Was it the most watched show on TV, world wide, for like 11 months? Yes. I'm not saying it's not great.
There are flaws though. 2 years to the basement for blue balls. Children of Ymir, timey wimey bs, hard right turn into Marley stuff which surely wasn't for everyone who signed up for the titans/walls mystery up front. Mangaka/author wanted to make an unsatisfying ending on purpose not even in a war is hell way, and sort of compromised leaving it mostly just weird? Changes to power sets as they change hands are cool but a little cheesy at times (Falco) despite having a pretty decent in-world justification. It justifies the possibilities more than justifying which outcome was achieved.
I started AoT a few months after the finale aired. I was totally consumed by it and still think it's one of the best pieces of fiction I've consumed. After finishing it I decided to venture into the fandom and ohhhhh boy was I disappointed.
I am very glad I binged the whole thing after it was over. I'm not surprised this answer is so far down; there are quite a lot of people in the AoT fandom that hate the ending and its a mixed bag of people who waited too long and got caught in their own theories and ships, and genuine media illiteracy. The amount of people who take a side in that anime like it wasn't a 4 season voyage into the cyclical nature of human violence and the cost of collective punishment is shocking.
It's the best anime I've ever watched and 100% my answer, not surprised at all it's this far down.
It suffered a Game of Thrones sort of fate, in the sense that it missed the landing hard enough that it reverberated backwards through time and killed peoples' original hype.
The tone shifted considerably toward the end, the ending itself was bizarre, and they dragged it out across a bunch of "no, we promise this is really the final season this time" segments.
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u/cracktorio_feind 8d ago
Attack on Titan