---
title: "Attack on Titan"
year: 2013
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/attack-on-titan"
fi1m_score: 83
critics_reviews: 2
published: "2026-09-17T22:06:49.118950+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-17T22:07:23.841518+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Attack on Titan (2013)

Created by Hiroyuki Tanaka, Shintaro Itoga, Tetsurō Araki, Jun Shishido, Mitsue Yamasaki, Teruyuki Omine, Yasuhiro Akamatsu, Masashi Koizuka, Kiyoshi Fukumoto, Shinpei Ezaki, Yuichiro Hayashi, Daisuke Tokudo, Kouki Aoshima, Hitomi Ezoe, Yoshihide Ibata, Mai Teshima, Akitoshi Yokoyama, Tetsuya Wakano, Aiko Sakuraba, Yoko Kanamori, Takayuki Hirao, Yasushi Muroya, Takashi Ando, Tokio Igarashi, Tomoko Hiramuki, Kaori Makita, Matsuo Asami, Makoto Bessho, Hidekazu Hara, Toshihiro Kikuchi, Tomomi Ikeda, Keisuke Onishi, Shingo Uchida, Kenji Imura, Yuumi Kawai, Tatsuma Minamikawa, Hiromi Nishiyama, Hidetoshi Takahashi, Yosuke Yamamoto, Hirokazu Yamada, Ken Ando, Tetsuaki Matsuda, Ryuta Kawahara, Yoshiyuki Fujiwara, Naoki Matsuura, Kenji Takahashi, Yang Liejun, Takahiro Kaneko, Kōnosuke Uda, Ryosuke Azuma, Shin Wakabayashi, Atsushi Tsukasa, Yasuhiro Geshi, Kazuo Miyake, Kunihiro Mori, Yuzuru Tachikawa, Miki Komuro · MPA TV-MA · Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Action & Adventure

**Fi1m score: 83** · Critics: 2 of 6 reviews so far

*In a sentence:* Grinning naked giants eat the town; the survivors answer with grappling hooks, choirs and a great deal of shouting

> An anime about teenagers fighting man-eating giants grows, over four seasons and 87 episodes, into something larger and much bleaker. It is loud, sometimes exhausting, and for most of its run it is superb.

## Synopsis

What is left of humanity lives behind three concentric walls, and has done for a hundred years, because outside them roam the Titans: giants who look almost human and eat people. In the outer district of Shiganshina, Eren Yeager (Yuki Kaji) dreams of the world beyond the wall; his adopted sister Mikasa Ackerman (Yui Ishikawa) watches over him, and his friend Armin Arlert (Marina Inoue) reads the forbidden books about the outside. Then a Titan taller than the wall itself appears above the gate and kicks it open. Eren loses his home and his mother in an afternoon, and swears to kill every Titan alive. Five years on, he, Mikasa and Armin are military cadets, training on the gas-powered cable gear the scouts use to reach a giant’s neck, when the walls are breached again at Trost.

## Review

*Attack on Titan* is adapted from Hajime Isayama’s manga, and the premise fits in a sentence. What is left of humanity lives inside three concentric walls, because outside them are the Titans: giants who look like people, eat people, and appear to want nothing else. The series began on 7 April 2013 and ran, with long gaps, to a Final Season that started on 7 December 2020: four seasons, 87 episodes. For most of that run it is superb. It shouts too much and explains too much, and the last stretch did not land for us as it has for many, but we recommend it.

The first episode tells you what you are in for. A face appears over the top of the wall, skinless and bigger than the church, with steam pouring off it. Then the smaller Titans come through the breach, and they are the worst thing in the series: naked, sexless, wrongly proportioned, and grinning. We were horrified, and it was the smiles that did it. They eat people the way a child eats a biscuit, and the animators hold on the chewing. Eren Yeager (Yuki Kaji) watches it happen to his mother while Hiroyuki Sawano’s score, choirs and electric drums and something like a hymn, plays over the top at full volume.

Sawano is why half the audience remembers the series as louder than it is; his music is huge and mostly sung in languages nobody on screen speaks. We did not mind. What we admired more, and what the reviews so far are right about, is the action. The soldiers fight with gas canisters, steel cables and paired blades, firing themselves between rooftops and up the backs of the giants, and the animators draw the whole of each swing rather than cutting round it. Shigeki Asakawa and Kazuhiro Yamada’s compositing gives everything thick black outlines and smeared streaks of speed, so the eye can follow a body through the air. Aya Hida and Masato Yoshitake, the editors, know when to hold a still face and when to let the cutting go to pieces.

The voices matter more than they usually do in something this violent. Kaji plays Eren at full volume for long stretches, and that is the part as written: the boy who wants every Titan dead and says so. Yui Ishikawa gives Mikasa Ackerman a low, flat voice that hardly rises, and that is where the series keeps its grief. Marina Inoue lets Armin Arlert sound frightened when he is right. Later come Hiroshi Kamiya as Levi, who talks as if bored by his own competence, and Romi Park as Hange Zoë, a scientist delighted by things that should make her run.

The flaws are the genre’s flaws. Characters explain tactics while falling off buildings. Meetings go on. The stretch of the first season after the fighting stops is a slog of tribunals and corridors, and the first half of the third is a plot about who runs the government, conducted largely indoors. The look changes late, too. Tetsurō Araki and Yuichiro Hayashi are the names that matter among dozens of credited directors, and when the Final Season arrives, with Kohta Yamamoto sharing the music, the giants move differently, built by computer, and for a few episodes we noticed the join more than we wanted to.

Then the writing, credited to Yasuko Kobayashi, Hiroshi Seko and Noboru Takagi, does something the first episode never promised. The Final Season opens with two new children, Falco Grice (Natsuki Hanae) and Gabi Braun (Ayane Sakura), and asks us to sit where we have not sat before. We will not say where. A series that began by asking us to cheer spends its last year making the cheering feel like a mistake, and it moved us more than we thought a cartoon about giants could. It was Gabi who did it: a child who believes everything she has been told, and is good at her job.

It runs to 87 episodes, it is a 15, and it earns both. Watch it with the Japanese cast and subtitles, do not try to take it in a fortnight, and be ready for a last stretch that has split its audience. We are on the less happy side of that split, and we still think you should get there.

*Fi1m score 83, published 17 September 2026.*

### Reviews we read (2)

- **The Guardian** (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the anime as a spellbinding global phenomenon focused on teens fighting man-eating giants in a desperate world. The spectacular action scenes and acrobatic fight choreography are singled out for particular praise. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/oct/16/attack-on-titan-box-set-review-manga)
- **IndieWire**, Charles Solomon (75/100, inferred): The review pairs the series with another anime and notes its intense action and world-building as standout elements in early anime coverage. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/culture/anime-reviews-date-alive-and-attack-on-titan-124093/)

## Details

- **Created by:** Hiroyuki Tanaka, Shintaro Itoga, Tetsurō Araki, Jun Shishido, Mitsue Yamasaki, Teruyuki Omine, Yasuhiro Akamatsu, Masashi Koizuka, Kiyoshi Fukumoto, Shinpei Ezaki, Yuichiro Hayashi, Daisuke Tokudo, Kouki Aoshima, Hitomi Ezoe, Yoshihide Ibata, Mai Teshima, Akitoshi Yokoyama, Tetsuya Wakano, Aiko Sakuraba, Yoko Kanamori, Takayuki Hirao, Yasushi Muroya, Takashi Ando, Tokio Igarashi, Tomoko Hiramuki, Kaori Makita, Matsuo Asami, Makoto Bessho, Hidekazu Hara, Toshihiro Kikuchi, Tomomi Ikeda, Keisuke Onishi, Shingo Uchida, Kenji Imura, Yuumi Kawai, Tatsuma Minamikawa, Hiromi Nishiyama, Hidetoshi Takahashi, Yosuke Yamamoto, Hirokazu Yamada, Ken Ando, Tetsuaki Matsuda, Ryuta Kawahara, Yoshiyuki Fujiwara, Naoki Matsuura, Kenji Takahashi, Yang Liejun, Takahiro Kaneko, Kōnosuke Uda, Ryosuke Azuma, Shin Wakabayashi, Atsushi Tsukasa, Yasuhiro Geshi, Kazuo Miyake, Kunihiro Mori, Yuzuru Tachikawa, Miki Komuro
- **Director:** Hiroyuki Tanaka, Shintaro Itoga, Tetsurō Araki, Jun Shishido, Mitsue Yamasaki, Teruyuki Omine, Yasuhiro Akamatsu, Masashi Koizuka, Kiyoshi Fukumoto, Shinpei Ezaki, Yuichiro Hayashi, Daisuke Tokudo, Kouki Aoshima, Hitomi Ezoe, Yoshihide Ibata, Mai Teshima, Akitoshi Yokoyama, Tetsuya Wakano, Aiko Sakuraba, Yoko Kanamori, Takayuki Hirao, Yasushi Muroya, Takashi Ando, Tokio Igarashi, Tomoko Hiramuki, Kaori Makita, Matsuo Asami, Makoto Bessho, Hidekazu Hara, Toshihiro Kikuchi, Tomomi Ikeda, Keisuke Onishi, Shingo Uchida, Kenji Imura, Yuumi Kawai, Tatsuma Minamikawa, Hiromi Nishiyama, Hidetoshi Takahashi, Yosuke Yamamoto, Hirokazu Yamada, Ken Ando, Tetsuaki Matsuda, Ryuta Kawahara, Yoshiyuki Fujiwara, Naoki Matsuura, Kenji Takahashi, Yang Liejun, Takahiro Kaneko, Kōnosuke Uda, Ryosuke Azuma, Shin Wakabayashi, Atsushi Tsukasa, Yasuhiro Geshi, Kazuo Miyake, Kunihiro Mori, Yuzuru Tachikawa, Miki Komuro
- **Writer:** Hiroshi Seko, Yasuko Kobayashi, Noboru Takagi
- **Cinematography:** Kazuhiro Yamada, Shigeki Asakawa
- **Editor:** Aya Hida, Masato Yoshitake
- **Music:** Hiroyuki Sawano, Kohta Yamamoto
- **Costume design:** Natsuki Yokoyama
- **Producer:** Tetsuya Kinoshita, Toshihiro Maeda, Kensuke Tateishi
- **Cast:** Marina Inoue as Armin Arlert (voice); Hiro Shimono as Connie Springer (voice); Tomohisa Hashizume as Bertholdt Hoover (voice); Yuki Kaji as Eren Yeager (voice); Natsuki Hanae as Falco Grice (voice); Romi Park as Hange Zoë (voice); Ayane Sakura as Gabi Braun (voice); Kishō Taniyama as Jean Kirstein (voice)
- **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA
- **Release (the US):** 7 April 2013
- **Genres:** Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Action & Adventure
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJaUvV9Hwgs

## Where to watch in the US

- Crunchyroll: streaming, hd
- Hulu: streaming, hd
- Disney+: add-on, sd
- Amazon Prime Video: add-on
- The Roku Channel: add-on, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy, hd

*Checked 2026-09-17.*

Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- 7th Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2023: 7th Crunchyroll Anime Awards (won)
- 6th Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2022: 6th Crunchyroll Anime Awards (won)
- 5th Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2021: 5th Crunchyroll Anime Awards (won)
- Manga Barcelona 2021: Manga Barcelona (won)
- 4th Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2020: 4th Crunchyroll Anime Awards (won)
- 3rd Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2019: 3rd Crunchyroll Anime Awards (won)
- Funimation 2019: Funimation (won)
- AnimaniA Awards 2018: AnimaniA Awards (won)
- Japan Expo Awards 2018: Japan Expo Awards (won)
- Behind The Voice Actors 2015: Behind The Voice Actors (won)
- JASRAC Awards 2015: JASRAC Awards (won)
- Sugoi Japan Award 2015: Sugoi Japan Award (won)
- anime award 2014: anime award (won)
- Anime Grand Prix Français 2014: Anime Grand Prix Français (won)
- Association of Media in Digital 2014: Association of Media in Digital (won)
- ExpoManga 2014: ExpoManga (won)
- Japan Character Awards 2014: Japan Character Awards (won)
- Neo 2014: Neo (won)
- Seiyu Awards 2014: Seiyu Awards (won)
- Tokyo Anime Award 2014: Tokyo Anime Award (won)
- Animation Kobe Special Award 2013: Animation Kobe Special Award (won)
- Billboard Japan Music Awards 2013: Billboard Japan Music Awards (won)
- Newtype Anime Awards 2013: Newtype Anime Awards (won)

## If you liked this

- *Neon Genesis Evangelion* (1995): Teenagers, giants and a creator who trusts the audience even less; the obvious ancestor.
- *Battlestar Galactica* (2004): Humanity’s remnant in flight, and the enemy turns out to have a point of view.
- *Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood* (2009): A long anime that pays off every thread it starts, with a lighter heart.
- *Children of Men* (2006): Britain as a walled pen, shot in long takes; the same dread, no giants.
- *Kingdom* (2019): Korean court politics with the undead at the gates; the walls hold about as well.

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/attack-on-titan