Summary
Attack on Titanis one of the most impactful and famous anime of all time. Since its release in 2013, it has both captivated existing fans of anime and brought a completely new audience into the medium. But just like all the other greats,Attack on Titanwasn’t immediately the smash hit it is known as now.
It took several years for a young creative mind to realize what could not have even happened at all. Author Hajime Isayama started from nowhere and, by simply creating a masterful work of art, he rose to stardom and fame. Without any other prior work and barely any artistic skill, here is how theAttack on Titanmanga began.
Hajime Isayama, a 19-year-old Genius
Out of Nowhere
Hajime Isayama was born on May 14, 2025. During his high school years, while all his friends started dating, he immersed himself in anime and video games and started drawing at a young age. He was noted to have a brilliant and creative mind that set him apart. During his part-time work at a cybercafé, he had a fateful encounter with a drunk man that impacted his life greatly. He was disturbed and dumbfounded at how he was simply unable to communicate with the man.How someone of his own species could seem so alien and unreachable to him. It was then that he realized that what scared humans the most was other humans.
I am free. Whatever I do, whatever I choose, I do it out of my own free will.
During this time, he discovered a video game called Muv-Luv Alternative. The game tells the story of a world where humanity has been nearly annihilated by a race of invading aliens. Humanity fights the extraterrestrial threat with giant and powerful mecha.The game involves time traveling and a catastrophic ending where all the characters die gruesome deaths.This game heavily influenced Isayama to create a story of his own. Between 2003 and 2005 he began working on a 65-page one-shot manga.
When he finished it, he first submitted it to Shōnen Jump with the hopes of them serializing it. However, the magazine quickly declined as they considered the story to beway too dark and gruesome for their magazine. And after Isayama refused to tone down his story, he sought publication in another place. He submitted his work to Weekly Shōnen Magazine, a subsidiary of Kodansha. To his surprise, they agreed to serialize his story in the Monthly Shōnen Magazin. This first work would becomeAttack on Titan.
Attack on Titan: A Smash Hit
A New Era of Anime
His editors and even himself often noted how poor his art was in comparison to all other manga. Isayama has publicly stated multiple times how critical and how bad he felt about his own artwork. And yet Monthly Shōnen Magazine continued to serialize his work for over a decade. Isayama’s artwork continuously evolved throughout the years, reaching amazing heights by the tail end of the story.
This world is cruel, but it is also beautiful.
The influence of his favorite video game, Muv-Luv, is easily recognizable inAttack on Titan. The apocalyptical setting is very reminiscent of the stage of humanity in the series, as an alien threat that suddenly invades almost completely wipes out the human race.And how teenagers employ giant machines to fight this threat. The time-traveling aspect didn’t become apparent until many years later, but it ended up being one of the most vital elements ofAttack on Titan. However, the depressing ending is something that led some fans to believe that the series would go in the same direction, but obviously, this was not the case.
Some fans have also noticed similarities between Eren Yeager and Shinji Ikari,the protagonist ofNeon Genesis Evangelion.Both characters go through horrific traumatic events and have very similar designs and both pilot giant humanoid creatures with slanted green eyes and terrifying teeth. The Attack Titan and Eva Unit 01 are similar in their body proportions, the shape of their faces and the fact that they both devour enemies in similar ways.
Another similarity fans have noted is between Mikasa Ackerman and Rukia Kuchiki fromBleach. Both have very similar hairstyles and the same colored eyes. Both are deuteragonists of their series and they have similar personality traits. Considering the time when the first draft ofAttack on Titanwas created, an influence from both Neon Genesis Evangelion and Bleach is quite reasonable. However, Isayama hasn’t spoken about this.
Attack on Titannow sits in the Hall of Fame of anime, bringing millions of new fans into the medium and captivating the hearts of almost every anime fan in the world. At only 19 years old, Hajime Isayama created his first work, a manga that would reach worldwide hit status and bring on a new era for anime.
Attack On Titan
Based on Hajime Isayama’s widely popular manga, Attack on Titan is a dark fantasy anime set in a world where humanity lives behind walls to protect themselves from massive creatures known as Titans. Over the course of four seasons, the story takes plenty of unexpected twists and turns, almost evolving into a different type of series in the process.
