First off, your opinion is your opinion is your opinion. I'm not so crass as to think I can prove you "wrong" in your opinion by mocking it and stating my own, but for the sake of those uninformed, I want to at least have my opinion stated as a balance to yours. Thus, don't take this post as me trying to debate you over something as personal as an opinion. I only wished to contrast you.
I don't know how to do spoiler tags, so I'll place my warning here: a handful of Attack on Titan spoilers follow.
Ishal said:
Shingeki no Kyojin is terrible, no that's too charitable. It's garbage, no still too charitable. It's an abortion. It succinctly displays everything I can't stand about anime ever, and this is why it's so popular.
I'll start here. I don't think it was necessarily your intent, since most of your posts are as level-headed and polite as you can expect on an internet forum, but the way you phrased your opening here makes it come across like:
"this series is only popular because idiot sheeple adore crap tropes and storytelling conventions, which of course
I am too enlightened to fall prey to."
Saying a show is popular solely because of elements you dislike can create the illusion of being some sort of iconoclastic hipster, even when such isn't your intent. It's especially palling when one considers how many of the complaints you leveled at SnK that could then be turned around and applied to SAO, which you compare favorably to it.
Eren: stock angsty hate filled teen with a chip on his shoulder cuz of his mom's death. Protagonist who does stupid stuff w/o thinking and is never in any real danger due to having his power to shift but when he is in "danger" he's saved by
...Mikasa: stock strong and silent type character. Female for otaku pandering and a generic combat machine when it comes to slaying Titans. No emotions so they can be discovered later in a lengthy flashback... because shounen anime. She protects weaker characters such as...
...Armin: Stock wimpy sympathetic plot device who's job is to sit on the sidelines and vomit exposition to the audience in the most pedantic formulaic way possible, because shounen anime!! And when not doing that get attacked or placed in danger to give the other two husks something to do.
Shonen stock characters are certainly not for everyone, but I have a hard time believing that AoT's characters are any more stock than any other series. Indeed, in my opinion, they're rightly regarded as better rounded than most other examples of leads in a shonen series. Yeah, Eren is a hotheaded, hate-filled shonen hero, but unlike pretty much any other shonen series, where hot-bloodedness can make the impossible possible, Eren's half-cocked attitude always, ALWAYS backfires on him. Whenever he pulls the stereotypical scene in any shonen where the hero roars out in youthful passion, ignores his orders and does what's RIGHT! it always results in his being humiliatingly pacified and lots and lots of death. He only ever accomplishes anything when he tempers himself.
These are the same stock trope anime cliches in so much anime, but OH NO!! It's different this time! It's different because the setting is "dark" and "bleak" and "Anyone could die at any minute!" I'm sorry, but that last one just cracks me up. This is a shounen anime, people. The only thing more certain than an obnoxious cast of characters surviving all the way through, or at least til the end, is death and fucking taxes.
Yes, you're right. Anyone with the slightest amount of genre savvy can say for certain than Armin, Eren, and Mikasa won't be dying until the end. That's three guaranteed lives... out of an impressively sized cast. People are right to be impressed by that, especially in this genre.
Besides, if they kill off the characters, how do they expect to have EPIC FLESH-MECHA TITAN BATTLES??. Because that is what AoT is. Honestly, I don't even like anime that much and I saw this coming a mile away. It's not because I'm super good at reading into things, it's not because I'm super clever. It's because this show is standard shounen bullshit. I'll say it again. Do you really think they would pass up an opportunity to have titan's fight each other? Did you expect them to just fight them from the walls and on horseback the entire time? Jumping around with their cords or whatever it's called? C'mon people...
Fair enough. Many people didn't like the plot twist with eren, and it's very much just a matter of taste.
Unfortunately for how cool Eren is as this pointy eared titan, that "interesting" setting goes bye bye. It's a clever bait and switch. The world seems so bleak and terrifying, hope is pretty much gone. Eren is helpless... until we find out he and a whole bunch of others can turn into titans. That whole bit where the scouting legion returns and walks through the street with 1000 yard stares. The women runs up to them and asks if her boy died for something. The guy breaks down and says no, they're dying for nothing. It's hopeless. LOL JK!! Turns out the scouting legion are filled with a bunch of badasses who are actually really efficient at killing titans... because shounen anime!!!! I'm starting to see a pattern here... hmm...
a whole bunch of others? to date, five have been confirmed. of those, only Eren fights on behalf of humanity. Also I must have missed the part where Eren being able to turn into a titan suddenly turned the show into "eren can accomplish anything the TV". Last I checked, Eren consistently fails to accomplish much of anything as a titan, and even when he does, it's usually just to help humanity recover some small amount of what they just lost in the titan attack. He basically changed the atmosphere of the show from "humanity doesn't have a chance in hell" to "humanity only has a snowball's chance in hell"
And the scouting brigade is an unkillable league of badasses? the same scouting league that lost 80% of its named cast during the female titan arc? then lost another man in the following arc, had its ace crippled for who knows how long, and its captain's arm chewed off? Sure they're efficient at killing titans. They've been doing it for years. They don't fight so easily as to drain the show of tension, though. If anything, their badassery is necessary just to make the show bearable. Without them, it would seem like there's no point to even watching humanity struggle, if they're just gonna be beat down! We may as well watch ants attack a man.
But all this has a counterpoint in the character of Dot Pixis. The kids spend their entire time shrieking and caterwauling (except mikasa.. cuz no emotion, cuz designated female combat badass for otakus, cuz shonen anime) then here comes the aged field commander who is just SO in control of the situation he can afford himself little breezy comments. He's there to give the kids and others hope when the writer should have written himself into a corner with the amount of despair and hopelessness he's built up. But of course, Pixis is introduced with a snarky and witty "fuck the establishment" angle because he's obviously going to come running to save the little people. That's his way of being honorable... and it was delivered in such a way that a blow to the face with shovel would have been less forced.
I don't follow. perhaps I misunderstand? Pixis, much like Irwin, is portrayed as a borderline cold-blooded commander who thinks nothing of sacrificing the "little guy" for the sake of the bigger picture, because they've (rightly) reasoned that there's nothing they can accomplish without sacrifice. the only way Pixis is portrayed as more "honorable" than anyone is that the higher ups want to just seal up Wall Sina and pray for the best, whereas Pixis and Irwin at least want to TRY to win the war.
You see, the problem with AoT and shonen in general is that it creates a set of stakes for itself and then casts a set of characters that are to take those stakes far too seriously - and then countweighs that with a team of happy-go-lucky asskickers who laugh in the face of danger.
again, I just don't see where you see anyone coming NEARLY as close to kicking ass with a laugh in the face of danger as you state here. I came close to dropping AoT a few chapters/episodes in, simply because without those brief moments of success, the show was overwhelmingly negative, and offered no hope to counter balance it.
In between we're presented with horrid comic relief characters like Sasha. Her only impetus in the series seeming to be hunger, but she operates on the same level as the rest of the cast, because shonen anime. All she does is complain about hunger pains the falls out of a chair. Hur dur physical humor.
now THIS I agree with you 100% on. Sasha's existance is unforgivable to this setting, and only ever comes across as inappropriate to the tone. Sure, she got her backstory, and I don't hate her anymore, but comedy relief never had a place here, and her setting the series up for a fart joke was just unforgivable.
***
Regarding SAO, I think the reason people are harsher toward it than other series even when it's of comparable quality is that it truly is fantasy/wish fulfillment. this doesn't make it worse than another show on principle, but it can come across as condescending and insulting to people who recognize it, basically coming across as an "here's a guy you wish you were, losers! Give me money!"
I've only seen the show as the episodes air on toonami, but so far it's okay. Not great, but not bad. It comes across like .hack//sign's cooler, far less pretentious younger brother.
