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Shadow0
Jun 16, 2008


If to live in this style is to be eccentric, it must be confessed that there is something good in eccentricity.

Grimey Drawer
Sorry to continue the Muv-Luv derail, but

Saagonsa posted:

I am sure this game that the developers did not trust would sell well enough without porn being included actually has a "great story"

I think everyone is trying way too hard to interpret their motivations in a Western mentality. One Piece is the highest-selling manga, but it has unnecessary amounts of boobs in it merely because it was made by Japan. It's called "fan-service" for a reason, the authors aren't doing it to sell, they are doing it as like a gift. I think they want to see themselves as well. It's a different culture and their motivations are different occasionally. If they really cared about profits, they'd internationalizing more things here, where people buy them.

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mandatory lesbian
Dec 18, 2012
Please stop trying to justify the weird high-school porn game in the thread about titans and the attacking of them.

Szmitten
Apr 26, 2008

Livingtrope posted:

Please stop trying to justify the weird high-school porn game in the thread about titans and the attacking of them.

Please, titans and the attacking on them. :colbert:

Zorak
Nov 7, 2005

Livingtrope posted:

Please stop trying to justify the weird high-school porn game in the thread about titans and the attacking of them.

To be fair: the author of AoT has already said he was "inspired" by said porn games so mentioning them isn't completely off-topic.

Also, don't backseat moderate.

Shadow0
Jun 16, 2008


If to live in this style is to be eccentric, it must be confessed that there is something good in eccentricity.

Grimey Drawer

Livingtrope posted:

Please stop trying to justify the weird high-school porn game in the thread about titans and the attacking of them.

What? Justify it? If anything I find it highly annoying really. I'm just saying it's why some authors do it. It's basically the same thing as when American movies have unnecessary action scenes.

UberJumper
May 20, 2007
woop
I like AoT because its serious and isn't filled with lovely fanservice. Oddly enough its pretty hard to find another anime that doesn't fall into one of those pitfalls.

Saagonsa
Dec 29, 2012

Shadow0 posted:

What? Justify it? If anything I find it highly annoying really. I'm just saying it's why some authors do it. It's basically the same thing as when American movies have unnecessary action scenes.

If you can't tell the difference between unnecessary action scenes and full on porn I do not know what to tell you.

GimmickMan
Dec 27, 2011

If I told you there was this show with giant zombies and a genocidal main character who turns into a giant himself to beat them up, you would think that it is just another edgy shonen snoozefest. Both ML and Titan have okay concepts that are executed in a very visceral way, with an enormous amount of attention to detail, and the characters are smart yet realistic enough to really carry across how horrible the world they're living in is.

It sucks because Muv Luv would be legitimately great if it wasn't a porn game with gratuitous underage T&A. It doesn't really add anything meaningful to the story or characters (though the fan translators will argue otherwise) so it is frankly indefensible. Amaterasu Translations hosed up massively by translating the porn version because they really, really care about how the MC ends up shagging the female lead in the end.

I'm a little mad because I can't recommend it to anyone who says they'd like more stuff in the vein of Titan.

Internet Alias
Dec 5, 2005
Mirrors are more fun than television.

UberJumper posted:

I like AoT because its serious and isn't filled with lovely fanservice. Oddly enough its pretty hard to find another anime that doesn't fall into one of those pitfalls.

AoT's version of fanservice is not killing off side characters right away.

mandatory lesbian
Dec 18, 2012
Yeah but the ones who don't get killed off turn out to be titans. Everyone's gonna be a goddamn titan by the end of this thing.

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

Livingtrope posted:

Everyone's gonna be a frackin' cylon by the end of this thing.

All of this has happened before and will happen again.

Zorak
Nov 7, 2005
There is a separate thread for VN poo poo, please take any extended discussions there THANKS.

Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

UberJumper posted:

I like AoT because its serious and isn't filled with lovely fanservice. Oddly enough its pretty hard to find another anime that doesn't fall into one of those pitfalls.

you might wanna check out Monster (has an anime), Vinland Saga, or Loan Shark Ushijima then. they all fit those two qualities and are great manga.

Jerry Manderbilt
May 31, 2012

No matter how much paperwork I process, it never goes away. It only increases.
So the first two chapters of the Levi spinoff are out, and I like how the Military Police are the butts of the joke even outside of the main story :v:

Phobophilia
Apr 26, 2008

by Hand Knit

Genocyber posted:

you might wanna check out Monster (has an anime), Vinland Saga, or Loan Shark Ushijima then. they all fit those two qualities and are great manga.

Tsutomu Nihei's Knights of Sidonia also tries to go for a similar mood to Shingeki no Kyojin as well, or at least at first. It doesn't feel anywhere near as clever as Nihei's older works, which is a shame. It is nowhere near as complex with its characters and political intrigue, and its art doesn't have the same sense of movement as SnK's art.

One of the strengths of SnK is that its world is completely unconventional, no other show portrays a slow inevitable loss against hordes of immense humanoid monsters. I have no frames of reference, so it always finds new ways of surprising me. Yes, Eren gets a meatgundam, but it's not a simple power fantasy as not only does it actually degrade his sanity, but it also marks him out for a humiliating death at the hands of his fellow humans. And there is no constant formula, no regularly scheduled attacks that all get resolved in similar ways, but constantly evolving situations that are barely resolved and always at some horrendous cost. This already marks it as different from other shounen mecha series.

KoS, on the other hand, falls into a rut, there are continuous attacks that are successively revolved by bigger and badder technology, and there is a gradual power creep as the protagonist gets better suits. The introduction of Tsumugi, on the other hand, completely shakes up the direction of the story and is a massive improvement. So in conclusion, KoS never reaches the same heights, but moves from consistently average to consistently interesting once the character of Tsumugi is introduced.

Horrible Smutbeast
Sep 2, 2011

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

So the first two chapters of the Levi spinoff are out, and I like how the Military Police are the butts of the joke even outside of the main story :v:

Wow this is pretty poo poo. I know it's done by a different artist and isn't really "official" but it's so generic and uninteresting.

CodfishCartographer
Feb 23, 2010

Gadus Maprocephalus

Pillbug
And here I was seeing 98 new posts and walls of black text thinking there'd been a new chapter, how silly of me.

Hodgepodge
Jan 29, 2006
Probation
Can't post for 273 days!
One thing that Attack on Titan has that is difficult to pull off in sci-fi and fantasy is an intuitive sense that the characters are well and truly hosed. The sheer physical logistics of fighting titans make for a really effective narrative device.

I've never been terribly interested in Muv-Luv, but Knight Run is really similar to AoT in tone. But the odds are always very abstract, like some new enemy unit destroying an entire fleet or some super-monster killing a bunch of knights. Compared to AoT, they may as well just have a bubble that says "everyone was screwed."

Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Dec 30, 2013

Nelson Mandingo
Mar 27, 2005



Hodgepodge posted:

One thing that Attack on Titan has that is difficult to pull off in sci-fi and fantasy is an intuitive sense that the characters are well and truly hosed. The sheer physical logistics of fighting titans make for a really effective narrative device.

I've never been terribly interested in Muv-Luv, but Knight Run is really similar to AoT in tone. But the odds are always very abstract, like some new enemy unit destroying an entire fleet or some super-monster killing a bunch of knights. Compared to AoT, they may as well just have a bubble that says "everyone was screwed."

You make a great point, that's something I appreciate a lot about Attack on Titan. When a character is killed, they're killed for completely legitimate and compelling reasons. Much like in say, Game of Thrones you get a very direct sense of the lead-up to a character's death. You get to examine their actions and realize what they did right or wrong. If Isayama just killed cast members left and right arbitrarily, it'd really lose the impact of a character's death.

That being said I wish the "It takes 30 humans to kill 1 Titan" is retconned or explained away as to why the main cast continues to survive beyond deteoriating plot armor. That and it doesn't really seem to be the case that it takes 30 humans to kill one titan. Perhaps it should be "It takes 30 humans on foot to kill one titan."

Speaking of plot armor, I get the feeling that Connie is going to be killed by the Beast Titan, because his defining negative trait is a lack of intelligence whereas that is the beast titan's strength. I also imagine that Jean's constant reminders of sacrifices to Eren is foreshadowing too.

Nelson Mandingo fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Dec 31, 2013

Saagonsa
Dec 29, 2012

Nelson Mandingo posted:

That being said I wish the "It takes 30 humans to kill 1 Titan" is retconned or explained away as to why the main cast continues to survive beyond deteoriating plot armor. That and it doesn't really seem to be the case that it takes 30 humans to kill one titan. Perhaps it should be "It takes 30 humans on foot to kill one titan."

Pretty sure that meant 30 "normal" people. The majority of the main cast was either in the top 10 of their class or are elite soldiers. I don't seem to remember many normal soldiers doing anything other than getting squished.

Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

Saagonsa posted:

Pretty sure that meant 30 "normal" people. The majority of the main cast was either in the top 10 of their class or are elite soldiers. I don't seem to remember many normal soldiers doing anything other than getting squished.

In addition, the first time the graduating squad encountered titans Eren got his leg chomped off and Armin nearly got eaten, and then Eren got eaten when he saved Armin. The titan killing profession has a high turnover rate, but those that do stick around tend to last a while.

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

Genocyber posted:

In addition, the first time the graduating squad encountered titans Eren got his leg chomped off and Armin nearly got eaten, and then Eren got eaten when he saved Armin. The titan killing profession has a high turnover rate, but those that do stick around tend to last a while.

Yeah, it seems like if someone is skilled with using the 3DMG (and have access to good terrain) that they can win almost 100% of the time against a non-human-controlled titan. It's just that 3DMG must be unbelievably difficult to use, and merely being somewhat competent against titans is probably roughly comparable to being some athletic prodigy; your average (or even above-average) person would probably be devoting most of their attention towards just not falling, much less titan-killing. But people of the caliber of Levi's squad seem like they can handle more or less anything as long as they don't make a really bad mistake, and as a human-titan Annie was unlike anything they had fought up until that point.

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!
The thing that always always cheesed me off about this series is the one detail early on where they illustrated how futile it is to try to blow the titans' heads off with cannons. I think I'd have been fine with the conceit of having dudes swinging around Spiderman-style killing titans with fancy swords, if they didn't have guns and cannons. That chapter showed titans getting their heads clearly blown off. With a blow that's big enough to take the head off cleanly from the base of the neck, you'd imagine that it'd be enough to take out the person inside the neck in the area where they typically chop.

Aside from that, one also wonders why they haven't devised some sort of system of ropes, trip-wires, and suspended guillotine blades to take out the titans. Or, if they are capable of making compressed air-powered grappling hooks, why they don't simply shoot great harpoons on ropes at the titans, drag them down, and slay them while they are incapacitated on the ground?

My point being is that humans are terrifically creative at thinking up ways to kill things that are bigger, stronger and faster than they are. Our Ice-age ancestors were hunting mammoths and other gigantic Pleistocene creatures, armed with only pointy sticks and fire. It seems trivial for people at a 19th century level of technological development to fight creatures that average only 5-15m tall.

Really it sort of starts to fall apart when you give it a moment's thought.

DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Dec 31, 2013

Zorak
Nov 7, 2005
Because that's less cool and who cares.

RyuujinBlueZ
Oct 9, 2007

WHAT DID YOU DO?!

DrSunshine posted:

Really it sort of starts to fall apart when you give it a moment's thought.

Welcome to most anime and manga, Doc.

InequalityGodzilla
May 31, 2012

I am rather entertained by the idea of something like a guillotine blade as wide as a city bus and raised as high as the wall being used to kill titans, though.

GimmickMan
Dec 27, 2011

To be fair the ancient large mammals that we (presumably) hunted to extinction were largely herbivores who had no idea how to react to seeing these tiny little guys suddenly hunting them down. They didn't have diamond-hard skin or regenerate their wounds or, you know, instinctively murder the poo poo out of people.

I mean yes, there's things that humanity could be doing that they're not trying out, but I like to think it speaks of how dire the situation is that this is the best thing we've got going.

muike
Mar 16, 2011

ガチムチ セブン

DrSunshine posted:

The thing that always always cheesed me off about this series is the one detail early on where they illustrated how futile it is to try to blow the titans' heads off with cannons. I think I'd have been fine with the conceit of having dudes swinging around Spiderman-style killing titans with fancy swords, if they didn't have guns and cannons. That chapter showed titans getting their heads clearly blown off. With a blow that's big enough to take the head off cleanly from the base of the neck, you'd imagine that it'd be enough to take out the person inside the neck in the area where they typically chop.

Aside from that, one also wonders why they haven't devised some sort of system of ropes, trip-wires, and suspended guillotine blades to take out the titans. Or, if they are capable of making compressed air-powered grappling hooks, why they don't simply shoot great harpoons on ropes at the titans, drag them down, and slay them while they are incapacitated on the ground?

My point being is that humans are terrifically creative at thinking up ways to kill things that are bigger, stronger and faster than they are. Our Ice-age ancestors were hunting mammoths and other gigantic Pleistocene creatures, armed with only pointy sticks and fire. It seems trivial for people at a 19th century level of technological development to fight creatures that average only 5-15m tall.

Really it sort of starts to fall apart when you give it a moment's thought.
I think a lot of that's due to the fact that only one faction of the military has put much, if any, thought into the development of weapons against titans. The recon corps is the only one that actively goes out and fights titans, and it's arguable that the other two are in their own ways against that goal. The thing Zoe invented to try and catch Annie is a good example of them trying to come up with new weapons against the titans with limited resources. The recon corps can't just order around the industrial base of the Walls beyond maybe just ordering more of what they're already making.

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

DrSunshine posted:

The thing that always always cheesed me off about this series is the one detail early on where they illustrated how futile it is to try to blow the titans' heads off with cannons. I think I'd have been fine with the conceit of having dudes swinging around Spiderman-style killing titans with fancy swords, if they didn't have guns and cannons. That chapter showed titans getting their heads clearly blown off. With a blow that's big enough to take the head off cleanly from the base of the neck, you'd imagine that it'd be enough to take out the person inside the neck in the area where they typically chop.

They say that cannons (particularly using grapeshot) actually are effective at killing titans in a defensive context. It's just that they're only useful defensively, when you can mount them up high on a wall or something.

The harpoon idea might work pretty well, but I don't have an issue with that level of suspension of disbelief. They do a pretty good job of explaining why guns/cannons aren't that useful, though.

blankd
Mar 26, 2010

DrSunshine posted:

Aside from that, one also wonders why they haven't devised some sort of system of ropes, trip-wires, and suspended guillotine blades to take out the titans. Or, if they are capable of making compressed air-powered grappling hooks, why they don't simply shoot great harpoons on ropes at the titans, drag them down, and slay them while they are incapacitated on the ground?

My point being is that humans are terrifically creative at thinking up ways to kill things that are bigger, stronger and faster than they are. Our Ice-age ancestors were hunting mammoths and other gigantic Pleistocene creatures, armed with only pointy sticks and fire. It seems trivial for people at a 19th century level of technological development to fight creatures that average only 5-15m tall.
I'd say it's because they don't have the luxury of lone Titans and the lack of predictability is what hinders a lot of their ability to kill things. I feel the comparison is also not the same since animals are more prone to being afraid of humans, Titans are not.

However what seems FAR more likely to me isn't so much "why don't they" but rather that there is intentional suppression of information, and given the deal with the nature of the walls and what the beast titan thought the 3D gear was amusing technology, I would not be surprised at all if that crippled weapon competency is not that they can't, but that there would be worse consequences for using weapons with more firepower.

EDIT: I suggest suppression of information since I'm sure someone would have tried making flight gear at some point since 3D gear isn't TOO far off from that.

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

blankd posted:

I'd say it's because they don't have the luxury of lone Titans and the lack of predictability is what hinders a lot of their ability to kill things. I feel the comparison is also not the same since animals are more prone to being afraid of humans, Titans are not.

However what seems FAR more likely to me isn't so much "why don't they" but rather that there is intentional suppression of information, and given the deal with the nature of the walls and what the beast titan thought the 3D gear was amusing technology, I would not be surprised at all if that crippled weapon competency is not that they can't, but that there would be worse consequences for using weapons with more firepower.

EDIT: I suggest suppression of information since I'm sure someone would have tried making flight gear at some point since 3D gear isn't TOO far off from that.

Hm, that's an interesting thought there, and might tie back into one of the theories I've been nursing since early on in my reading of the comic-- that it's all an artificial system somehow, that the entire situation is either an experiment or intentionally created for some reason.

A thought: If they were really a defensive society -- i.e., with the impetus for creating and retreating behind the walls in the first place -- you would imagine that the cities would be laid out in a less open and conventional way. I would imagine the whole society would be designed along defensive lines, with high stone walls and enfilades to channel and manipulate a Titan attack into a narrow space where they could easily be dispatched. One could even imagine people building underground warrens and tunnels, a whole society dwelling underground. You could build buildings quite close together, and have emergency nets and ropes to string up in between the houses. You could build most houses very low to the ground, and made of stone or concrete, with steel doors. There's a lot of ways to go about it!

Yet we don't see any of these very simple ideas that anyone would have thought up at first hand if they considered such a situation. That, and the Wall Cult, the Wall Titans, the bemusement of the Monkey Titan, and the sheer artifice of the whole thing, leads me to suspect that it's all intentionally set up for some nefarious purpose. A good comparison is how we found out in Claymore how the whole island, the whole world that the story had taken place in up till then, was just a testing-ground for human weapons.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
The problem with cannons is that aiming them is not easy. You fire cannons at things like ships, or walls, or armies. Things you can't miss, even if you don't hit exactly where you aimed. Blowing off a titan's head isn't quite as easy, though hitting them at all would at least slow them down, I imagine. Wasn't this covered, actually? I swear in the anime at least one of the halfway point info-dumps references that the main problem with cannons was hitting titans in the one way it would actually kill them, though I could be misremembering.

Anyway, the rest of the stuff, we don't really know how the city was built and whatnot. And, you know, people grew complacent behind the walls. No one thought they could be breached, so making extensive defenses behind them probably wasn't a concern.

From a different perspective, the titans all getting chopped up at the gate would send the story in a rather different direction. Or instead lead to the Colossal Titan, who knows the layout of the city and all that, kicking in a different part of the wall, I suppose.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Dec 31, 2013

RyuujinBlueZ
Oct 9, 2007

WHAT DID YOU DO?!

DrSunshine posted:

Hm, that's an interesting thought there, and might tie back into one of the theories I've been nursing since early on in my reading of the comic-- that it's all an artificial system somehow, that the entire situation is either an experiment or intentionally created for some reason.

A thought: If they were really a defensive society -- i.e., with the impetus for creating and retreating behind the walls in the first place -- you would imagine that the cities would be laid out in a less open and conventional way. I would imagine the whole society would be designed along defensive lines, with high stone walls and enfilades to channel and manipulate a Titan attack into a narrow space where they could easily be dispatched. One could even imagine people building underground warrens and tunnels, a whole society dwelling underground. You could build buildings quite close together, and have emergency nets and ropes to string up in between the houses. You could build most houses very low to the ground, and made of stone or concrete, with steel doors. There's a lot of ways to go about it!

Yet we don't see any of these very simple ideas that anyone would have thought up at first hand if they considered such a situation. That, and the Wall Cult, the Wall Titans, the bemusement of the Monkey Titan, and the sheer artifice of the whole thing, leads me to suspect that it's all intentionally set up for some nefarious purpose. A good comparison is how we found out in Claymore how the whole island, the whole world that the story had taken place in up till then, was just a testing-ground for human weapons.

Except that's exactly what they did? The city that was taken at the beginning of the series is set outside the "main" part of the wall, because titans are drawn to large concentrations of humans and so they'll focus their efforts at that pimple sticking out of the "main" section of wall making it easier to defend.

They also do in fact have large underground city areas for the purpose of retreated into should the walls be breached. It was recently brought up, even. Of course there are other means of defense, but this is the means we've been shown and is basically the strategy that has been most often used historically with the walls simply dialed up to 11, anime-style.

Mordaedil
Oct 25, 2007

Oh wow, cool. Good job.
So?
Grimey Drawer
Heck, the only problem with killing titans with cannons is the normal problems with cannons. These are large mobile targets, cannons are difficult to aim, they have terribly small weakpoints compared to the rest of their frame and indeed, they have used cannons to kill tons of titans.

It is, however a problem of resources, aiming and time. As it is, it is just faster to fling in there with 3DMG and cut out their nape than it is to load a cannon, aim it at their weakpoint, fire and reload.

Soulcleaver
Sep 25, 2007

Murderer
I'm putting my money on the monarchy or someone suppressing information and keeping the technology level/applications thereof right where they're at. We already know that they censor anything about the outside world, spread propaganda to ostracize adventurers and other undesirables, and probably have some kind of advanced smithy hidden in the inner city for making giant X-acto knives.

Nelson Mandingo
Mar 27, 2005



I see the lack of development of weapon systems to fight the Titans as something that is suppressed by the government.

It's been stated already that information from outside the walls is considered heretical by the government and you're trained to the idea (so much you teach your children) that the world outside the walls is completely forbidden and people who want to go outside are just plain wrong. Then you've got the latest chapter straight up showcasing a group who aren't the least bit nervous about intimidating an extremely influential noble. So it's clear there is a massive government conspiracy going on under everyone's noses. It wouldn't be surprising if they suppressed technology and actively encouraged staying in the industrial revolution era lifestyle that people live under.

But if technology suppression is the case and not just a quirk of the setting Mr. Isayama will have to explain why they allowed the 3D Manuever gear.

One of my favorite "wouldn't it be cool" theories posted in this thread is the idea the rest of the world is more modern and trucking on, and wherever Attack on Titan is taking place is just some walled off north korean style regressive hell on earth that nobody wants to deal with.

Edit: Once we reach The Basement™ we'll see if the setting is in the future or it's own unique thing. I imagine Eren is going to find a futuristic lab down there.

Nelson Mandingo fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Dec 31, 2013

Mordaedil
Oct 25, 2007

Oh wow, cool. Good job.
So?
Grimey Drawer
Well, you see, being locked behind a wall with limited amount of resources already puts a huge strain on technology and it doesn't really mean that it comes from higher up.

In fact, the 3DMG itself isn't all that drat impressive, it is wires and hooks fired with suppressed gas and upped in usefulness for the rule of cool. But it isn't really a thing that is super advanced or anything, because during the military training most recruits probably die during the mountain training where their commander cuts the rope they are using to climb a cliff with, and the casualties are written off as they wouldn't have survived a titan anyway.

It's all will-power and guts and even the worst recruits are probably more physically fit than the top 0.01% of mankind today.

Like, literally, the fact that they don't kill themselves regularly is more impressive than the technology behind the gear itself.

Mordaedil fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Dec 31, 2013

Kaleid Stardust
Oct 27, 2013

by toby
Speaking of the influence of porn games on Isayama, I'm stumped as whether this (NSFW) is the work of a fanartist dedicated enough to replicate SnK's style perfectly, or if the mangaka himself couldn't retain his perversion any longer.
(Spoilered under the minute possibility that this is some sort of leak of the actual manga.)


(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

Kaleid Stardust fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Dec 31, 2013

Mordaedil
Oct 25, 2007

Oh wow, cool. Good job.
So?
Grimey Drawer
While you didn't label that as NSFW, that was honestly really tame for porn, if you can even call it that.

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Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

thanks for showing us two underage anime characters loving, this thread really needed that

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