Board Thread:Anime/@comment-27321453-20180916183013/@comment-35822279-20180916214913

Another really good episode for a really good season of Attack On Titan. Since this is pretty close to end of the Uprising arc I will include my thoughts on the overall arc so far.

Pros:

- I really appreciated that Rod's titan was brought to life primarily with traditional animation and overall it looked like a good and proper Cronenberg abomination.

- this episode had good conclusions to the character arcs of both Eren and Historia who I think have been stellar in this season and have been elevated by great performances by their Japanese voice actors both in this episode and all season long.

- the battle against Rod's titan was well executed and another notch on the belt of the action side of this arc which I felt has been consistently great this year with great animation, choreography, and of course Sawano crushing it as usual with his consistenly great soundtrack.

Cons:

- nothing too major to really list as I thought there wasn't any crushing flaws here and if I have criticisms there nitpicks.

Uprising (Manga) vs Uprising (anime):

Pacing: Even though the pacing wasn't perfect towards the start of this season I think I ultimately prefer the faster pace of the anime than the slower pace of the manga as it meant we lost a little bit of context regarding things like the Dimo Reeves alliance but it also meant that the worst elements of Uprising were largely dead and gone by like episode 3 and that the better elements got more time to shine (Historia's choice, the sins of Eren's father, Erwin's ace in the hole etc.).

Action: Both versions are strong in this regard in my opinion as they aren't as action packed as other arcs but the action scenes that are there are great due to the freshness of Kenny's squad in comparison to Titans and Shifters and how exciting they are to behold even on the page but the anime wins here due to outstanding animation and again Sawano's impressive score (special mention to the crystal cave fight as the beginning reminded me a lot of Hans Zimmer's score for Inception which I adore and the rapping elements when Kenny showed up was also a brilliant touch).

- Drama: I think that I'd have to give the advantage to the anime as while the manga once it got going was also very effective in this department the voice acting, music, and animation of the anime all came together brilliantly to enhance the material to an even higher degree than before especially in the episode "Wish" which is in contention with "Close Combat" from Season 2 for best episode of the show (IMO) and is one of my favourite episodes of the year period.