Attack on Titan Junior High – Early Thoughts

This is a series I really didn’t expect it to be what it is, I figured we’d be given your typical spinoff comedy or just silly OVA episode where they take the cast of a show and put them in a different situation with the same personalities and some of the same elements. Something like Type-Moon’s Carnival Phantasm – just a bunch of random jokes playing off some character traits and quirks in the stories. Or, a more fitting example, Kino’s Journey’s spinoff that has Kino in high school – which as far as I know, ends up being exactly what I said, just kind of a quirky comedy based around her personality rather than anything more thought out than that (though I’m sure it’s incredibly fun as well).

Instead this is something far better that I can’t think of any examples of before now. AoT Junior High is a true scene-to-scene parody in a way I haven’t seen any official spinoffs ever do, it’s a condensed and filled with silly reproduction of the original story, events in it, and cast. This feels like an incredibly high-end fanmade little animation, the type you’d find on Nico Nico with some crudely drawn sketches and one guy doing a bunch of silly voices for everyone. Yet somehow it’s official which gives it a much better budget, the whole main staff and studio, all the seiyuu, and everything else.

It’s fucking great too, not only is it hilarious just because these characters being kids in a world where titans are basically just bullies at school stealing their lunches, but BECAUSE of it essentially taking such a harsh, dark, heavy, and very serious story and turning it into a total joke yet remaining loyal to that story throughout. You get all the same scene even down to the OP and intro scenes being nearly IDENTICAL to how AoT originally began yet with the new fun twist and every scene throughout the episode you’ll recall “oh, this is that one part!” and it makes it so much more funny and enjoyable because these are scenes you’ve seen play out in such dramatic, cool, or fucked up ways before.

This is really something special and seriously fantastic, I mean it even plays one of the badass insert songs from the original show yet instead of going after the Titan’s in a rage for killing his mother it’s because they took his precious bento. Plus, it feels very aware of fan stuff and the generally dumb shit that kind of was irritating in the real show and isn’t afraid of making fun of itself for that stuff – for example a certain popular lesbian pairing is now a thousand times more serious and Ymir is incredibly possessive and violent towards anyone near her girl, and of course the EREN EREN EREN EREN EREN EREN EREN EREN EREN EREN EREN from Mikasa is here and clearly aware of just how silly it always was. On top of that her obsession with him is getting some fun additions, like trying to think up a plot to bump into him like all these other characters on the way to school – but she ends up launching him miles away by slamming into him so hard and then yells wait for me desperately at him, as if he ran off and left her behind.

Unlike Lance N’ Masques, this is getting an unbelievable amount of hate for reasons beyond me. In LnM I could understand the stupidity and ignorance at play that created the retarded opinions I was seeing…but here? This is fucking awesome and so much goddamn fun. Any actual fans of AoT would adore this because it’s a fanservice dream come true, yet all there is is whining and moaning about the fact it’s not season 2 – as if somehow this magically slows down the release of that, which isn’t how anything in the world works but also shows an even more clear misunderstanding of how anime is produced as well in the fandom than ever. Shirobako was such a bad idea, now everyone thinks they know the industry because they watched one of the most inaccurate filled with misinformation pieces of shit they could find about anything ever. It’s sad that “fans” can shit on such a loving product specifically made for said fans because it’s not what the baby wants this second so the baby cries and shits itself because mommy didn’t get it the right my little pony figure (oh wait, that’s middle aged men, not babies). Worse, baby does this while baby gets what baby wants anyway, as they confirmed season 2 is coming 2016 – if you somehow believe this magically made it not come out this year you might want to just stop having theories or opinions given you’re too stupid to properly form them. This SERIOUSLY blows my fucking mind though, this is an incredible little bonus given to us that has NO impact on season 2’s release. This is them throwing us a bone knowing we’ve waited a long time and knowing season 2 would take a bit longer in production and wouldn’t be available yet by now, as well as a way to raise fan interest again during that period of production for the actual season 2. This isn’t “causing a delay” this is “here’s a snack while waiting for dinner because I know you’re hungry”. Grabbing a Snickers before dinner is done doesn’t somehow make the oven need to be reheated and the timer have to be reset.

This is genuinely fucking great just in every way and the fact that it exists makes me happy, I really hope this kind of retelling parody spinoff deal becomes a ‘thing’, I’d love to see more shows have something like this rather than just generic comedy specials or spinoffs. I INCREDIBLY HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT TO ANYONE WHO HAS SEEN ATTACK ON TITAN. It’s such a perfect thing that so badly needed to exist and I had never even imagined it would be what it turned out to be. I really hope it maintains this style of parody through mostly re-creating scenes, rather than ditching out on that concept for more typical (yet surely still funny) comedy.