Revisiting the Fascist Subtext of Attack on Titan: Some Notes on a Modern Reactionary Anime

Attack on Titan is an ongoing Japanese comic book series written and illustrated by Hajime Isayama, who, growing up in the countryside of Ōita Prefecture, Japan,² landed upon a simple but disturbing truth: Because all living organisms must feed on other living organisms to survive, the world is an inherently cruel place. Life, by definition, undermines ethical considerations. Or so it might seem. Unlike so many of the powerful but problematic ideas that cement themselves into the minds of children, only to be abandoned upon the arrival of adulthood, this one stuck around for Isayama, at least as a problem to be addressed. His manga tells the story of a world in which people live under the constant threat of being eaten alive by naked, mindless, humanoid giants. The idea is not original. Humans have, in science fiction, often been flipped by circumstance into serving as dinner for an alien species (even as we actually are for any number of terrestrial species, from bacteria to bears and lions, if we're unlucky). But Isayama has connected this evolutionary trope to a sociological concern toward the growing attraction in the world for autocratic—often sociopathic—forms of governance. Published in 2009, the manga, alongside its anime adaptation, quickly grew into a global pop-culture phenomenon. Part of Isayama's success can be attributed to the grotesque allure of his (eventual) drawings; another, to the surprisingly sophisticated incorporation of Nazi ideology into his narrative. But, in sum, the anime series poses disturbing questions for a society that has drawn its economic and political strength from imperialism, especially, as with Japan, from a totalitarian past—or, as with the United States, from a periodic appetite for totalitarian leadership.

Chapter one of Shingeki no Kyojin debuted in Kodansha's Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine on September 9, 2009. Better known in the west as Attack on Titan, it tells the story of a world in which humanity resides behind a series of three enormous walls that protect it from giant, naked, man-eating humanoids called Titans. They are, in essence, the principle of Life, reversing the dominance of humans, who are now food. One fateful day, when the outermost wall is mysteriously breached and a nearby town is overrun, a boy named Eren Yeager watches his mother as she is eaten alive by the invading behemoths. After joining a sea of refugees past the middle wall, the traumatized youth subsequently decides to join the army in order to avenge his mother's death and retake their lost home. On the campaign, however, he learns that one of the young men he befriended during military training was responsible for the breach. Determined to kill his former brother-in-arms, Eren follows him past the outermost wall, where he discovers that the real world is nothing like he imagined.

Without any prior experience, Isayama struggled to find a publisher willing to take on his work. Editors everywhere were impressed with his premise but disheartened by the—admittedly—poor quality of his original drawings. Fortunately for Kodansha, their blind faith in the 23-year-old's still-developing talents paid off. By 2013, Attack on Titan was selling almost sixteen million copies per year, making it the second best-selling manga in the country at the time, surpassed only by veteran mangaka Eiichiro Oda's long-running series, One Piece.³ That same year, production company WIT Studio released an anime adaptation that, thanks to the leadership of Death Note director Tetsuro Araki and international distributors like Netflix and Crunchyroll, turned into a massive hit with younger viewers.⁴ With over 100 million copies sold worldwide as of 2019, Attack on Titan currently holds the title of eighteenth bestselling manga of all time.⁵

Over the years, fans and critics have speculated extensively on the reasons behind Isayama's explosive and, in many ways, unprecedented success. Theories range anywhere from the series' having spun a clever twist on the now-oversaturated but once feverishly popular dystopian fiction and zombie-apocalypse genres, to the artist's supposedly...