A god of destruction. I feel bad for those island devils. One day, that's gonna show up to kill 'em. This first bundle of volumes sets things up a little more like a standard story. Eren is our protag, Mikasa is a loyal friend/love interest, and a coterie of friends and rivals exist to push Eren and "make him be stronger" or whatever. Our threats are identified and seem fairly clear, all that's left is to see what Eren's personal growth looks like and who will get off'd in our hero's long march.

Anyway, good shit in this omnibus. Roughly three whole volumes of the five contained are dedicated to the Female Titan, as introduced in the end of Colossal Edition 1, establishing a very firm story arc. The rest of the collection poses the mystery of the Beast Titan, but it is not given as much focus as other things - namely, the mystery of the Walls, the in-pouring Titans who seem to have come from nowhere (there turns out to be no hole in the Wall), the true identities of Ymir and Krista, the true identities of Reiner and Bertolt.... The world is very dark. I like how the dark undertone of the art shows us just how dark and dangerous this world is. While reading, I kept thinking about how the grey and scribbles showed us how much we don’t know. When the characters are out hunting Titans and not knowing where they are, the artwork allows you to see that. The blurred edges and lines give the same view that the characters are seeing. You are there with them. The darkness and the unknown give you this experience of being in the world with the characters. Plus, the characters’ facial expressions and actions add more. While I am still new to manga, I have not seen too many graphic novels in general display this kind of emotion on the characters. The author truly is showing you their fear and unity without words. Now, we do see this through the spoken parts as well. However, it is through the characters’ actions that we see most of it. From Vol 3 things definitely start tilting sideways. Eren is a titan..or can transform into one. Ok. So can others apparently too. This society is incredibly corrupt from top to bottom and it is astonishing the titans have not finished them off. There are...titans in the walls??

As Reiner's Armored Titan battles Eren's Titan, Bertholdt fights against the Scouts with a partially transformed Colossal Titan. When the soldiers led by Hange Zoë are ready to land a killing blow, Bertholdt once more uses his steam emission control to keep them all at a distance, and their ODM gear is unable to reach him in the continuous gusts of wind. Bertholdt's Colossal remains in this state of emission for a short time until Reiner faces imminent defeat in his struggle against Eren and calls for help. Hearing Reiner's signal, Bertholdt falls to the ground below. [8] This causes a destructive explosion below, with the Colossal Titan evaporating into a gush of steam. Bertholdt leaves his Titan and joins up with Reiner, who had managed to capture Eren and Ymir in the chaos. [13] Return to Shiganshina arc [ ] We also have the female Titan on a ramage. Our characters are trying to figure out what that is all about. While they were doing that, you could see them start to wonder if there were more people out there like Eren. Do more people have the ability to turn into Titans? Again, this sense of the unknown comes across so well. Then, we also have the big reveal about the wall. This makes our characters start to wonder what else their government and military leaders are keeping from them. After all, they are the ones putting their lives on the line. This bit of information is enough to sway the course of events. It makes them also reexamine everything that they thought they knew about the world. However, this didn’t last for too long because we are once again thrown into the face of action. Again, I am sure this will come up again. It’s too big of a reveal for it not to come up. We do get Connie’s and Sasha’s story. I don’t know if anyone else feels this way, but I felt like their stories kind of showed the plot down. We were in the middle of some pretty intense action and it was interrupted by their stories. Now, I am sure that these will be important later on, but it just felt sort of awkward where they were placed. It, again, just interrupted the flow of what was happening. I've written at length for singular volumes of other manga series, yet I feel like I don't really want to write about five books at once, and so I guess this will be terribly brief for a review of mine.

Started this series because my wife has watched the show about three times now and the zeitgeist is at a fever pitch. I do give Isayama huge credit for the mild way with which the Armored and Colossal Titans (re)introduced themselves here. Maybe I was expecting some over-the-top Naruto shit, but I'm glad Isayama handled it with some "maturity." Really digging the sincerity with which Isayama's been writing his story, avoiding blatant cliches... even if I'm mostly excited for the flesh-mecha battles between Titan-shifters.Join our Discord community, where we chat about the latest news and releases from everything we cover on AIPT