In this post, I'll dissect all of my issues with the entirety of the series from the character writing, plot, worldbuilding, themes/messages, as well as debunking common counter-arguments, and everything else I could possibly find.

Character Writing/Drama/Development

The character writing in this show is some of the most overrated and frankly soulless I have seen in all of fiction. Most of the characters are merely plot devices that exists to move the plot from point a to point b with little to no depth outside of their role in the story. This normally wouldn't have been such a bad thing, but it's here where the story tries hard to be an emotional character drama and automatically expects the audience to care about certain dynamics despite never setting them up in any meaningful way, despite said characters being effectively emotionless NPCs and not characters.

Take for example Reiner and Bertholdt reveal: the story tries hard to act like this is an extremely tragic betrayal scene, but because of how underbaked and how little I care about the two due to how little they interacted with other members of the cast, I found it extremely hard to care when the twist happened. When I was watching this scene, my reaction wasn't "Aw man! How could this happen?" but instead "Wait, who tf were those two? Oh it's that one tall guy alongside that other dude who is supposed to be the big brother archetype of the cast (despite never being built up in any meaningful way), so it's gotta be important." This is just one of the many examples I brought up and I can easily bring up more, especially with the show killing off NPCs like Levi Squad acting like it's meant to be tragic and fucked up despite me not caring because the characters are never set up in a way to make me care about them to begin with.

The character development aspect of the series is terribly written as well due to the poorly written character drama I mentioned above. Some characters like Mikasa virtually never changes/develops from start to finish because the story refuses to grapple with any of their issues in any meaningful way unless it's relevant to the plot, making them a plot device instead of a character especially since even Mikasa in the ending after completing her character arc, we see that virtually nothing about her changes as she's still obsessed with Eren. Not in the tragic way of a character being consumed by their flaws and becoming their worst self but in the sense that the story barely acknowledges it or even cares about her outside of her role in the story.

Then we have the other end of the spectrum with characters changing their personalities on a whim without any gradual development with Eren being arguably the worst offender. I know it's the common consensus to say how the ending "ruined" his character by assassinating him but as I was watching, I can barely get invested in his corruption arc whatsoever due to the series never showing him being consumed by his flaws unless it's relevant for the plot. He starts out as a your loud whiny shonen protagonist who has a rather generic arc of becoming more confident in his own abilities for the first 3 Seasons before turning into this Darth Vader/Homura Akemi figure offscreen, despite this new change never being foreshadowed or given any gradual growth before he just turns into this genocidal fascist who'd wipe out humanity for the preservation of his people for some reason. It also really doesn't help that his character is a clusterfuck where he'd switch his archetype from "genocidal manic who'd kill his loved ones to get what he wants" and "tragic child who never grew up and is a slave with no real control over his fate whatsoever" without any explanation. Which unfortunately isn't a surprise why no one in the fandom even knows what character is he even supposed to be, not helped at all given the ending effectively being the author saying even he doesn't know so he just implied that the founding titan messed up his head to not bother dealing with actually giving us a clear answer.

I can go on and on with several other characters but I frankly don't have time as it'd clog up this rant more than it needs to be. I feel like I made my point clear enough to the point most people can understand what I'm talking about for the character writing and why it's shit despite fans so desperately claiming otherwise.

Plot

The plot is a contrived mess because of its need to constantly recontexualize itself with every subsequent twist. The jump from medieval fantasy zombie apocalypse to Game Of Thrones without any proper time given for the audience to adjust to this new setting. The author effectively wrote two completely different stories that do not correspond with each other whatsoever and expected the audience to automatically care because it's foreshadowed, which is honestly why the series unintentionally killed any identity it could have had because it didn't build upon what was previously setup so much as it just forgot the previous plot existed to get to the cool new stuff.

The so called "best plot twists in fiction" also really aren't anything special outside of the initial shock value because of how little they affect the characters and the status quo.

I have already criticized the Reiner and Bertholdt twist above due to the terribly written character drama taking away anything emotional in the reveal due to their relationship never being setup.

The basement reveal while it had potential was completely ruined by the fact that the status quo never changes following the twist. The story hammering the same "kill or be killed" narrative as it did in pre timeskip ultimately ruined any substance this twist could have had, making it ultimately just cheap shock value (I'll get into this way more in the Worldbuilding and Themes/Messages section).

The Attack Titan's time travel/future sight twist and him using it to manipulate his father and kill his mother does absolutely nothing beyond taking away agency in two scenes for shock value. It recontexualizes nothing beyond begging the question of why didn't Eren use this more in the final battle to win and achieve his goals.

All in all, one thing I noticed from all three of these twists is that none of them have much substance outside of the initial shock value due to them not twisting the plot and having a effect on the story moving forward in any meaningful way. Vader being revealed to be Luke's father is significant because it recontexualizes their entire dynamic into a farm boy trying to defeat an evil tyrant to a son trying to save his father when they fight in ROTJ. Ned Stark's execution serves are a reminder to the readers that ASOIAF/GOT is not your happy go lucky fantasy story but a dark and brutal political drama where anyone can die. The reveal of Darth Revan's identity in KOTOR recontexualizes the entire story as we now know that we were playing as Revan the entire time. All of these twists are meaningful because they have an effect on the story going forward and build upon what came before in a way that improves what we already saw.

All of this isn't even mentioning the entire story is a plagarization of The Eternal Champions by Michael Moorcock, where the protagonist Erekose is forced to commit genocide to protect his race the Eldren from extinction from a world that wants to kill them all due to war crimes they committed in the past. I'm tired of going deeper into this but I propose everyone to just read a summary of the plot of TEC to easily see how AOT is a ripoff, and not even in the inspiration vs inspired way.

Worldbuilding

I don't have much to say about the worldbuilding pre basement reveal (beyond some very suspect elements of the world that I will get more into in the Themes/Messages section), a lot of my issues heavily stem from post basement reveal and the geopolitical situation of the final arc/post timeskip.

The entire outside world were introduced to a total of two countries besides Paradis. One of which is virtually untouched outside of a brief flashback and the other where we spend a total of ~10 episodes before we go back to Paradis for the entirety of the final arc. This wouldn't have been such a bad thing if this was another anime, but for a series that's meant to be a political drama spanning around the entire world where the overarching question is "would you destroy the world to protect your loved ones", you cannot have worldbuilding like this. This is not helped whatsoever by the entire arc effectively being one of the most disgusting geopolitical situations I have ever have the displeasure of seeing in fiction.

The Paradis/Outside World conflict is a completely black and white situation of two fascist factions trying to exterminate the other. There was zero attempt for any communication between Paradis and the outside world that would actually help their case on the geopolitical playing field because of how comically grimdark the situation is where it effectively forced omnicide into being justified. This is also why so many AOT fans are fascist: not because the story unintentionally radicalizing them, but because the story for all intents and purposes validated their beliefs that the outside world are an unsympathetic and unlikable racists who will ultimately kill them given time (as shown in the ending).

Which isn't helped at all that the outside world as a whole is a very one dimensional faction is so underdeveloped that we don't even know the names of 99 percent of the countries. This is not helped at all that the entirety of the world is effectively a hivemind (outside of select few NPCs ) that wants all Eldians dead no matter what, to the point they'd immediately ally with the Nazi Germany analogue in universe the moment they hear that Eldians might pose a threat again, effectively further forcing the geopolitical situation into a completely black and white scenario with little to no nuance because of how much the world hates Eldians to genocidal levels. I read about a lot of bad empires in real life, but never have I encountered an ethnic minority that was hated so badly by the rest of the world leading to other countries refusing to fight their own wars just to take turns bullying said ethnic minority over something that happened over a century ago (this is also extremely relevant for the next section as I will get into shortly). All in all, the worldbuilding is awful due to never showing us the perspective of the outside world in any meaningful way, which is even worse given the central conflict is meant to build up to a world ending apocalypse.

Themes/Messages

The overarching message is a convoluted fuckfest of ideas with no real payoff because of the Hajime Isayama's own political views and the worldbuilding of post timeskip making every ending to be a clusterfuck of ideas with no clear message beyond a generic "genocide/war/extremism bad" message that is expected from any political drama, and remember: this is the morally sound interpretation of the overarching message.

Now, obviously Attack On Titan has been criticized in the past for its extremely suspect political themes and Isayama's own extremely questionable political opinions on Japan. Despite its claims of being a supposedly anti fascist show because of how it portrays it as bad, yet it never portrays any real alternative for the fascism/extremism the status quo constantly exhibits and any attempts to dismantle it are repeatedly met with the same realization that "it's just how the world is," how they need to keep the system intact and kill all of the "undesirables" or else they will be killed in turn and that certain groups are more deserving of life than others and that coexistence is virtually impossible and will lead to ruin. This is shown throughout the entire series: even after the basement reveal all the way to the ending, Eren and co. never try to find any alternative (like teaming up with the disenfranchised and forming alliances) and the status quo is suck in the same "kill or be killed" narrative we started with. The series never tries to grapple with showing the effects of fighting fascism/extremism to the same degree a well written anti-fascist story does so like All Quiet On The Western Front and this is likely because I am going to be brutally honest, Isayama was never interested in criticizing a system that he glorifies and is sympathetic towards especially given the historical parallels between Eldia and Japan, where the narrative easily becomes a Japanese Nationalist's wet dream the more you analyze it with this in mind.

The entire worldbuilding also heavily supports this. Communication with the outside world is shown to be nigh impossible due to the terribly written political situation effectively forcing omnicide as the only way to resolve the overarching conflict given no one wanting to ally with Paradis and the latter being an oppressed minority despite having ruled an empire and committed atrocities on the entire world in the past. This is extremely suspect and draws many similar parallels with real world nationalists and colonists with the belief that they're this underdog race of people who were cucked of their former glory against their colonized territory. This is not helped at all with the series effectively depicting the reason the empire fell was because the pacifist king felt "guilty" and that the rest of his race needed to suffer for the sins of their ancestors, another highly suspect argument that Japanese nationalists use. All of this is not even me bringing up that the series depicting Eldians effectively being treated like Jews for losing their empire and that the rest of the world are Nazis for asking for apologies/reparations for warcrimes and the ending effectively being an fascist's view of eternal war and how coexistence is impossible and war will not stop until one side is dead. I can go on and on for more questionable shit this series proposes but I think I made my point clear enough in that saying that the themes/messages being a clusterfuck is the understatement of the century.

Debunking Common Counter-Arguments

"It'd take too much time to properly develop every character!"

No it would not lmao. Cowboy Bebop, Legends Of The Galactic Heroes, Game Of Thrones/ASOIAF, Evangelion, and Berserk are all perfect examples of shows with a similarly large cast and are able to write more compelling characters and dynamics in far less episodes. There is frankly no excuse for AOT to be this poorly written and I'd honestly prefer having more filler moments to flesh out certain characters and dynamics so the character drama wouldn't be literal dogshit.

"The point is that X can't ever change!"

This would have been compelling if the story actually went to any length with grappling with the issues any of the characters deal with, and how it affects their psyche and relationships over time. This applies to virtually every character because of how they're soulless plot devices and not human beings due to the series never actually going in depth and showing how their flaws affect their relationships in any meaningful way, which in a sense just confirms to be the author never wanted to actually write about or analyze how certain characters behave and the effects it'd have on their relationships, they're just plot devices to push the plot from point a to point b so long as it's convenient and get sidelined the moment they're no longer relevant.

"The worldbuilding isn't bad because real life countries are also awful"

Yeah uh, one problem with this is that fiction needs to make sense and for a series that's all about setting up a genocide dilemma, there is zero reason for us to care about the outside world until the author starts showing Eren murdering innocents from countries we were never given time to feel attached to rather than writing the conflict in a way that shows the perspective of both sides by fleshing them out so viewers can form their own opinions.

"Characters like Niccolo and Onyakopon as well as Hizuru proves that the outside world aren't all bad"

It doesn't matter especially since we the viewers were never shown in any meaningful way to be able to affect the status quo in a way that wouldn't require Eren to initiate the rumbling. Even the characters in universe doubt that the assistance from Hizuru would be able to help them in any meaningful way given they were only exploring their resources, so why should the audience in that case?

"AOT portrays genocide/fascism as bad because it depicts Eren and The Yeagerists as evil for killing people!"

Just because the author tells us something was meant to be the case doesn't matter if it's now shown in any meaningful way. This is especially relevant for AOT's case as the entire narrative depicts the world as being cruel and that fighting is the only way to survive. Refer to what I said in the Worldbuilding and Themes/Messages sections for more information but the tl;dr is that even though it's depicted as morally bad, the series never actually challenges these perspectives in any way and the status quo stays the same from beginning to end with the kill or be killed philosophy. Meaning that whether the author intentionally or unintentionally meant to portray this, he has more or less simply validated the belief that fighting is the only way to survive and how the pain caused from that ultimately doesn't matter.

"AOT's ending is anti genocide/fascism because it shows war never ends!"

Only to someone who is unfamiliar with fascist media would claim this is true. Because anyone who is even slightly familiar with fascist literature would recognize that Paradis hyper-militarization and ultimate destruction with the titan curse coming back, combined with the series worldbuilding and status quo never changing will easily see that the ending is very clearly meant to be an apocalyptic visions that you're supposed to fear that you constantly see in fascist literature, how this future is a direct consequence because Eren failed to wipe out all enemies beyond Paradis.

"AOT's popular so that has to mean it's good!"

Yeah, and Infinity War and Endgame are seen as the pinnacle of moral/ethic debates and peak cinema to casual moviegoers, yet I'm pretty sure nearly everyone reading this post would agree this is not the case. I automatically disregard everyone who uses appeal to popularity for their argument for this exact reason given the content that I actually watched is not good much less groundbreaking in the slightest.

"AOT is good because it uses foreshadowing/symbolism/negative change arc/kills off characters/plans itself out/insert some other basic writing technique"

Damn! So it uses basic writing techniques that all writers are not only capable of using and but are also expected to know how to use! Truly absolute cinema right here! Next thing I'm gonna here is that Redo Of Healer is a masterpiece due its skillful use of persuasion to make the audience feel bad when Keyaru commits morally questionable shit on certain characters!

In conclusion, if you like Attack On Titan, your intelligence is low.

Just like it happens with all overhyped mediocrities, the thing that made it so famous is the premise. A setting where mankind is almost wiped out by giant monstrosities and gets cornered behind huge walls, only for a giant to break down their fortifications and let the monsters into civilian areas. Terror and death spread as people die defenceless by the thousands and the rest retreat to other fortified lands where they work almost as slaves because of overpopulation and lack of food. From this description you are presented with a most interesting action / survival / horror, very graphical and doesn’t hold back in depicting gore, as the giants chew and swallow people. You are really intrigued to find out how people can survive against these monsters.

Sounds amazing enough for anyone to jump into the show, but surely not because it is original. It is actually quite basic and overdone; there have been several similar stories over the years, from Blue Gender to Claymore. Heck, the very same studio made Owari no Seraph and Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, which have the exact same premise. The truth is, AOT came out at a time when 90% of anime were effortless softporn and moe; so it stood out. If it was made along with Death Note or Code Geass, it would only get a fraction of its hype. Also, the zombie apocalypse fad was still going strong in the west, and people were craving for something similar to The Walking Dead and hopefully not as trashy as Highschool of the Dead. Also, it is not a harem with schools that pretends to be deep and serious by having an apocalyptic story that is there as nothing but a fancy backdrop, like in the cases of Chrome Shelled Regios or Total Eclipse.

The main problems are still present though; so let’s go over them, one by one.

1. AOT is oozing with coolness and not mature or sensible

That translates to lots of eye-rolling moments. It is NOT a mature story despite having mature themes; and if some think otherwise they are simply ignorant. It’s all here, the cheesy dialogue, the 1-dimensional characterization, and the overused shonen shenanigans. The enemy seems undefeatable at first but then some obnoxious emo teenagers get convenient superpowers and defeat them by the dozens.

2. Characterization is quite basic and even laughable at points despite the attempts to make the cast mature and serious.

Take the protagonist for example. Remember Naruto and how he always screams “I WILL SAVE SASUKE DATEBAYO!” every 5 minutes to the point you want to strangle him? Well this one here is not any better since all he does is yelling “I WILL DEFEAT ALL THE GIANTS DATEBAYO!” It has that irritating always-angry, totally-stupid shonen thing you find pretty much everywhere and no amount of dramatic backdrop manages to make him anything more than that. Also, his backdrop did not form his personality, as he was BORN angry; he did not become angry because of the titans. And just like all typical shonen heroes he has special powers, special family, special friends, is plot armoured, and in general has everything working to his favour despite being nothing but yet another ill-mannered youth. But hey, we gotta pamper our main audience somehow and this effortless stereotype works just fine; so why try harder?

Other characters include:
- An aloof girl who loves potatoes and talks like a retard; because all shows need a comic relief idiot.
- A local aristocrat who exists to show what a selfish asshole he is, letting everyone die just so he can escape with his money and not thinking about it twice; since as we all know adults in shonen are all assholes and only teenagers are the goodhearted folks who do all the work and save the day.
- Kidnapers who kill and sell people as prostitutes, just so we can hate them and wish them dead 10 seconds after they are introduced.
- Some scaredy cat boy who is always crying and panicking, just to show how cool is everyone else. Worthless and irritating as Reki from Claymore and yet another proof of why this show is not better than Claymore. They pretend he is a mastermind when it comes to planning ahead, but in reality he is the only one who sometimes thinks, while everyone else is an oblivious idiot. So technically he is a normal guy surrounded by retards.
- And let’s not forget the protagonist’s “not-blood-related-sister” who seems WAY too interested in him to the point she can’t exist without being a needy pet with constant withdrawal syndrome and half her screen time consists of yelling his name. How else would we have the obligatory brother-sister love thingy going on? Very mature, indeed.

You can literally describe most of them in 10 words as the way they talk and act will border a slapstick comedy half the time. Everything they need to express, they do it by yelling or crying like maniacs, even when the situation hardly calls for them to act as such. Or when they try to be serious for a change, it still comes off as comical. You see a guy in the first episode giving the severed hand of a dead soldier to his crying mother while saying with a serious face “This is all we could salvage. And by the way, your son died for nothing. HERP!” Lol man, what kind of a military leader is this guy? Was that supposed to make me feel sad? I am laughing at it.

You may be fooled to think they have depth, since most of them get flashbacks full of tragic childhood moments and stuff; but let’s be honest, all secondary characters in shows like Naruto and Bleach have those too and they are still nothing but cardboards to the story and eventually one dimensional archetypes instead of real people. AOT is not any different, as each of them is there just to cry in a corner, show us his tragic past and then go to fight the giants until he realizes he is completely worthless before the hax skills of the main characters and simply stops caring afterwards. Literally all secondary characters are nerfed or killed-off a few episodes after they are introduced.

3. SHHHHOOOOOCK FACTOOOOORRRR

Something rather un-shonen for the time it came out, was the numerous deaths of secondary characters. Not many convenient survivals and resurrections here; if you are caught by a giant, he is going to rip you to pieces and eat you while you are still alive and screaming. That makes the tension ten-fold compared to an average shonen where everybody survives impossible situations. That still doesn’t save it in the longrun of course, since it is nothing but SHOCK FACTOR to make the audience gasp with blood and violence and not some actually tragic death of important characters you will never forget. You only notice the gore and not the people experiencing it. I will never forget the Nanto fighters in Hokuto no Ken because they were part of the plot and did far more than being emo in a corner before kicking the bucket. These here? Who are they? You will forget them 5 seconds after they are dead. Even the novelty of the high mortality rate lost its edge once shows like Akame GA Kill, Knights of Sidonia, and Fate Zero did the exact same thing soon afterwards. Not even that feels special anymore.

4. Plot Armoured (Titan?)

And despite the high mortality rate, eventually you realize it is something that counts only for secondary characters. They serve only as cannon fodder in this show; they exist just to cry in corners, die miserably, and fool the unexpected to think no one is safe. The major ones on the other hand, get the usual shonen package: Plot armoured with hax powers, like Wolverine’s super fast regeneration and Spiderman’s super fast agility, to forever survive any giant attack. They are oozing with the rule of cool and dwarf everybody else in importance, thus trashing the whole survival / horror aspect. The audience cheers for them, as they wipe out armies of undefeatable (for everybody else) giants, thus there is no tension. It is still all about who is more overpowered and cool, like in any run of the mill shonen. The tragic parts also become meaningless, since it all comes down to the usual magic superpowers and poser fighting, as in the case of, again, any run of the mill action shonen.

5. The mystery aspect is quite weak

Half the interest most show in this anime derives from the gore (which is cheap and eventually shallow) and the other half is the mystery of the unworldly enemies (which fades away as soon as it is eventually revealed). At first you are thrilled to find out why the giants are eating people. They don’t need food to sustain themselves. They don’t have a personality or even intelligence which makes them grotesque and terrifying because you cannot understand their motivations. Well, most of your questions won’t be answered in this season, and the eventual explanation in a later arc only serves to make you realize there wasn’t much to it. OH HEY, THEY ARE JUST ZOMBIES, WHO COULD HAVE KNOWN! So even if you are watching this for the thrilling emotions, you are bound to hate it after you realize it wasn’t that good to begin with. It pretends to be far more than a most basic zombie apocalypse scenario. The city is the mall, the titans are the undead, and the steampunk spidermen are the people trying to survive.

6. Weak world-building

It is full of interesting ideas as far as the setting goes, from detailed maps of how the human lands are run, to blueprints of how their cannons and steam engines that make them fly work. Later on you get even basic politics and religious fanatism as the people react to the new giant attacks and all of a sudden some kids get hax powers. It makes it far more interesting than some generic RPG world full of fortified cities and wilderness crawling with monsters. It’s not TOO detailed though; most of them are there for show since they don’t matter much in the longrun. You think those rotating cannons, the titanium swords, or the steampunk spidermen do shit against the giants? All you need is a few angsty teens with hax superpowers nobody else can beat if they work hard all their lives. And even if you just stick to the setting itself, it is quite simple despite its secondary details. The whole world is basically either houses where people live in, or wilderness where titans roam around. Many claim that since the story is a slowly-revealed mystery, it is excused when everything is so basic. It still doesn’t change the fact that the human land looks like 3 perfectly drawn homocentric circles and later on it’s just a flipped world map with undeveloped empires. Even a baby can do better than this.

7. Slow pacing

The early episodes have extremely fast pacing but then it snails down to almost a halt. The first five minutes go wasted on summaries of things we saw just in the previous episode, and there are even recap episodes for events that don’t need more than a few minutes to describe. In a way this is a positive trait since it invests time in letting the viewer immerse in the mood of the show. Much better to running through the events while leaving everyone and everything unfocused or not looked into. Sadly, the mood is the only thing they focus on. Not much time is used to flesh out the characters or the setting, and in the longrun all secondary cast and the funky steampunk technologies are meaningless.

8. Overused tension gimmicks

The script heads for a constant thrill, and because of the slow pacing causes every major event to last more than it needs, and constantly stops with a cliffhanger. Although this can be a nice motivation for the audience to anticipate the next episode, they do it so many times and for events that could practically fit in only one episode. Tension loses its meaning if it happens all the time without proper relaxation points and after awhile you no longer find it exciting or edgy, exactly because it is always like that. You get used to it, it doesn’t look awesome anymore, and because most of whatever happens in it is about caricatures of people you forget as soon as they are dead, it becomes boring.

9. Plot Driven

Although this is not an issue with everyone, it is still a problem. The characters have no control over the events of the show; they are just reacting to them. No matter what happens, they will never choose what to do next; the plot is going to force them into what to do next. It makes sense for that to happen in stories that have to do with death and survival, but it also makes them pass as drones, unable to progress or develop further on their own, despite their hax superpowers. This takes away their significance, which is already very thin since you forget them 5 seconds after they die. This feeling only gets worse in later seasons when you find out amnesia and mind control are in this story as common as spring allergies. What kind of a mature story would turn its characters into sock puppets?

10. It looks nice but that is all

As far as the artwork goes, there are big aesthetic differences between the manga and the anime adaptation. The manga feels very crude when it comes to proportions and perspective. It has very rough outlines and feels sketchy at points, with crude anatomy and stiff motions. The anime fixes these issues and even includes a catchy chorus OST to make it even more intriguing. There are still major quality drops throughout the show, since at some parts you get fluent animation and detailed artwork which make it look amazing, while in others you get static images and crude character figures which makes it look lame.