Manga review: Shingeki no Kyojin

An opening for the long awaited post for a blog that is full of 3 months old cobwebs lol. A great manga with intense violence and gore, Shingeki no Kyojin, or 'Advancing Giants'. At first the name sounded like a baseball oriented manga..or something about sport of the sort, but when I read them reviews, well, maybe a few months or so ago, it does not, by all means related to sport. It's a really awesome manga with an exponential burst on the storyline a little further inside. Hence, one has to be patient and to keep on reading to reach to the exciting parts. You could feel ultimate fear from reading this manga, boy I haven't felt this way since 'Monster'.

Title: Shingeki no Kyojin
Status: Ongoing
Nationality: Japanese
 Genre: Drama, Shounen, Psychological, Supernatural, Tragedy, Horror, Mystery, Action, Mature
Source: mangafox

Written and drawn by Hajime Isayama sensei, this great manga was nominated for the 4th Taisho Manga Award and winner for the 35th annual Kodansha Manga award for Best Shounen category as explained in Mangafox. The scanlator group responsible for the current chapters is the TDX Scanlation Group. Currently scanlated at ep 28, the manga has soared in popularity while being able to maintain a non-generic shounen storyline. Truly, a jewel amongst jewels.

The manga is centered around Eren Jaeger (middle) and his foster sister, Mikasa Aekerman (on right), and later with increasing importance, their great buddy, Armin Arelet (left). Their lives were in a setting where giants and titans (fyi, they eat humans for no plain reason) roam freely with the population of humanity dwindled to the ones living behind gigantic walls, about 50 meters high. This actually occurs few hundred years ago before the presence of our 3 little heroes I think.

Armin, Eren and Mikasa

Hence, these kids never see the wide plains, the forest nor the sea. Very pitiful. The walls got a few layers, Wall Maria, the outermost wall, Wall Rose, the middle one, and Wall Sina, the centermost wall. The situation is that the higher your ranking/nobility/level, you'll have clearance to stay at the inner side of the wall. And of course to avoid the walls to be breached easily, the concentrations of population was placed at 4 corners of each walls. This is because the giants has a tendency to target a mass number of humans rather than the scattered ones. So, the probability for the walls to be breached at these 4 sides are much higher than the rest, and ammunitions were concentrated to these sites. Its pretty sick strategy don't you think? But necessary.

The view of the layer of walls

The kickstart of the story was initiated with the presence of a 50 meter titan, exceeding the height of the wall, breaking the wall near Eren's hometown and letting loose all the normal giants ranging between 15 - 3 meters. It's a total massacre with Wall Rose being compromised. Eren, together with Mikasa, saw the death of his own mother, being ripped and chewed by a giant which ignite his already pumping desire to kill the sonuvabitches (ehem, excuse me hee :D). He entered the military, learned the 3D maneuver gear, and enter the Scouting Legion, juz so that he could kill more giants and maybe save humanity just a wee bit. Later on, he acquired the ability to turn himself into a 15 m giant, with no way of controlling it. From this you can even smell the stink of a scheme don't you? Soon he and his friends realize that, the danger was not just outside the walls..

The types and ranges of giants that devour humans for pleasure..scary..

The latest page of the manga :)

Eren, in his giant skin

A coloured scene, by a fan (i think), where Eren fought the 50 m titan.

This manga gave me goosebump. Sometimes, I feel intense fear. I would say the mangaka was able to bring us into his world which is full of despair, horror and death. The storyline is powerful, the drawing, getting better although a lil shaggy but enough to illustrate the necessary information. I was really thankful that I browse through mangas in Mangafox when this manga got an update. What luck. It seems that the updates came once a month lately at about 40 page. And, again I was thankful because I was patient and read through till the end. A jewel amongst jewels indeed. A must read for the adults.

Ratings: 9.5/10

Oh how I wish the updates were sooner... :)