Over the last decade, the fantasy genre has dominated anime as much as it has the rest of television, be it live-action or animation -- particularly in the shadow of the Game of Thrones phenomenon. Though always a prescient device in manga and anime, magic and the supernatural have been especially popular in the 2010s (especially where the portal subgenre -- isekai -- is concerned), evidenced by the likes of Sword Art Online, Hunter x Hunter, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Black Clover and, of course, Attack on Titan. Even beloved superhero series like One-Punch Man and My Hero Academia deal in "fantasy" in a broader sense.
While sci-fi has also been well-represented by high-concept hits like Steins;Gate, Dr. Stone and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, one quintessentially Japanese genre has comparatively fallen by the wayside: mecha. That's not to say the last ten years have been a giant robot vacuum; Star Driver, Guilty Crown, Darling in the Franxx and, probably most notably, Eureka Seven accumulated plenty of fans. But, the recent Netflix re-release of cult mecha sensation, Neon Genesis Evangelion, served to remind us this year that this particular category hasn't had as much sway with audiences as it did in the '90s.
And yet, as strange as it sounds, there's a case to be made that Attack on Titan, one the decade's blockbuster anime, is something of a mecha story in fantasy clothing.
It's hard to understate how much of a breakout success Attack on Titan has been. At one point in 2014, Hajime Isayama's manga, which began serialization in 2009, overtook manga giant, One Piece in sales, and has continued to trail close behind ever since. Despite the initial boom of interest in the anime adaptation dipping in recent years, the mid-2010s saw it catch on like viral wildfire; boosting the manga sales even higher to earn it a "once-in-a-decade" description from its enthused publisher. All of this is to say that Attack on Titan struck a chord with its audience instantly.
Some attribute this to its YA-baiting dystopia while others have pondered on -- and criticized -- its pro-nationalist appeal. Less, if at all, discussed, is its genre-bending. At first glance, Isayama's pre-technological, Eurocentric world marks it out as high fantasy, and there certainly is evidence of a supernatural root to its titular monsters. And yet, on the inside, the series secretly functions much more like a bleak sci-fi, with the "magic" of its world tied up in a complicated -- and controversial -- web of genetics and genocide.
More to that point, despite not having a single robot in sight, Attack on Titan ticks almost every mecha box there is: the walled world that Eren and his friends live in functions as a planet surrounded by unexplored space, much like many a space-set mecha story, in which scouting missions beyond the walls carry the same level of danger and mystery as journeying into the cosmos does. The human-on-Titan battles are even fought largely in the air -- like spaceships or flying mechs -- using the Omni-Directional gear. As is so often the case in mecha, our central heroes are teenagers forced to go far beyond their home, while all of the post-apocalyptic chaos they're involved in revolves around humans fending off an assault from "alien" things from a mysterious beyond breaching the protective barrier of their world, mirroring Evangelion's premise. The story in Attack on Titan also gradually unfolds itself into a deeply political and specifically pro-military one, echoing much of the iconography and themes of the Gundam and Macross franchises that feature heavily militarized mechs and often deal with the horrors of war.
Fundamental to mecha is, of course, the mechs themselves and their (usually) human pilots. Fulfilling this requirement in Attack on Titan are the Titan shifters: huge, fleshy exoskeletons that are essentially "piloted" by a human host from the inside. Again, this is reminiscent of Evangelion with its bio-mechanical Evas; unholy creations that can sometimes have minds of their own, much like the beast-like Titans, though the way the Titan "suits" manifest themselves is more in-line with Tony Stark's Bleeding Edge Iron Man armor. There are even individualized types of Titan whose abilities suit a particular function -- abilities that can be passed on from person to person like inherited technology rather than an inherent magical power.
Fantasy and mecha has never been incompatible: The Vision of Escaflowne and Magic Knight Rayearth are just two examples of the genres being successfully fused together before, usually justifying their 'bots as being relics of a long-lost era -- much like the mystically advanced Atlantean tech you see in Disney's underrated gem, Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Attack on Titan employs a similar explanation: an amnesiac, isolated society similar to the set-up of another mecha classic, The Big O, that is surrounded by ephemera it doesn't understand from a past it can't remember.
The pieces fit together even better knowing that Isayama took heavy inspiration from a visual novel called Muv-Luv: Alternative, from a game series that appears to be a fluffy romance on the surface but is actually about alien invasions of Earth, humans surviving on the brink of annihilation, alternate histories and... mechs! Lots and lots of mechs. âge, the company behind Muv-Luv, even acknowledged Isayama's reverence for the games with its own Attack on Titan crossover event in 2018.
Accusations of plagiarism aside, repackaging one genre in the skin of another is a tried-and-tested recipe for success, something that Isayama's apocalyptic epic has undoubtedly proven in the 2010s. Plus, Attack on Titan is really just an absolutely bonkers story; don't underestimate the appeal of bonkers storytelling.
Attack on Titan will return for a fourth season in fall 2020, though the show's exact release date is unknown at this time. It's unknown at this time if Season 4 will be split into two halves.