Anime Reviews

Review: Attack on Titan 2 – Episode 1

REVIEW – Shingeki no Kyojin, or more famously known as Attack on Titan, just released the first episode of the series’ second season. Every fan has waited for a very long time to watch this anime series once more.

Although some people in the community were very displeased to hear that the second season would have a twelve-episode cour, the first episode’s release was met with excitement.

As for this writer, it was a much more… meh kind-of episode.

The second season’s first episode recalled to the events after that whole fist-fight between Annie and Eren, as well as what happened to the rest of the Survey Corps twelve hours prior that time.

The first episode focused on the 104th Survey Corps as they were defending against the titans who broke through Wall Rose twelve hours prior the events caused by the whole Annie and Eren carnage.

The Survey Corps split into four compass groups to warn the near villages as their Squad Leader, Mike (second to Levi), was buying them time and holding off the titans advance. Died, of course, quite horribly.

I find the whole interaction between the newly-introduced Beast Titan and Mike quite entertaining. It captures the whole emotion of fear around Mike as he grasps the situation: “Holy sh*t, this titan can speak Japanese?”

It also appears that the Beast Titan has the capability to control and order around the lesser and unintelligible titans. Quite similar to how Annie Leonhardt does it as the female titan but in a much more direct sense – literally telling them to do this and that.

The episode ends off with the big guys: Eren, Mikasa, Erwin, Levi and friends responding to the whole attack.

For me, this whole episode was showing nothing new other than the existence of the Beast Titan. It felt more like a recap of the previous season’s events and how it will lead to the events next episode.

Overall, it was a pretty disappointing episode for me. I was expecting some sort of thrill and excitement but it came out as a slow paced episode.

I hope the next episodes will pick up faster than this one.