Attack on Titan

Long ago, what was left of humanity pulled back behind enormous walls to escape the giant beings that roam the land outside. Inside, people built ordinary lives — homes, trades, families — and told themselves the walls would hold. Only a small band of soldiers ever stepped beyond them, and few of those came home. That arrangement lasted for generations, until it did not. Attack on Titan opens at the point where the comfort inside the walls stops working, and the people living there are left facing a choice they never wanted to make.

What is Attack on Titan about?

The story is set in a walled settlement and turns on the bargain its people have made with fear. Safety comes at a price. Curiosity is discouraged, the outside world is treated as a tale rather than a place, and the soldiers who guard the walls decide what everyone else is allowed to know. Attack on Titan is interested in what that bargain does to a person over time. It asks whether a quiet life is worth having if it is built on not asking questions, and what happens to loyalty, friendship and ambition once the answers start to arrive. The series blends action with mystery. There is fighting, and there is a great deal of thinking about why the fighting happens.

Genre and tone

The mood is serious and often grim. Attack on Titan deals with loss, violence and the cost of survival, and it makes no effort to soften those things for comfort. Long stretches are tense and quiet, built on what the characters do not yet understand. Then the pressure breaks and the action arrives quickly and hard. There is dread in the everyday scenes as much as in the battles — a meal, a conversation, a walk along the top of a wall can carry as much weight as a fight. The colour work is muted, the scale is vast, and the sound design leans on silence before it leans on noise.

Who is this anime for?

This suits you if you like a story that plays a long game — one that plants questions early and takes its time answering them. If you enjoy animation used for adult themes, science fiction and fantasy woven together with politics and history, and action that means something beyond the spectacle, it will hold your attention. It also suits viewers who are happy to keep track of names, places and shifting loyalties, because the story rewards attention. It is not easy, light entertainment for a relaxed evening, and it is not aimed at young children. The material is dark and the emotional weight is real.

Technical details

• Original title: 進撃の巨人
• First broadcast: 2013
• Genres: Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Action & Adventure
• Voice cast: Marina Inoue, Hiro Shimono, Yuki Kaji, Natsuki Hanae, Ayane Sakura
• Format: 4 seasons, 87 episodes

Information supplied by TMDB.

Find out more

Along the same lines, see also the pages for Solo Leveling and Fighting Spirit. For set-up, our guide ‘films and series on demand’ answers the practical questions. British IPTV also presents its subscription on the British IPTV page, its plans on the Plans page and a how-it-works guide.