Friday 16 February 2018

ANIME REVIEW: ATTACK ON TITAN SEASON 2



Attack on Titan Season 2
Released By: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Rating: 15
Running Time: 112 Mins
Audio: English and Japanese DD 5.1
Due Out: 26/02/2018
Reviewed By: Sandra Scholes 

After the Titans broke through the wall, Eren vows he will kill every one of them when his mother is one of the fatalities. Here several years on, we see Eren through his time with the Scout Regiment he enlisted in and how they manage to evade and eventually kill the Titans, but there is the one thought on their minds; where did the Titans come from?

Eren's fight with the female Titan also means more trouble for his friends as more Titans are looking to feed if they break though Wall Rose. What Eren and his friends really want to know is who the Titans are and why they are so ferocious. When they know the truth it will make them wish they hadn't had such a need to find out the truth. Only the discovery of the Beast Titan will have them putting their fears aside to focus on the danger before them.

When the scouts find there is a Titan within the walls of Wall Rose, they might consider if there are more as they have to keep their guard up. Eren and his friends have to evacuate the areas where the Titans are taking over before they can kill any humans, encouraging them to flee. As always the hard part for the scouts is pre-empting Titan attacks.

What attracted me to this anime in the first place was the production value; the sheer effort that had gone into the character creation, storyboards for the sequential art, how the characters interacted with their backgrounds and the use of colour. The main for me was the aerial combat routines which showed how versatile the scouts were when they tried to take down the Titans. Even the Titans themselves (the intelligent ones) are interested in this. As there is suspicion of Titans hiding among the humans, no one can trust one another, even in battle.

The whole point of the latest journey is so that Pastor Nick can see the Titans for himself and shed some light on the situation. Eren disagrees, of course angry at Nick's silence, saying he should tell them what he knows. The anime shows us flashbacks of a time before the Titans came and the fight for humanity took place. Sasha remembers how she wanted to live in the forest with her father, even though there was less and less game to hunt once the Titans arrived. This was obviously before they even knew they existed.

For me, there are several moments that made me sit up and take notice in this four part season, Sasha's backstory of how she came to be the hungriest girl in the series and have her own nickname of "Potato Girl" take on a Titan all by herself, Eren's early life and woes and how he came to become a strong warrior in the fight against even bigger Titans and battle scenes that show the sheer size of the set pieces; Utgard Castle being one of the more spectacular ones.

Bonus for DVD & Blu-ray Limited Edition: 
Episode Commentaries
Anime Expo 2017: Interview with Trina Nishimura, Tetsuya Kinoshita and Yui Ishikawa
Interview with Original Creator Hajime Isayama
Inside the Episode
Eyecatch Gallery
Promo Videos
Textless Opening and Closing Songs
Trailers

PLUS:
24 Page "Notes from Beyond the Wall: Part III."
60 Page Art Book.

Summary: Attack on Titan is still a favorite of mine and one where you need to read the manga of it to get more of a taste of the characters. Now it is on Blu-ray as well as DVD, so we get to see a clearer picture of what happens in this serious action anime.

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