Review from someone totally new to anime

__I was extremely bored throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and in september 2020 I finally started watching some anime a friend has been recommending. I've been missing out! I'll start out with attack on titan, as it's the first I've watched. I think maybe I can give a fresh look from the outsider perspective, as someone who has never seen anime before, and it might be good reviews for people who themselves are new to anime too :)
besides, I'll be writing these about once a week for the animes I've seen for now (most are comedy, romance or slice of life). If you wanna check it out.__
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Synopsis
Attack on titan is set in a post-apocalyptic world. somewhere in the medieval period, unintelligent but quite dangerous giants called titans showed up from who knows where and started wreaking havoc by eating humans. Thus, humanity built three walls to defend themselves. Behind these walls, humanity became lazy and started to forget the danger of the titans. Needless to say; that backfired badly and things take an ugly turn for humanity. Main character Eren then joins the army, to fight the titans with his comrades, although those can't all be trusted.

Characters
The story follows Erin Jaeger, a boy who has been scarred for life by the titans and wishes to kill them all. He is spirited but very impulsive. This is balanced out by his adopted "sister", Mikasa. She is calm and collected, but cares deeply for Eren. The two are accompanied by timid Armin, who appears much like a third wheel to me.

Eren is quite an annoying character, but he is someone I can sympathize with. His fits of rage can seem out of place and overly dramatic, as if he's summarizing his anger directly to the audience. Mikasa's "no bullshit policy" makes for a much more enjoyable character. Armin has a similar approach as Eren, but rather are his speeches about himself being a wuss instead of himself going on a murder rage. Overall, the cast (including the supporting characters) feels really unique and their behavior makes sense, but sometimes feel more like strange caricatures of their personalities due to the dramatic tone. Speaking of tone...

Tone and theme
The tone of the anime was darker than what I was ready for going into this. My vision on anime has always been the pokemon-style upbeat stories so this was very unexpected. I'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic, and the anime has, like in "the battle of Trost", a masterful way of portraying the darkness of the world that the characters live in, by actually using the dramatic monologues. When this is alternated with their brothers and sisters in arms being torn to shreds by titans, I truly makes you immersed in the pain that war brings with it. For that is an important theme; the darkness of the world and how humans approach it. The spirit to make things right which brings a lot of rage with it, like Eren experiences, is a way some people deal with pain and hardship. Others are like Mikasa, a calculating, almost cold character who shuts out the horror and focuses on her objective; protecting those she loves. And for some, it gets too much. Like for Armin. He has a hard time coping with the horrors of reality and shuts down on multiple occasions. He has to outgrow his own emotion and do what is best for those around him.
All in all, I think the themes of attack on titan are outstanding, and explore what is usually shamefully overlooked in the post-apocalyptic genre; How do we humans deal with all the evil that happens around us?

Narrative
This is where attack on titan felt a bit meh for me. A major portion of the show is about mystery. You start out with dozens of questions, but you end with a million of them. Where did the titans come from? How could humanity but walls that big with technology so primitive? Why are these people so gloomy? Why are these people not just gloomy, but literally want to see humanity end? How did Eren get this ability he discovers half-way the season? Why is everyone so against it when it's so useful? What does this say about titans? What are titans? Why do they do what they do?
The stream of questions is endless, and constantly gets filled with new mysteries. The large cast (mostly war buddies of Eren) makes it feel like a diverse world, but also makes it hard to care about one single character. It took me several episodes to recognise a lot of them, let alone remember their names. And each of them has a complex history that the show takes a long time to discover. Then you discover some histories are tied together, and you fall from one intrigue right into the other. And as someone who watches this type of television for the first time, I can only think:

What the fuck is going on?

I think that is a fine description for the narrative. While attack on titan tries to make a compelling, dramatic and heartfelt arc for every character, it ends up creating only few, since I felt like being thrown around from place to place without ending up catching a breather to process what is happening.

Remaining topics
I will go over artstyle, animation, intro and music here, since I know that's important to people :)
Attack on titan looks undoubtedly beautiful. The design of the titans look goofy, yet terrifying at the same time. Their dumb appearances emphasizes they’re simpletons, reassuring the thought that they won’t show mercy. It has amazing shots which clearly shows the emotion of the characters, so you can fully immerse yourself in what they’re going through. That is important, considering the theme. The animation truly comes to it's right in the fight scenes, it is satisfying to watch, and seeing soldiers use the 3D maneuver gear the army utilises to get the angle on titans never gets boring to watch. When Attack on titan goes confusing with it's story, I can always come home to a good hack 'n slash of titan necks. The music wasn't very memorable, as in I don't remember anything of the soundtrack, apart from the songs playing in the intro's obviously! Those are extremely fun to watch, even if it's 25 times in a row. It makes you pumped for the episode to come and summarizes what the show is about.

conclusion
I wasn't too stoked about attack on titan while watching it, but when I did finish it in the end it felt complete yet had me hunger for season 2; There are so many questions and I demand answers! While it had some shortcomings in really immersing me in the story due to quite complicated story arcs, I didn't really need to know exactly everything what was going on, because one eventually figures out for themselves who is good and who is bad, and with the endless mysteries Attack on Titan keeps stacking on top of each other, there is always something else to ponder about and in the end, it makes it ok!