AX 2018: Attack on Titan Season 3 Premiere Review

The newest season of Attack on Titan starts with a bang, picking up right where we left Eren and his friends last. Needless to say, this is the series at its finest.


The third season of highly popular anime series Attack on Titan will leave you on the edge of your seat – so long as you're familiar with the story so far. Be warned that spoilers for the first and second seasons of the show follow.

The first episode of the third season of the series that premiered at Anime Expo this year picks up right where viewers last left the gang, though markedly decides to focus more on the aloof Levi. His mission at the start of the episode is to escort the recently kidnapped Eren and hier to the throne, Historia.

As fans learned in the second season, roughly three years have passed since the Scouts of Squad 104 were inducted. It's nice to see some friendly interaction here as the team cracks some jokes to lighten the mood from last season (where nearly all of them were killed thanks to traitor titan shifters Bertolt and Reiner). It also adds a human element to a story otherwise filled with to the brim with grusome intrigue.


Plenty of drama follows in the episode as we see the likes of Hange's squad attempt to pick apart some lingering questions the series raised since its initial season. Parts of the overarching narrative are beginning to come together, and it will be interesting to see what exactly gets answered by the time this third season has run its course.

This first episode manages to add another mystery in the form of a strange man from Levi's past. Kenny the Ripper seems to be as imposing as one of the series' many titans, judging from the reaction he's invoked in the show so far. While this is a novel new direction, it's concerning that yet another storyline is being interwoven into the fabric of the series. Attack on Titan has yet to answer some questions it's posed years ago, so why add even more onto the complexity?


That gripe aside, the show is as entertaining as its ever been, especially when considering it from an animation perspective. Illustrations and movements are as crisp as they've been in some of the series' most dramatic moments. Best yet, no traces of CGI have yet been found as of the time of this writing.

The third season of Attack on Titan holds a lot of promise. Mystery, drama, and action are the hallmarks of this series and if this first episode serves as any indication, season three will deliver in spades. What's more is that it seems as though the series will expand its scope on both a world-building and personal scale. This initial episode hints that the third season's 24-episode run will flesh out characters further, too, though there's still no guarantee that everyone will make it out alive.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

×