Highlights
- Attack on Titan Junior High maintains the original’s appeal by showcasing a unique and different storyline from other anime, with no revealing uniforms or fanservice.
- The characters in Attack on Titan Junior High retain their personalities but are exaggerated, setting up a slice-of-life plot filled with school romances and one-sided crushes.
- The spin-off adds dark humor, such as Auruo biting his tongue and references to the original anime, making it an amusing homage to the original material.
One of the biggest appeals Attack on Titan had since its initial premiere was how different it was from other anime. There were no revealing uniforms for the female cast, nor any sort of fanservice to appeal exclusively to male viewers.
Additionally, men and women were respected equally, both by other characters and in the narrative itself. Though given its gritty story line, it was no surprise that both fans and Isayama himself came up with alternative timelines to lighten the mood. In 2015, Attack on Titan Junior High got its own anime adaptation by WIT Studio and Production IG; which tells the story as if it took place in modern-day Japan.
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Main Character Syndrome
Fans already know that Eren is hard-headed with a motive to move forward, and this adaptation doesn’t change that. Starting the same way its predecessor does, Eren has a strange dream and wakes up drooling, already setting the tone for the story. From there, the typical “I’m running late for school” first episode commences.
On the way to school, the major characters are introduced by Eren crashing into them, with Historia/Krista being the first. Mikasa fantasizes about being the one to crash into Eren, so she can help him up, but it ends up backfiring due to her speed and strength. This sets up their dynamic from the getgo; Mikasa has a crush on Eren, but Eren is too dense to notice it.
All the Attack on Titan Junior High characters keep their personalities, but to a more exaggerated degree. This helps set up the slice-of-life plot that the show has. Jean, originally haughty in his own right with a crush on Mikasa, is now the main rival to Eren and tries to achieve popularity with girls; Historia is the conventional “kawaii” girl that doesn’t like fighting, and whom everyone wants to protect; Sasha is the comic relief foodie, that every mainstream anime has; and Eren is the protagonist with an inspiring and relatable goal: destroy all the Titans, so they permanently stop stealing their food.
In a way, this brings to light how the original source material’s characters were based off of anime tropes, but heavily deconstructed. In a “typical” anime setting, all that needs to change is their predicament. The only two characters that didn’t undergo any major changes were Sasha and Connie.
School Romance
Attack on Titan Junior High embraces slice-of-life anime tropes to a T. This includes one-sided crushes, and the famous “summer festival” episode. In the original anime, Bertholdt is confirmed to have feelings for Annie, but could never bring himself to confess. This is the same in the anime, but Reiner decides to help his friend’s chances with Annie, when Krista mistakes the former’s date invitation for a class trip. In the end, while they don’t immediately get together, they start out small by doing festival activities.
But in more explicit terms, Franz and Hannah are confirmed to be in a romantic relationship, both in the original source material and in Attack on Titan Junior High. It’s pretty obvious from the beginning that the two have a thing for each other, and Eren’s accusations about their interactions only serve to make it all the more funny.
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Did They Just…?
Seeing how the original anime is dark and gritty, there’s no surprise that this spin-off would have a touch of dark humor. Auruo bites his tongue a few times because of how often he speaks – and so in Attack on Titan Junior High, every time he’s on screen, he bites his tongue at least once.
What makes it all the more funny is in an episode where he runs for student council president and his speech only consists of him biting his tongue and passing out. During the token “school sports festival” episode, Marco gets left behind and is posed in the exact same position as his death in the original anime. While those are only a few references, the anime itself thrives on homage to the original material. It’s not uncommon for fans to refer to it as, “Cope on Titan”.
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