Series Title: Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan)

Season: 1

Season Duration: 4/6/13 – 9/28/13

Director: Tetsuro Araki

Written By: Yasuko Kobayashi

Stars: Yuki Kaji, Yui Ishikawa, Marina Inoue

There are a number of fears that most of humanity experiences as a whole: Claustrophobia (fear of captivity), Thanatophobia (fear of dying), Acrophobia (fear of heights/falling), Xenophobia (fear of the unknown/unfamiliar), etc. Attack on Titan is an anime that capitalizes upon these fears in a successful attempt to subtly unsettle the viewer.

As the story goes, about a century prior to the beginning of the show, creatures of enormous stature with a sole taste for human flesh known as Titans appeared in the world. Titans didn’t age, had no need to eat for sustenance, regenerated extremely quickly, and could only be killed by slicing through a specific area behind their necks. Being at a quite basic level of technology, humanity was quickly overrun and brought to the brink of extinction. At that point, all of humanity took refuge behind a 3-layered set of massively tall walls named Maria, Rose and Sina. As a result, the bull’s eye area inside of the walls is the only human territory left in the entire world. A century later, we have Eren Yeager (Yuki Kaji) and his friends, Armin Arlert (Marina Inoue) and Mikasa Ackerman (Yui Ishikawa), living in the Shiganshina District on the outer edge of Wall Maria. However, the wall comes under attack and is breached, thus, incurring heavy human casualties and forcing all the inhabitants to retreat behind Wall Rose. Due to events that occured during the attack on Shiganshina District, Eren swears to himself (and anyone else that could hear him) that one day he’d wipe the world free of all the Titans. Eventually, Eren, Mikasa and Armin are allowed to begin training so as to join humanity’s military, and the adventure goes forth from there.

Despite the fact that the show’s story itself makes it crystal meth-level addictive, the style in which AoT (Attack on Titan) was animated was also a stroke of pure genius. The characters are drawn with such inhuman skill that they almost seem alive while the Titans have almost the same texture in the anime as in the manga. This contrast is subtle, but still unnerving to the unsuspecting viewer. It is almost like an inkling of a doubt in the back of the mind, telling you that there’s something wrong with those Titans, but you can’t quite place it. You just KNOW there’s something unnatural about them. Then to further contrast, all the buildings and the architecture are entirely 3-D animated, allowing for extremely sharp clarity and dimension with even the slightest “camera” movement while the far backgrounds are completely digital in nature. The combination of all these factors results in nothing more than an extremely stunning series of fast-motion action shots that, when watched, provide impossibly great satisfaction.

Attack on Titan is bloody, tearful, traumatizing, and agony-inducing, but also beautiful, in a sense. Refrain from allowing young children to watch it, but other than that guideline, have at it. There’s a whole world to explore inside those walls, so why not explore it on the Wings of Freedom with Eren Yeager and company?