Attack on Titan is one of the biggest anime hits in recent memory. Popular on both sides of the Pacific even before it was dubbed into English, it garnered praise for its graphic animation, hairpin-turn plotting, and palpable atmosphere. But despite the hearty recommendations from otaku circles, I avoided Attack on Titan. This was partly because of my inherent skepticism of something so universally praised, thinking there was no way it could live up to the hype, but also because I found the premise ridiculous.
Set in a fantasy world resembling medieval Germany, Humanity is almost extinct after being devoured by a race of mindless giants called Titans. 100 years before the series begins what's left of the human species has retreated behind three massive walls to protect themselves. It's here we meet our protagonists; young Eren Jaeger, his adopted sister Mikasa, and their friend Armin. The three yearn for something more than their repetitive lives behind the wall, with Eren in particular wanting to join the Scouts who explore beyond the protective barrier and see the outside world. But their childhoods are abruptly ended when a colossal skinless Titan, taller than any previous Titan, suddenly appears and blows a hole in their town's wall. A horde of smaller Titans floods in and Eren's mother is eaten, setting him on a path of vengeance. He and his friends barely escape the slaughter and decide to join the Army to fight back against the Titan threat. But despite their gusto, there is more to the Titans' sudden reappearance than they know...
What turned me off about Titan was its reputation of grimness. It was compared to Game of Thrones when it came to character deaths, giving them interesting backstories and personalities only to murder them in the most gruesome ways. The gore of the Titan attacks was heavily emphasized by viewers. Not helping matters was the Titans' apparent invincibility. With anime's usual answer to giant monsters, giant robots, off the table due to the setting, the puny human protagonists seemed completely outmatched by the Titans' speed, regenerative ability, and hard to reach weak spot. They seemed so undefeatable it was almost laughable. When I tried to brainstorm Anti-Titan strategies with my roommate, the anime checked me at every turn. This created in my mind the idea that Attack on Titan was nothing more than an exercise in masturbatory depression, a slasher movie blown up to apocalyptic scale where characters existed for no reason other to have their lives and dreams ended in the meat grinder of a Titan attack. An excuse to wallow in adolescent grimness and "oh so serious" violence.
So when Toonami started airing the English dub, I began watching mostly out of spite. Eventually I did start to dig on the characters and story, but the hype felt out of place. The anime was good but it was still flawed, mostly pacing problems and an over-reliance on dialogue, so what was it about Attack on Titan that made it so popular? Then while watching the news, it finally clicked.
The first decades of the 21st century have not been kind to the climate of American Culture. Not to be the millionth person to say it, but the triumph we felt after the End of the Cold War and the Fall of Communism was ended by 9/11. What seemed like sunny days ahead became dark and stormy one September morning, ushering in an era of partisan bickering, neo-conservatism, and the War on Terror. And the charged atmosphere brought other distressing issues like Climate Change and wealth inequality to the forefront of discussion. It felt the End Times had come. Any wonder than that post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction came back into vogue alongside the gritty reboot? If the Apocalypse was right around the corner, it only made sense to prepare for the aftermath.
This really hit home with the Millennials, those who had been born in the late 80s/early 90s and are now going through college. They came of age during this oppressively grim time, when everyone was worried about terrorist attacks, virus scares and environmental degradation. Cynicism was the order of the day and the news sounded worse every night. Just recently we had the stratified racism and Police militarization during the Ferguson riot, the boiling-over of the entrenched bigotry in video game culture, and the takeover of sections of Iraq by ISIS radicals. And that's on top of the shit economy that's keeping many Millennials unemployed and living with their parents. It's like we can all feel the tremors of the Great Collapse and fear the moment it comes.
These same Millennials grew up with anime. They were at the heart of the anime boom when the original Toonami brought Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon to American television and make up a huge part of the anime audience today. There the ones who've made a hit out of Attack on Titan. Why? Because they can see themselves in it.
Just like the protagonists of Titan, Millennials were born into a world of relative safety. The former behind their fortified walls, the latter in the Capitalism triumphant 90s. But that safety came to an abrupt and terrifying end by a surprise attack. The Colossal Titan in the anime, 9/11 in the real world. Suddenly the world wasn't safe anymore. Parents became vulnerable, the military became an increased presence in everyday life, and the threads of civility began to fray. And the danger doesn't have to actively be present to affect people, just the looming threat of what might happen is enough to inspire dread and rash decisions in people.
But despite the ominousness, Eren and his comrades fight on. They refuse to let the harsh reality keep them from achieving their goals. In fact, the very overwhelming odds inspire them to fight harder. And that's what Millennials relate to. They relate to living in a depressing world that seems to refuse to get better but dreaming anyway. They relate to fighting back against that very depression. They relate to sometimes letting the grim times get to them and having their friends slap them out of it. They can relate to not letting outdated systems and ideas get in their way. What's true in Titan is true for them.
So in this metaphor, the Titans stand in for every grand existential threat Millennials face. Climate change, Terrorism, the crumbling American infrastructure, all of them Titans. And while they may not have Titan Shifting or ODM Gear, they do have the Internet. They may not be able to kill cannibalistic giants or plug holes with boulders, they can organize quickly and Occupy Wall Street. Sometimes they do fall short of their idealistic goals, like defending Trost or Occupying Wall Street, but in both cases they get back up and keep at it.
Now some of this could be said about any generation coming into adulthood, for instance didn't the Baby Boomers fight against the society they grew up? But the key difference is in the cynicism. The Baby Boomers weren't rebelling against cynicism, they were rebelling against the plasticity and homogeneity of the 1950s. It was cynicism that drove their rebellion into the ground. But Millennials are fighting against cynicism, just like in Attack on Titan. They're fighting against the fear and paranoia that keeps us trapped behind walls, just waiting for the end to come. Fighting against the climate of the times. Fighting for a goddamn future.
Of course, what I just laid out is metaphorical. Millennials aren't literally fighting like the characters in Titan, but I think they bought in to the similarities. The struggle against the Titans felt like the same struggles they face blown up to world-shaking reality. They got the overwhelming fear, the righteous anger, and pyrrhic joy in the anime's narrative. So I was wrong. Attack on Titan isn't the exercise in masturbatory depression I thought it was. In fact, it was the exact opposite. It's not an anime about hopelessness. It's an anime about hope and the willingness to fight for it.
So all together now!
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