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Uh what. This manga is addictive and interesting but the art is undeniably pretty awful. Inanimate objects look great but everything human just looks so disproportionate as well as static (apart from the aerial stuff, that's generally pretty good). http://www.mangareader.net/shingeki-no-kyojin/10/145 For example in this panel the characters all look like they're balancing on one leg with their arms out rather than running. I'm no artist but I think it's probably because their posture is so upright among other things. http://www.mangareader.net/shingeki-no-kyojin/10/141 This shows how disproportionate his hands/arms are. On the flip side the art style really works for the titans because the disproportionate limbs make them look very creepy.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 03:27 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 03:40 |
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Illuyankas posted:I'm looking forward to finding out how the sixty metre tall titan can move so fast and so quietly, that it can appear and disappear next to a heavily guarded wall without anyone noticing.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 03:33 |
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Well, gently caress. I stumbled on this thread by accident, never heard of this thing. Now, 3 hours of my life have just disappeared while I was reading all the 10 chapters. I wanst going to, Im not into mangas at all. But drat if that wanst the best comic book Ive read in a long time and actually one of the best read I had this year. This poo poo is just amazing, Im completely hooked. I just need to know one thing: when is the next one coming? EDIT: Ok, the art is not a masterpiece at all, but the giants are pretty drat creepy. And the argument more than makes up for it. The plot is incredible and original, the characters are pretty good, and the dialogs are great, Im not ashamed (well, perhaps a little) to admit I almost cried a few times. Elias_Maluco fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Jun 3, 2011 |
# ? Jun 3, 2011 03:57 |
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canned_fruit posted:Uh what. This manga is addictive and interesting but the art is undeniably pretty awful. Also yes. Yes it does.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 05:10 |
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SpaceDrake posted:Yeah, just to put this in perspective: I don't know any spanish. What does it mean? canned_fruit posted:Uh what. This manga is addictive and interesting but the art is undeniably pretty awful. While I will admit that the art in this isn't exceptional, and the author clearly has issues with drawing proportions and hands and posture and such, pretty much everything else is acceptable and doesn't deter me from the story. Through the script and through what art he does do, you can see exactly what he was trying to draw but was otherwise bad at doing so. Regardless, it still owns hard enough that I don't give a poo poo. Elias_Maluco posted:Im not ashamed (well, perhaps a little) to admit I almost cried a few times. wtf GreenBuckanneer fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Jun 3, 2011 |
# ? Jun 3, 2011 05:26 |
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I think the art is pretty good for a new mangaka, so far. I like the way he especially draws Mikasa and the giants, but yeah, there is definite room for improvement. Also chiming in with my love for this series so far. The giants are amazingly creepy and I love stuff with a huge scale, so fighting 50m giants is right up my alley!
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 06:35 |
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GreenBuckanneer posted:I don't know any spanish. What does it mean? Mi casa? My house?
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 06:40 |
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The art is pretty bad on occasion, but only with the normal humans. Any weirdness on the Titans is either intentional or just works well. The buildings and backgrounds tend to always be good, though. Considering how well the manga is selling, I'm assuming it will get better fast, since he'll be getting great assistants.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 07:13 |
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SpaceDrake posted:Also for any theoretical English release I think Mikasa might need to be slightly renamed, if only to prevent any sniggering from people who might know a bit of Spanish I don't think any Spanish speaker would care. I even know a Japanese supermarket in Mexico City with that name. This manga is great and I curse myself for reading it all in such a short time.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 07:15 |
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Honestly the weird proportions and rigid posture gives me an Aeon Flux vibe.I think that the artwork in chapter 10 blows the artwork in the first chapter away so it probably won't take long for the artist to find his groove. I can't wait for humanity's first victory.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 07:50 |
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Illuyankas posted:I'm looking forward to finding out how the sixty metre tall titan can move so fast and so quietly, that it can appear and disappear next to a heavily guarded wall without anyone noticing. * Disappears mysteriously on the same day as the giant attack. * Just before disappearing, tells his son which he has turned into a Titan super monster, about his secret basement and gives him the key * Knew how Titans worked etc * The huge titan appears/disappears with the same hot steam that TitanEren appears/disappears with Bisse fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Jun 3, 2011 |
# ? Jun 3, 2011 08:14 |
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Bisse posted:
Well, all titans appear with that steam. Remember that the titans do the same regenerating thing that Eren does, which is why they need to hit that weak point. I think someone even calls it Titan Steam at one point.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 09:22 |
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Now, I recognize why the giants look so familiar. The way they're drawn remind me a lot of Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son. I don't know if it's intentional or not but it's a really interesting style. I'm really enjoying this, thanks for the recommendation Zorak.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 09:32 |
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PaleIrishGuy posted:Well, all titans appear with that steam. Remember that the titans do the same regenerating thing that Eren does, which is why they need to hit that weak point. I think someone even calls it Titan Steam at one point.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 09:41 |
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good stuff, be looking forward to catching up to this in a year.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 09:54 |
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Scoobi posted:Am I the only one disappointed in it? No, I think the technical quality of the art isn't very good and it lacks production... But the designs of the Titans and the characters themselves are solid, and whenever there's action it looks fine. The strength of the concept and setting is what makes this manga good, in my opinion, and it looks like it's going in an interesting direction story wise. I just wish it wasn't a monthly...
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 10:49 |
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One thing that really puzzles me is the titans expressions while attacking and eating humans. They usually look almost joyful, or at least peaceful. No signs of anger, rage, fear, evil. The big one is different, though, that one really looks vicious. Another obvious remark is that the titans probably appeared around the 19th century. Also, how many people are in that city and how its called? I dont remember the book saying anything about it, but I might have missed. EDIT: GreenBuckanneer posted:wtf Well, what can I say, Im a very emotional kid. Elias_Maluco fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Jun 3, 2011 |
# ? Jun 3, 2011 14:07 |
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IShallRiseAgain posted:Did you actually read the manga or are you basing it on the OP? I think the first few colorized pages look so bad is because they had a bad colorist. Its the only explanation I can come up with for why they look so terrible I've read the entire thing. Its why I said its promising and I want to like it but it looks like someones fan comic and not like something I would ever pay for. The titans eating people are pretty great and scary, but goddamn some of the panels are just bad. Basically I'm surprised with the level of love this seems to get both in japan and here despite it. And the story, while interesting, hasn't gripped me quite like berserk (I came from the berserk thread).
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 15:59 |
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Yeah, the story and characters are dry. There needs to be a little more id. Maybe I just like demented people. But the characters of seem to be of the same vein but muted outside of combat.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 20:29 |
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I don't usually read these kinds of comics, but decided to give it a try based on the OP. I was pleasantly surprised so far, even if it is a bit hard for me to tell at some points what exactly is going on or who's supposed to be talking at the moment (could be a cultural thing, though - even switching the panel direction was a bit challenging at first). Generally speaking I enjoy stories that simply present one absurd premise and run with it, showing how everybody tries to cope with this new reality. And Advance of the Giants certainly tickles that fancy. It's quite enjoyable. I can't help but wonder about certain aspects of this world, though, even outside of the whole "what are the Titans and why are they doing this?"-mystery. For example: The city is the humans home turf - and even after a breach they still control the top of the wall! That's a huge strategic advantage right there. If their main problem is a medium sized hole in the wall, why would they discuss moving a huge boulder as their only option to block it? Why don't they simply use people and carts to move bricks, rubble and cement safely along the wall to the hole and simply dump it over the edge and pile it up until they've blocked it? With a couple of hundred men and two or three days of work they could burry the former door completely. If you're in a hurry, you could even use explosives to collapse the first couple of meters of wall right above the gate and repair it later. Also, why keep the doors at all, especially knowing that the huge Titan's preferred strategy is to kick them down? I get the argument that they are partially symbolic, and permanently blocking them signifies giving up any hope of return to the outside world, but they aren't really that important strategically. It's not like they hide underground with doors being the only way in or out - they simply need some lifts and cranes and ladders to pass the walls any time they want. Also, having the human troops swing around in their gear is a nice concept, but it suffers from the "Spiderman paradox" - where do they swing from most of the time? Wouldn't it make sense to have some towers and high buildings within the cities with the express purpose of increasing their defenders mobility and creating safe spots (instead of just having uniform rows of relatively flat houses)? The Titans didn't seem to be too eager to climb, or use tools, or purposefully demolish human structures so far. Also, why not use the size difference more to your advantage? Wouldn't having large arching windows that Titans can use to see/climb/reach in be a pretty stupid idea for building your HQ/armory/stronghold? Why use huge, broad empty streets in favor of narrow alleyways? Why use long flat houses in favor of a more contorted architecture that offers more cover to humans and restricts the Titan's mobility? Tunnels and bridges and cable railways well out of reach all seem like good things to have, too. Or why not build the city (or at least parts of it) onto the top of the wall in the first place, since (at least prior to the giant Titan's appearance) this seems like the safest place of them all. I guess all I'm saying is that for a people whose biggest fear over multiple generations was being eaten alive by big dumb predators, they don't really seem too eager to structure their environment accordingly.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 20:48 |
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Its kind of hard to repair the wall or set up explosives properly if there are a bunch of giants swarming at the hole. They also didn't design the city to be giant proof, because once giants breach the wall they are pretty much screwed no matter what they do, and the materials and manpower is better used for fortifying the wall. The reason they didn't seal up the doors is because at first they didn't really need to, and now the doors are necessary for their plans to take back the outer wall.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 21:09 |
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Until the giant titan showed up, the cities were pretty much perfectly safe. There's a general impression that general readiness is way down since there hasn't been any real impending danger in a century, hence all the so-called attempts at taking back the outside. The average person considers the military to be a bunch of freeloaders, not a vital part of their survival. Then the giant titan disappears for 5 years and they really only have one panicked account to go on as far as any tactics employed by it. They doors stay part as a symbolic gesture and part to provide a way to get scout teams (platoons more like) and their supplies in and out quickly. dis astranagant fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jun 3, 2011 |
# ? Jun 3, 2011 21:10 |
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quote:Also, why keep the doors at all, especially knowing that the huge Titan's preferred strategy is to kick them down? I get the argument that they are partially symbolic, and permanently blocking them signifies giving up any hope of return to the outside world, but they aren't really that important strategically. It's not like they hide underground with doors being the only way in or out - they simply need some lifts and cranes and ladders to pass the walls any time they want. You need doors in order to move large amounts of gear through. Hell, we saw the issue with small doors just previously; there's a limit to what you can do with "just man sized doors" given the nature of civilization. Moving supplies to the outside via crane is something you could conceivably do, but we haven't exactly seen what the level of their mechanical design is short of their maneuvering gear. A sufficient supply flow requires a large opening and, as we saw with the scouting expeditions they showed, they often included rather sizable supply chains to support them. Supporting any sort of armed force requires a lot of man-power infrastructure. For every soldier you need like 5-ish non-soldiers just to take care of their crap and feed them and do all the other stuff. Further, it's kind of hard to do a mass-exodus and army-action when you have to move literally everything by ladder. quote:Also, having the human troops swing around in their gear is a nice concept, but it suffers from the "Spiderman paradox" - where do they swing from most of the time? Wouldn't it make sense to have some towers and high buildings within the cities with the express purpose of increasing their defenders mobility and creating safe spots (instead of just having uniform rows of relatively flat houses)? The Titans didn't seem to be too eager to climb, or use tools, or purposefully demolish human structures so far. Most of the time we've seen them doing stuff it's been on a low-building level, where they pull themselves from rooftop to rooftop before they fall low enough for gravity to get them. It's not quite the same issue as the Spider Man thing. quote:Also, why not use the size difference more to your advantage? Wouldn't having large arching windows that Titans can use to see/climb/reach in be a pretty stupid idea for building your HQ/armory/stronghold? Why use huge, broad empty streets in favor of narrow alleyways? Why use long flat houses in favor of a more contorted architecture that offers more cover to humans and restricts the Titan's mobility? Tunnels and bridges and cable railways well out of reach all seem like good things to have, too. Or why not build the city (or at least parts of it) onto the top of the wall in the first place, since (at least prior to the giant Titan's appearance) this seems like the safest place of them all. I guess all I'm saying is that for a people whose biggest fear over multiple generations was being eaten alive by big dumb predators, they don't really seem too eager to structure their environment accordingly. I think a lot of the implication is that no one actually expected the Titans to ever get into the city, hence they never really designed them in such a way internally that it'd be naturally more defensive. They took some precautions, but as anyone familiar with city planning might tell you, there are few cities that are rationally lain out. They've already established that private industry has a lot of pull within the city, and if they want to do stuff in a way that makes them more money vs efficiency, they'd probably do it. Also, I think the broad streets is again a matter of them focusing more on accomodating industry. The big streets are equivalent of modern throughways in a standard city: industry and trade flows through it. Bear in mind that there are actually some empty spaces within the rings as they've shown us, where there's farming and even still some forests remaining. There's supplies moving everywhere, and you have to bear that in mind. I do think the author made some assumptions re: the level of technology and city planning understanding for the sheer purpose of making battles more interesting and the entire setting more frightening, but I think they're within the level of plausible suspension of disbelief in that regard.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 21:19 |
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Im in agreement about the art. Those hands. The creepiness of the titans and the gore/chaos/fear and everything are really great though. Still loving it though.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 22:10 |
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Is there some sort of weird belief or myth out there I'm not aware of? What's with the nape of the neck? Titans die if their neck is cut into. Evangelion had kids inserted into the nape of the neck to control those giant half human / half angel cyborgs. I even seem to recall an episode from Tales from the Crypt where a mad doctor found the soul in dead bodies. Guess where it was located.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 22:39 |
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Hugs Boson posted:I think a lot of your questions can be answered by the fact that the humans seem to have limited technology and are very, very scared of the titans. As such, they are very focused on how to fight them and protect against them, but not how to avoid them altogether, which is really the best strategy. Build a car, and you can go so fast they can't even catch up; build a plane, and they can't even reach you. Instead, the humans focus on improving what is essentially 19th century technology, and get stuck in a technological backend.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 23:16 |
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Zorak posted:I think a lot of the implication is that no one actually expected the Titans to ever get into the city They must have thought of that possibility at some point, though, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to build (or keep, whatever came first) the innermost of the concentric wall circles, including the individual bastions of the inner cities. I guess I found it just a bit odd that they would go through the tremendous effort to build these giant walls (stretching over many hundreds of kilometers according to the map), and then just kind of stop there. But yeah, I agree, it probably boils down to everybody feeling safe and not really planing for an emergency of that magnitude and going on with their normal lives after a while.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 23:22 |
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Hugs Boson posted:They must have thought of that possibility at some point, though, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to build (or keep, whatever came first) the innermost of the concentric wall circles, including the individual bastions of the inner cities. I guess I found it just a bit odd that they would go through the tremendous effort to build these giant walls (stretching over many hundreds of kilometers according to the map), and then just kind of stop there. But yeah, I agree, it probably boils down to everybody feeling safe and not really planing for an emergency of that magnitude and going on with their normal lives after a while. What I've gleaned from the story is that each ring denotes a socioeconomic status. The trainees spoke about applying for the King's Guard or whatever, to live in the center of the city and live a cushy life. Perhaps they were originally meant to separate the classes, and making them a second/third line of defense was an afterthought. Also, while the proportions are really whacked out, at least fight scenes flow naturally and are followable - more so than Break Blade, a manga that (I think) has a similar art style.
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# ? Jun 3, 2011 23:35 |
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Hugs Boson posted:Also, why keep the doors at all, especially knowing that the huge Titan's preferred strategy is to kick them down? I get the argument that they are partially symbolic, and permanently blocking them signifies giving up any hope of return to the outside world, but they aren't really that important strategically. It's not like they hide underground with doors being the only way in or out - they simply need some lifts and cranes and ladders to pass the walls any time they want. Other people have addressed your points but I'll tackle this one specifically. In one of the post-chapter notes where the author talks about the world what you said is literally the case; one of the governmental parties argued that taking away the doors would be forcing humanity to admit that they would be permanently trapped and imprisoned forever, never to reclaim the Earth, and this argument won over enough of the populace for the ruling party to nix the idea. As for the rest remember we haven't seen beyond the innermost wall. It could very well be that those in the centre of human territory see the outer levels as only a slightly-less worse place than the Titan-controlled wastelands and see the wall as keeping the titans and gutter-trash populace away from the nobles. The entire setup of the world is incredibly symbolic and I'd be disappointed if later volumes didn't deal with all this. Edit; more stuff. Also remember that before the gianto-Titan showed up there was what, 100 years of peace? That's long enough for an entire generation to be born and die, especially in a 19th century-level of technology. The innermost enclaves have probably gone even longer without ever seeing or hearing about a titan attack. That's more than enough time for A) people to simply stop giving a poo poo and B) people to accept a status-quo. Pierson fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jun 3, 2011 |
# ? Jun 3, 2011 23:36 |
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Scoobi posted:I want to like the idea of this but the art is just soo bad I agree that the art is pretty bad, but the concept is so drat zany that it has kept me interested.
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# ? Jun 4, 2011 05:18 |
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After reading Blame! and Biomega I don't give a gently caress how a manga looks anymore, its all about the story and characters. The art is actually really growing on me and I'm liking it more and more, but I'm a huuuuge sucker for "messy" art. And like others have said, the mangaka will no doubt improve his anatomy and perspective and nail his style down while the comic is ongoing.
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# ? Jun 4, 2011 05:31 |
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Holy poo poo, Chapter 4
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# ? Jun 4, 2011 08:08 |
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Hugs Boson posted:The city is the humans home turf - and even after a breach they still control the top of the wall! That's a huge strategic advantage right there. If their main problem is a medium sized hole in the wall, why would they discuss moving a huge boulder as their only option to block it? Why don't they simply use people and carts to move bricks, rubble and cement safely along the wall to the hole and simply dump it over the edge and pile it up until they've blocked it? With a couple of hundred men and two or three days of work they could bury the former door completely. If you're in a hurry, you could even use explosives to collapse the first couple of meters of wall right above the gate and repair it later. Well, like you said, it takes time, and an 8-meter whole is still pretty sizable. And all it takes is one Titan to undo all blocked at once. Since titans home in on concentrated humans, they'd be stalking the walls and the opening most of the time, and even a lure plan like what was attempted with the rock isn't fully working. On top of that, the colossal titan completely ruined the tops of the wall above the gate, so that would slow down any top-of-the-wall drop down repairs. As for explosives, well it's possible they just don't have them. Or at least, not in significant enough power to collapse the wall. Cannons are the most powerful weapon we've seen on the human side. Hugs Boson posted:Also, why keep the doors at all, especially knowing that the huge Titan's preferred strategy is to kick them down? I get the argument that they are partially symbolic, and permanently blocking them signifies giving up any hope of return to the outside world, but they aren't really that important strategically. It's not like they hide underground with doors being the only way in or out - they simply need some lifts and cranes and ladders to pass the walls any time they want. One of the information pages explains what you said exactly actually. The conservatives (political factions ahoy) wanted to have them buried, but the reformists advocated that "abandoning the doors to the outside world was tantamount to renouncing the idea of a rehabilitation of mankind."
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# ? Jun 4, 2011 10:44 |
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Hugs Boson posted:They must have thought of that possibility at some point, though, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to build (or keep, whatever came first) the innermost of the concentric wall circles, including the individual bastions of the inner cities. I guess I found it just a bit odd that they would go through the tremendous effort to build these giant walls (stretching over many hundreds of kilometers according to the map), and then just kind of stop there. But yeah, I agree, it probably boils down to everybody feeling safe and not really planing for an emergency of that magnitude and going on with their normal lives after a while. I got the impression that the people planning the outer towns aren't really planning them for a defensive war, they're just planning them for, basically, bait. I believe someone mentions that their reclamation effort from 5 years ago was designed to fail and to sacrifice as many people to the titans as possible, because they needed to reduce the strain on supplies. I would bet that the king/nobles/whoever in the innermost wall are just trying to get as many people as far away from themselves as possible so that they survive the longest/are last to be eaten.
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# ? Jun 4, 2011 12:24 |
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I must say that I really enjoy how this manga sets up and then delivers exposition and explanations for how things are/why they are that way. Spoilered just to be safe; The neck-cut neatly sets up the position of the "pilot", but what really blew me away was the look of the 50m giant, (all muscle and sinew, no skin) and its instantaneous "disappearance", later being explained by size/appearance of giants being directly related to the mental and physical state of the one who "summons" it. Eren overextends himself at one point and only manages half a skeleton that decomposes within seconds when he relinquishes control. That said, this could turn out to be a bore if they don't engage with the 50m giant being another conscious agent with an agenda fairly soon. It would be neat if this was really just a fantasy examination of a sci-fi idea. The wealthy suspend themselves in an artificial reality as the world goes to poo poo around them; their predation on the poor taking on an absurd brutality as the "put human in me" protocols of their perfect biological cocoon-machines go haywire. Strabo4 posted:After reading Blame! and Biomega I don't give a gently caress how a manga looks anymore, its all about the story and characters. This made you not care about art anymore? Alright.
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# ? Jun 4, 2011 16:05 |
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The mention of Biomega puts me in mind of another of Tsutomu Nihei's series, Knights of Sidonia. Like Advance of the Giants, it's about a warped, claustrophobic human society attempting to fight near-invincible enemies. Sadly scanlators don't seem to give a poo poo about it.
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# ? Jun 4, 2011 20:01 |
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I don't think even Nihei's greatest fans (i.e. me, heeen) would disagree that his stories range from less-than-obvious at best to confusing jumbles at worst. Knights of Sydonia/Sidonia/Cidonia improves that a lot though. Anyway back to Giants. What you said PaleIrishGuy is correct. The walls were designed to have inhabited towns inside bubble-shaped outcroppings so that giants would concentrate on attacking those relatively small areas where humanity could concentrate their defenses rather than randomly across the whole wall.
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# ? Jun 4, 2011 20:18 |
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I thought Nihei's appeal was his art. Its detailed beyond all measure.
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# ? Jun 4, 2011 20:21 |
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Lenaway posted:Honestly the weird proportions and rigid posture gives me an Aeon Flux vibe. Gyre posted:you see the soldiers cutting off the back of the titans' necks, and they just look like chunks of flesh. When Armin cuts into Titan Eren to retrieve Eren you can still see his body inside. Of course, given Eren's fused state it's possible that initially there are humans inside titans, but they get absorbed quickly into them. This was pretty much exactly what I was assuming as well. I really hope that they find out more and more about the Titans just by examining their anatomy and (de)composition after battles, and maybe a tidbit here or there from old records on the outside hinting on their origins/function, but never quite figure out exactly how or why they came into being. That always ends up with some lame infodump character, usually a bad guy that isn't terribly compelling. As far as his father concealing the research I suspect his research was illegal, since pretty much everyone has been talking about how wanting to know anything about the outside is "heresy" and Eren's association with the giants was immediately labeled treason despite the fact that he wiped dozens of them out. I am guessing the government is deliberately suppressing any legitimate means of fighting their way back into control because they can use the people's fear of the giants to maintain their own power within the walls. Also two things: Mikasa sounding like mi casa I actually noticed and liked because it works thematically (her finding a home with Eren), despite probably being total coincidence. I really like how their salute looks like a pantomime of stabbing oneself in the heart. Grenadier fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jun 4, 2011 |
# ? Jun 4, 2011 20:23 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 03:40 |
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Seems appropriate for a group of soldiers whose main duty is to go outside the walls and
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# ? Jun 4, 2011 20:30 |