Board Thread:Anime/@comment-5774380-20190701015956/@comment-35822279-20190708231542

I finally caught up with the end of the season and I have to say this was another strong adaptation of a chapter I loved in the manga.

Pros:

- I always felt that this chapter was pitch perfect in tone, thematic relevance, and juxtaposing triumph against melancholy and the anime translated this perfectly to the big screen with the voice actors and Studio WIT hitting all the right beats.

- There has already been lengthy discussions about Floch's speech and I agree with the others here that it really is a great moment. However I want to give special mention to Floch's VA who perfectly captures the brutally honest and pragmatic Floch and dare I say made him somehow extremely likeable despite his harsh words due to the lack of malice that he put into his performance.

- Another excellent performance was Eren's VA Yuki Kaji who perfectly captured the despair and growth of Eren here with that last scene especially hitting like a truck because of this.

Overall Season Thoughts:

I thought this was another good season of Attack On Titan with the last few episodes in particular being excellent adaptations. I would say though that this wasn't the shows best season with the animation feeling messier than prior seasons as It was really easy to see where corners were cut this season with That Day and Thunder Spears being the core offenders (lots of stills and missing animation respectively). The Colossal Titan's CGI was also incredibly hideous somehow looking worse than Envy from FA:B (I just wrapped this up yesterday) a show from 2010. These scenes I honestly would have preferred that they took their time doing handrawn animation as the CGI failed in everyway conceivable as it clashed badly with the hand drawn background, the colouring just looked wrong, the steam looked fake and was overused to mask the lacklustre model, and the Colossal looked and felt weightless with the fall scene especially being a massive downgrade compared to the manga as that panel really captured the magnitude of Bert's defeat whereas the anime just had the Colossal weakly slump over like a deflated balloon. Another problem with this season was that it barely deviated from the manga and thus carried the same critical flaw of RTS which was that everything is grand and epic but also incredibly hollow with very few big deaths (the only ones that count are Bert the least developed warrior, Marlowe a likeable tertiary character, and Erwin who's sacrifice rocks in the moment but is undercut by the lacklustre Midnight Sun) and far too much plot armour (Armin and Reiner especially) with nameless extras creating most of the casualties. Armin's resurrection is still one of the worst moments in the series as it made little to no sense (dude was incinerated and fell from 60 feet onto a brick house the chance of survival is like negative 10 thousand), left Armin listless in the series for a incredibly long time (no spoilers), and deprived him of a satisfying character arc. This moment was perfect but Isayama immediately screwed it up by not allowing this death to stick as it gave a primary Non-shifter character a 13 in Endurance when he is shown to be frail as hell before this and the melodrama around the serum undercut both Armin and Erwin's big moments. The serum struggle would have also been better if this was used to upgrade a secondary to a main character and would have made the 13 year rule hit harder by dooming someone to a painful existence all so Eldia could gain a powerful weapon rather than because they were dying. Overall these weaknesses were prominent enough for me to say this was probably AOT's weakest season as the adaptation for once didn't really improve on what it came from (S3 P1 got quicker pacing and the earlier seasons got great animation to bring Isayama's meh early work to life) and felt like it followed the same highs (The denounment of RTS is a 100 times better than the battle and is some of AOT's greatest material) but also had the same weaknesses coupled with new flaws (animation and budget problems). It was still supremely entertaining and the last two episodes are fantastic but after wavering between a 8 and a 9 I will score the season a 8/10 as it was still very good but undeniably on the weaker side of recent watches which to be fair this is probably the greatest stretch of shows I've watched in a bit (only like two misses out of 10 shows) but still I felt like this could have been a lot better with a little bit more time and a few plot adjustments.