Hello everyone and welcome to The Anime Pulse: First Reaction. Hajime Isayama has built an empire around titans. With an anime series that has a second season on the way, two animated movies, two live action movies, a manga series, and a plethora of specials, Attack on Titan is pretty much everywhere. Now we get a spinoff series taking our characters, shrinking them down to chibi size and sticking them in a crazy junior high school environment. This is Attack on Titan: Junior High!
First Episode Impressions
I’m skipping the general overview because I kind of said it in my introduction. It’s Attack on Titan set in a junior high school. It doesn’t get much more descriptive than that!
The show loves to take humorous shots at itself, pretty much making it a requirement to see the original Attack on Titan anime first to get the jokes.
Eren and Mikasa wake up and they are running late for their first day at junior high. They run to the school and a bump into some familiar characters like Christa, Sasha (who likes watermelon instead of potatoes), Connie, Jean, and more. All the characters they run into are angry that they keep getting knocked down so they angrily chase Eren and Mikasa into the school where the opening bell rings.
Realizing that they’re late and they need to hurry, they take a wrong turn and end up on the titan’s side of the school. Eren vows to destroy all the titans for that horrible act they committed back on that fateful day. After being found by Hannes, Eren and company are escorted to their classroom where the drill instructor, Shadis, from the original series serves as their homeroom teacher. They are about to hold the opening ceremony when the titans show up and attack the school.
The titans start grabbing humans and in a re-enactment from the original series, a titan is about to swallow Thomas when he, suddenly, spits him out. Thomas then cries out because the titan got his school lunch. In fact.. all of the titans are there to steal and eat their school lunches! That horrible act that happened to Eren was a titan eating his precious “cheeburg” (Hamburger Steak w/Cheese) lunch one day and he never forgave them for that.
Eren grabs two brooms and goes to the rooftop. He sees the Colossal Titan and makes a jump for him, just like in the original anime… except, Eren doesn’t have 3D Maneuver gear and falls short…. WAY short.. and hits the ground. The Colossal Titan laughs and, once again, steals Eren’s lunch and Eren vows to avenge his stole cheeburg lunch.
This is, obviously, a show that isn’t meant to be taken seriously. I really enjoyed the comedy in this first episode and I think people who are throwing their arms up in dissatisfaction aren’t really giving the show the chance to shine. Sure, it’s not canon, and sure it probably belongs on a straight to DVD release, but it’s still fun to watch and I got some laughs out of it.
OP & ED Impressions
Opening
“Seishun wa Hanabi no You ni” by Linked Horizon
YES! REVO and Linked Horizon are back for this and the opening theme is a complete parody of “Guren no Yumiya,” the first opening from Attack on Titan in both the art and the music. I actually liked the opening a lot.. it’s very catchy! It captures the epicness of the original, but also the light-heartedness of the anime.
Ending
“Hangeki no Daichi” by Eren Yeager (Yuuki Kaji), Jean Kirstein (Kishou Taniyama), Mikasa Ackerman (Yui Ishikawa)
The ending is catchy as well. It’s got a standard J-Rock feel to it as you would expect from a song sung by the voice actors, but it’s got a good beat. The art features the characters running on a blackboard as well as being superimposed into some real world classrooms. It’s fitting and it’s not really a bad song. I like it.
Worth Watching?
MAYBE – All depends on if you like parody shows. I liked it and I think it’s worth a watch, but others may not share my opinion.
