Attack on Titan (Japanese: 進撃の巨人 Hepburn: Shingeki no Kyojin, lit. "Advancing Giant") is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hajime Isayama. The series began in Kodansha's Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine on September 9, 2009, and has been collected into 26 tankōbon volumes as of August 2018. It is set in a world where humanity lives in cities surrounded by enormous walls protecting the humans from gigantic man-eating humanoids referred to as titans. The story initially centers on Eren Yeager and his childhood friends Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert, who join the military to fight the titans after their hometown is invaded and a titan eats Eren's mother, whom he swears to avenge. As the story progresses and the truths about the titans are slowly revealed to the reader, the narrative shifts to encompass Historia Reiss, squad leader Levi, Eren's father Grisha, and other supporting characters.
The spin-off light novel series Before the Fall began in December 2011 and has received a manga adaptation. Two additional light novel series and four additional spin-off manga series have also been created. An anime television adaptation was produced by Wit Studio and Production I.G and aired in Japan on MBS. The first season aired between April and September 2013, the second season aired between April and June 2017, and a third season commenced broadcast in July 2018. Four video game adaptations developed by Nitroplus staffers in collaboration with Production I.G were announced to be released as bonus content for the third and sixth volumes of the Blu-ray Disc release of the anime, with another game developed by Spike Chunsoft for the Nintendo 3DS. A two-part live-action film adaptation, Attack on Titan and Attack on Titan: End of the World, and a live-action web-series were released in 2015. An anime adaptation of the Junior High spin-off manga, produced by Production I.G, began airing in October 2015. Attack on Titan and all five spin-off manga are published in North America by Kodansha USA, while the three novel series are published by Vertical. The anime has been licensed by Funimation for North America, by Manga Entertainmentfor the UK, and by Madman Entertainment for Australasia.
Attack on Titan has become a commercial success. As of August 2018, the manga has 76 million tankōbon copies in print, making it one of the best-selling manga series. The release of the manga's anime adaptation, which received critical acclaim for its atmosphere, music and story, boosted the series' popularity. Although it also gained fame in neighboring Asian countries, the series' themes have been a subject of controversy.
Why do I like Attack on Titan, or rather Shingeki no Kyojin so much?
I admire this display of raw human emotion in a bleak situation. I know there's people out there who praise The Walking Dead as the de facto survivalist/apocalyptic dystopia narrative, but I like Attack on Titan because everyone didn't wake up to this reality and instantly became a bad ass who knew how to survive. The first few episodes follow the principal cast getting military training and are thrown onto the frontlines of their first battle with no warning. These so-called hardened soldiers are quaking with fear and losing their minds. These aren't people who are magically experts at taking lives or wielding a weapon. I swear, it drives me crazy to no end to hear people go on and on about how they want the zombie apocalypse to happen for real like The Waking Dead for they can show off how prepared they are for that type of world when I know they can't even kill an insect without being frozen in fear.
Don't get me wrong, there's moments of both The Walking Dead comics and television series that I do enjoy when I do take the time to pay attention to them, but I feel that stuff is extremely overrated in terms of how "deep" and "meaningful" people analyze and over-analyze that content for being. Both of these mediums can resonate with people in their own individual means, but I always felt that Attack on Titan captures that hopelessness feeling more - at least in the initial seasons (currently in the manga not so much). On top of that, I don't get depressed watching Attack on Titan like I do with The Walking Dead. TWD falls into a rather predictable pattern of stuff going well for a moment then goes bad to worse then to the worst possible outcome/scenario. There's really no happy ending to that story. In contrast, I can't see Attack on Titan ending on a lighter note when the creator himself said that his perfect ending would have every major character die in the finale, but call me nuts, I just enjoy this ride better out of preference. People die in both narratives. There are characters that feel like genuine real people to get behind and at the core of all of the fantasy/science fiction to these stories, at the core, they are stories about people dealing with conflicts with other people.
I'm sure there's going to be that one smart ass who points that out in the comments or social media that The Walking Dead does essentially the same thing... True, but you don't have AoT's fanbase (at least I haven't seen it from my experience) swept up into this mindset that this reality would be "fun" to live in. I think Eren Jaeger said it best, "This World is Hell."
I prefer to contrast the two like this - While The Walking Dead prefers to highlight the absolute worst in mankind/humanity, Attack on Titan always manages to showcase the best of what mankind has to offer, even in the most dire situations.
I first discovered this medium a few years ago when I was in a pretty dark and low point of my life. I was binge-watching a lot of different anime and TV shows to pass the time and keep my mind off things. Seeing what the people in this world and this environment was an inspiration of sorts and I got hooked. I watched the entire first season in less than a week and started reading the manga shortly after that. I kept up with both the anime and manga iterations of this medium thoroughly to this day and I still find myself invigorated following the adventures of these characters. I get it, Attack on Titan isn't everyone's cup of tea - much like The Walking Dead is for me - but in both cases, the journey of mankind's survival against impossible odds is a narrative well worth the time to witness first hand.
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