be known as a cuck.
Isayama is kind of a bad writer. The dialogue of his characters are stilted and quite autistic in many areas, and above all, he frequently and obsessively reads reviews of his work, and integrate media into his work.
Now there is nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from other works, pretty much everyone does this, but he seems to grow obsessed with other medium and tries to integrate it within his work as a priority.
He also reads too many reviews and distrusts himself. He should put more faith in his decisions and forget about appealing to the masses by reading reviews.
Isayama has incredibly low self-esteem, and it becomes apparent in his interviews. He was probably bullied a lot as a kid, which reflects the themes of his medium. The rumbling is basically one big mass shooting. Isayama clearly wanted revenge against the world in his youth. Eren is Isayama, or atleast who Isayama wants to be. The main theme of Snk is outlined in chapter 137, which is a quite simple "enjoy the good shit and chill the frick out, in spite of the bad. Your fantasies of destroying the world and getting revenge are only going to ruin you and everyone around you in the end"
>Now there is nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from other works, pretty much everyone does this, but he seems to grow obsessed with other medium and tries to integrate it within his work as a priority.
Where is the actual evidence of this? Not that it matters since every artist takes from others, but people bring this to attention more specifically with Isayama
he specifically said somewhere that the ending would be like the guardians of galaxy, and talks about other tv shows and movies a lot. It's the marvel inspirations in the last couple chapters that feel moe glaring. He also does base characters off of tv shows. Gabi was inspired by Arya, Falco is inspired by Jesse Pinkman
>Falco is inspired by Jesse Pinkman
lmao
okay yeah, probably not worth watching all this shit sigh
(cont)
Here it is
https://comicbook.com/anime/news/attack-on-titan-anime-guardians-of-the-galaxy-marvel/
He is the kind of writer to not only draw inspiration off of other work, but to basically see the direciton of his own story from the perspective of other movies and shows.
>Start was strong
>Corps beginning was alright
>Female titan to Erens kidnap was brilliant
>The coup was fricking awful and the worst part of the series for me
>Fight vs the beast titan was great with a terrible end
>Eren going nuclear to the start of the rumbling was brilliant
>Rumbling itself and the end was complete nonsense
Would say it’s a 6.5/10 overall
Only long time manga readers were butthurt over the ending btw. Anime only chads weren’t so assblasted. The pseudo time travel stuff was worse than the ending
nah. don't watch
>Genuine discussion on this.
go to Cinemaphile and commit suicide BRUTALLY.