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In It For The Tank
Feb 17, 2011

But I've yet to figure out a better way to spend my time.
The first episode of the new season added something that wasn't in the manga. While Falco is concussed, he mentions dreaming about flying around holding a sword and seeing titans. That's either something to come in the next chapters or a memory from Ymir (not Founder Ymir, Freckles Ymir) when she was a member of the Scouts. Either way, it seems like PATHS fuckery, since he has yet to eat the Jaws Titan. It's a bit like Eren waking up in the first chapter with tears in his eyes, which happened before he ate Grisha.

I really hope this doesn't mean that Falco eats Eren and gets the Attack Titan.

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chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



They also added a cameo from Jean, it looks like.

The last shot of the episode is a man with his eyes concealed buying a newspaper. Not a lock, but the haircut and the facial hair match up pretty well.

Interesting to see him before we even get Eren.

Conspiratiorist
Nov 12, 2015

17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth sixth some day
That's totes Jean.

DamnGlitch
Sep 2, 2004

That was loving incredible. The cg Titans looked really good too.

I think mappa has this handled.

Viridiant
Nov 7, 2009

Big PP Energy
That was the quickest half hour I've experienced in a while.

Green Tea Erotica
May 5, 2010

Anything you can do I can do BETTER
Seeing a bunch of disappointment at full cgi Titans, dont get it, cuz Mappa made that poo poo look good. A lot better than some of the cgi Wit had going

Viridiant
Nov 7, 2009

Big PP Energy
Yeah I don't know what people are talking about, that episode looked amazing to me.

In It For The Tank
Feb 17, 2011

But I've yet to figure out a better way to spend my time.
There were definitely moments it was noticeable but it's such an inconsequential criticism. Yeah, it would be amazing if every single titan was hand drawn but that's just not realistic. It still looked pretty drat great and even when it was really obvious (primarily the Beast Titan), it wasn't like... Scorpion King levels of jarring. It was just like "Okay, that's CGI... but who gives a poo poo look at those boats explode".

Viridiant
Nov 7, 2009

Big PP Energy
I couldn't really pick out the really obvious shots from the others. Maybe this is the same kinda thing where I'm apparently unable to discern low framerates in videogames. Whenever people make videos comparing the framerate of a game on one system to the framerate of the same game on another system I'm completely unable to tell the difference.

Not Keyser Soze
Mar 7, 2007

Endless Celestial Sex
The colorless, faceless soldiers goose-stepping to unsettling music is pretty fascist if you ignore all the adjectives I just used so I think I'm gonna write a long blog post about how this show is fascist propaganda.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you

Not Keyser Soze posted:

soldiers goose-stepping
They will use this part, instead of the other stuff showing it's bad. Which is about the same as saying Wolfenstein supports Nazi.

DamnGlitch
Sep 2, 2004

Viridiant posted:

That was the quickest half hour I've experienced in a while.

For real me and my GF (her favorite anime) sat down and it felt like a 10 minute scene.

My only disappointment is there wasn't a little stinger for whatever's coming next. Mostly because it went so fast. I guess the guy at the very end is supposed to be a tease but I'm not intimately familiar with all the character designs so I couldn't point him until reading speculation.

I thought it was impressive though that they hung an entire episode away from the protagonist faction to start the last season. Bold, but with such an out of the gate swinging episode I find I'll bet most people can't find a (good) reason to complain.

Captain_duck
Dec 3, 2005

I swear nice bushes!
Holy hell that was one amazing opening of the final season. Seeing that part animated was insane.

And yeah, new studio handled it fine.

Viridiant
Nov 7, 2009

Big PP Energy
I'm happy anime watchers now get to be introduced to the best character, Gabbi.

Not Keyser Soze
Mar 7, 2007

Endless Celestial Sex
I think more than anything else the moment from the first half? of this season I'm looking forward to the most is the scene where the kind family daughter tries to stab Gabbi because it's one of the few moments where the cyclical and irrational nature of hate is blatantly called out. One of the problems of SnK is that it has a realistic portrayal of the insidious and creeping nature of fascism and racism, which results in the aforementioned over-serious think pieces about "the anime you like is bad, actually". It's a rare moment of moral clarity for a character like Gabbi who had been so (realistically) entrenched in her brainwashing that even among regular Eldian folks she was still filter filtering everything trough the idea that her own people were evil.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Not Keyser Soze posted:

I think more than anything else the moment from the first half? of this season I'm looking forward to the most is the scene where the kind family daughter tries to stab Gabbi because it's one of the few moments where the cyclical and irrational nature of hate is blatantly called out. One of the problems of SnK is that it has a realistic portrayal of the insidious and creeping nature of fascism and racism, which results in the aforementioned over-serious think pieces about "the anime you like is bad, actually". It's a rare moment of moral clarity for a character like Gabbi who had been so (realistically) entrenched in her brainwashing that even among regular Eldian folks she was still filter filtering everything trough the idea that her own people were evil.

One of the things about Gabi is that she spends most of her time with Falco, and Falco is maybe the most moral character in the manga despite growing up in the same culture as Gabi. It probably makes her look worse to some people since Falco is seeing through the propaganda, making it easier to think "Man, Gabi sucks" instead of "Man, Falco is a saint."

Also, useful to have the whole "Marley is a military dictatorship" confirmed in black and white like that. I hadn't been quite sure if they had a civilian government we didn't see earlier, so that settles the question nicely.

Turin Turambar
Jun 5, 2011



Green Tea Erotica posted:

Seeing a bunch of disappointment at full cgi Titans, dont get it, cuz Mappa made that poo poo look good. A lot better than some of the cgi Wit had going

Yep, both the models and the color integration and shading were good enough to make almost seamless, unless you know, you start looking at paused stills.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Turin Turambar posted:

Yep, both the models and the color integration and shading were good enough to make almost seamless, unless you know, you start looking at paused stills.

You could see a little bit of stylistic difference, and the framerate was different. Well integrated, but visible if you knew what you were looking for.

Phobophilia
Apr 26, 2008

by Hand Knit
CG looks like CG because it doesn't move like keyframes with in-betweens. But whatever they did with the shading and frame rate made it look completely seamless.

Show's in good hands. The director knows what they're doing, every single frame established something new about the world and the stakes and the amoral power politics at play.

I'm kind of going to miss having WIT around. You could really watch how the studio evolved and matured from S1 onwards. But their pipelines just couldn't handle it, so they offloaded it to MAPPA, another relatively new studio who is the alumni of an old storied studio, who has independently developed their own action series pipeline, and it is mature enough to handle this show. Also they were given all the time in the world for production, and they deftly aped the all the old designs to it could be seamlessly handed off.

Phobophilia fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Dec 7, 2020

hatty
Feb 28, 2011

Pork Pro
I think Armor and beast looked worse than before but that’s obvious. Cart and Jaw seemed fine, were the normal titans CG? I couldn’t tell either way.

GimmickMan
Dec 27, 2011

Put me in the list of people really worried about a studio change who are now at ease. I was also ready to grab the pitchforks after seeing the opening song wasn't by linked horizon but the imagery and music are suitably :gonk: that I can accept it.

Cao Ni Ma
May 25, 2010



Mappa does fantastic 3d blending, second only to Ufotable and honestly at the pace they are growing they'll start to use it better than them in a few years.

Series continues to look great, and if they can leverage their expertise to lower production issues there should be absolutely no worries of them running into problems. My only concern is them stretching themselves thin with the amount of work they are doing.

Turin Turambar
Jun 5, 2011



hatty posted:

were the normal titans CG? I couldn’t tell either way.

My philosophy is: If I couldn't tell, then it didn't matter.

Faustian Bargain
Apr 12, 2014


Is it time for a new thread title yet?

Attack on Titan - Taken away to Eren's butt

Tenzarin
Jul 24, 2007
.
Taco Defender
Really blown away by finally learning more backstory about the pigs. Caught completely off guard.

Good chapter, really have no idea how this is gonna end.

Also in side note the idea that Eren used his time travel ability to make Ymir release the pigs is already being told.

Tenzarin fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Dec 8, 2020

Beefstew
Oct 30, 2010

I told you that story so I could tell you this one...
The Linked Horizon OPs were great, but their time is over. They were used to represent war propaganda, and this is the part of the narrative where any reasonable viewer should've wizened up to that.

Ethiser
Dec 31, 2011

Tenzarin posted:

Also in side note the idea that Eren used his time travel ability to make Ymir release the pigs is already being told.

Obviously you then flip in on them and say that Ymir has actually been controlling Eren all this time.

bees x1000
Jun 11, 2020

Turns out AoT is on Hulu so now I finally have a use for my wife's subscription. Neat. First episode was great, Mappa doing good work. Liked the end credits as well.


Ethiser posted:

Obviously you then flip in on them and say that Ymir has actually been controlling Eren all this time.

Really, hasn't Isayama made it clear enough that Eren isn't in control? This theory is very unlikely to pan out, IMO.

Kritzkrieg Kop
Nov 4, 2009
That very anime comic relief scene with Glasses Bertholdt and Falco with Second Annie was put in so the viewers would grow attached to them, but I forgot if that was in the manga.

Conspiratiorist
Nov 12, 2015

17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth sixth some day
It was.

Beefstew
Oct 30, 2010

I told you that story so I could tell you this one...

bees x1000 posted:



Really, hasn't Isayama made it clear enough that Eren isn't in control? This theory is very unlikely to pan out, IMO.

How so?

Eren's obviously a slave to his own desires and his fatalist viewpoint, but does that translate to "oh he's being mind-controlled by Ymir"? Because that would suck imo

GimmickMan
Dec 27, 2011

Beefstew posted:

The Linked Horizon OPs were great, but their time is over. They were used to represent war propaganda, and this is the part of the narrative where any reasonable viewer should've wizened up to that.

We had characters saying that fascism was bad earlier and the OPs were fine. If anything the dissonance made the story even better.

If it worked then, it would still work now, but that ship's sailed already so :shrug:

comedyblissoption
Mar 15, 2006

s04e01 looked sick as hell and I didn't notice any "CG-ness" jank that people were complaining about that I could see in earlier seasons sometimes w/ like the colossus titan. I'm not like an animation nerd though, just a humble anime appraiser.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



GimmickMan posted:

We had characters saying that fascism was bad earlier and the OPs were fine. If anything the dissonance made the story even better.

If it worked then, it would still work now, but that ship's sailed already so :shrug:

I think the issue now is less about fascism than about the more basic question of the conflict. Previously, we switched to Red Swan for the uprising arc, after all.

The Linked Horizon OPs are for humans vs titans, where the us and them lines are clear, and where battle is assumed to be heroic, for the salvation of mankind. The third season's first OP, by contrast, was for an arc where it was human against human, with moral lines being murkier.

In the final season, the war is human against human, with Titans acting as weapons, soldiers, and victims rather than as an inscrutable other. Going for a straightforward fight song isn't a good fit, even for irony value.

JahRoo
Oct 22, 2010


comedyblissoption posted:

s04e01 looked sick as hell and I didn't notice any "CG-ness" jank that people were complaining about that I could see in earlier seasons sometimes w/ like the colossus titan. I'm not like an animation nerd though, just a humble anime appraiser.

Yeah I just finished watching and didn't notice anything janky. It was super obvious in season 2 with the colossal titan and there was nothing like that in this episode.

GimmickMan
Dec 27, 2011

chiasaur11 posted:

I think the issue now is less about fascism than about the more basic question of the conflict. Previously, we switched to Red Swan for the uprising arc, after all.

The Linked Horizon OPs are for humans vs titans, where the us and them lines are clear, and where battle is assumed to be heroic, for the salvation of mankind. The third season's first OP, by contrast, was for an arc where it was human against human, with moral lines being murkier.

In the final season, the war is human against human, with Titans acting as weapons, soldiers, and victims rather than as an inscrutable other. Going for a straightforward fight song isn't a good fit, even for irony value.

I don't really see a point to arguing from a hypothetical and counterfactual position so I'm just going to say that LH is, imo, cool and good and has made cooler and gooder songs than both red swan and this new one.

Ultimately what matters (to me) is that the OP as a whole represents the material, looks good and is memorable, which this manages, so I can accept it even if I'd rather wish some of the details were different. This is unlike (imo) the red swan op which I think is very weak on those ends, though I can at least appreciate they were trying to contrast from every other OP surrounding it.

mightygerm
Jun 29, 2002



JahRoo posted:

Yeah I just finished watching and didn't notice anything janky. It was super obvious in season 2 with the colossal titan and there was nothing like that in this episode.

The beast titan looked like a ps3 character. The rest was okay.

Kild
Apr 24, 2010

Beefstew posted:

How so?

Eren's obviously a slave to his own desires and his fatalist viewpoint, but does that translate to "oh he's being mind-controlled by Ymir"? Because that would suck imo

He's seemingly locked into a future he can't change. His actions don't matter at this point because the future he saw seems inevitable. That's why he was so mean to Armin + Mikasa.

Beefstew
Oct 30, 2010

I told you that story so I could tell you this one...

Kild posted:

He's seemingly locked into a future he can't change. His actions don't matter at this point because the future he saw seems inevitable. That's why he was so mean to Armin + Mikasa.

Oh yeah, I'm fine with that. I just hope they don't pull an "Eren was a good guy all along and it was Ymir controlling him remotely" thing.

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bees x1000
Jun 11, 2020

Well yeah but I’d prefer that to ‘Eren was the bad guy and manipulating Ymir this entire time’.

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