AoT is a strange show for me. I remember it being one of the most popular anime in the 2010s, the show pretty much got viral around the time it aired and even before I watched season 1 of the english dub on Adult Swim Toonami 11 years ago, I already heard quite a lot about it. It's was even popular amongst people who didn't even watch anime that much. When I did initially watch the first season, I was wondering what on earth the hype was even about, why on earth was it so popular and even recall it being one of my most hated anime for a few years, I was really convinced that AoT was not a good show at all, I even got into multiple flame wars with it's fans back when I did do stuff like that. However, AoT is a series while starting off rough, did slowly start to get better as it went along, all though the final season's writing while fascinating on paper left a lot to be desired. It also ends on a rather undwhelming and unffufilling note.
Anyways, enough of all that, let's begin this review. The first season like I said before, I have a complicated history with, it might be one of the few anime I watched 3 times(2nd time I watched was due to me thinking that the final season was going to be quickly finished in 2020), but every time I watch it and especially in the first half of that said season, I get a strong sense, "the writing is extremely underwhelming". This is in large part due to the underdeveloped characters, outside of maybe Jean Kirstein and Erwin Smith. The cast are all completely one note and don't have much going on to them. Eren Jaeger is short tempered loud mouth hot head who has to shove in a shout almost every 5 minutes. Armin Arlett despite being smarter than Eren is esstentially just follows the latter around like a dog and Mikasa Ackerman's entire character despite being stronger than Eren physically is nothing more than just a guard dog for him. The rest of the characters don't really fare much better other than just having one note quirks to them. Sasha just likes to eat food, Hunjie is extremely quirky, Levi is a borderline psycho and the Levi's squad are just extremely loyal to him and get killed off pretty quickly and those are the ones I recall.
This is much in large part due to the season 1's knack for relying on shock value more so than developing and fleshing out characters.
To give an example, Eren's mother Carla Jaeger despite her being important to the story and her death being the inciting incident that kicks off the said story, the viewer is barely given enough to know her before she dies so they can feel as invested as Eren, all I really know about her is that she is kind hearted and puts up with Eren's brashness. If you ignore that fact that this might be many people's first introduction to anime and seeing an animated character get eaten to death might be geniunely shocking to many but even by 2014 when I did watch the dub, I already watched a decent amount of anime so this had no effect on me.
Another example is how the character of Marco despite being important to Jean Kirstein, only has one major and somewhat forgettable scene where the former tells the latter that he's good leader because he knows when to be afraid, not bad but this is the major scene Marco gets before he dies.
The final battle of Annie Leonheart fighting Eren at the end of the season is pretty much supposed to be Eren being conflicted about fighting her since they were in Cadet training for so long but they only had one major scene together and that's it, yet the writers want the audience to believe they've known and spoken to each other for a while before the showdown.
Then there is shock value that contradicts it's own themes and character roles. The former being how AoT establishes itself as nilhilstic show where anyone could die but then it turns out Eren has superpowers, many including myself had an issue with this since one, it circumvents any character development Mikasa and Armin have by having needing to grow past their need to rely on Eren but then it's also a show that establishes that superpowers are suddenly a thing. The problem isn't that there is superpowers it's more so how it's used as a way to keep Eren alive when the story seemingly killed him off. The story does do interesting things with this later but this is a hard pill to swallow.
The latter is how Mikasa is much stronger and more combat efficient than Eren is despite the two's first encounter has the later killing multiple grown men much bigger than him and so how is she stronger than Eren if he is capable of doing all that? Who trained Mikasa? Never explained.
I can list some other examples how the show wants you to care for a bunch of random soldiers and their dead comrades during the female titan portion or how Petra had an attachment towards Levi despite it being revealed after she died but I made my point.
Then there are just other issues with the season like how the Battle on Trost district takes a good 8-10 episodes to finish and this would be fine if the characterization was there but instead I just wanted it to be over and partnered that with the Eren death fake out and that only added insult to injury.
I have complained about S1 a good deal but some good things to come from it is that Jean and his chracter development as someone who starts as someone who wants to live a free and complacenent life to realizing that there someone who believes that isn't really the way to live is decent writing especially for S1 standards.
The 2nd half introduces Erwin Smith who is my favorite character in the series and S1 does a decent enough job at establishing his cryptic, reckless and cunning ways.
Then there is the fact that 25 episodes has gone by and not much has been explained regarding the cellar in Eren's basement in Shinganshina.
After all that, it's really to easy to see why AoT is a show I disliked for a decent number of years and time hasn't made me kinder towards S1. Attack on Titan's anime thus far really seems like the kind of anime adaptation that seemingly cuts out a lot of material from the manga. The thing is, bad manga adaptations usually get derided and get forgotten about to the sands of time, this was a show that had a huge following despite having the many shortcomings that it did.
However seasons 2 and 3 would come along and massively overhauled everything I had with the series. If you told me from about 2014-2019 that AoT would be a much better series and would become a geniunely good show, I would tell you were wrong but AoT is a show that proves that any series especially long running can have a rough start.
Season 2 pretty much massively improves the characters, now the show isn't relying immense shock value anymore and characters are getting much more fleshed out now. Ymir and Historia who were esstentially just background characters in S1 have a pretty interesting relationship in S2. How Ymir is brash and upfront about who she is and Historia is more shy and quiet by comparison. Historia's character development in S2 and 3 is one of my favorite things about the series in how she slowly comes to accept who she is regarding duty to the throne and herself.
Reiner was one of S1's more slightly developed characters and the show this time around has him along with Connie, Sasha, Ymir and Historia try to fend off some titans in a castle and there is a decent bit of downtime, in between titan attacks and a scene like this while there somewhat in season 1, didn't really pop as much as this scene did.
Eren's battle and even being conflicted about Reiner is a bit more developed by comparison to the fight with Annie since they had more time together. Seeing Eren slowly get angry but comes to grips with the fact he has to fight Reiner hits close to home with me now.
The only major gripe I have with the season is that Eren having the ability to control titans was a seemingly out of nowhere deus ex machina since the Scouts were borderline out of luck and the plot needed to find to get them out of hairy situation so the writers came up with this.
Then comes season 3 and this is pretty much AoT at it's highest point in terms of writing. A conspiracy gets introduced, mystery boxes get revealed and after this point the show's writing never reaches this height again.
The aforementioned conspiracy is already interesting stuff since it turns the much of AoT's premise on it's head where it turns out there is a greater threat than titans out there and it's about uncovering all that. The Scout Regiment are pretty much the ultimate underdogs here with them slowly trying to uncover it all, trying to route the people behind them and answer the mystery box.
Kenny Ackerman is my favorite villain in the series, his appreance establishes multiple things, there are members in the Scouts who now have to kill actual people than titans, he's the only character in the series that made Levi uneasy by the mere mention of his name, that there is something that government is hiding and even in death, he has the titan serum that can turn certain people into titans which will come into play later in the season.
His line during his death scene where he mentions everyone is a slave to something is a line that resonates with me more now than it did when I first watched it.
Historia's character arc comes to a complete circle.
Erwin's backstory and why he is willing to gamble so many lives is explained here and he feels very guilty about but at the same time, he's gone too far off down the deep end to stop now.
The final battle on Shinganshina is pretty well in that both the good and bad side are constantly one upping each other and it all esstentially comes full circle with Erwin willing to scarifice himself in order to give the Scouts one major chance at victory. The season a great job at selling you how important Erwin was to cause and how everyone wanted to keep him alive and even after the victory, Erwin's name is still being mentioned and remembered and everyone doesn't know what to do now.
If you AoT summed up as simpily as possible is that it was a series that lived and died with Erwin Smith. S1 got more tolerable with him introduced and the series starts to become more dull with him gone.
However a big issue with S3 is that the backstory is revealed that Eren eats his father Grisha to obtain his titan powers but Eren never once comes to gripes with the fact that he killed his own father or how the story explains how he managed to get back to to civilization since in order to turn into a titan behind the wall, it would cause a lot of noise. It's not to dissimilar to Naruto Uzumaki's backstory on his body was just lying there after his parents were killed. Dragon Ball is a much more lighthearted series than AoT and the former had a scene where Goku came to gripes to the fact that he accidentally killed a parental figure while being transformed into a monster and not being in control while in it.
Now this leads to the final season and well...it's a weird dozy. AoT might've finally explained it's mystery box with that the wall was nothing more to keep a certain group of people known as "Eldians" in where they have "titan blood" and it has started century long war with the a group called the "Marlyeans". Attack on Titan in many ways suffers from the same problem that the 00s Battlestar Galactica reboot did in that when the mystery boxes are explained, it becomes less interesting and more confusing. Both pretty much start off with "humanity - good" and "opposing force - bad" turns into, "good guys were actually connected the opposing force the whole time".
Some parts of this season is interesting on paper, the idea of the protagonist you've been following the whole time, Eren Jaeger turning heel. Armin and Mikasa needing to come with the terms with the fact that the guy they depended on isn't there for them anymore, so everything season 1 seemingly copped out on is now being full embraced here. There is also a fascinating retcon that could've retroactively made Mikasa Ackerman an interesting character, where it was Ackerman blood was the reason why she was such a guard dog towards Eren and the latter actually hated the former the whole time. With that last one especially, it felt like final season was going to head somewhere but punches were pulled but in a different way.
The biggest problem this season has is that there is almost no one of geniune virtue that is worth supporting and the characters we are supposed to root for have barely any geniune agency or worthwhile solutions plans of their own.
Two of the characters in the final season who have the power to change the world Eren and Zeke Jaeger are both genocidal nilhilists. The former pretty much wants to use the Rumbling to kill as many Maryleans as can and the latter wants Eldians to slowly die by taking away their ability to reproduce.
Both are esstentially people that are impossible to root for in any way since both of their endgames involve commiting genocide. The series than switches main character chair to Armin and Mikasa and their whole group and once Eren activates the Rumbling the entire season from here on out is just fighting Eren's cult terrorist group the "Jeagerists" and catching up to Eren. The plot moves at a snail's pace and Armin has no interesting alternative to stop this century's long war despite the story establishing that Armin is smarter than Eren.
As a result, it's hard to get invested in anything that goes on in the final season then the series establishes that Eren had the ability for titan blood to be completely eradicated without killing Eldians and it comes too out of left field for me to care and comes off as a last minute attempt to make Eren seem heroic despite all the horrible things he did.
Mikasa was the one give the final blow on Eren but at the end, she ultimately has stockholm syndrome to a dead guy and isn't conflicted or tries to grow past the guy who's final words he said face to face was "I always hated you". The subplot regarding her duty to her clan never once even gets mentined. It felt like by that point it just pulled the biggest punch.
Speaking of the ending, I know it's often derided but what I dislike about is that it pulled an original Final Fantasy 7 where it turns out humanity at the end is pretty much wiped out making Eren's entire struggle to get rid of titan blood entirely pointless since mankind would wipe each other out anyway regardless of that said blood.
At this point, how do I not know Hajime Isyama isn't going to do what Square Enix did with FF7 and retcon the ending to AoT for a quick buck by making endless prequels, spinoffs or alternate realties? Akria Toriyama sort of did the samething by making constant prequels before the timeskip epilogue of Dragon Ball. That's what I truly dislike the most about the ending.
Overall, this review has been pretty lengthy, and Attack on Titan is a series I can basically say I liked the middle portion of more than anything. It is fascinating how an anime I used to be so apathetic towards was a show I got to the end of at all. Would I consider it great? No but it is interesting how I managed to ultimately invest this much time to a show I initially disliked 11 years ago. I am open for this happening again but at the same time, I doubt it.