14 Reasons Why 'Attack On Titan' Is Totally Overrated

The first few episodes of Attack on Titan are some of the best ones. The world-building is fantastic, and even if some of the characters seem a bit cliché, you find yourself growing attached to them. There's drama, there's tension, there's suspense, there's the beginnings of character development, all excellent signs of good things to come. Once the Survey Corps forms and everybody starts fighting Titans, however, the pace becomes uneven, the world-building grinds to a halt, and some of the episodes are disjointed messes that involve either excessive exposition or fights that go on for way too long. Add the fact that the things which created a sense of intrigue and mystery in the beginning don't get resolved by the end, and you've got an anime that doesn't live up to its potential.

There's no question that watching the Titans gobble up their human prey is both terrifying and exhilarating. Well, the first 10 or 15 times it happens anyway. After that, the concept starts to wear a little thin, and it becomes clear that the main thing holding the show up is shock value. Of course Titans are going to keep on eating people, but it'd be nice to see something other than Eren Yeager reacting in an endless cycle of rage and disgust. Free! Iwatobi Swim Club came out at the same time as Attack on Titan, and a lot of people watched both simultaneously. The fact that some viewers were more emotionally affected by crying teenage boys on a swim team than they were by child soldiers getting vored on says something about the over-reliance on shock value, and the under-utilization of character development.

Eren Jaeger, the protagonist of Attack on Titan, is one of the least interesting characters in the whole show. Eren starts off the series dissatisfied with living life inside the walls. He feels trapped, like he's being treated like cattle. He wants to escape, and he wants to destroy the Titans. When Titans attack his hometown of Zhiganshina, destroying his home and killing his mother, his desire to kill Titans intensifies. After that... things don't really change much. While he does learn more about the Titans, including coming to terms with his own identity as a Titan shifter, in the end, he's still motivated purely by rage and revenge. He still wants to kill all the Titans, he's just louder about it.

Mikasa Ackerman, one of the main characters in Attack on Titan, has a horrific backstory. As a little girl, her parents were murdered in front of her eyes by slave traders, who then kidnapped her with the intention of selling her into sexual slavery. Eren rescues her after murdering two of her kidnappers. When a third slaver appears and starts choking Eren, Eren screams at Mikasa to fight, and she does. She murders the third kidnapper and saves Eren, allowing the two of them to escape. After that, Eren's parents adopt the now orphaned Mikasa, and the two of them develop a sibling-like bond. That's all well and good, but the incident never really comes up again after that. It's used to explain why Mikasa is so attached to Eren, and why she can sometimes be cavalier about death, but beyond that, it's not mentioned. Parental death might be common trope in anime, but you know what isn't? Sexual slavery. Mikasa was kidnapped so that she could be sold into sexual slavery. While the kidnappers weren't successful, this is still very much a thing that happened, and for the rest of the series it's completely ignored. Not only is this serious topic swept under the rug, but the fact that the victim is Mikasa, a Japanese girl, is incredibly twisted. Remember, the Japanese imperial army actively sold Korean women into sexual slavery. One character in Attack on Titan, Dot Pixis, is a tribute to a general from the Imperial Japanese Army. That's like if a Christian German author based one of his good guys off of a renowned Nazi, then wrote a scene where a Christian German girl was sent to Treblinka.

The most popular ship in the Attack on Titan fandom is Eren x Levi, also known as Ereri. This is a terrible, terrible ship. Eren Jaeger is a severely traumatized child soldier. At the start of the series, he is 15 years old. Levi Ackerman is his military commander. Levi is probably somewhere in his early 30s. So that’s a major age gap, combined with the fact that Eren is legally obliged to obey Levi or risk being imprisoned or killed. There’s a scene where Levi savagely beats Eren in order to prove a point, and that’s deemed appropriate by the higher-ups. Not exactly a great set-up for a romantic relationship. While it’s not the fault of Attack on Titan itself that this pairing dominates the fandom, it’s hard to get invested in a series beyond the initial viewing if every time you Google the show name, you have to think about a 30-something military commander banging his teenage cadet.

In the first episode of Attack on Titan, Armin gives a dramatic speech about how everyone is too complacent, and just because the Titans haven’t shown up for 100 years doesn’t mean that they never will. Not one second after the words leave his mouth, a Titan kicks down the wall and all hell breaks loose. Coincidences happen, sure, but relying on them to get your point across is just lazy writing.

Considering the high production value of the anime, the sloppy manga art is actually pretty surprising if you aren’t expecting it. Isayama doesn’t seem to have a grasp on how human anatomy works, which is kind of important in a series that takes liberties with people's form and structure. What's worse is, unlike some other manga, the art doesn’t seem to improve at all as the series progresses.

At the end of the first season, we find out that the Female Titan, who has been terrorizing the Survey Corps, is actually Annie, one of the cadets. The season ends with Annie trapped in a crystalline substance, unwilling and unable to explain what motivated any of her actions. We see a couple of flashbacks featuring her dad telling her that he supports her, but all that does is add to the confusion. Oh, and we don't find out what's up with the mysterious basement door that Eren's creepy dad wants him to unlock. While it's unfair to expect that a series to reveal all of its secrets in the first season, the fact that we end without so much as a hint as to Annie's motives is less intriguing than it is frustrating. Rather than creating suspense, it just creates a sense that the writers didn't know what they were doing.

Before the “Female Titan” shows up, all of the Titans are supposedly sexless. That’s what makes her femininity so unusual. The allegedly sexless Titans have masculine features. They have broad shoulders, square jaws, and all the typical markers of an XY chromosome set-up besides the associated genitals. In human biology, males are not the default, females are. In utero, all fetuses develop along the female trajectory, until either testosterone and androgen for XY babies, or estrogen and progesterone for XX babies, kick in and finish the job. That's why everyone is born with nipples, even though they only serve a biological function for people who can bear children. While we can’t expect Titan biology to perfectly mimic that of humans, of course, but the fact that masculine Titans are “sexless” while the “female” one isn’t does posit males as the default. Not only does that not make sense, but it's also pretty sexist.

In 2010, Hajime Isayama (the series creator) said that Dot Pixis, a military official in Attack on Titan, was based on an actual military figure from Japanese history, Akiyama Yoshifuru. Isayama claimed the Yoshifuru was “frugal and respectable.” Akiyama was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army. He was the commander stationed in Korea while it was under occupation by Japan, and he contributed to its colonization. The Japanese Army forced Koreans to change their surnames to Japanese ones, tortured and experimented on Korean citizens, sold Korean women into sexual slavery, and forced Korean men to perform dangerous military activities. Koreans, therefore, generally view Akiyama as a war criminal. With that track record, it’s no wonder. The fact that Isayama apparently approved of torture and slavery didn’t go over well with the fandom, particularly the Korean fandom. He actually received a number of death threats over it. The fact that Dot Pixis, one of the good guys in Attack on Titan, was based on Akiyama, really makes it hard to enjoy the series, or to place value on any political points it might try to make.

Given the popularity of gritty reboots of everything from Pokémon to Power Rangers, it's no surprise that the Internet likes dark stuff. There's nothing wrong with a show taking on serious themes, and it's to be expected that a series about man-eating monsters terrorizing humanity is going to be kind of upsetting, but Attack on Titan can be absolutely relentless with its negativity. To be fair, there are some jokes, but those jokes always have an undercurrent of pain. Sasha's the potato girl, and that's sometimes funny (but honestly kind of one-note), but then we realize that she's obsessed with food because she spent her childhood starving half to death. Not so funny now, right? The overall message about becoming a monster in order to defeat monsters is crushingly sad, and the endlessness of the suffering can be so intense that it loses its intended meaning.

While a lot of the art in Attack on Titan is beautiful, the animation leaves something to be desired. In the second episode alone, there are at least five scenes where one person is talking and moving, while everyone and everything in the background is immobile. This actually makes it harder to focus on whoever is talking at the moment, because the frozen townspeople look creepy as hell. Also, when people yell in the show their heads bob up and down like they're about to fall off their body. This undercuts the seriousness of whatever it is they're yelling about, draining the dramatic tension from the moment.

At the height of Attack on Titan's popularity, you couldn't go to an anime convention without seeing fans showing their love for the series through cosplay. This would be great if it weren't for the nature of said cosplay. The thing is, no matter how talented or dedicated the cosplayer, they only have a few options, and those options suck. The first option is dressing up like a member of the Survey Corps. This is an outfit involving boots, a jacket, suspenders, weapons, a cape, and a white shirt. Also a cravat if they're dressing as Levi. This is fine, but it's the same outfit over and over again no matter which character they're dressing as. It's like if Naruto cosplayers had nothing to choose from besides "Generic Konoha Ninja Uniform." After a while, it gets boring. The second option isn't boring, but it is freakin' gross. Some cosplayers dress like Titans, which means skinless jump suits and rubber masks decorated with fake muscle fiber and teeth. It's not something you want to see every five minutes while you're lost in the Dealer's Room.

No matter what you think about Attack on Titan, you have to admit that Guren no Yumiya by Linked Horizon is a pretty rockin' theme song. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for any of the other three theme songs. The first end theme, Beautiful Cruel World by Yoko Hikasa is fine, but it isn't particularly memorable, and the mournful, delicate melody doesn't really match the mood of the show. The second opening theme, Jiyuu no Tsubasa, also by Linked Horizon, is a disjointed mess that's barely even discernable as a song. Great Escape by Cinema Staff, the second ending theme, is fine, but ultimately forgettable. Considering that a good anime theme song can stay with you long after you've stopped caring about the anime, the fact that only one out of four of these songs is even remotely memorable is a problem.