Anime: Shingeki no Kyojin Season 3

I have seen so many shows that I see patterns everywhere, I see the same stuff almost everywhere and I can at least partially predict so much of what’s going to happen.
Therefore, I am so happy when something is so completely different from everything else that I don’t even dare to think about what comes next in it
This is what AoT does, every step of the way.

It starts completely shrouded in mystery and one could think that as the mystery is slowly but surely unveiled, the show would get more predictable and less surprising.. Na-a-ah! It’s quite the opposite actually. A lot gets explained, but the characters and their mindsets are so original that you can never be sure what they are going to do and how they are going to (re)act.

Second greatest strength of this season is surely ACTION.
I have only seen a few series with more action and possibly no series with better action.
More fights? Sure, a lot of shows like that exist. Better animation? Sure, pretty much any recent title from ufotable or mappa. Better music? No, just no. There is no anime which has better music during action scenes (and only a handful of titles with better music overall) – Heaven’s feel is the only one which I think comes close.. Better writing? No way. The team behind AoT seems to know their shit perfectly! They know how to make each action scene different and exciting in its own way. Finally: Better suspense/thrill? I can think of a few titles, but I would say none of them does it as good…

Anyway, the most powerful weapon of this part is STORY. They reveal sooo many new important facts + just enough from some characters’ past to further strengthen their position in the story and most importantly, they enable us viewers to connect so many dots we couldn’t before…but the main parts are still very much shrouded in mystery, which is exactly as it should be imho. It’s super interesting and enjoyable already but I just can’t wait till I learn more!!

I don’t think any other anime has the same brilliant composition of mystery, drama, action and characterization.
What I am saying is that it’s shaping to be the best story anime has ever told.

It starts kind of weak with ep 1 attempting slice of life and comedy (which doesn’t fit at all after what happened at the end of S2), but it fortunately quickly shifts to drama and action again, along with the mentioned heavy chunks of story in each ep.

Unfortunately, the last 2 episodes are mostly garbage – flashbacks that are 98% unimportant, recaps of previous seasons and empty babble – I know it was supposed to be a preparation for part 2, but when they decided to split it like this, they should have increased the level of hype towards the end, not decrease it rapidly and give us pointless slice of life episodes when we all know the show’s just absolutely not about that…

***
Animation 8/10
Apart from the GIANT titan, it’s still pretty much perfection, never-ending action with constant super-high level of movement (and all other kinds of) animation

Music 10/10
Undoubtedly one of the best OSTs ever! It's honestly such a boost to the action scenes when the music is so hyped!

Story 9/10
-read above

Characters 9/10
Mikasa still one of the best chars ever, unfortunately she doesn’t have that much space here;
Historia stops being mostly a cute doll/mascot and becomes actually amazing character,
Eren is as retarded as ever
Superb side characters and their stories like Levi and Kenny

Value 8/10
It's so far the weakest link of the franchise, but it's an inseparable part of it, thus the re-watchability is ultra high. It's one of the first BDs I bought and I will surely never regret it.

Enjoyment 8/10
I enjoyed first 10 episodes quite immensely and looked forward to every next one, but the last 2 ruined it quite a bit..

This review covers only the third season of Shingeki no Kyojin. For a full understanding, please read the review of the previous seasons in their respective entries.
Review
Shingeki no Kyojin (SnK) is, by now, one of the most important shows airing in Japan. The reason is simple: it has a budget, it has fame, and it has a purpose. The original idea, for those who have forgotten, was to deliver a world on the brink of extermination, a place where mankind could only cower in fear of the titans while a few brave heroes would die in the hundreds in order to save a single day. This idea, however, changed. A lot. By the end of the second season what we had was some sort of complex political intrigue fueled by heroes and villains fighting each other in the form of giants while searching for the truth.

No one can argue that SnK puts a lot at stake. Both previous seasons fueled us with questions about how the world came to be, about what exactly are the titans, what the hell is going on behind the scenes, and so on. It got a lot more shounen and we've learned only random characters are disposed of and the heroes were script-protected, but it still got the most tense atmosphere of its genre. So now we get to see another season. Does it answer our questions? Does it still stand on its purpose?

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1. A political season
   First of all, forget fighting the hordes of titans. After unleashing his new power, Eren is hunted by the noble and the police while his friends inside the scouts try to keep him hidden and protected. The atmosphere of the show shifts from deadly fights against the titans to a more tricky dealing with other humans, greedy ones to that. It all boils down to politics in the end, with most of the season revolving around the royal family, a manhunt for Eren, and man versus man combat. In a way, this makes the shounen aspect of the tale feel less powerful than in the previous season, which as a consequence turns everything a lot more mature at first sight.
   
   Remember the door to the basement?
   Yes? Good. The show remembers it as well, but only enough to keep it fresh in our minds.
   
   It gets a lot a nonsense though
   In a way, SnK seems to be a massive amalgam of randomness. It was first about Eren's revenge, then the titan's secrets, then politics, and now about the birth of fucking civilization. It hits some marks, but most of the time it seems to spit so much random information at you and very little seems to have real meaning. By the middle of this season, for example, we get thrown into the origins of the royal family, which was barely even mentioned until then. After that we are shown to a side of the military that we never knew existed. It's a lot to take, but at least it has the consequence of showing us some info on how the walls and the city came to be.
   
   When they do that, however, it becomes obvious the author was not thinking things right when creating the timeline. For a place with 100 years of existence, people talk about "previous generations” as if they had dozens generations since the creation. It's 100 years for god’s sake, it’s possible there are living people who saw the wall being fuckin built. Anyway, to correct these holes they opt for a few ass-pulls with memory shaping, but most of the time it simply ignores any sort of questioning.
   
   It's still the same though
   Although the attempt to breach the political area is a bold and good one, the show remains a slowpoke in terms of pace. There are entire episodes dedicated to some character explaining his own conclusion about a mystery just for the mystery to be completely told to us in the next episode. There is too much boring and meaningless dialogues trying to give depth to the nonsense behind everything, and this ends up making things become more crazy as well as nearly zeroing the survival aspect of the show and the thrill of fighting the powerful titans. Not even the ending, which puts the titans back in the spotlight, is enough to make up for the wasted time in things that could be explained in a fourth of the time they did.
   
   And it forgot its cast
   The cast was never exactly a forte for SnK. Eren yelled a lot more than necessary, Armin was just a boy in a permanent state of despair, and Mikasa was never approached from any angle besides the super-protective god sister. This season, however, it seems the staff forgot to give time for ANY character to shine except for Levi and Historia. Most of Levi's squad only get a trial to their lives for one short decision at attacking a human, which ends up being not much of a problem for them. Eren is basically removed from screen until later, when he just wishes to be killed without any sort of self-questioning. It's weird. People, even villains, seem to lack the ability to lie and all their audience also seems unaware of that possibility. A pity, because the political backstabbing could be a lot better if you knew more shades to the characters acting in it. Perhaps the most explored character in this department here is Erwin, but even he gets too little to shine.
   

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Comments
SnK still gets its combo rolling and it did move away from the typical shounen shit it was becoming. I was expecting a season filled with insane titan versus titan fights, but instead got a season with a lot more depth and some welcome explanations to some of the tale's mysteries. In a way I find it pleasing to see the show going down this path, becoming more grounded even if throwing away that mask of a survival tale (if it had any of that by now).

There is, however, a serious problem with the content of this new approach. There are some interesting aspects, but the show wastes a lot of time detailing useless things, giving a background tale to characters with little importance and, more importantly, failing to develop the major cast in any way. Mikasa and Armin are simply ignored, Levi gets the role of protagonist, but he lacks the complexity to be a good one, everyone else is just there to have a line explaining things at most.

We got answers, and that's perhaps enough to move on. Now we need to see where we will be going from there.