Shingeki No Kyojin has just recently started airing as an anime this season and is the most hyped up show that is currently running. I got into the manga about a month before the anime started to see what it was about. I haven’t read too many manga so far, but I can still feel like I want to write a review about how spectacular this manga is.

I’ll address the few downsides to this manga before explaining each of the parts individually. First, this manga starts off a little slow. It goes in a slightly different, less chronological order than the anime, with more jumping around to different times and some flashbacks. Once you get into it and get used to the huge character cast who keep dying and getting replaced by stronger, more important, and longer lasting characters, it gets easier to understand. The other problem this manga suffers from is that with the huge character cast, the character designs for some characters are fairly similar and sometimes cause you to forget which character is which. This problem ends eventually though when the manga starts to focus more on the important people and less on the massive amount of death fodder characters.

Plot – 10/10
The plot is amazing. As you probably already know, the plot of Shingeki No Kyojin is about humans who have been forced to retreat behind a set of three walls and several smaller settlements next to them for over a hundred years. Titans, beings whose shapes are similar to humans’ who range from 3 meters to even one that is 60 meters tall (really fucking tall if you don’t know metric like me). For hundreds of years, the humans have survived inside the walls without the titans ever breaking through, but that’s where the story begins. One day when, five years prior to where the main events of the story begin, the 60 meter titan appears outside of the wall of the settlement where the three main characters (Eren, Mikasa, and Armin) live and breaks through the wall letting smaller titans into the settlement and producing mass chaos and lots and lots of death. Some people manage to escape, but the titans have already taken over and forced the humans to retreat behind the next of the three main walls. From there, the story jumps ahead a few years to when the main characters are joining the military and then graduate. From there, the story really gets going, but I won’t spoil anything else. It only takes about five chapters to get really into the plot. Having just caught up to the manga at 44 chapters earlier today, I can tell you that after Chapter 30 readers are in for a huge plot twist ride especially after Chapter 40. These twists really catch you off guard but are not bad in the slightest.

Art – 9/10
As I mentioned, some of the characters designs are somewhat similar. So far, the anime, which adds color especially to hair to help differentiate between brown and black hair, seems to have fixed this problem. The other problem is that some fights, especially using the 3D maneuver gear which is the main weapon used to kill titans, is so intense that it is clearly not something still images can convey as well as the anime has so far. The art is still great, but the task of drawing these action scenes is just too much sometimes. Still it does succeed in capturing the emotions of the characters, especially when they are horrified, which happens a lot.

Characters – 10/10
Eventually this manga slows down the amount of death fodder characters and gets you more into the main ones who are great characters. Eren, the main protagonist, is a boy bent on killing all titans and getting revenge for the loss of his mother when the titans first broke through the wall several years ago. Mikasa is Eren’s friend and the strongest fighter in their graduating class from the military. She is always looking after Eren and doing everything to protect him, and he does get into a hell of a lot of trouble. Armin is Eren’s other childhood friend. Unlike Eren and Mikasa, he is not a good fighter though he excels in strategizing. Personally, I think Armin may be my favorite character, though I think a lot of people like Mikasa the best. Some other notable characters are Rivaille (or Levy) who is the strongest fighter in the whole military and can take down dozens of titans single-handedly, Sasha (aka “Potato girl”) who likes food and is also a great fighter, and Annie who excels in hand-to-hand combat, and Reiner who is very muscular and always wants to protect everyone he can. While some characters may not seem very important at first, many of them have things they are hiding and pasts that have not yet even been fully explained at 44 chapters. You emotional connection you get with these characters can hurt you sometimes if a character you like a lot dies, but others live on draw you into a strong connection with them instead and never cease to amaze you.

Enjoyment – 10/10
I’ve been reading this manga somewhat slowly for the past couple months, but just today I read from Chapter 31 to 44 almost all in one sitting. Once this manga really gets going, it draws you in and you better be prepared for this thrilling, gory, twisted ride that I highly recommend to everyone who enjoys survival horror or action manga.