I want you to cast your mind back to 2013.

This current generation console war had just begun, Harlem Shake was a thing and Youtube rewind was...

full of Youtubers.

Now if you were to head towards the anime community however, what you would have found it...

This was the year Attack on Titan took over and I don't just mean for the anime fandom,

it blasted the shackles of the community to find a wider vast mainstream appeal which had never been done before for a single season...

Excuse me for a second...

...for a single season of anime.

Conventions were flooded with people in a Survey Corps uniform, memes were absolutely

inescapable on the internet and somewhere in between all that Attack on Titan also aired.

I knew something was fucking weird when my

co-workers in my office job at that time started off handedly mentioning attack on Titan in the same conversation as Game of Thrones.

Mostly because people are saying: "IT'S BASICALLY LIKE GAME OF THRONES!" (excect it hasn't shit itself)

For anyone who's gotten into anime more recently is kind of hard to convey how unprecedented of phenomenon this show was.

There'd never been such a meteoric rise in the history of the medium and the only thing has come close is the One Punchy Boy.

Anime nowadays has become a much more accepted medium and I honestly think Attack on Titan was what set the ball rolling for that.

The franchise had the entire community in the palm of his hand and all it had to do to continue that hype train was anything...

and then it didn't.

But after four years it returns with season 2 and has been going strong since then with Attack on Titan Season 3 Part 2 Episode 12 Chapter 3 having just finished.

I'm not gonna pretend that the series isn't still immensely popular

but the hype is certainly just a fraction of what it was. Which is a shame because with this later season the series has evolved

and changed so much that as someone who is initially very lukewarm about the series, I think where it is right now

it's shaping up to be -

One of the greatest anime of the modern age.

And I don't use those words lightly.

What I'm trying to say is the Attack on Titan is pretty Great

and has turned into something pretty Great,

and as the series goes on it gets even more Great,

so I just wanted to make a video about how Great it was.

Originally this was just gonna be a short video talking about how good the new season is,

then the more I worked in it the more I realized I really couldn't do it justice without talking about the entire journey we took to get here.

Because every season is so vastly different from each other and yet builds on and adds to the overall experience.

There will be spoilers in this video

but I won't be spoiling anything from the latest season because it's my long-winded way of saying you should drop everything because this later season

is absolutely worth it.

So buckle up your seat belts, put your phone on silent,

take a break from your JoJo memes because it's gonna be a long one.

Because as one of the few people who waited all these years without buckling in to read the manga,

experiencing all this for the first time now, all I can say is...

I WAS ALL ALONG YOU FUCKERS! IT WAS WORTH IT!

If I can give season one credit for anything, it's that it immediately grabbed your attention until you can't look in any other direction.

I think many people can agree that the first few episodes is one of the best hooks you can find in anime.

In contrast to the rest of the season where you'll find a whole mixed bag of opinions ranging from:

I personally thought it was OK but lacking in a few places.

And I know everyone's given their two cents on this by now, so I'll try to avoid repeating any common things.

Yes, everyone got bored of seeing it everywhere. We all know you're not a real critic unless you complain about the...

And I really don't care if you're a special flower who thinks the second opening is better than the first.

'Cause it's not (Set playback speed to 0.25 to see this frame)

So before I get into what I thought the series was lacking compared to what we have now,

I want to shine a spotlight about what I thought it was doing right entire time and what it continues to do to this day.

Aside form the obvious spectacle of the amazing action Isayama was able to craft is really believable world with what felt like a unique premise.

I've always loved the world building in Attack on Titan because it never needed huge exposition,

dumps of dialogue and lore to lend to his credibility that it existed because it just felt like it did.

It's the attention to detail that gave the world so much life and made it so interesting.

And I know I'm speaking very broadly here,

so let me give you a counter example.

Let's throw all this out of the window for a second and talk about Naruto. (Believe it!)

Naruto has a world with a rich lore that intertwines all the different clans and bloodlines, creating a believable history that you can totally immerse yourself into.

But there's one thing that's always bothered me about it.

What the fuck is the technology in this world?

These ninjas have cameras, computers, satellite dishes, bloody television sets and they are just randomly there and they're not there throughout the series.

These are all very small superficial things that shouldn't affect your overall enjoyment of the franchise,

but if you really think about it, it really fucks some of the worlds logic and raises way more questions than it should.

Like you have magic ninjas controlling mystical beast that could level entire cities with the single fart?

But having a whole room of meditating ninjas singing Kumbaya for chakra communication when wireless transmitters have clearly been used before?

What?!

Radio waves and satellite dishes obviously exist so why is important inventions like radar not a thing on the battlefield?

Or why is technology not more widely used in warfare in general?

And here you got Akatsuki using some high-level communication jutsu what is basically a Google Hangouts.

Christ guys, stop being so try-hard and just start a fucking discord server.

I'm not saying I want to see ninjas running around with fucking air pods

but if you're gonna add some of these elements in your fictional world for some kind of aesthetic reason,

while it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things and I'm sure some theory can explain it,

It just doesn't feel organic.

Now this all may sound like nitpicking to you cuz it totally is but the point I'm trying to get at is that

in the world of Attack on Titan everything just makes sense.

From the social-political structure, to the protocols for certain situations, to the wall having a religion, to the sophisticated mechanics of how the ODN gear works -

every aspect of this world seems to have been intricately crafted from the ground up.

The way it functions and develop seems like a logical product of the initial rules that is set and as the series goes on and more aspects get explored you're like:

"Oh, shit! Yeah! Of course that's how things work. I didn't think about that until now."

You can tell a lot of thoughts has been puts into even the tiniest details, even if they don't explain everything.

Like, I don't need a five-minute explanation on how they have an invention to get horses up and over the walls,

but it's there in the background and it's not exactly something you'd immediately think about, but yeah, of course they'd obviously need one.

Sometimes it's the smallest details that can lend the credibility of your world

and one thing that made Titans such a convincing threat was that they set up its rules then they dear to them under real world logic.

if you don't have anywhere to grapple onto -

If you run out of gas -

If you sustained an injury from some random debris, shot a landing or an ape thrown a fucking horse fastball at you -

Because of course you are.

This isn't the usual anime logic where you have high school kids being flung through five walls of pure concrete

and then no one's even remotely surprised when they dig through four tons of rubble with only a single scratch being like:

"you thought it was over"

Which is something everybody likes and has stayed consistent throughout the series.

But(t) to get back to why I never held the series in the highest regards,

the biggest problem about it was that after everything was said and done it all felt very superficial.

What I mean by that is a lot of the appeal came from shallower elements that were there to maximize impact but not really leave a lasting impression.

From the bombastic action

TO THE DRAMATIC SHOUTING

to soundtracks blaring in your face at full volume

There was always some kind of twist and turn to keep you watching even if it relied on cheap shock factor.

But I can't force feeding you something every episode so you never get a chance to rest and reflect on it.

Cheap thrills took priority over actually taking time to develop these characters with the possible exception of

Meaning most of them were just recognizable for a single quirk or were one no characters introduced for the purpose of being killed off.

The developments contributed to constant shocking and hype moments, but once the initial adrenaline wears off you've realized there was not much else there

OH MY GOD! THEY KILLED THE MAIN CHARACTER IN EPISODE 5!

Ha ha just kidding! He's actually a Titan. It was a prank. It's just prank bro.

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When I equate season 1 to is a rollercoaster ride.

And I'm not talking about those donkey pop-up coasters uou find in your local carnaval or whatever.

I'm talking Nemesis Inferno at Thorpe Park, King the car at Six Flags, the fucking

Attack on Titan riding Fuji-Q Japan... wait a minute

It was a high budget premium thrill ride but it was a thrill ride nonetheless.

Because of this when the show ended I undoubtedly had a great time watching it but looking back I had zero emotional attachment to it.

And that's how it was for a long, long, long-ass time...

And then

If the reception for season 1 was unbridled hype and excitement,

When season two aired it was much more like: "Hey guys, Attack on Titan season 2 it's coming out!"

Alright we can fix this. Can you get me the hype button please?

A lot of this can be attributed to the four year gap

but I think another big reason was that it was just vastly different in tone and pacing causing a lot of people to feel a bit underwhelmed by it in comparison.

Despite this however, it may come as a shock to many of you that I actually prefer to Attack on Titan Season 2 over Season 1!

Oh you know, it would be shocking if I didn't already make a video literally called "Why I Actually Preferred Attack On Titan S2 Over S1!"

Season 2 made me infinitely more invested in the franchise than I had ever been before and the way it was able to make me do this was by

stopping the rollercoaster, letting you get off the ride and just explore the theme park at a slower pace.

I swear this is where a theme park analogy ends, I just really want to go to Thorpe park.

It added a lot of these mystery elements which really enriched my interest in the world and added a layer of tension to it.

J.J. Abrams has this great little TED talk where he explains his theory behind the mystery box.

Where when watching a show or movie you can always find these mystery boxes where information is fed to you

but just enough is withheld to create a mystery and it's the withholding of the

information that is far more engaging for the viewer because we invest ourselves to find out

"What's in a box?!"

And that's exactly what happens here.

It constantly gave you these little tidbits and flashback of conversations that implied

that there was something much larger going on in the grand scheme of things

but not giving you enough information for any of it to make sense.

And it got you curious and invested to see what was in this mystery box,

which in the series was literally

"What's in a basement?"

There was real tension in the air because you didn't know what was going on.

Who was a Titan? Who was in there? Who wasn't?

What did this flashback mean? Why is there talking gorilla?

It can't be a talking gorilla because I'm already Winston.

And the more you found out the more questions that were raised.

There was a lot more emotions evoke than just shock and awe and improved me that the series could do more than one thing.

Also gave a good amount of screen time on characters who hardly got any before so much so that the main trio were barely there in the first half

and one of the most popular characters, Levi was almost non-existent.

Levi more like Lebye, amIright?

Season 2 managed to make you invest and care about these characters who you didn't even remember existed in season one.

Like I remember back when the first season was in the prime of his hype I actually got spoiled about the reveal of who the Colossal and Armored Titan was.

And my actual response back then was:

"Oh for fuck's sake! I can't believe the internet done this again!

This has ruined the entire fucking thing for me! Goddamn it, I'm so fuckin' pissed!

Wait, who?"

Bertholdt, Reiner, Ymir and Krista all took the spotlight for a good portion of the season and I ended up really liking all of them.

Which is incredible because going to this all I remember about them was -

I'm pretty sure you had two lines before.

You were a background character I think.

Cheap waifu baits.

I don't even think you're in season 1.

It's in taking time to establish these characters and building up the mystery of the world

I felt they were setting up a story with an actual foundation rather than setting up the next big shocking moment.

And that's honestly why I preferred this season.

It felt less like a string of moments and more like a narrative that followed a set of characters with their own drives and motivations

with moments that organically resulted from it.

Because there was still some great moments, even if they came there on lower quantity.

Now, while I can understand that as a standalone season

not everyone will agree that this slow methodical build-up was more entertaining than the action-packed thrill ride,

I don't think anyone can argue about the results that this foundation paved the way for.