Attack on Attack on Titan

No typo, anywhere.
I'll be criticizing the SnK anime that has the biggest fandom atm a bit, not the greatest idea, but always the cool hipster thing to do (cool hipster? what did I just mutter... anyways).

Those who read the manga have probably noticed, it's way too overdone. Remember that scene where Light takes the potato chip AND EATS IT in the english dub? That's the SnK anime in a nutshell (in many ways?). Other than the fact the director gets overexcited over every simple thing, the music is often trying to overtake the actual plot. You never really feel a sense of dread ever since episode 1, because you feel that if the army of hundreds of guys living in the background playing a glorious tune on a trumpet or whatever came in and started pummeling on titans, they'd be gone in no time, so it's cool.

That was probably their way to approach a mainstream audience and widen the perception as much as possible, which combined with their other approach, the heavy censoring of the anime, transforms SnK from a horror action to a hype action anime with some blood and people acting slightly sad in an extremely glorious atmosphere. So, yeah, Rivaille kicking Eren was exciting. Duh, every animator, voice actor and sfx'er or whatever there was orgasmic with excitement over it, so naturally the audience would be excited, and over people pleading to other people or reprimanding other people of course. I mean, yeah, titans are eating people, but when Armin gets bitch slapped or something you get the most hype version of the national anthem ever along with a dramatic close-up, so obviously, the more important moment in the story.

I gotta say, it clashes pretty hard with the plot for me, so it bores me since immersion is kinda gone, at least in the way the story is supposed to be.

i find it fun how they over do everything, well especially for me since i already read the manga so i'd rather get something like this than the same as the manga personally. because i've already been through what the manga was trying to do, and this is fun to watch and gives me somewhat of another reason to not drop it just because i read the manga.
also i think the real big issue in the anime is.. the pacing, they're taking it really slow. and they're going way too far with recaps. i mean did we really need a recap episode when you put a recap in the beginning of every episode?
some scenes really drag out and some feel overdone to the point where they ruin it, like armin's speech and mikasa killing the man chocking eren.

but i mean it has its flaws but it's still a rather good anime, and i probably would've enjoyed it more if i didn't read the manga already

SnK holds its own more so than SAO did. Thats a plus. There are things they did right; but the over-the-top stuffs is kind of out there. Who am I kidding? Im a TTGL fanboy. Anywho, my score so far for what they have still remains a solid 7.5/10. Thats pretty good for entertainment on my end lately...

I like I like this anime. This anime this anime is becoming more famous and more famous.

Honestly, if they improved the pacing, it'd probably be pretty enjoyable. It overdramatizes just about everything, but if you watch it without caring about anything except what's on-screen, it's alright(which is not a good thing, really). As pointed out, the sense of dread is mostly present only in the first episode(Which to me is still the best episode so far, but then again, dropped).

I know that people have been comparing it to SAO a lot due to the fandom, but, I find it a really weird comparison, it's not even close. SnK had an actual solid and interesting story behind it while SAO was originating from obvious young otaku escapism issues and weaknesses and was clearly aiming at them (reason people were so into it, was for the wide audience the vanilla, but for the big fans it was hardly the story and more the empathy: look, guy got inside a video game world and he was awesome in there and everyone loved him), while for many people old enough to be self aware, it seemed simply embarassing. SnK's concept was original and fresh, was to the point of what it wanted to say and do, and the original medium transfered the atmosphere really well, while it was action-horror which is not really a huge mainstream genre.

As far as the anime goes, SAO nailed it, they did the best job they could with the source material and, although I haven't read it, I will say they delivered the point perfectly, correct me if I'm wrong. Admittedly, the source material was already vanilla enough, so with some ok presentation it was ready to go, still, they did the best with what they had.

Now, I'm not saying that by any means SnK is a bad anime. I've seen bad, SnK is not one of them. It has a good story and source material behind it, and a huge production as it seems in front of it. The problem is, that even though it is still a good anime, it has a story that is butchered by its presentation. Of course horror won't get in a huge audience, so in order to make it more appealing, they lost the sense of dread. Manga had you go from eren's mother dying to graduation day ending with a titan attacking again, making it seem like an actually impossible situation, giving this much needed stress for the atmosphere of the series, while the anime broke it up with the training (which was shown later in the manga when a part of the actual action was finally concluded), which may seem like they did it to be chronologically correct, but if you think about it, training is a vanilla section, it was made to ease the audience into it and get rid of that exact stress. The music and direction is trying to overwrite the actual plot and fade away as much of the dread. Which is understandable, you need to reel in the braindead audience somehow, so you give them visual and auditory fireworks and have them go "weeeee~" with grandiose music that is in reality out of place and an amount of visual effects every time someone says something halfway relevant that makes you think they are about to transform or something, while at the same time managing to make with all that the horror into vanilla to hold on to that audience which would otherwise drop/ignore.

Many have pointed out how it is dragged out. It may be tough to pinpoint it in the episodes themselves actually, as it seems that only the canon is covered, but it is. The reason is the scenes. Exactly because of the grand musical score and the direction, it may seem that scenes are of adequate length, but they are actually pulled to fill for time. Time how long Rivaille was kicking Eren, then go to the manga chapter and think how much time the scene actually needed. Now, nothing is wrong if you don't notice it, right? Not exactly, if they are pulled the fact remains, that there isn't much plot per episode. So how is that gap of a plot filled? Character exposition.

Now, I firmly support that good characters are needed and characters are a major part of a story, but there is another part of it. That is creating and farming fandom on characters, which you are using instead of actual plot, which they overwrite, to fill in. Think naruto. How are the endless amount of fillers even viewable by a certain audience, and some even claim that they like them. It is farming said fandom. You focus on the character instead of the story, and then show the character instead of story. X filler was good because Shikamaru was in it and I like Shikamaru. The plot was irrelevant since it was a filler, therefore non-canon, might as well be a fanfic. However a plot was not needed because there was fandom.

For example, Marco was supposed to barely noticable by the time he was found dead exactly because you wouldn't get a grandiose death for people, you wouldn't get foreshadowing or preparation, people are supposed to die nameless and wasted (also, plot point later, yay), instead in the anime you kept focusing Marco doing things to get your regular anime reaction to character death. Mikasa was focused as a woman with all the heavy make-up and minor things like changing the tatoo into an embroidery, to stress the character's feminine appeal. Showing the training arc early also served towards that, because now in the first big fight you were following potato girl, or eren's rival, or whatever. And exactly because of the dragged out scenes, you would at those times focus on the characters accompanied by yet another grand musical score to give them a higher sense of importance to your subconscious. As a result of all that, even without much plot going on, people would still follow the episode, because X character that was focused before got some time now, and I as a fan was satisfied.

So, did the production of the anime do wrong? No, business wise they did excelent, they had an interesting story which would hold a large number of people who were looking for good anime, while they also drew in people who would otherwise be watching just naruto fillers and one piece, so they did great. Was the anime done right? No, as an experience it was still done wrong even though market wise it was excelent. The SnK manga is a great manga and a great experience you will remember for a long time, perhaps in years to come it will be considered a classic. The SnK anime on the other hand, is a good anime, but it's a firework. It does great as it's airing and reels in its audience, but it covers a lot of gaps with fancy stuff and sacrifices its great quality for acceptance. Since their approach was correct, should I just be ok with it? No, there are quality issues and they should be noted, they were given an excelent story which they buried beneath high volume orchestrals, dramatic close-ups and a fangirl's visage of Rivaille in a wet T-shirt.

In a way it reminds me of Death Note. Yeah, I know how you are all religious for Death Note, but as an anime it did have one major issue, and that is that same SFX attempt at making everything exciting no matter what they were, even though it was a psychological battle thing which is not supposed to be like that, yet, friggin strokes on paper had on average more impact to them than a kamehameha.