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[Jonnas]

I finally sat and watched the Attack on Titan finally-for-real-final-episode-seriously-guys-it-is-final episode.

I am really happy with the adaptation. The animation looked gorgeous, as Mappa tends to do (Levi gets all the best bits, doesn't he?), but the general tone, the pacing, the priority in bringing the Manga's ideas into colour and movement, it was all everything I could hope for.

Spoiler

• Armin's voice acting was outstanding;
• Armin & Zeke's conversation was so well done. I knew it was the crux of the climax, and it was perfect;
• Erwin's final order in Mappa's style is *chef's kiss*;
• Moments like Jean pulling the trigger, the hopelessness before Falco showed up, and Pieck's peak performance, are still as great as I remembered them;
• Mikasa beheading Eren. It was such a subtle, heavy, and poignant moment in the manga panels, I was worried it couldn't be replicated in animation. But dear Lord, they understood the assignment so goddamn well;
• That baby. Holy shit, I felt my soul leave my body.

I may have mentioned before that I had the one gripe with the Manga ending, and that it could be solved with a slight line rewrite. I may have also mentioned that Isayama confirmed that the line would stay the same in the ending, and that I hoped they could at least change the tone.

Spoiler

They did! They did change the tone!

My gripe was the fact that Eren claimed that 80% of humanity has been exterminated, and Armin barely reacted. This heavily bothered me, I thought it was a mistranslation, the scene didn't make any sense. And afterwards, Armin thanks Eren for "what you've done for us", everything about that was off.

They changed a lot of this in the anime, as now Armin reacts with the proper horror that this information deserves. He also no longer thanks Eren, instead he calls him out for missing the trees for the forest (well, the shells for the Ocean), and then assumes part of the responsibility for the massacre. "We'll see each other later, in Hell". Fantastic, much better stuff.

...

(On a side note, I still think an 80% success rate makes very little sense. Eren was still in Marleyan territory. The whole reason Eren was near that military mountain outpost was because he made it a priority and gunned for it. By all means, the Rumbling wasn't even done with Marley - its first victim - by the time it stopped. How the fuck did it also reach the vast majority of the world?)

(It's a minor point, I understand that the themes matter more than the logistics. But it's part of the reason I thought a mistranslation had occurred)

As for parts that I still liked more in the Manga...

Spoiler

• Levi's final salute hit me so hard in the manga... I have no idea why it felt so less impactful in the Anime, everything looked right, but... Manga was better, somehow.
• The final shot with Mikasa admiring the bird... In the Manga, there's this major view of Shiganshina, and you can clearly see the city surrounded by an open field, there's no Wall in sight. It was a fantastic manga panel, and a great panel to end the final chapter and series... But it's much more subdued in the Anime, haven't seen any viewers noticing what the overview shot was meant to show.

Finally, one clarification for @bob. I knew the answer to what you were asking about, but had to watch the adaptation myself to be completely sure you were talking about that scene.

Spoiler

The body that Armin was yelling at was, indeed, another Armin. It was his spirit/mind/soul telling his body to move, to wake up, to stop being so damn weak and useless. It was a metaphorical, Paths-y moment.

Short-haired Eren does look a bit different in Mappa's style, but his eyes are unmistakable. I know you had some face recognition issues with this series, but I'm afraid I haven't seen it from other people, you're the only case where I've seen this happen. I'm sorry about that.

 

Edited February 16 by Jonnas

[bob]

I finally sat and watched the Attack on Titan finally-for-real-final-episode-seriously-guys-it-is-final episode.
I am really happy with the adaptation. The animation looked gorgeous, as Mappa tends to do (Levi gets all the best bits, doesn't he?), but the general tone, the pacing, the priority in bringing the Manga's ideas into colour and movement, it was all everything I could hope for.
Spoiler

• Armin's voice acting was outstanding;
• Armin & Zeke's conversation was so well done. I knew it was the crux of the climax, and it was perfect;
• Erwin's final order in Mappa's style is *chef's kiss*;
• Moments like Jean pulling the trigger, the hopelessness before Falco showed up, and Pieck's peak performance, are still as great as I remembered them;
• Mikasa beheading Eren. It was such a subtle, heavy, and poignant moment in the manga panels, I was worried it couldn't be replicated in animation. But dear Lord, they understood the assignment so goddamn well;
• That baby. Holy shit, I felt my soul leave my body.

I may have mentioned before that I had the one gripe with the Manga ending, and that it could be solved with a slight line rewrite. I may have also mentioned that Isayama confirmed that the line would stay the same in the ending, and that I hoped they could at least change the tone.
Spoiler They did! They did change the tone!
My gripe was the fact that Eren claimed that 80% of humanity has been exterminated, and Armin barely reacted. This heavily bothered me, I thought it was a mistranslation, the scene didn't make any sense. And afterwards, Armin thanks Eren for "what you've done for us", everything about that was off.
They changed a lot of this in the anime, as now Armin reacts with the proper horror that this information deserves. He also no longer thanks Eren, instead he calls him out for missing the trees for the forest (well, the shells for the Ocean), and then assumes part of the responsibility for the massacre. "We'll see each other later, in Hell". Fantastic, much better stuff.
...
(On a side note, I still think an 80% success rate makes very little sense. Eren was still in Marleyan territory. The whole reason Eren was near that military mountain outpost was because he made it a priority and gunned for it. By all means, the Rumbling wasn't even done with Marley - its first victim - by the time it stopped. How the fuck did it also reach the vast majority of the world?)
(It's a minor point, I understand that the themes matter more than the logistics. But it's part of the reason I thought a mistranslation had occurred)
As for parts that I still liked more in the Manga...
Spoiler

• Levi's final salute hit me so hard in the manga... I have no idea why it felt so less impactful in the Anime, everything looked right, but... Manga was better, somehow.
• The final shot with Mikasa admiring the bird... In the Manga, there's this major view of Shiganshina, and you can clearly see the city surrounded by an open field, there's no Wall in sight. It was a fantastic manga panel, and a great panel to end the final chapter and series... But it's much more subdued in the Anime, haven't seen any viewers noticing what the overview shot was meant to show.

Finally, one clarification for [mention=229]bob[/mention]. I knew the answer to what you were asking about, but had to watch the adaptation myself to be completely sure you were talking about that scene.
Spoiler The body that Armin was yelling at was, indeed, another Armin. It was his spirit/mind/soul telling his body to move, to wake up, to stop being so damn weak and useless. It was a metaphorical, Paths-y moment.
Short-haired Eren does look a bit different in Mappa's style, but his eyes are unmistakable. I know you had some face recognition issues with this series, but I'm afraid I haven't seen it from other people, you're the only case where I've seen this happen. I'm sorry about that.
 

Yeah, I'm happy to concede that it's just me. I've never seen anyone else complain about it either. I've just never had any issues with any other anime (and I don't have fave blindness in real life). I think I just don't like the way they draw people in AoT.

[EEVILMURRAY]

I finally watched the dubbed Attack on Titan finale part 2 yesterday, my word... how lame. I would query if it followed the manga (not that it would really matter), but based on Julius' load blowing above, it kinda does.

Spoiler

Much like the whole saga, this started with so much promise, the final battle was awesome, but then it started to decline.

 

I had already had it spoiled for me who was going to kill Eren, so I was expecting a really emotional tormenting exchange between the two before the final blow, and there was build up to this, but instead we got a simple slice which seemed so smooth I thought they were going to pull a hologram/decoy card. but nope, that was it. Job done. They must've spent too much time with Armin in his whiny philosophical scenes to fit it in.

Then cut to some sort of lifetime montage of Eren telling Armin about the events and wiping his memory about the conversation, which looked like it happened several times during their time together (the first even before the events of the first season?) and the rationale for all the killing was:

A) He doesn't really know

B) Reasons

C) He wanted to see this weird lake/swamp of blood

I mean, I was going on the events of carnage/prisoner dumping from another land/torture/etc from the previous seasons to be rationale enough for an anime villain and their character arc. But hey, fuck me I guess, he just wanted to. They might as well have put a giant sign telling me to go fuck myself and I wasted all that time watching him be conflicted about stuff, then it's revealed he's told other people about this too, he knew what would happen and didn't seem to give that much of a shit, so we were treated to several seasons of good acting. When did he get this Professor X style power? 

Mikasa was transported to some sort of alternate timeline where he and Eren live in a cabin? I first thought it was one of those anime things where the character goes into one of those self-delusions ("I don't feel like I'm supposed to be here"), before breaking free. Like Evangelion but less shit. But it seems it was Eren's psychic sorcery at work again.

All of this seems to stem from some girl being pissed off a coupla thousand years ago, who I think was the parasite worm thing? Turning people into titans though, that was great and was looking forward to another good battle, but missed a trick there.

Falco flying, which titan did he get that power from/when?

I am surprised that Levi didn't die, when people normally start seeing the ghosts it generally means they're on their way, but I guess it "wasn't his time yet"

Epilogue = pointless. Really couldn't give a shit. Credits show tree getting bigger and the city getting more advanced before being destroyed, I'm guessing the writers were trying to nudge me saying "Hey hey, Peace doesn't last forever, do you get it?", and then I am Legend turning up and walking into the tree as if it's some sort of teaser/satisfying ending? 

 

Like Bob, I felt a bit confused on some of the faces later on, like the woman who took over the army. She looked familiar, but I'd lost interest.

I think one of the things that made this so disjointed for me was the release. There was such a delay between everything I'd forgotten half of the stuff before the next instalment came along, plus the penchant for jumping through time/location without warning was confusing. I think if I had started watching it for the first time with everything out, I might feel different. Instead I have something which started off so amazing, then started to have all sorts of random tat crammed in that it became a mess.

[bob]

I've started watching Demon Slayer on Netflix. I watched the first half of episode 1 a while ago, but it didn't grab me. However, i'm 10 or so episodes in this time, and I can see the appeal.

I did start to wonder though, as i was watching, why anime is given a pass on certain things that we probably wouldn't accept if it was any other sort of media. For example, some of the dialogue is just arse. Some of this can be down to translation issues, but I don't think that's the entire reason, since often the dub and the sub differ quite a bit, and neither one are any good. 

Similarly, anime has this trope where they just outright explain what they're doing, because they can't be bothered to find a way to show you naturally, i.e. "the demon detected that I was going to feint one way, and then adjusted his stance to counter my attack! Oh my!" 

I get that maybe a lot of this comes from it being an adaptation of a manga, but is that a good enough excuse? Would we have accepted Aragorn shouting out explanations during the battle of Helm's Deep to help the watcher know what was going on? 

[EEVILMURRAY]

16 minutes ago, bob said:

Similarly, anime has this trope where they just outright explain what they're doing, because they can't be bothered to find a way to show you naturally, i.e. "the demon detected that I was going to feint one way, and then adjusted his stance to counter my attack! Oh my!" 

Is this regarding the drum dude? 

I feel what you're saying, which is why I haven't been going through it as vigorously as I could. I think I'll try to finish My Hero Academia instead of trying to find new anime to watch.

I did watch Porco Rosso on Netflix, that was an unusual watch.

[bob]

I finished Demon Slayer, well, up until the point released on Netflix. I thought there were more seasons than that - i'm left wanting more!

There was something so compelling about it, i'm not sure what it was.

[EEVILMURRAY]

On 11/04/2024 at 10:06 AM, bob said:

I finished Demon Slayer, well, up until the point released on Netflix. I thought there were more seasons than that - i'm left wanting more!

There was something so compelling about it, i'm not sure what it was.

Maybe they have more on the Crunchyroll app, you may have a few ads to slog through though.

[bob]

Nice thought, but i've seen up to season 3, and i don't think season 4 is out yet at all anywhere.

[Julius]

Princess Mononoke >>>>>

[Jonnas]

10 hours ago, Julius said:

Princess Mononoke >>>>>

Should I take this as "Better than anything else", or "Nothing is worse than this"? I hope it's the first one, because I really like this film (rewatched it not too long ago, too).

[Julius]

1 hour ago, Jonnas said:

Should I take this as "Better than anything else", or "Nothing is worse than this"? I hope it's the first one, because I really like this film (rewatched it not too long ago, too).

It's the first, absolutely one of my favourites  I watch it every year or so and it never fails to blow me away. The story and characters and world are great, but that music? 

It's my favourite Ghibli and favourite animated film (sorry, Prince of Egypt), and is in the eternal showdown up against a couple of others for the position of my favourite film of all-time. 

One of the greats 

Edited April 18 by Julius

[Julius]

Trailer for Season 7 of My Hero Academia, which kicks off 4th May (there have been new recap episodes releasing this month):

The quality of the show may falter at times but damn if I'm not just as excited to hear what Hayashi has cooked up in the soundtrack this time around! 

[bob]

Oh Damn! I would prefer to wait until it is dubbed, but I may not be able to contain myself!