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Hey guys, kanna here with your spoiler-free review of Attack on Titan Part 2 - End of the World. Sit back, grab a coffee, tea, hot chocolate, whatever, and enjoy.
After we saved our sanity with last week's Anime Monday, One Punch Man, it's time to lose our sanity again with Attack on Titan Part 2 - End of the World. Or in Japanese, 進撃の巨人エンドオブザブザワールド.
Before we get started, I thought it was interesting that they transliterated the words "End of the World" instead of using the words 世界の終わり, which literally means "End of the World." Maybe it's because the band doing the theme songs for both parts has the same name, Sekai no Owari? Who knows?
Now I had hoped and prayed that this would be better than the abomination that was Attack on Titan: Part 1.
I could only be so lucky.
Where do I even begin? Well, for starters, let's talk box office. This isn't something I would talk about, as I don't typically follow box office numbers. But boy oh boy, did this movie do poorly. And I'm not surprised. Everyone went into Part 1 thinking it was going to be some epic masterpiece, and as a result of that thinking, it made 3.3 billion yen (27.5 million USD).
Little did they know that what they thought was going to be an epic masterpiece was going to be HORRIBLE.
Still, it did make a ton of money and managed to outperform its sequel, Part 2, by a considerably large margin. How much, you ask? 17.54 million USD (2.1 million yen). See, while Part 1 made 3.3 billion yen, Part 2 only managed to rake in 1.2 billion yen (9.96 million USD). That's pretty bad.
Anyway, we have the same people returning to their writing, directing, and acting duties for this movie. So the crappy writing team that worked on Part 1 has returned. And somehow, they managed to do even worse with this one.
I honestly didn't think it was possible for this to be worse than Part 1. But it happened. So, thank you, Hajime Isayama, for proving the impossible. I say this with the utmost sincerity: thank you for gracing us with not one, but two disgraces to Attack on Titan.
I mean...wow.
This movie had no plot, the acting (what I could judge of it, given the only subbed movie I could find had Russian audio) was pretty bad, and there was little to no direction. I couldn't feel any emotion for any of the characters. I nearly fell asleep within the first twenty minutes.
Let me spell this out for you. The first ten minutes consisted of a recap of Part 1, complete with stock footage, narration, the works. That's enough to put anyone to sleep if they saw Part 1. We then get a flashback that's about two minutes long, and then about ten minutes or so of Kubal interrogating Eren. Then again, I can hardly say how much time they spent on that scene, as I was practically half asleep during that scene. I had to hold my head up just so I could stay focused on the movie.
It was like watching a Shyamalan movie, only one that somehow managed to be WORSE than the worst of Shyamalan's films. And that's saying a lot.
The CGI somehow managed to be worse than the last movie's. Again, that's saying a lot. Remember the cruddy CGI from Mortal Kombat: Annihilation? Think that, imagine it evolving and changing over the years, and STILL managing to be worse than that.
Hajime Isayama...I don't even know what to say to you anymore. You aren't a bad writer, but the fact that you asked to make the characters "more relatable" in a way that people could empathize with them actually made it harder to relate to them. You turned Eren into a wimp, Mikasa into Little Miss Pouty, made them boyfriend and girlfriend (I'm never going to understand that angle, am I?), and just made so many changes that the plot completely disappeared.
The characters were no longer the characters we knew and loved, regardless of the name change. The two characters that stayed the same were Sasha and Hanji Zoe. I'm not even talking name change; they actually managed to keep their personalities intact. Heck, even Armin's personality was kept intact (more or less). But they changed so much that it was just...not even Attack on Titan anymore.
Look, I'm still going to read the Attack on Titan manga and watch the anime as soon as the second season premieres. But Hajime Isayama needed to stick to what he was good at: NOT SCREENWRITING. While Part 1 felt like a slap in the face to the fans, Part 2 felt like a punch in the gut.
Well, I'm off to go and recover from this. This ranting gave me a pretty bad headache.
Til next time! ~k
