User blog comment:KiruSama/AoT Story and the Fandom (is trash?) Spoilers for those who have not caught up with the manga/@comment-29958651-20161008135342

Well, let's analyze that (a little bit):

1. Attack on Titan story. You're absolutely right that AoT universe is just fulfilled with plenty of relatable characters. And maybe that's the problem. If you have so many characters, it is hard to kill anyone, without bad fan reception. But if you're writing a post-apocalyptic dark fantasy manga, you just have to kill someone. As for the recent chapters, it was Erwin, but the fan reactions would be similar if Levi would had choosed him instead of Armin (even though Armin's death was expected since he was burnt and fell down from big hight). However, it needs to be said that Isayama isn't killing his (major) characters randomously and each (major) death has got a specific place in the story (Erwin, Mike) or character development (Marco, 1st Special Operations Squad). So (even though the killing rate is quite high in AoT) story is far away from trash.

2. Attack on Titan fanbase. Those fans you are talking about are not real fans. Here, at Wikia, are the real fans, who takes their love for AoT seriously. They are just enthusiastic admirers, whose main interests are shipping, hentai, gossips and fake images. Jean + Eren, Mikasa + Annie, Petra + Levi, anyone + anyone. They aren't necessary bad, but some of them are living in their own weird world, where you don't need any evidence or references to support your idea. It's just a waste of time, when you try to persuade these or when you try to negotiate their silly theories. They take these things very seriously and any kind of disagreement they took offensive. Perhaps the only thing, you can do, is to ignore them (I hope that they will soon discover that FairyTale and Sword Art Online provides FAR more material for their crazy stuff). So yes, these so-called die-hard fans are trash, but it needs to be said that there are also communities of true fans, who just want to have fun and talk about their favourite anime/manga.

Your friend should maybe check out more episodes to have a more complex opinion :-) Maybe he would like it more after discovering the rest of the anime