Introduction
Attack on Titan is a franchise that I've never engaged with on the level that I always thought it expected me to, and it has enough immediately apparent effort put into it that I feel like it deserves that level of engagement. I watched a decent amount of the anime when it was first coming out, and I know I read through a substantial amount of the manga as well, but very little of that information stuck. A lot less than I thought would stick, given what I did and did not remember going into this viewing of the show. My current viewing of the show is explicitly to explore the serious themes that make this series so culturally relevant and controversial. I feel like I've heard a lot of discussion about Attack on Titan, but very little of it seems to be considerably thoughtful, which tracks for English discussion of shonen-oriented anime. A pretty large portion of the community is just interested in shows like this for the scene-to-scene drama and action, rather than overarching gasp political themes...
The following essay will generally consist of my overarching thoughts about the first two seasons of the anime, with little super meaningful thought put into the structure. This is more of a free-form discussion, primarily to have a snapshot of my thoughts at this point in my experience with the anime. I have been watching through Crunchyroll, so that particular localization is the one I am working from. I know that a lot of people find the Crunchyroll localizations of shows to be objectionable for whatever reason, but this is the version of the show I most readily have available. I will more than likely buy some kind of physical release in the future, but I'm too invested in the series to want to wait for that before continuing.
I'd consider myself mostly unspoiled for the rest of the series, what I do know is so incomplete and fragmented that it hardly paints a picture in my mind that even slightly resembles something meaningful. I will be summarizing information that I feel is necessary for certain thoughts, but this is not going to be a recap or overview of these two seasons. I will assume that those reading are at least familiar with the first two seasons of the anime or the relevant sections of the manga, as I will not be treading lightly around spoilers. This is your formal spoiler warning. If you want a recommendation of the series from me so far, I think it's really good. It's something I'm glad I'm watching over reading; I feel like the sound design choices made highly positively impact my experience with the media.
Setting the Scene
Attack on Titan takes place in a nameless dark fantasy setting, primarily focusing on the last remnants of humanity on the brink of extinction. Humans live within a series of concentric impenetrable walls designed to keep out titans, giant and grotesque humanoid creatures who only desire to eat humans. Our central protagonist, though I would hardly call him a hero, is a young man named Eren Jaeger, who harbors a deep and personal hatred for the titans that inhabit the world. At the beginning of the series, we follow the perspective of Eren Jaeger during the fall of Shiganshina, a city built within a small outcropping poking out from the southern edge of the outermost wall, Wall Maria.
Two "special titans," titans that seemingly can appear out of nowhere and possess unique looks and abilities, attack and destroy the district's outer gate, allowing a flood of standard titans to flood into Shiganshina. Eventually, titans flood through the district and into Wall Maria proper. Eren witnesses the death of many members of his community, experiencing a character-defining moment of extreme helplessness at watching his own mother be consumed by a titan. After living as a refugee within the next wall, Rose, Eren joins the military and swears to one day kill every single titan in the world. On the day of his class's first assignment after graduation from the military academy, the two special titans from Shiganshina attack again and compromise the gate of the Trost district, a similar outcropping to Shiganshina. In the battle to retake Trost, Eren awakens the ability to turn into a special titan with exceptional physical strength, and this ability allows Eren and the human military to retake Trost, though with significant losses.
Emerging Themes
What we just covered is a rough and very brief summary of most of Season 1's content, and provides us enough information to begin discussing the, albeit surface-level, themes that I've identified. I don't claim that any of these thoughts are brand-new or revolutionary, but I feel like actively writing about this stuff is a major part of the academic fulfillment that I've been missing from my life since finishing my education.
The first thing I'd like to note is that the structure of the military, perhaps humanity's primary government as a whole, is deeply corrupt. The Garrison, the branch of the military tasked with maintaining and keeping watch on the walls, is full of lazy drunks going through the motions. This branch of the military has long since "gone soft" in the absence of major titan attacks before the beginning of the series, and they are still racing to shape up by the time the bulk of the series actually begins.
The Military Police, stationed within the innermost wall, Sina, is thoroughly rife with corruption. Most of the members of the Military Police we see openly claim that they chose to join this branch to ensure a "safe and easy" life within the calm and protected wealthy districts of the innermost wall. The members of the Military Police are very clearly in a class above the rest of the military, with executive blessings from the aristocracy they are tasked with protecting.
The Survey Corps, the branch of the military the primary cast is enlisted in, routinely leave the walls in order to search for information related to the titan problem in hopes of finally getting the upper hand for the sake of humanity. Public perception of the Survey Corps varies widely between individuals, though seeing Survey Corps members as a ritualistic sacrifice to the titans outside of the walls is a common through-line. The families of Survey Corps recruits often lament the choices of enlisted individuals, as well as the military for which they work. Joining the Survey Corps is seen as effective suicide, to be thrown into the titan-powered meat grinder for marginal gains for any individual mission at best. Before the series starts, it's established that the Survey Corps has made pretty much zero tangible progress towards understanding the true nature of the titan problem.
It's easy to see the commentary here, in regards to the structure of the military and the government's influence therein. Absolute power is corrupting, and the two branches of the military most heavily associated with maintaining the power structures within society are rotten to the core. The only branch of the military that is actively doing something about the state of the world consistently fail and endure massive losses in horrific and terrifying ways. The aristocracy sit in their comfortable palaces and actively cull the population by sending untrained refugees out to die in certain-failure military operations. In this setting, as well as in real life quite often, the ruling class deals heavily with religious structures. The Wallist cult has strong ties with the aristocracy, as evidenced by Ymir's overhearing of Historia's situation as an illegitimate child. We know that the Wallist cult knows more about the true nature of many aspects of the setting than they let on, demonstrated by that one priest's reaction to the face of a titan within the walls being revealed after the capture of the female titan. It is reasonable to suspect, both from a narrative and thematic perspective, that the danger and deadliness of the job of the Survey Corps is somewhat manufactured. Place yourself in the shoes of one of these religious nobles whose primary goal is to guard secrets related to the true nature of the world: you've already made discussing the world outside of the walls socially taboo and perhaps illegal, how convenient is it that you are able direct those who still want to uncover your secrets to the certain-death job of a Survey Corps recruit?
Within the Survey Corps, however, a different kind of monster than the titans lies at the top of the chain of command. Erwin Smith, commander of the Survey Corps, is framed as a hero of sorts; The Survey Corps is the only branch of the military actively doing anything about the titan problem, and under Erwin's command the most tangible progress towards these goals has been made. However, his approach as the commander is brutal, towards the titans and his own subordinates. The operations that headed by Erwin that we see are brutal, and universally end in mass loss of human life. Whether it be his own soldiers, or even civilians in the case of the operation to capture the Female Titan, no amount of loss outweighs even the smallest step towards uncovering any amount of information in Erwin's eyes. He knowingly sends countless people to their death, making exceptionally risky plays for only slight incremental gains. There is not a single operation the Survey Corps is sent on where significant losses or injuries are not heavily focused on within the show, no operation has been anywhere near "clean". In a more traditional battle-oriented manga or anime, these losses would be glossed over, implied but not detailed or mentioned. Sure, there are entire world-spanning ninja wars in Naruto, however the losses not directly related to the main cast hardly tangibly affect the tone of the piece of media. In Attack on Titan, these deaths are focused on. Disposable characters that only last for a set-piece or two are given names, personalities, goals, aspirations, dreams. Almost every character that we see die was someone with an actual life, not some disposable incidental the narrative can just exchange for any other individual soldier.
One might argue, myself included, that Erwin's tactics display a blatant disregard for human life, contrary to the stated goal of the Survey Corps. Though in a situation like this, where powerful individuals capable of damning huge swathes of humanity in an instant can appear at any moment, it asks one to consider whether it is worth it to prioritize absolute speed in solving the titan problem despite all costs. The awakening of Eren's titan powers and the knowledge that there are "answers" in the Yaeger family's basement in Shiganshina give the Survey Corps an advantage against the titans that they have never had before, and may never have again if Eren is ever lost or killed. Is it moral to push this advantage as hard as Erwin is pushing it? I feel like this is going to be one of the main questions the show requires me to answer, and I likely will not have an answer until I know what's in the Yaeger family's basement and the cost in human life and suffering it took to get there. At the very least, Erwin's disregard for human life extends to him, as shown in the operation to retake Eren from the Colossal and Armored titans. After he is taken by a normal titan by the arm, he effectively surrenders his own life and orders the Survey Corps to retrieve Eren at all costs. Erwin survives this operation, though at a cost of one arm.
Speaking of the Colossal and Armored titans, they are also extremely interesting figures that have revealed themselves to be more central to this story's themes than first implied. The true identities of the Colossal and Armored titan are Bertholdt and Reiner, two fellow members of the Survey Corps and Eren's graduating class. They reveal that they are from somewhere beyond the walls, and have been sent to ensure the eradication of everyone within the walls. It's easy to immediately write these individuals off as murderous monsters because of their actions, however this isn't inherently the case. After their first operation in Shiganshina and infiltrating the military, they both began to empathize with the the wall-dwellers: the people who they built their new lives among. Their regret has built to the point where Reiner's sense of identity became fragmented. The only way he could live with what he's been assigned to do is to fully embrace the role of a soldier within the Survey Corps, shutting his conscience away from his actual primary mission until it he has to make an essential move for the mission. These two aspects of his identity in direct war with each other have been shown to take immense toll on Reiner, mentally and somewhat physically.
Bertholdt and Reiner clearly know much more than they let on, explicitly so. They tell Eren that if he comes with them, they will be able to explain the whole situation, though Eren reasonably doubts the validity of their claims. After fully integrating themselves within wall-dwelling society, they can't help but see themselves as monsters. They continue to follow their original orders once they find a convenient time to retrieve Eren, despite the internal turmoil it brings them to betray their new home within the wall. Clearly, in a position like the one they both occupy in a war like this, there are no winners. The lines of who is good and who is bad blend together, until the only monster that remains is yourself. I assume there are plenty of good, kind, loving, innocent people wherever the special titans are from; the remorse these two show when reflecting on their actions is proof of that. It seems that, for whatever reason, both sides have vilified and demonized the other side for so long that the origins of the conflict have long-since been forgotten. Endless blood is spilled in a meaningless war, where the ones who suffer the most are the only ones who know what is happening yet are powerless to stop it.
Another individual who knows more than they let on, Ymir, shows us a different side of this conflict. As an orphaned child, Ymir was chosen to be an idol for a cult in some village outside of the walls. When the cult is raided by some sort of government, Ymir and the members are sentenced to what seems like a form of execution for worshiping some royal family. The members of the cult, including Ymir, are forcefully turned into Titans and seemingly dropped into the territory the main bulk of the story takes place within, near the walls. Ymir only regains her humanity after eating an ally of the special titan invaders, inheriting his ability to swap between a human and special titan in the process. This revelation is paired with a general reveal that all titans are actually transformed humans whose habits and features reflect the humans they once were. This re-frames the main conflict of the show so far; Eren's hatred of the titans and goal to eradicate them turns out to be a hatred of a class of being that's fundamentally the as him. With this information, one can draw the conclusion that the titans and humans must be two members of the same minority class, pitted against each other by some ruling class for the sake of control. Given the shady actions of the Wallist cult and the government that protects it, this seems likely. The themes of the series to this collectively form the perspective that people in uncontested positions of power are, for lack of a better word, evil. The Wallist cult, a religious sect that worship the walls like deities, seem to know something about the true state of the world that would fundamentally shake society, and they can't let that happen lest they lose power.
Afterword
It's been a while since I've written an essay like this about a piece of media I've been consuming. It was fun! I haven't flexed a lot of these muscles in a very long time, so I'm sorry if I repeat phrases or talk in circles a little bit throughout this post. I'm just very happy that I've been able to get it done, as I've been suffering from a really bad and long-lasting case of writing block. I want to apologize for the uncharacteristic lack of visuals in this post. As Attack on Titan is something that I'm currently in the middle of engaging with, I didn't want to risk spoilers by looking anything about it up on a search engine. I hope you can understand, and I once again apologize for the essay's lack of visual interest. Even so, it feels good to finish up a writing project, even if it was a relatively short one. If you're reading this and you aren't already one to do so, I highly recommend finding a topic or piece of media that you are deeply interested in and write an essay. It's been a really fun change of pace to engage with something at this depth. It's not that I "didn't know" a lot of the stuff before I started writing this stuff, it's more like I didn't know that I had such developed thoughts on a lot of stuff until I sat down and tried to write them. It's fun to discover those "unknown knowns" in life, and I feel like writing essays about the stuff you like is a really good way to discover them. Anyways, I'll be off for now. I've got stuff to check out and get out of the way in preparation for WoW Forever, which will certainly absorb a lot of my free time in the coming weeks.