Attack on Titan Live Action

The announcement of the Attack on Titan Live Action movie gave me a mixed feeling of hype and worry. One one hand, it would be given to the capable hands of Shinji Higuchi. Higuchi is well known in the realm of anime; he is one of the founding members of the legendary anime studio Gainax. Apart from that, he has worked extensively in tokusatsu (special effects) movies, especially in the Kaiju subgenre, as he is responsible for a trilogy of Gamera movies and has at least some involvement in one Godzilla movie. The cast looked really interesting, featuring a bunch of newcomers, some veteran actors, and some actors who have been featured heavily in tokusatsu productions.

On the other hand, the vaguely European setting has been replaced with a post apocalyptic Japanese setting, and although the trailers were beautiful, they seemed to omit several plot points. I was worried on how effective an adaptation it could be.

I'm personally a fan of the anime and manga with a slight preference towards the anime. The manga posits the plot a bit better, but the art style is not very good. Also, the voice actors really give life to many of the characters, and as for the music, well, one look at Guren no Yumiya and its endless remixes will tell you why this anime opening was the runaway hit of that year, even to fans who didn't watch the anime.

In this piece I'll be talking about the live action movie as a standalone film (no spoilers) and as an adaptation (which will be rather spoiler heavy.)

Attack on Titan the standalone film

By itself, how was the film? Attack on Titan is a workable special effects-laden extravaganza that features almost nonstop action at a breakneck pace. It's impressive in the face of its SFX budget,which is minute compared to Hollywood's special effects-heavy extravaganzas.

It works mainly like a post apocalyptic horror film; there are copious amounts of blood and gore present as our resident Titans consume humans by the hundreds. It's not as extreme as other Japanese gore movies or even the anime (perhaps to secure a more family friendly rating) but there are still a lot of horrific scenes that will delight fans. The baby Titan scene, for one, is sure to freak some viewers out.

The SFX of the titans comes out really well, with giant sized actors and actresses as the Titans (instead of some weird all CGI thing that would probably not look as good). The integration of the Titans and human actors is probably the best feature of the movie.

At first I was concerned that the change of setting would be a problem, but the movie works fine even without it. Faced with adapting a work with a deep world and an expansive backstory, Higuchi and team seem to have decided to just make their own thing and run with it from there. That, in itself, is quite an achievement.

For the moviegoer with no knowledge of the series, as a standalone movie Attack on Titan is entertaining, although a little forgettable. It leaves open a lot of mysteries for us to mull over until the second film, Attack on Titan End of the World to come out around next month.

Attack on Titan the Adaptation

To make it short and simple, Attack on Titan the Live Action Movie is not a good adaptation. I'm not even sure if it's an adaptation at all. It's as if they took the core premise, some of the character names, and removed everything else. In the process of viewing the movie I was often reminded of M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender. That is not a good thing, by any stretch of the imagination. It also doesn't help that the finished product ends up far inferior to the source material.

From here on in, I'm going to talk about why this film is inferior to the anime and manga. SPOILERS FOLLOW.

Characters are Everything

Attack on Titan works mainly because of its characters. These are characters with developed stores, and with their own hopes and fears. You care for them, and then you get really bummed when they die. The movie could have worked with these characters' motivations and backstories intact, but instead, with such a radical revamp, you're left with no character development at all. And with that in mind, you really don't care if most of these characters live or die. I wouldn't have minded if the Titans had eaten everybody; it's that bad.

Take Levi. Levi is the most popular character in the series. He is even more popular than the main character. In the movie, Levi has been taken out. His replacement character, a man named Shikishima, is nothing like Levi. Levi has a cold hearted exterior, is blunt even when talking to superiors, and is pragmatic, thanks to a traumatic history. In the movie, he has been replaced with a creepy dude (WTF is that apple scene for?) who acts all smug. He isn't a character I would care about. I hope he has a leg bit off or something in the next film. I don't even know why Levi was removed; I had heard that the reason was because his name wasn't Japanese enough. So Armin, Eren, and Sasha (all preserved for the movie) are Japanese names then? I don't buy it.

The center of the anime and manga Attack on Titan is the Shiganshina Trio, what can be called the three main characters of the series: Eren, Mikasa and Armin. The dynamics of this trio really shapes how we view the series through their eyes. Mikasa was the peerless warrior who cares deeply for the other two (especially Eren), Armin was the brains of the operation, and Eren was the hot-blooded guy with the guts and spirit to fight for humanity. Plot points in the movie separate the three, effectively eliminating this character interaction, and the movie suffers because of it.

Mikasa is one of the most popular female characters in the series. Her reasons for joining the Survey Corps is because she wants to protect Eren, who is the only family she has left. She's Eren's adoptive sister, and in the past Eren had saved her from a group of bandits. Ever since then she has vowed never to let Eren protect her again, and in doing so has become one of the strongest fighters (probably second only to Levi) in the series. Here in the movie, we don't really know her motivations. She's Eren's friend, but she's not that close to him anymore. Since she is separated from the others early in the story, her character is an enigma. Her presence in the story is reduced to a caricature. She's the token badass babe with no backstory.

Eren, our main character, is driven by revenge against the Titans after seeing his mother get eaten by a Titan in a very dramatic fashion. His rage for the Titans is so great, it fuels his own transformation into a Titan, so much so that Mikasa remarks in the anime/manga that Eren's Titan form is a "reification of man's anger against the titans." In the movie, his parents are long dead.  He really has no motivation to join the anti-titan forces except for Mikasa disappearing. You couldn't even give that as an excuse for his transformation by the time he transforms in the movie, he knows Mikasa is alive (and eating random apples.) If you do, the excuse isn't even that good. He does get hit on by a random new character who quickly dies five minutes after she gets anything meaningful to say, but her death is nothing compared to Eren's original anime/manga motivation.

As for the rest of the characters -  they've either been reduced to gross simplifications of their complex anime/manga counterparts, or are utterly forgettable. Jean in the anime/manga? A born leader who struggles with his self worth compared to others. Jean in the movie? A quarrelsome asshole. Sasha in the anime/manga? A boorish hunter girl (who eats a lot) with her heart in the right place. Sasha in the movie? The girl who eats a lot.  There's also Axe Guy, Lovey Dovey Karate Girl (who the hell has sex in the middle of Titans?) Single Mom Escape (Go-Busters fans woo), Annoying Chick Who Almost Gets Everyone Killed and Guy Who Gets Eaten #7, whose names I can't remember because I really don't give a flying fuck about them.

No Training Day

We empathized with a lot of the characters in the anime/manga because of the short training arc, which introduced us to most of the main characters, showed us how the 3D Maneuver Gear worked, how to kill Titans, how motivated Eren was to kill Titans, and his interactions with his fellow cadets. In the movie, we get almost nothing. Not even a montage. We get a short lecture by Hange (who is an instructor now for some reason) but nothing else. No training - no bonding. No bonding - no character development.

The Survey Corps

The Survey Corps (also known as the Scouting Legion) is one of the three groups of soldiers in the Attack on Titan universe. The other two are the Garrison and the Military Police. Tasked with the dangerous job of taking expeditions outside the wall - and safety - to gain an advantage over the Titans, it's full of eccentrics, insane people and genuinely good soldiers who are adept at killing Titans. They suffer the highest death rates and are the least desirable group to join (cadets choose one of the three groups to join at the end of their training.) A lot of Eren's motivations towards killing Titans are directed towards joining the Survey Corps. They wear the uniform seen below.

In contrast, cadets wore a shield emblem with two crossed swords.

In the movie, all of the cadets wear the Survey Corps uniform for some reason. There is no choosing scene (again, it would have been a decent way to build up character.) Instead it makes the Survey Corps look like a bunch of ninnies since all they do during the subsequent mission is scream and die. But wait, I hear you say, maybe all of the soldiers in the live action movie wear this uniform. Nope, that's not true. Souda, one of the soldiers introduced earlier (probably a replacement for Hannes) wears the Garrison uniform, which is a shield emblem with two roses.

This is the equivalent of giving Navy SEAL uniforms to Boy Scouts. That's how absurd it is. None of the cadets in the squad in the live action movie are given cadet uniforms, nor are the differences between the three groups of soldiers clearly explained.

Worry-free Titan Invasions

In the anime/manga, you can really feel humanity's dread. Their lives against the Titan invasions has been one never ending sequence of retreats and defeats. These are people that are being humiliated on a regular basis, with their best chance at victory (the soldiers with the 3DMG) being only partially successful at best.

It's a sense of despair that you see all throughout the ranks of the soldiery; there are often attempts to mutiny, some commit suicide instead of being eaten, and many are stricken by grief or PTSD. Instead of seeing a clear path to victory, they see one of many routes to defeat.

In the movie, there's one suicide scene out of nowhere - that's it. The soldiers are more forced into their position to be able to provide food for their families, but they seem to mostly not mind fighting against the Titans. You don't feel that this is a race on the brink of extinction.

Casting and Actors

Satomi Ishihara's Hange is probably the only character that I could tolerate in this movie; I wish she had more time to act crazy, but that's okay. Second place would be Sasha's actress, Nanami Sakuraba, but you only really get to see her (when she's not eating potatoes) one or two times. Kiko Mizuhara, who was great in movies like Norwegian Wood, is nothing more than a pretty face here thanks to lack of character development. They also wasted a good opportunity on Rina Takeda, a.k.a the girl from Karate Girl, who could have been made into an Annie counterpart. You know, because martial arts. Instead becomes the live action counterpart of Hannah, she has an awkward love scene and dies minutes later.

I would have liked to see more from Hongo Kanata, who plays Armin, but we see like a few short scenes since the movie dismantles the Shiganshina trio. (Catch him in the still-airing Akagi live action adaptation). And finally we get Haruma Miura's Eren, who sounds like a sometimes smug, sometimes whiny dude that never really does anything until the end. This is a shame since Haruma Miura did some great work on TV, especially in Samurai 17, the third season of Gokusen and also in movies like The Eternal Zero. 

In Conclusion

Is the Attack on Titan live action movie a good adaptation? No. I hesitate to even call it an adaptation. It is as much an adaptation of the source material as Dragonball: Evolution was an adaptation of its source material. As a fan, I feel it doesn't work in the slightest. Keeping an open mind might help, but I predict most fans will probably leave the theater disappointed in the result. This is in stark contrast to another recent anime adaptation that did work despite large changes in the storyline - Rurouni Kenshin. That's because while Kenshin still kept the characters - the heart of any adaptation - intact, this movie throws that all away. Your mileage on this one may vary.