Attack on Titan begins as a horror story and ends as something much harder to name. Across four seasons, from its premiere on April 7, 2013 to its conclusion on November 5, 2023, Hajime Isayama’s story about giants who eat people became a story about walls, nations and the lies people tell to keep both standing. It is widely called one of the greatest anime series ever made, and for once the reputation is earned.
Trailer, via Crunchyroll Dubs.
Behind the Walls
The setup is simple. What is left of humanity lives behind enormous walls, hiding from Titans, giant humanoids that devour people for no reason anyone can find. Only the Survey Corps goes outside, and most of them do not come back.
Then a Colossal Titan breaches the wall of Eren Yeager’s hometown. Titans pour in, and they eat Eren’s mother. He swears vengeance and joins the Survey Corps with his friends Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert. That is the whole of the first act, and it plays like a siege.
The Three Leads
Yuki Kaji voices Eren, Yui Ishikawa voices Mikasa and Marina Inoue voices Armin, and the show’s long game depends on them. Eren is rage looking for a target. Mikasa is loyalty with a sword. Armin is the one who thinks, and the series slowly reveals that thinking is the only weapon that ever mattered. Watching the three drift apart over the years of story that follow is the real plot.
Two Studios, One Vision
Wit Studio animated the first three seasons and MAPPA took over for the final one. The handoff shows, and it is not a flaw. Wit’s seasons have a kinetic, swinging quality that makes the vertical maneuvering gear feel like flight. MAPPA’s final season is heavier and colder, which is right for where the story goes.
The Turn
The show’s great move is to stop asking what the Titans are and start asking where they come from. The answer reshapes every earlier episode. Characters you were told to hate turn out to have been children given a uniform. Characters you cheered become the thing they fought. The series is about how a people decides who counts as human, and it does not let its hero off that hook.
Where It Strains
The final season carries a great deal of exposition, and there are stretches where the show tells you its politics instead of dramatizing them. The cast also balloons late, with figures like Gabi Braun, Falco Grice and Zeke, voiced by Ayane Sakura, Natsuki Hanae and Takehito Koyasu, pulling focus from the people you spent three seasons with. Some of that is the point. Some of it is just crowded.
The Verdict
Attack on Titan aired on Mainichi Broadcasting System for its first two seasons and NHK General TV for its final two, streamed in North America on Crunchyroll, Funimation and Hulu, and ran its English dub on Adult Swim’s Toonami block from May 2014 to January 2024. It became a phenomenon by being brutal, and it became great by being honest about what brutality does to the people who survive it.
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