##### (Warning: this review contains spoilers)
##### Also this is more of a personal rant about the series rather than an actual, high effort and well-spoken review. If you are easily triggered or something (yes, people actually get triggered by other people's opinions nowadays) then I'd advise you not to read it. Anyway, with that being said let's get right into it...
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#Introduction.
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Attack On Titan The Final Season Part 2 is way worse than I initially imagined. Jesus. I mean, I knew that the story was going to be bad and filled with plot conveniences and poorly written moments because I've read ahead in the manga after The Final Season Part 1. I also knew that the characters in AoT would continue to be shit (like they always have been) and mainly used as plot conveniences with a single and repeating character trait, rather than becoming actual fleshed-out characters who are supposed to be and behave like humans. But, at the very least I expected the animation to improve. Sadly it is still just as bad as it was in The Final Season Part 1, if not worse. While I never had high expectations for Attack On Titan, especially after Season 3 Part 2, I always thought it would at least be a visually stunning show to watch.This of course is no longer the case after The Final Season Part 1, since as we all know, MAPPA did one of the worst possible adaptations I've ever seen, with some absolutely horrendous CGI and, at times, little to no movement / animation with lots of grotesque looking and poorly drawn stills (I've included examples below, but we will get to that later). But... at the end of the day I could somewhat excuse that (emphasis on the word "somewhat", because personally something that looks this bad isn't excusable at all, but anyway) because the shitty animation in The Final Season Part 1 was probably due to time constraints, tight schedules, constant pressure from the producers, bad management, overworked employees etc. So when The Final Season Part 2 was announced for 2022 and after taking consideration that the studio would at the very least have more time on their hands work on this season and properly animate it, I expected a huge improvement in terms of visuals. Sadly when I started watching it, not only was I disappointed, but I was just plain shocked.
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Animation & Art.
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The Final Season Part 2 not only managed to be only slightly better than an average PowerPoint presentation you see by a not so diligent student in high school, but at some points it also has even less "movement" and "animation" compared to The Final Season Part 1 (which already had almost non existent animation to begin with), with like 80% of each episode being still images with only a character's mouth moving up and down. This is what we call animation nowadays folks. There are even several (and I really do mean several) times where there is literally no animation and a single badly drawn still image just... hangs in there for 5-10 seconds with literally nothing happening at all animation-wise, apart from a random-ass narration from a character in the background. Hell, a lot of the time there isn't even any dialogue during those stills, directly implying that they were just hastily added in there as "fillers" just to be able to hit that 20 minute run time each episode needs to fulfill. It really seems like they couldn't find anything else to put (or they didn't have the time, or they didn't ever bother to add something of importance) and they just said "fuck it, just fill the rest of the episode with a PowerPoint presentation my 12 year old nephew made as a school assignment, I have seen The Promised Neverland S2, they did something similar, why shouldn't we?". But I digress... Most of the art and the faces of characters keep looking as if they are "melting", like they were drawn in one of those "guess the drawing" games where you have like a minute to draw something and the other people have to guess what it is. While those who suffer from this fate the most are the faces of background characters, that doesn't necessarily exclude the faces of main characters at the forefront of the screen, making some stills from the anime look like someone spilled some water over the drawings and then decided it was okay to include them into the final product. Sadly this problem just keeps getting worse and worse with each episode and by the time I got to episode 10 the problem was so bad that I now genuinely struggle to think of another popular and generally well-liked anime with worse animation than Attack On Titan.
This anime (or "season/part", whatever you want to call it) in general had abysmal production in terms of art and animation and people who say that MAPPA did as good of a job as WIT "but they were going for a different, more manga accurate style" are either objectively wrong, or they are trying to imply they were aiming for more of a "manga-reading" experience, hence the PowerPoint slideshow. The only thing that's (barely) keeping this from falling below the 1/10 mark in my eyes was some RARE but genuinely good background art, the arguably great voice acting, a short but nicely animated/directed sequence in episode 11 and episode 3. But those episodes, which in general were kinda decent (?), let's say like a 5/10 in terms of quality were a welcome surprise, but overall pretty insignificant in an otherwise unimaginably ugly looking show.
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Some Screenshots...
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Those screenshots were mainly taken from episodes 10 / 11, because it was at that point where I decided that I was going to make this review and I haven't started taking screenshots of the episodes yet because I had no reason to other than to laugh at them. Of course that doesn't mean that those are the only ones though, I have many more but I decided to spare your eyes from those abominations. And for those who are going to say "oh you just took some zoomed-in screenshots and you think that's bad animation? Of course characters in the background are going to look a bit sketchy" I'd like to tell you that these screenshots are not zoomed in, nor freeze-frames during intense action scenes (well, apart from that Armin face one, that was just way too hilarious not to include). Those images filled the whole screen and they were probably there for several seconds with little to no animation or a change in scenery or camera angles, making them inexcusable for... questionably one of the best, but arguably one of the most influential anime of all time.
##### Note: Bro is literally missing his entire elbow.
##### Note: It's baffling to me how wrong the perspective is in this one. Jean looks like he is a 2.5 meter fucking giant while Armin looks like a 130cm child.
##### Note: this has to be one of the worst backgrounds I've seen like... ever. Genuinely looks like a badly rendered background from a PS1 game. On the left you can also clearly see a "line" of some sort which suggests that there are 2 different .png files that are not even connected properly. Like in old games where you had "dirt_1.png" transitioning into "dirt_2.png" but you could always tell where one started and where the other ended because of the graphical limitations of the time. I unironically would have done a better job connecting those two and making the transition more seamless with Photoshop in like half an hour.
##### Note: apart from this being a really bad still (background looks like a ps2 game's graphics with the "cartoon filter" and that Yelena woman looks like she was drawn in milliseconds) I wanted to ask; WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS GUY'S PALM??? (the one dressed in white)
#####Armin's face is literally me during the entirety of those 12eps.
Keep in mind btw that all those screenshots came from the last 3 episodes (this is around the time when I decided I'd make this review) and I caught ALL THOSE animation errors and/or badly drawn stills while watching on 2x speed. The amount of atrociously bad stills and animation errors in this sad excuse of an anime probably far exceeds what I can show you here (I will never forget, for example, that LITERALLY 50 SECONDS OF A STILL IMAGE OF A FOREST exist in the middle of episode 9 if I'm remembering right. Talk about being lazy).
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Characters.
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I could also go on and on about the characters and how badly I believe they are written / developed, but that's mostly a problem that began from the very first season and carried throughout the series, so it's not necessarily this season's fault. Although one could argue that it actually is this season's fault for not trying (or trying but failing) to fix its characters and their issues.
● Eren continues to be an extremely edgy and predictable Lelouch copycat.
● Mikasa continues her constant simping for Eren throughout the series, with this being her one and only personality trait since season one ("wow she is such a great character, she has to be the best written female character ever :0") while at the same time no meaningful development happens between them.
● Gabi still is one of the worst written and most annoying characters in anime history, with her presence in the anime being completely forced and unnecessary since the time she was introduced, her "friendship" (lmao I can't believe I'm saying this for a person she actively tried to fucking kill) with the blond haired chick who I fail to recall the name of is still one of the most braindead writing decisions I've seen in my life. Also because I keep hearing this, no, she never was a uniquely written character, that "oh I used to hate the other side but now I kinda get them" thing has been done to death, it's literally one of the most stereotypical plot points ever. If you think that's an original idea then you just haven't seen enough anime/shows/series and you are only exposing your own media illiteracy.
● Armin continues to be that irrelevant "friendship above all" character each shounen anime (because AoT is not a seinen, let's not kid ourselves here lmao) has for some reason and, just like Mikasa, this seems to be his one and only personality trait for the entire series, like a fucking robot that's programmed to only act a certain way...
...and last but not least...
● Reiner continues to be that lucky bastard who literally can't die for plot convenience purposes. Motherfucker could have a nuclear bomb go off directly next to him and the show would still pull some bullshit cartoonish ahh reason on how he could obviously survive this unscathed. Fans of the show will say that "if you pay attention to the plot you would understand why him surviving this and that makes sense", but I'd argue that's mostly the plot pulling one ass-pull after the other in order to find a way to keep Reiner alive. Reiner is the literal personification of a plot convenience.
● The rest of the character cast is either completely forgettable and irrelevant (that bold guy for example, Connie I believe was his name?) or just straight up extremely annoying and unlikable (Hange for example, like seriously who even likes her?), and the only 2 good characters in the show are either dead (Erwin, AoT's only great character imo) or... for-some-stupid-plot-armory-reason-not-dead-despite-having-a-fucking-explosion-go-off-right-in-front-of-them (Levi). And then people keep trying to tell me that "AoT is never afraid to kill a character". Like did we even watch the same show??
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#Story.
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For similar reasons I won't go into detail about the story. What started off as a cool idea quickly turned into a plot armor/ plot hole shit-show around Season 3 Part 2 (since the whole Reiner getting his fucking head blown off but still surviving and Armin being burnt to a crisp, turning into charcoal but... still surviving enough time to be given the titan fluid...?) and The Final Season Part 2 is certainly no exception. Everything in this season feels like it was introduced as a way to fix some previously obvious plot holes (paths for example) only to make them even worse and create even more plot holes on the way, rather than actually being part of the story from the start and the whole thing "coming together" in a "big and grandiose reveal" or whatever. The whole attack on titan storyline as a whole has become more and more of a jumbled mess rather than a normal, coherent and well-written story and it gets worse and worse with each installment. At this point AoT's story feels like one of those clothes that you thought were cool back in middle school, but now the thing has like 2000 different holes that have been hastily patched, and not only that but now that you are starting to get older you realize that even though you thought this thing used to slap as a teen, maybe, just maybe, you were just a corny teen who liked edgy ass clothes, instead of the thing being actually really good. Things happen only to shock us but then they are revealed to be not so important (Armin """""dying""""" again), huge battles happen with literally no casualties for our main boisss (Mikasa killing like... 1000 people in ep 11 without having a single scratch YAAAAS SLAY QUEEEN 
) because suddenly we are not watching humans battling each other, we are watching a God amongst men fighting pure mortals, throwing the viewers suspension of disbelief out the window of an 80-story skyscraper for like the 11th time in this series. But then again, those are problems that AoT always had, especially from Season 3 Part 2, so I can't really pretend that this is exclusively The Final Season Part 2's fault.
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My thoughts...
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I never really cared which anime is considered to be "the best" by the community. Attack on Titan though is by far the least deserving of that title. Not because I'm "a mindless hater who hates popular stuff to get attention" as some people will claim, but because it's an objectively bad show. It has objectively bad animation, its characters are nowhere near as good as most people claim and its story has some objective problems with its writing in many aspects, like plot holes, non-sensical character motivations and plenty of plot contrivances. As a story driven and character based drama, Attack On Titan fails because of its poorly written characters and abundance of plot holes. As a pure action-hype-aura-farming show it used to be good when WIT was in charge of its animation, but now it fails as an action show as well because of its atrocious animation and directing. Apart from the unique and, admittedly, really great original premise, I fail to see how you could enjoy this. Except if you are a teenager and the coolness factor is all that matters to you and you can't stop watching because of how hot Mikasa and Eren are. But obviously I'm way too old for this, I'm here for the story and the animation.In my eyes, over the past few years and especially after MAPPA took over its production, Attack on Titan has become a genuinely bad show that is not only outclassed by literally every other critically acclaimed anime I can think of, but it has also become worse than some generic memed-to-shit isekai "trash" like sword art online (which at the very least had some minor improvements in terms of its storytelling over the years, plus some amazing animation) and is comparable in terms of quality with shit like the "milf isekai". Just like those anime are still milking the isekai cash cow that SAO created, Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 feels like a genuine cash grab to capitalize on a craze that was created by itself a decade ago, albeit with a different studio. It has now reached the lowest of the low when it comes to manga adaptations for profit. A blatant copy-paste of the (already kind of average looking) manga panels with little-to-no creative / artistic input and alterations to make it more suitable for an anime format. Taking the manga panels, coloring them and then making that into an anime is NOT a good and creative way of doing things and NOT a sign of "a great and faithful adaptation" as many people (falsely) claim, it is something even an amateur animator can do. A real masterpiece is when the anime adaptation elevates the original source material to new heights and makes things that were originally impossible in a manga format, possible through the medium of animation. Something that truly transcends the source material. A true masterpiece isn't merely "faithful to the manga". And The Final Season Part 2 is far from a good adaptation, let alone a masterpiece. MAPPA's version of Attack on Titan is for me one of the biggest failures I've seen in anime adaptations ever.
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Conclusion.
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I know I will get a lot of hate for this review and I don't really care. I think it's stupid to be like "well, what I believe about this show is vastly different from the general consensus, so I won't talk about it" etc. I genuinely hate this show. I genuinely believe it is objectively subpar. I'm tired of pretending it's not just because the community thinks otherwise. I would even go as far as to say that I genuinely believe it sets an extremely bad precedent for every anime sequel that is set to air and come out after this one. It proves that hype itself is enough to carry a show to "greatness", not actual talent, work, creativity etc. Just take some already successful manga, colour its panels, turn that into the most creativity-starved anime, hire some great voice actors so that we seem legit and we're good to go. When "The Way of the Househusband" did exactly that everyone got mad, but when "The best anime of all-time" does it it's "cool" and "MAPPA did a better job than WIT because it's a more faithful adaptation than that of WIT's" or some other bullshit. I feel like concepts like "creativity", "passion" and "innovation" in the anime industry are dying and Attack on Titan is partially the reason why; if not, then it's definitely the reason this mindset and work ethic is becoming more and more prevalent. It being nominated for "Best Animation" at the Crunchyroll awards is a slap to the face for every single studio that actually put some effort into its production. It should be common sense that overworked animators, directors (etc...) with extremely tight schedules can't make a solid product. Attack on Titan is probably the best (or worst, depending on how you see it) example of this that I've seen in my 7 years of anime-watching.
