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ATTACK ON TITAN #21 - - Watch & Learn
As I’ve said, watching ATTACK ON TITAN has been more-or-less akin to
eating a juicy steak with a fair amount of gristle on it. You’d describe the experience
as great, on the whole, but you still feel like you’re frequently chewing
through stubborn fat string to get at the stuff that’s actually tasty.
(Which is to say that this show could benefit from a story editor
armed with one of those scissors that are so popular, right now…)
This episode was unquestionably a good portion of TITAN steak. The
ruckus between Eren and the Female Titan was as strong a fight as I’ve seen in
any anime - - absolutely visceral. More to the point I'm making here, though, it makes the
slower portions of this arc look better in hindsight, as the frustrations they
built up comes to a thrilling catharsis. Eren’s transformations have been
fueled rage since the get-go, of course, but no Hulk-Out has ever made you feel
like you’re in the guy’s head (figuratively and literally) the way this
one did. Moments like this make TITAN’s classification as a supheroic horror
war ensemble epic seem like something awesomely unique.
Going even further, I dig how TITAN’s showing itself to be an inversion
of many familiar anime tropes. We already know that the 3D gear provides an
interesting inversion of the kaiju/mecha dynamic we’re so familiar with, but I
also can’t help but wonder if Eren’s revelation about self-belief is a direct
potshot at the philosophy of GURREN LAGANN and its ilk. That sort of thing can
easily twist into a lot of vague and incomprehensible hooey, so it’s likewise
easy to view the Guardsmen’s gruesome deaths as being this show’s cold, hard
illustration of the pragmatic consequences of such notions.
A tenuous idea, perhaps, but I’ll bet these creators all know eachother.
I’m sure they’re giving throwing plenty of subtle and not-so-subtle ‘answers’
into their work, and the phrasing so closely recalls GURREN LAGANN’s that it really doesn’t seem like it could be a coincidence.
Watch this
episode, "Crushing Blow - 57th Expedition Beyond the Walls" here and decide for
yourself, then read my write-up on the previous episode here.
About the Author
 | Tom Pinchuk’s a writer and personality with a large number of comics, videos and features like this to his credit. Visit his website - - tompinchuk.com - - and follow his Twitter: @tompinchuk |
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