kanna-chan's cafe

Hey guys, kanna here!

So now that we've saved our sanity thanks to One Punch Man, it's time to get ready to lose it again. I promised this review for a while, and here it is: Attack on Titan Part 2 - End of the World.

I'm not going to waste any time with this, so if you haven't read my review of Part 1, I STRONGLY suggest you read it, as from this point on, it's full spoilers ahead.

The movie opens up with a recap of Part 1. Same animation, same footage, same...pretty much everything for about ten minutes. Which would have been a great idea if it didn't feel like one of those "Previously on..." things you see in TV shows. And even those aren't that long; they're usually anywhere from thirty seconds to one or two minutes. Not to mention that there really wasn't anything worth remembering about the first film, so that whole ten minutes or so was entirely POINTLESS.

And I normally wouldn't be this uptight about it, if it wasn't for the fact that Part 1 was an abomination of a film and a disgrace to Attack on Titan, and we had to relive that movie for the first ten minutes of Part 2.

OK, enough of that. I complained about Part 1 already. Let's keep this on track.

Oh, and there's a flashback that actually ties in with the anime. It's Eren as a young child and his father injecting him with a serum before his mother intervenes, then the police come and chaos ensues. And...that's basically it. To be fair, that's all the anime gave us, too, so I guess it's not that bad.

So our movie really starts shortly after the first one ended, and we see that Eren has been captured by Commander Kubal and his squadron and has been put in a straightjacket. At least, I think it's a straightjacket. It looks like a cross between what people in psych wards wear and those jackets magicians use for escape tricks.

Anyway, Kubal and co. believe that Eren is a threat to humanity, as he can turn into a Titan. So they ask him the big question: Titan or human? Guns are pointed at Eren and everything; he is about to be executed.

Eren, however, tries to convince everyone that he's human. And even though his comrades witnessed him wipe out A BUNCH of Titans and had caused NO HUMAN CASUALTIES WHATSOEVER as a Titan, one person, Souda, jumps to his defense. Unfortunately, in the midst of explaining stuff about the Titans and even revealing Eren had a brother at one point, one of Kubal's soldiers shoots and kills him before he can say anymore.

First off, WHY did Souda defend Eren? I mean, I'm sure Eren much appreciated it and everything, but even Mikasa, who was supposed to be Eren's girlfriend (seriously, Mr. Isayama? You went with this angle?), didn't defend him. Armin defended him, but Kubal and co. were all, "Eren turned into a Titan, we believe you can turn on us, so you deserve to croak." And that doesn't really make much sense, but I'll address why later with my other complaints.

Next thing we know, this other Titan, the Armored Titan, busts through the roof of the building that they're all in, destroys the top of the building, and causes a bunch of deaths. Kubal is killed (RIP character we didn't really know or care much about) along with a few other people, as this Titan that seems to be intelligent takes Eren out and walks away after receiving a "death glare" from Mikasa. And I put quotes around death glare because it looks like a cross between a pout and a death glare. Not to mention that that was pretty wimpy on the Titan's part. But we'll get to all my complaining later. Because there is A LOT of it.

So Eren wakes up in this bunker (which looks more like a psych ward) and finds Shikishima (the movie's version of Captain Levi FREAKING Ackerman) is there. Shikishima explains the origin of the Titans through Apple TV (I swear, this is product placement for Apple TV; the remote is right there in the shot. I'm also pretty sure I saw footage from Super 8 in this scene). This wasn't addressed in the anime, but was somewhat revealed in the manga. And because this hasn't been addressed in the anime yet, this is a blog about anime and not manga, and this review is full spoilers ahead, I can tell you all about it! Yay!

Origins: The Titans were actually human beings who were used as test subjects in military experiments. Unfortunately for the scientists conducting the experiment, something went wrong, and the humans turned into these massive Titans. And because the definition of insanity (you know, keep trying the same way on something that clearly doesn't work and hope for a different outcome) is something that is clearly unknown to these scientists, these experiments continued for decades. It turned into a disaster for mankind as what was apparently a virus that could rapidly multiply turned humans into mindless Titans.

Anyway, after the origins are explained via Apple TV and what I'm convinced is footage from Super 8 (really?), they're somehow sitting on beach chairs in another place. No, I don't get how that happened.

Shikishima then asks Eren to reflect on one question: how to destroy the Titans. Shikishima continues to explain that the virus made the Titans immortal and able to adapt to temperature and weather. Since they have no need to eat or drink, the Titans are near invincible. The virus never stopped developing, so it also made the Titans ageless and immortal.

Eren realizes that the one person who knows how to destroy the Titans is his father, who's dead (well, we think he is at any rate; the flashback left things pretty unclear when it ended), but the interesting thing here is that Shikishima refers to Eren's father as his own father, too, revealing that he and Eren are brothers (hello, plot twist...I think. There were a few typos in the subtitles, so whether the subbers meant "your" or "our" is unknown, especially considering the audio was in Russian and not the original Japanese). Not only that, but Eren's father was the one who created the Titan experiment.

So a while later, Shikishima and Eren meet up with the rest of the Scouting Regiment, who picked up a bomb from a district that they're planning to use to blow up parts of the walls so the Titans can't get in (which worked so well before, right?). We then get Shikishima's real sinister plan: he wants to launch a coup (is that the right spelling? French words like that always get me, so I'm not sure) against the government, who wanted to keep the people in the walls and used the Titans as a way to instill fear in the people. Eren isn't having any of that, so we get to watch Eren get his ass handed to him on a silver platter by Shikishima, before Shikishima reveals that he is...the Armored Titan.

Granted, the transformation scenes don't look that great, but they lead to THE BEST PART OF BOTH PARTS OF THE MOVIE. Full Titan vs. Titan action. This fight scene was freaking AMAZING, even though it was only about two minutes, and as much as I want to go on about it...the bad parts of the film do outweigh the good.

After Eren kills Shikishima, he stays in Titan form and decides to go along with the plan as he carries the bomb up the wall with a little difficulty, but manages to do it with encouragement from Mikasa. After he's taken out of the Titan and returned to human form, we see that Kubal has, in fact, SURVIVED about a thousand tons of rock falling on him. That would have turned anyone into a pancake. ANYONE. But apparently, this leads us to another realization: Kubal is a Titan-shifter as well. And he can't just become any Titan, but he can become...the Colossal Titan.

Yeah, that crappy as heck CGI abomination from the first part? That was Kubal. And because the rest of this basically makes no sense, the short version is that Shikishima somehow survived and decides to go back into Titan form and sacrifice himself by blowing up the wall, himself, and Kubal as the Colossal Titan. Our "heroes" look over and see the outside of the walls, and the credits roll.

So...was this as bad as the first movie? No. Was it worse than the first movie? Yes. Rating of Part 2: 0 out of 5. Rating of both films as a whole: 0 out of 10.

Why: Holy frick, I felt like I was watching Mortal Kombat: Annihilation when I was watching this because of the horrible CGI. There was almost no plot, I couldn't really care about any of the characters, and the story just seemed like it was going nowhere. So many characters died, and you couldn't really feel bad about it, because they were either given little to no screen time, or they had little character development.

It was hard to judge the acting with this, because the only subbed version of this I could find had Russian audio and not Japanese (seriously, I was so desperate I would have settled for a version without subtitles as long as it had Japanese audio). But out of all the actors in this, I'd say Satomi Ishihara was the best, and Kiko Mizuhara was the worst. Satomi Ishihara had Hanji Zoe's character spot-on in this, and was actually pretty funny. But Kiko Mizuhara did NOTHING in either movie. I felt like I was watching Kristen Stewart act. She just pouted the whole time.

The one character I actually really wanted to enjoy in this was Armin, played by Kanata Hongo. But even HE did next to nothing. Actually, that's not entirely true. He did have the guts to stand up to Shikishima and threaten to detonate the bomb, which would kill himself, his comrades, and Shikishima. He was also a brilliant strategist and I felt like Kanata Hongo actually played the part pretty well, despite the bad writing.

But the bad writing, directing, and CGI are what totally drag this movie down. Sure, you can blame it on the acting all you want, but when you have a script that's bad with no direction, no plot, and no organization whatsoever, your movie is basically screwed. You can't even say it's one of those movies that's so bad it's good. These movies are so bad that they're AWFUL. They are a disgrace to Attack on Titan.

You know the Star Wars Holiday Special? The project that George Lucas was personally ashamed of? I'm surprised that the writers and directors don't feel that way about these movies. Especially when you consider that the second film did even WORSE in the box office than the first one did. The special effects director, Yoshihiro Nishimura, and the director of both films, Shinji Higuchi, did not respond well to their critics.

According to a translation, Nishimura responded to a comparison of the film's special effects with Hollywood's standards, "I'm sorry, but deciding what movies to see based on their budget and comparing everything to Hollywood, that's like how some people feel secure when buying Okame natto when they go to the supermarket." For the record, natto are fermented soybeans, and Okame...I have no idea. If any of my Japanese viewers want to explain what that is, let me know so I can correct my explanation. But apparently, people are very peculiar about it for some reason. I'm not that familiar with Japanese food, so I can't explain why.

However, the real criticism came from the hardcore fans of the original source material with complaints of all the characters they got rid of or replaced, as well as other major changes that were made to the movie.

You should NOT watch these films as your intro to Attack on Titan. Watch the anime or read the manga first. If you really want to watch these movies, do it AFTER you do one or both of those two things. These movies are a disgrace to Attack on Titan, and while Part 1 felt like a slap in the face to hardcore fans, Part 2 felt like a punch in the gut.

Well, that's my review! Stay tuned for next week where I review...Supernatural: The Animated Series.