Attack on Titan

 

For eight years my son and I followed the saga of Erin Yeager in the Japanese anime series “Attack on Titan”.  It is a strange title in that it appears it was either mistranslated or something was lost in translation as there are “attacks” and there are “titans” but there is no “attack on titan” as such.  Before watching it I thought “titan” might be a planet or something.

When we started watching it together my son was 11 and when we finished it he was 19.  With some degree of verisimilitude he was aging at the same rate as the protagonist-turned-antagonist.  I first showed him a scene of an “abnormal” titan running through what looks like an old European city flopping its arms and bouncing off of buildings.  This titan was 45 feet tall and intent on eating any humans it could catch.  It looked like a “normal” adult male but had no clothes and no genitalia, strangely enough.

It confused and fascinated him at the same time, but he was hooked.  The themes running through it are profound and play out in intense relationships, politics, and the horrors of war.  The depth of imagination necessary to create a world this complex is awe-inspiring and has been the topic of many conversations between my son and I over the years.  

[At present this process is repeating via the TV series “Severance” though on a smaller scale.]

The image I created is a combination of the series poster and a picture I took of the Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. mural in Indianapolis that is titan-size.  I found it today going through some photos from 2021 and just realized the young figure of Erin Yeager could represent my son and KVJ looming over the wall is me as an elderly male.  From a developmental perspective it is like a metaphor of my son needing to grow and overcome my dominance/control in order to eventually take his place as an adult in society.

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