Anime has often had a sketchy relationship with its American fans. Despite Anime such as Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon Indigo League, Digimon, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, among many others being a key part of nostalgia; in today's society you are just as likely to find just as much detractors than fans of anime. A key reason for this is that newer anime has been criticized for either overusing traits that made the anime of our youth great in an attempt to "cash-in" without doing anything new, along with an over-saturation of tropes that while popular in Japan Westerners either care little about or even blame for the preceived declining quality of anime(ie: Moe). There were also external factors for this preceived decline such as the lack of professional anime critics, a preceived bias to the Otaku community, the use of internet streaming and piracy allowing for anime of less quality to be circulated online, thereby putting the perception of anime into more scrutiny.
This has led to people claiming that anime is dead, or at the very least, it would not return to the prominence it had achieved in the late 90s and early 2000s. Yet however, there has been momentum that could possibly restore the image of anime or gain it a new audience outside of Japan. One of the major aspects of this change is the return of Toonami to Cartoon Network, an anime and action block whose efforts lead to the last anime boom. Another significant shift towards a possible return to form for Anime outside of Japan is the introduction of new Anime that is seen as not recycling tropes that made the anime of old great or using tropes that are preceived to be contributing to the declining quality of anime. And among them, is the anime Attack on Titan.
For those who don't know, Attack on Titan is essentially Neon Genesis Evangelion, but without the mecha. The plot revolves around the the last remnants of humanity living for a hundred years inside a fortified city designed to protect them from a powerful race of man-eating giants known as Titans. The city is protected by three layers of walls these being Wall Maria, Wall Sina, and Wall Rose. The two races have locked one another into a stalemate: the Titans cannot breach the walls of the city, and humanity cannot make war with the Titans without risking extinction.
That is until the reappearence of the Titans in year 845; when a colossal destroyed the the perimeter wall of the village of Zhiganshina, and allowed lesser Titans to invade from Wall Maria. Three children escaped from the ensuing massacre: Eren Yeager, an aggressive adolescent boy who lost his mother in the; Mikasa Ackerman, his quiet adoptive sister; and Armin Arlert, Eren's bookish best friend. Years later, the trio decide to join the Survey Corps, a military branch dedicated to making excursions into the outside world to fight the Titans and research ways to defeat them once and for all — and Eren, with vengeful and murderous intent in his heart, vows to kill every last Titan on Earth. Little do they know however, exactly the full consequences of the Human-Titan war and just what sort of problem they have got themselves in....
Attack on Titan‘s success has grown exponentially in the latest months that it’s become the most sold manga in the first half of 2014. This is the first time that a manga actually unseats One Piece in years with more than 8 million copies sold. And the franchise’s popularity doesn’t only come from Japan either, it is a worldwide phenomena with fans from all over the world. But what makes it so awesome? And what problems does it have? Part 1 of my review of Attack on Titan gives 4 reasons why it is so awesome and one of the better anime. But at the same time the manga has a large hidden problem within it's themes that, if not addressed properly, or at least the implications of such could be twisted and interpreted in ways that might be not what the author wants, could make Attack on Titan an example of how Anime could go wrong, which I will cover hopefully in Part 2 of this review.
