I finally got around to watching the first episode of Attack on Titan last night, and the overwhelming impression I had was of something trying to affect the appearance of weight, importance, and impact without putting any of the necessary work in. Mood vacillated from something like a downer episode of Spice & Wolf to giant monsters terrorizing humanity's last enclosure in a way that ensured the latter came off not only as shock when it finally appeared, but shock that pulled its punches. All of the yelling, cringing, Dutch camera angle using, and alluding to humanity's dire predicament did not actually add up to an atmosphere of dread in the way I think that they were meant to, weighed down as they were by the odd choices made in art direction and editing that burdened the whole thing with a distinct lack of tension. The varying thickness of the inks on character models, in particular, exaggerated the facial designs and expressions in a way that I can only describe as silly and comedic, in direct opposition to what they were probably going for.
It's a shame, because the premise is as delightfully doom-laden as it gets, and the titan designs are terrifically creepy, but what I gather from this episode and the all-downhill-from-here reputation the show seems to have is that they're both somewhat wasted in execution, at least by the anime. If anything, it gave me a level of appreciation for what From the New World, with all its flaws, was able to do in effectively and subtly setting up a world of mystery and disturbance and decay without immediately resorting to Inception horn farts and cannibalism from the get-go.
