ATTACK ON TITAN Part 2 - BLU-RAY REVIEW

How does it feel to be completely caught up on the Attack on Titan anime? I just finished Part 2 of the Blu-Ray/DVD combo on offer from FUNimation, so I can tell you for sure: it feels pretty great! As a story, the arc of this season feels much more complete than the previous season, which after an initial thirteen episodes felt more like a premise than an actual coherent narrative. (Giants appear from the woods; attack city. The people must fight back. The end.) This time around, however, I finished feeling as though I had a real grasp on the whys and the hows of what is happening, and I’m definitely eager to find out more--and to spend more time in Attack on Titan’s ultra-dire universe.

The quality of the production easily matches or exceeds the previous set of episodes, so if you’re already into the look and feel of Attack on Titan, you’ll be satisfied. While there isn’t much visual diversity, there is at least a bit more time spent outside the walls of the series’ retro-futuristic fairy tale hometown, which is a nice change of pace. I watched part dubbed, part subbed, and while I still have reservations about the English-language cast, there is no deal-breaker here.

== TEASER ==

Like the prior set, this bit of Attack on Titan is split up into three distinct stories with multiple parts; though this time around they’re each similar in length, and none stretch to the nine-part marathon-style length of “The Struggle for Trost,” which closed out the first season… very… slowly. This time around, the season as a whole much more closely resembles a three-act structure and we all benefit from it.

In the first story, “Eve of the Counterattack,” we wrap up the aftermath of Eren’s public Titan transformation, in the form of a trial at which his usefulness will be decided. The show makes a pretty convincing argument for executing its own lead character, who many in the show believe has simply become too dangerous to keep around. This is where Attack on Titan really begins to show its strength: this isn’t a show about good triumphing against evil, as much as it is a show about the survival of imperfect--and sometimes downright pitiful--characters. Right away, it becomes clear that there are ulterior motives and hidden pasts galore, and when screen time starts being given to a wacky cult of wall-worshipers who view the wall with a sense of religious mysticism that brings to mind conspiratorial Egyptian pyramid plots, we get a sense that we’re many layers from the center of this particularly smelly onion.

While the FUNImation box set touts a quote comparing Attack on Titan to The Walking Dead, the better comparison would be ABC’s Lost, which invited you to speculate and then relished in revealing new plot twists so wacky that they would’ve been impossible to ever predict. Attack on Titan does this repeatedly and gleefully, but is so well paced over the course of the season as to never be offensive with the way it hordes secrets or suddenly introduces wholly-new concepts.

The second story, and bulk of this season, is called “57th Expedition Beyond the Walls,” and if that randomly numbered mission doesn’t sum up Attack on Titan perfectly, I don’t know what does. Now a member of the Recon Corps, our hero Eren heads into the woods to do some experimenting with his Titan abilities, which everyone is very excited to learn more about. But this begs the questions… what was the Recon Corps doing on the first 56 missions, before Eren? With all of the death that falls on the Recon Corps every time they step out of their base, and their extremely cavalier sense of safety for their members, it becomes easy to believe that there are but a few Corpsmen who were even around for the early days and have survived to see the present. Sure, there was a lot of death in the first season, but those were largely villagers, foot soldiers, and other human set dressing. This time around we’re watching the fast and furious death of the elite warrior class, which really hammers home the tenuous, unstable nature of life in Attack on Titan, amping up the significance of every moment. (So many characters die, you’re almost better off not bothering to know their names yet.)

Without getting too spoiler-y, Attack on Titan ends this season by throwing away the story from season one, in which wholly evil giants attacked and the innocents of humankind had to fight back. That story is replaced with something that much closer aligns to a post-modern sense of storytelling in which there aren’t villains, just equally courageous heroes with opposing world-views. It’s maddeningly clever, if just a smidge dishonest at times; each hero is given a black mark, and each villain is given a halo, as if to say “See? We’re all the same, but we come from different places,” though some of these seem more natural than others. Skeletons fall from closets en masse, and some of those skeletons damn-near stand up and ask “Miss me?”

In all, I was really glad to have stuck it out through the remainder of Attack on Titan, and I’m very ready for some more. The mythology is only a tiny bit more visible, but what I have seen, I’m really digging. But seriously, you guys, where are these Titans coming from? Count me in for the 58th, 59th, and 60th Expeditions to Discover Attack on Titan’s True-True Story.

Alexei Bochenek is a lifelong tech nerd and film buff based in Los Angeles. He writes for various online publications and edits the Los Angeles events website LALookout.com. Follow his Twitter: @alexeigb.