It was, uh... alright. I guess.
I'm kind of hesitant to comment. I really don't care for anime (and it's not like I haven't tried) so I'm sorta the wrong person to ask. A lot of the things I didn't like were things that are standard in anime. A lot of the humour, the way the characters talk ("Eh?" "Ooh?" "Uh?" "Hmm"), the constant indecisive internal monologues. But I guess that's exactly what the target audience is looking for.
- Premise: Cool.
- Pacing: Fucking incompetent.
- The way the script portrays genius (usually relating to Armin): Shits me off something fierce. To be fair, genius or exceptional intelligence is really hard to portray in fiction. Attack on Titan does it by having characters make wild leaps of speculation and then have them always be right because the writer can do that.
- Erin: An irritating twit. I liked him well enough early on. Impotent rage from a small child is effective. It's poignant and sad. Or at I think so. But then he grows up (relatively speaking) and gets a rage-based superpower and suddenly I give zero shits and just want him to die so someone more interesting can have the spotlight.
- Which brings me to my main gripe. I feel that a huge, huuuuuge opportunity was missed with the fifth episode onwards.
They make us think Erin is full on dead. Dead as dead can be. And I thought that was brilliant. Here they are, setting up this kid as the typical angry boy anime hero who swears vengeance through gritted teeth every morning before breakfast, complete with an ADOPTED sister who totally doesn't want to fuck him. So we're fully expecting him to be the hero and do anime hero stuff. After a few episodes he throws himself into the fray as expected. And then fucking dies. Quickly and brutally and in a realistically unfair and arbitrary manner, as if to say, "Fuck you plot armour! Begone from here!"
"Holy shit", says I, "They totally pulled the rug out from under me! Expectations scattered to the wind! Now we're going to have the story continue without its nominal protagonist as the now guilt-ridden Armin and the quietly driven but aimless Mikasa have to pick up the pieces and keep going. And I'm right on board with them because I was expecting Erin to survive just like they were. My god, this might be the best thing I've ever seen from an anime!"
Except then he turns out to be totally alive, complete with super anger powers and suddenly we've plummeted back down to the murky depths of baseline anime.
Oh well. At least it wasn't riddled with fan service and panty shots.