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REVIEW: Attack on Titan: End of the World Novel




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pachy_boy



Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 1336
PostPosted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 11:44 am Reply with quote
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However, it doesn't add enough to the story for me to recommend this to anyone who has already seen the movies.

Gotta disagree. I may be in the minority, but I love the underrated Attack on Titan movie (not plural, because it's really just a single 3-hour epic that got needlessly split in half) and will always defend it. Having said that though, this novelization really is an improvement on the movie's story in a lot of ways.

While all the characters share the same fates they do in the movie, they do things in different ways that were far more meaningful (Jean in particular). And it was like the author read the script and then wrote the characters based on how he understood them from the anime. We get more from Armin’s perspective, and how his genius mind was always working, such as how he suspected there was something wrong with the wall restoration expedition from the get-go. Mikasa gets a background where she did in fact experience a (different from the anime) childhood trauma that Eren helped her from, and I believe fans who disliked Mikasa’s portrayal in the movie may like her a little better in this novel.

I also admit the movie has its plot-holes, which just happen to get filled up and explained in better detail in the novel version. Not least of which, it answers the questions of where did the trucks get all their fuel from, and how were the walls originally constructed without having gotten swarmed by the titans? That kind of goes to show that with the movie, their primary concern was keeping things cinematic. A book doesn’t have that kind of luxury, providing only information instead, and in some ways is more fulfilling for it.

One of the things I thought was genuinely cute about the movie was the implied romance between Armin and Sasha (which we'll probably never get in the anime/manga), so I consider it a bummer that got left out of this novel. The only other nitpick I have is that the open-ended conclusion still leaves me wondering about where the surviving characters go from where they are, although perhaps that's the intent of the movie version's story.

So yes, for anyone who's seen the movie, this novel version is still worth the read, if partly to give the movie's story another chance to appreciate it in a way that certain fans may not have when they watched the movie itself.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Posts: 3019
PostPosted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 11:13 pm Reply with quote
pachy_boy wrote:
The only other nitpick I have is that the open-ended conclusion still leaves me wondering about where the surviving characters go from where they are, although perhaps that's the intent of the movie version's story.


In a way, I thought it was similar to how the first live action Resident Evil film helped establish an ongoing franchise that operated independently from the games' continuity.
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