Attack on Titan (manga)

"On that day, humanity received a grim reminder. We lived in the fear of the Titans"

Attack on Titan is an anime/manga about humanity's struggle against Titans, man eating giants. The story starts in the year 845. A little over 100 years ago, the Titans appeared, and pushed humanity to the brink of extinction. Humanity retreated into stronghold with mighty walls the Titans couldn't breach. Since then, humanity has been locked in a stalemate against the Titans. Shortly after the story begins, a colossal Titan appears, and destroys an outer wall gate, letting its smaller kin into the city.

It is known for Anyone Can Die, so don't get too attached to anyone. Between deaths and the initial mystery sounding the Titans, this show has lots of spoilers to avoid (possibly even on this page). The show goes far beyond simply showing fighting between humans and Titans. Plenty of attention is paid to the virtues and faults found in humans.


 * Better to Die Than Be Killed: More than one person has concluded that suicide is preferable to being consumed alive by a Titan.
 * Building Swing: Soldiers use the Omni-directional Mobility Gear powered by compress gas to make use of this trope.
 * Dual-Wielding: Very common among the human soldiers.
 * Eaten Alive: Titans almost always kill this way.
 * Fantasy Gun Control: Averted. Both somewhat primitive guns and cannons exist.
 * Gods Need Prayer Badly: The wall cult believes the walls are divine, and the amount of protection they provide depends on the amount of faith/worship their creator, the Great Architect, is given.
 * Guilt-Free Extermination War: Eren makes it perfectly clear he wants nothing more than to exterminate the Titans and reclaim humanities presence outside the walls.
 * Hopeless War: The prospects for humanity's survival are pretty low for the first episodes.
 * Leitmotif: Some Titans have this. They tend to sound pretty urgent.
 * Ominous Latin Chanting: The soundtrack makes use of a language that is certainly not english. Often the soundtrack doesn't sound merely ominous, but urgent. Which makes sense when the threat of extinction is smashing through the gates.
 * Perpetual Motion Monster: Given the To Serve Man entry, and that Titans have been almost entirely cut off from their sole food source for over 100 years, humans naturally came to this suspect something along these lines.
 * People Farm: Eren claims this. He is being metaphorical. The walls are intended to keep Titans out, not humans in. And the Titans have no apparent intention of allowing humans to survive long enough to breed.
 * To Serve Man: Titans eat only humans
 * Uncanny Valley: The Titans often fit in this category. They definitely aren't consistent in appearance. In general they look like male humans (and then made bigger, and then probably have this trope slapped on to various degrees). The Colossal looks a lot like a typical human male, if scaled up to over 50 meters tall..., without hair, or lips, or cheeks, or skin.