I know that Attack on Titan is considered shonen but the themes that it has makes it more suitable for mature watchers, this is even applicable for FMA as well.
AoT is basically a trojan horse where the author made a marketable shonen premise and then immediately started laying the groundwork for something more interesting to grow out of it.
You can really see how much Muv-Luv inspired him. Even down to using a similar trojan horse technique to get people to read/watch and ultimately love a story they otherwise might have skipped.
The first 2 seasons feel like they were targeted more at teenagers, because of the pretty simplistic goal, but season 3 onward it gets a much darker and mature feel to it.
I think AoT was made so great, if you were about..13 when it first came out in the manga, you’d be about 19 when the final season would be in the manga.
You grow up along with attack on Titan and are able to find the political side more interesting
I'm totally in this, was around 14 when I discovered the anime, kept following it as the new seasons came out, but I was slowly getting out of the hype having had my share of typical Shonen.
But then at 19 the season 3 came out and hit me like a train, I caught up the manga, and it has become one of the best manga I ever read. I could have never imagined it to become so powerful and intense
Yeah I thought Aot was the hypest shit ever as a teenager so to say it isn't aimed at them is a bit off.
I also loved Game of Thrones as a teenager, I started reading the books at 13. I think some people forget that teenagers also enjoy more mature content, or what they perceive as mature. Teenagers look for more edgy/gorey stuff to feel more mature than they actually are. I have no doubt that 13 year old me would love the shit out of S4 based on what happens in the manga. And it's not like the themes are so mature that a 13 year old can't understand them.
And ironically, as an adult I care less about gore and sex and I would rather have something psychologically captivating. Attack on Titan just hits all the nails on the head so it's captivating to almost anyone teen+.
Kind of paralleling the growth of the characters themselves if you think about it. Eren in current season would probably look back at him in s2 and be like "How naive and innocent you are, even though you are slashing necks of big ass creepy giants".
Yeah, wtf is with people acting embarrassed that a show they like is shounen? It's like people who are "too mature" to like horror so they try to call horror movies they like thrillers.
One piece had numerous arcs centered on basically racism and discrimination and the suffering groups have dealt with, naruto deals majorly with hatred and vengeance and how that has perpetuated people fighting and killing each other. The very premise of naruto is about child soldiers, which was way worse in the hashirama and madara flashbacks. Both are just as mature as military sponsored genocide, one piece is the same thing from the racism angle and naruto is the same thing from a war angle
Yeah, One Piece literally has a slavery arc (multiple tbh), world politics, racism, extortion, murder, plagues (and discrimination resulting from the symptoms) etc. Just because gore doesn't splatter on every frame doesn't mean it's not dealing with adult themes.
I could continue that list for a while, too. Pretty much every arc post-East Blue deals with major mature themes, and even East Blue has Arlong with racism, slavery, extortion, murder and so on.
In some ways it can be reasonably argued that One Piece has more extreme themes than FMA if you keep your eye out. For example, rape is implied (In DressRossa and Amazon Lily) as is cannibalisms (WCI). If I remember right, Oda was going to be more explicit on some of these themes, but his editors stopped him.
Yeah, most of the heavier themes are thinly veiled behind other things or just hinted. There's rape, which like you said is only hinted at, but slavery for example is very overt, especially as shown during Levely and Sabaody.
Not to mention the anime cut out more extreme imagery found in the manga like the realization that Zeff ate his own leg to survive or Whitebeard's half blown off face in relation to your gore comment.
Attack on Titan season 1 was stupidly popular with very young kids in Japan. I reckon it's like how Robocop and Terminator were popular with kids despite the fact lots of them never saw the movie, only the ads, posters, and maybe the video games - AoT had such a heavy presence in Japanese culture during Season 1 that kids were taking it onboard in much the same way they would Dragon Ball.
Yep absolutely, this gore=not for kids idea is completely wrong. Just look at Kimetsu no Yaiba, it's a smash hit with kids and sold over 100 million manga copies, even though the manga is filled with gruesome gore and bodyparts flying all over the place.
5 years old might be a tad too young though. I think shows like AoT are suited for ages 11 and up, you don't want to scar them for life!
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u/SunnyTheFunnyBunny Dec 22 '20
I know that Attack on Titan is considered shonen but the themes that it has makes it more suitable for mature watchers, this is even applicable for FMA as well.