First Impressions / Series Introduction / Shingeki no Kyojin

OP Sequence

OP: 「僕の戦争」 (Boku no Sensou) by Shinsei Kamattechan

「海の向こう側」 (Umi no Mukougawa)
“The Other Side of the Sea”

Admit it, you’ve been waiting. Eagerly. Every day has been a curse of patience, but the wait is now over, because SnK is here for its grand finale. Or at least the first bit, because oh yes, there’s still more yet to come after this 16-episode season finishes its run. I’m honestly shocked they’ve found a way to drag this damn series out more (read: not in the slightest), but to be fair, when you’re a fan of SnK, you’re down for whatever pops out the Titan hatch. Best prep yourselves boys and girls, we’re in for the long haul.

Right off the bat the important thing to note about this season of SnK is that entering blind or without a refresher will be very painful. Absolutely no time is wasted in recaps of last season’s battle of Shiganshima or the overall history of Eren and friends, the Wall, and why the world is as it is: from the word go it’s all un-adapted manga material and you best learn to love it because it ain’t slowing down (yes, that’s a firm recommendation to go watch the earlier stuff if you already haven’t). This episode effectively occurs four years after those previous events, with Marley—i.e. the bad guys—launching an attack against one of their many enemies and the key enemy Fort Slava using enslaved Eldians—i.e. the progenitors of Eren and company. Only major plot detail here is the anti-Titan weaponry: for the first time Marley is dealing with technology that nullifies the advantage its Eldian shock troops under Zeke (Koyasu Takehito) and Reiner (Hosoya Yoshimasa) provide. It’s a portend of things to come for Marley, and when attention returns back to Paradis and cast we’re familiar with next week (although spoiler alert, best to keep tabs on the utterly zealous Gabi; Sakura Ayane), it’ll all start making better sense.

Otherwise what we got with SnK’s return was classic whetting of the appetite. As fully expected 3D SGI will feature heavily when it comes to the battle scenes, however I have no real issue with what we’ve seen so far; compared to last season’s Colossal Titan, this is heaven and hard to really nitpick over outside the occasional rigid movement. Likewise is art; MAPPA may not be Wit, but this has been a fairly seamless transition quality-wise if I have ever seen one (and oh boy have there been some bad ones in anime history). While I’m probably not alone in disliking the OP received this time, given how damn long SnK has dragged out over the past decade, any amount of consistency should be appreciated considering we never were guaranteed to get this season (or a full adaptation) in the first place.

It’s pretty much SnK as SnK does, and one way or another, you can bet this laden train and its over the top story hasn’t even started hitting the gas.

 

ED Sequence

ED: 「衝撃」 (Shougeki) by Yuko Ando

Preview

12 Comments

  1. Yeah, given how amazing the openings were for the past three seasons. The new openings is just explosions. Just explosions, and a non-lyric musical score. Say what you want about symbolism and colour scheme and even the musical tone, but to be honest, are you sure you enjoy it more then the other opening themes.

    …So yeah, totally with you in finding the new opening theme utterly underwhelming.

    LAsuka
    Reply

    1. Personally I’d like anime to take the Re:Zero approach and do away with openings for the most part and use the 1 minute 30 for extra story scenes. They’d still make money selling the CDs/Digital tracks even if we only see an opening for a single episode out of 12/24.

      Lyfe
      Reply

      1. I honestly wonder why they never considered dispensing with the OD/ED more often. A lot of the set scenes throughout would’ve benefited nicely from the extra time, which is what most people tuning in want to see in the first place.

        Pancakes
        Reply

        1. Exactly. I thought White Fox set a fantastic example that studios can follow if they choose too. I suspect though that many won’t because thats 3 minutes of extra animation budget per episode if the op & end were cut.

          I also think for some shows the opening is just filler space, you can tell because for some shows they wait a couple of minutes for the opening scene to play out before running.

          Lyfe
          Reply

          1. I haven’t watched any of this series since the first season but I think that the extra budget would have been a deal breaker then. I’m probably exaggerating a bit but it felt like every single episode after the debut showed a good two minutes of re-hash from the prior episode. I think ep.13 was the worst (~4:40 before the first new frame). Actually, in my notes I wrote that incredibly, ep.16 was another episode without the beginning re-hash (I think 15 was as well).

            Sometimes the OP/ED really set the emotional tone for a show. Haruhi would have been diminished without Hare Hare Yukai every episode. Lots of shows don’t put so much effort into their music or OP/ED so this doesn’t apply to every show but for those that do, it’s valuable. I do agree that many shows would also benefit from selectively using that time for story.

            Also, don’t most production committees (all?) include a music publisher? I’m not sure how easy this would be to regularly kill off.

            Mockman

  3. *Cue the Battlefield 1 and Titanfall jokes/memes* (Yes, you can hum the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” if you want to.)

    Reading the corresponding manga chapter as soon as the previous season of the anime ended (and eventually catching up to the latest chapter), I can’t help but sense a bit of adaptation expansion to this episode (adapted from chapters 91 and 92), but after doing a bit of re-reading, I realized that even with the adaptation expansion (extra details) or even some anime-only scenes (like another armored train inside Fort Slava that Reiner has to deal with), it’s still pretty faithful to those chapters.

    The transition from Studio Wit to MAPPA was pretty smooth for the most part, though I concur the opening theme is definitely no ear worm compared to the likes of “Guren no Yumiya”, “Jiyuu no Tsubasa” and “Shinzou wo Sasageyo.”

    In any case, with 2020 being an absolute s**tstorm, Shingeki no Kyojin: The Final Season will certainly be one of the few good things to have come out of this damned, blighted year. Looking forward to seeing the rest of the chapters in animated form.

    Incognito
    Reply

    1. By all indication this will be a fairly faithful adaptation, 2 chapters (give or take) are being adapted each episode and we won’t get the full adaptation this season. This season and whatever follows will definitely be a proper sendoff for SnK fans.

      Pancakes
      Reply

  4. Eh, this can‘t be the proper OP and just something that they went with for this first (small) arc to avoid spoilers? At least I hope so.

    I liked the small anime only stuff that they added to Reiner‘s fight. And the CG was pretty good.

    boongmam
    Reply

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