I’ll save you all a scroll. I’m giving Attack on Titan Season 3 Part 2 a 10/10. I usually reserve actually scoring an anime until I organize my thoughts into a review, but that isn’t needed this time around. My thoughts are collected: I am madly in love with the second half of the season.
Attack on Titan Season 3 Part 2 directly follows the first half, with Eren and the rest of the survey corps traveling back to the Shinganshina district in order to retake it and discover the secrets to Eren’s father, Grisha Yaegar’s, basement.
Unless they’re really good, I tend to skip openings. I found it nigh-impossible to not watch Attack on Titan’s S3P2’s opening week after week. I was so excited seeing the opening for the first time - hearing how it sounded like a combination of my favorite Attack on Titan openings (the first and third) and seeing how we’d get another epic fight. Shoukei to Shikabane no Michi is just one example of the show’s excellence. Blending beautiful action and heart-pumping music to show viewers a snippet of what’s to come and enticing them to watch.? This is an opening done right.
Attack on Titan S3P2 continues the tradition of having a brisk pace - at least since season 2, each twenty-two-minute episode feels more like a twelve-minute episode and I absolutely love the sense of feeling like I absolutely need to watch the next episode. It’s the equivalent of having a book that you cannot put down and few anime I’ve watched achieve this sensation. As an aside, this is especially cool because this half, for the majority, really did take place in a really short timeframe.
Prior to S3P2, season 2 was my favorite season because of the curves it threw the viewers. This mainly came from the reveal that Bertholdt and Reiner were the Colossal Titan and Armored Titan, respectively. I was disappointed that we didn’t get a reveal that powerful to me in the first half. The second half more than makes up for that as we finally discover what Grisha was hiding and the answer is haunting, recontextualizing the entire series as we realize that most of the titans aren’t the bad guys after all, just a product of terrible circumstance combined with the true villains who until now have gone unknown. I can’t wait to see the things the fans took for granted in light of not having all of the information. Revelations aren’t the only things that make me excited for the future of the show. The fact that the Survey Corps has all but been decimated will have long-standing consequences. I love how much the characters have been changed, scarred by the events of the show. The ocean scene at the end is absolutely beautiful in composition, but Eren’s mental psyche is so shattered that we can’t help but feel chilled as he ponders if he and the other Eldians will ever truly be free.
And I acknowledge that S3P2 wasn’t literally perfect. I can admit that the Plot Armored Titan, as my affectionate nickname suggests, utilized deus ex machina to a ridiculous fucking amount (then again, I suppose once is ridiculous enough) to ensure its survival. After escaping following getting his shit rocked by Eren in season 2, Reiner is fatally wounded by Levi, but he’s able to transform (and thus heal) anyway because he transferred his consciousness down his spinal cord and away from his brain. Let’s ignore the fact that this doesn’t make any sense and focus on the fact that this was never established as being possible before. It’s fine to reveal new, powerful abilities, but it’s understandably irksome when these never-before-seen powers determine the tide of the battle/plot. Then, later, Reiner is suffers more injuries that should be fatal and he still isn’t dead.
Colossal Titan still looks like complete garbage at times (and I only now realized why he looks amazing at times and like hot mess at others - it’s hard to animate it in motion but it’s fine when stationary).
Arimin surviving was somewhat annoying at first for me because I felt like they only did it because he was a main character and were afraid to kill him off.
And the fact that the third season was split up at all is simply annoying for me as a viewer since I had to wait and felt I forgot important details (luckily, I was fine).
These are nitpicky details, but even so, they are faults I had, so why didn’t they detract from my score? I think the reason is because these were all things that, while I disliked at the time, resulted in things that I loved about the season. With Reiner not dying (at least for the first time,) we wouldn’t have gotten the epic, beautifully animated and cathartic fight between The Advancing Titan and the Armored Titan. Characterization has been phenomenal in Attack on Titan, particularly this season, so even if I didn’t like Armin surviving at first, he’s already had to deal with people criticizing him and his team for saving his life over Erwin’s. I’m confident that there will continue to be real consequences for Armin, ensuing that his survival isn’t an unambiguously net positive. Finally, I accept the wait for the second half as well as Colossal Titan’s shoddy CGI because the studio needs the time to animate. As good as Attack on Titan looks, it would be a disservice to rush it just to ensure the episodes come out earlier and it would be a disservice to pool too many resources away from the amazing animation of the fights and the 3D maneuver gear just to make the colossal titan look better. I would rather we have kept the powerful ocean scene than an awesome-looking Colossal Titan.
Overall, this second half is by far the best that Attack on Titan has to offer. It has elevated the entire show. Ten measly episodes have enhanced an entire 50+ episode series. It should be clear why I think this is so phenomenal. Ever since I started reviewing, I’ve done my best to avoid tens. I’ve tended to pass them out willy-nilly, but this truly deserves it and I cannot wait to see how the story concludes next season.
Most of my love for this series comes from the writing, so I’d like to thank Isayama, the mangaka responsible for Attack on Titan.
And I’d like to thank Studio WIT for bringing his ideas to the small screen. While there’s word that they might not return next season, I’m happy at the work they’ve done so far.
“If we kill all our enemies beyond the sea, will we finally be free?”
10/10
A+