There are several layers of metaphor Iyasama is trying to make about how individuals, and societies, react to crisis and adversity. tonyyao82 once linked to an article that compared the titans to national crisis: overwhelmingly large, seemingly illogical, often of unknown origin, and extremely deadly. In chapter one Eren openly declared his disgust for the walls, his desire to join the scouts, defeat the titans, and free humanity from confinement. Then there are the walls themselves. To most characters they represent safety, despite being breached twice now.
If the titans represent crisis and danger at a societal level, the hero's of Shinegki represent those with the courage to confront the crisis head on and seek the best possible solution. The wall represents those who are willing to sacrifice what they believe in for the illusion of safety. If the titans represent World War II then the walls are appeasement. Eren, Mikasa, Rivaile, Irvin, and the Scouting Legion would be Churchill, Roosevelt, and the allies. Isayama is trying to draw a line between courage and cowardice at a societal level. Between coping with adversity in a positive sense and coping in a negative way. But courage comes at a price. The bravest characters may end up dead while those behind the walls lived. That is sacrifice, part of the cost of fighting for what you believe in. Death is not due to a lack of coping, death is a fact of life during wartime.
I understand all that Keiten and don't even disagree with anything you said but it's not just a matter of the wall troops being the scared ones and the scouting legion being the brave ones. Almost every character's bravery has buckled in the face of giants or their death. Yet most of these characters have faced Gaints multiple times, they should be learning what to expect by now. Especially the Scouts Legion who were told straight up, most of you are going to die and means most shouldn't be in terror. From the moment they realize that most should be working their way through...
For me the meat and potatoes of a war story is how the characters react to such things and if they all have the same reaction it lacks the character depth I need to relate to them. It just seems like "Terrified Solder A" dies, "Terrified Solder B" dies, etc... and that cause all these deaths to have absolutely no impact for me.
I don't know if you like documentaries or not but if you do and if you haven't seen Ken Burn's "The Civil" series I suggest you check it out. It's probably the greatest on war and human nature I've ever seen.(the whole thing is steaming on netflix too)
Great manga and all, not gonna elaborate much here since many of you already posted what's in my mind.
However is there a release date for the next chap? I can't find it anywhere on the web and updates are irregular.
Would appreciate it if someone can tell me more about the release of this manga. Is it by chapters or book? And what about the date.
Thanks
Probabbly this truly isn't the most chaaracter orientated manga there is but personally I find the characters to be a lot more interresting to actually listen to than what I see in most other shonen series. Peraps its the dirreness of their sittion or the sympathy I have for them but I really find that I love the character development so far. But what I really love the most is the cast of characters entirely. Have you ever noticed hw in most shonen, even those of the darker variety like claymore how the characters seem redundant or unimportant or just plane uninterresting? Well in this series I find myself engrosed by the different roles,opinions and perspectives of each character. Also I disagree with whoever said there was no character growth besides the fct that it still kinda feels early for that sort of thing in a manga like this. I believe that Jean Kirschtein and Armin Arelet are too major examples of characters that are currently undergoing signifficant growth as compared to how they were at the beginning of this manga, in fact I believe these two hve comparitively grown moe than any of the others including the main protagonist himself. But like I said i'm no major manga analyst and that's just my two cents as it relates to the characters.
The reason, I suspect, why it never seemed very special to me is because I am a character oriented reader. That's my bias in all things. So I tend to look less at how the world fits together and more how the characters fit together. And to be honest, outside of 4-5 characters, I don't think it's been very good in that respect; due mostly to the large number of "terrified young soldier" archetype that's been introduced.
So that's why I think those aspects didn't stand out as much to me but maybe overtime that aspect will change a little and I'll be able to enjoy it as you guys do.
---------- Post added at 11:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:15 PM ----------
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."- Abraham Lincoln
(It's my second favorite quote)
People adapt to circumstance it's part of our nature. Sometimes that adaptation is for the better sometimes it's for the worse but they always change and a good character does that too. Adversity just makes that need to adapt even more apparent. When a character does not adapt, both mentally and emotionally, I don't think their acting all that human.
Never the less, I think you are correct character growth is not a prerequisite for a manga to be good but it is a prerequisite in manga's of this type for me to enjoy it properly and that's really what this comes down to for me. It just doesn't suit my tastes right now.
though kaiten put it brilliantly what i think,i'd still like to make a post about this. i really don't think character orientation has to be about a character's growth/change. it could easily be about exploring an existent character. the character 'grows' to the reader not because new elements are added to him/her, rather because new elements about him/her become known to reader.
secondly growth/adaptation doesn't necessarily mean 'change'. i was just watching the movie 'before sunset'(a wonderful movie btw, whole heartedly recommended). a character their argues that ppl don't really change...its just their way of expressing themselves get changed. he said for example, a jovial optimistic guy after being paralyzed in an accident would be a jovial optimistic guy in wheelchair after 6 months once shock wears off. same way a bitchy miserable guy would be a bitchy miserable guy with a cadillac and a castle after he wins a lottery.
i don't mean to say that life changing things don't happen. what i mean to say that they are rarer. they don't come along as easily as in some shonens(ruroni kenshin,naruto). in a normal soldier's life,what life changing thing would one normally expect during their training years? little if any i would say. On the other hand deaths or life threatenning events in front of a child,that should have decisive permenant effect on the character...as we've seen with mikasa and eren.
and even there, see how different was the effect of such trauma on the two children. mikasa due to her inherent nature drew strength from her almost maternal instincts to protect...on the other hand, the effect on the adventurous eren was to become even more resolute in his extrovert loud emotions,like vengeance and conquering.
not only these two,take a look at the other two other children(whose names i've forgotten) in the training camp who faced the giants attacks besides eren's group. they became afraid of giants and wanted to avoid them...another very plausible,most common human reaction,which suits with their overall general characterization of normal ppl.
i personally think amidst all the praise about world-building and plot-setting, the characterization part of shingeki no kyojin is often very undermined/undervalued. like the other aspects SnK excels at stopping-from-going-overboard with its characterization too. it doesn't feel a necessity to make every characterization moment into a character changing moment. all its characters have distinctive patterns and when they interact with each other,their reactions mirrors the way such interactions between personalities would've happened in reality, which is why its so impressive. almost all the human interactions are perfectly done.
about the other characters not being much handy against giants, i'd once again say its very much appropriate and realistic. its been well established that very few humans are capable of fighting giants and i'd not expect 10 such characters coming out of the one single trainee squad and start doing such feats in their very first battle. in fact i wouldn't expect all the trainees to attain such capabilty ever in their life time....cause otherwise it'd feel incongrous as to why one particular squad would produce all such excellent fighters in one single batch while the rest of the squads couldn't produce such fighters all together in all the years.
and about the change/growth of the trainees, we did see that after the first battle right? the rival guy of eren changed his mind. he was the one to make the decision to sacrifice ppl to get into the tower of warning bells, and that was a vital decision,which made his character grow as well. as i said, i wouldn't expect all the characters to suddently 'change' from one single fight...but they are adapting to their experience,without breaking up their mould of character. that's impressive that such continuity is being maintained in a shounen, and not trying to pass off sudden 60,90 or 180 degrees of change in character as character growth/development.
---------- Post added at 06:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:41 AM ----------
I understand all that Keiten and don't even disagree with anything you said but it's not just a matter of the wall troops being the scared ones and the scouting legion being the brave ones. Almost every character's bravery has buckled in the face of giants or their death. Yet most of these characters have faced Gaints multiple times, they should be learning what to expect by now. Especially the Scouts Legion who were told straight up, most of you are going to die and means most shouldn't be in terror. From the moment they realize that most should be working their way through...
For me the meat and potatoes of a war story is how the characters react to such things and if they all have the same reaction it lacks the character depth I need to relate to them. It just seems like "Terrified Solder A" dies, "Terrified Solder B" dies, etc... and that cause all these deaths to have absolutely no impact for me.
I don't know if you like documentaries or not but if you do and if you haven't seen Ken Burn's "The Civil" series I suggest you check it out. It's probably the greatest on war and human nature I've ever seen.(the whole thing is steaming on netflix too)
I don't get it. i don't remember seeing scouts legion veterans freezing up that much. you do know that most of the scout legions are comprised of new soldiers right, who have not faced giants before. not only that scouts legion is generally made up of worst trainees (our protagonists are a huge exception as emphasized on so early in the series)...so how should one expect much bravery from them?
Also being scared right at the end means nothing, even the bravest of man can legitimately be afraid of death. what i'd have objected to is if that fear kept the scouting legion soldier from doing what they were told to do(like the unexperienced wall troups in the bell tower in the first fight),but that never happened.
---------- Post added at 06:54 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:48 AM ----------
Another thing about this manga is that I don't believe it is THAT character driven, undoubtedly to an extent, but considering how much recourse we keep going to "microcosm", "shared", "society" a tragedy in the manga does have a personal aspect to it but more to that its a collective. Which targets at the core of the manga being that of a battle of humanity, and indeed the author has hit the nail on this wonderfully precisely because the loss of a friend or decimation of a squad impacts the entire humanity in the bigger picture of things. Which is why victories and losses mean so much to this manga and really affect you as a reader because its not as personalized hence it is a win and loss for everybody in a far more objective sense, when a character cries you accept it because of that distance that prevents you from projecting yourself to the work or "owning" the character so that your reaction might have been "snap out of it!".
Perhaps this generalization would turn off people, after all its really only now after what 30 chapters or so that characters begin to mark an impact as individuals I only begin to remember names aside from the trio of friends, but if you think about it how often do you come across the handling of such in any manga - even more so in the tightly handled Shounen magazines. So I honestly can't relate to an idea of being turned off by this as the work challenges me, and I'm not one to turn away from a challenge especially when it has been done well.
Couldn't agree with you more. its not a manga about a guy growing up, or about a life of a guy(so in that sense its not character oriented)...but that doesn't make the characterization any less impressive, nor does it stop the characters from developing/growing/changing. In fact i think its lot better than usual shounen character oriented manga. its quite similar to fma in that regard, though one would be right to say that allan's goal of restoring his brother's body gave a more personal feel to it.
We should also remember how early in the story Shingeki is. There has really only been one complete arc so far, while the series is still less than three years old (debuted in September 2009).
If anyone has missed, MH has arranged awards for Manhwa and its sub-sections. You can find the links below. There are plenty of categories to nominate your favorites. We would love to see your participation.
