What I experienced with Attack on Titan is a little different from what most people did. I first heard of it when the 4th season came out. The hype that surrounded the release of what was annoynced as the last season made it impossible for me not to take a look.
At first I wasn't sure it was worth it to go back and watch all the previous seasons so I started from season 4. It was a nice imaginary world that highlights the crualty of humans towards each other when they forget what they have in common and focus on the racial and historical differences.
It points out how the hate leads to discrimination and wars and how ugly those wars can get when we stop seeing each other as fellow human beings.
Of course, because I didn't watch the first seasons, I missed out on a lot of details and had not much attachement to the early seasons' characters. So when the "heroes" of the first three seasons clashed with the heroes of the 4th season, I was rooting for the latters (Gabi and co.)
I was so submerged into the narrative that I couldn't imagine what the producers did there.
The event that made me kind of obliged to catch up with the story from the beginning was when a girl named Sasha who was portrayed as one of the invaders in season four, got shot during the ivasion by none other than Gabi who was portrayed as a hero. A messed up, strongly manipulated, teenage hero. But a hero nonetheless.
That event made the internet explode with hate towards Gabi and grief for Sasha. That's where I got confused and went back to season one.
It turned out that the story began with a group of children living in an island thinking that their island was the last inhabitable place on earth and that the rest of the world was only occupyed by oversised, mindless humanoids called Titans who feed on human flesh. They only managed to survive and keep the island thanks to the walls that protect them from their eternal predators.
It was so easy to get attached to those characters because all they think about is family and their biggest dream is "freedom". You'd thing you'd want the same thing if you were them and you start comparing them to real life cases where a group of people are under siege and aspire to escape and explore the world.
I watched them grow into the soldiers who later discovered the reality of the world and identified their real enemies ( spoiler: not the titans). Only then I felt sad for Sasha and resented Gabi for shooting her.
The rest of the story takes us through an existential and philosophical dilemmas where the enemies of yesterday become the friend of today and vice versa. At some point, I stopped rooting and started enjoying the journey wondering where it will lead.
When season four ended they announced that there will be a second part of it to be released a year later. Knowing tha Hajime Isayama, the writer, has indeed finished writing the manga, I couldn't wait to know how the story ends, so Attack on Titan was the first manga I read in my life. But that didn't stop me from waiting for the anime version which was released very, very slowly and gradually and only ended last saturday night.
Attack on Titan is a journey I recommend to every anime watcher or manga reader out there. If you were hesitating to dive in, I tell you it's definitely worth it.
the first image in clearly a screenshot from the anime
