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Narm / Attack on Titan

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  • Several Titans boil down to giant wobbly nudists smiling like they're stoned out of their minds... until you see their Slasher Smile. What follows is a gruesome image of the human body getting torn to shreds by the teeth. By then, Narm fizzles out as it gives way to good-old Primal Fear.
  • In the first episode/chapter, the Scouting Legion soldier who drops to his knees and basically screams "WE DIDN'T LEARN ANYTHING!!" comes across as hilariously overdramatic. Later on, when you realize how terrifying the Titans are, it seems more appropriate.
  • Sometimes when Eren in Titan form yells in the Japanese dub, it's hard not to let out a little giggle now and again.
  • There's the scene that spawned the "Titan-san is late for school" meme. Civilians are trying to evacuate, when suddenly a Titan appears and runs towards them. That would be suspenseful... If the Titan wasn't running in a hilariously awkward way. The poor schmuck getting punted off the screen can be the icing on the cake if you're into this kind of humor.
  • In Episode 24, the dramatic zoom in on Eren looking completely bonkers as he's about to transform is either awesome or hilarious.
  • Some of the early manga chapters, before Art Evolution took hold, featured hilariously distorted and bizarre expressions. Jean's WHAT IS IT EREN face is the most famous.
  • This really strange face Eren is making on the cover of the manga's issue 15. It looks like he walked in his parents having sex or something.
  • The Spanish dub gets hit by this due to Mikasa's name, since it sounds exactly the same as "my house" in Spanish, "mi casa". They didn't give her a Dub Name Change, so every time someone says sentences like "Mikasa is awesome" or "Where is Mikasa?", it sounds unintentionally funny.
  • Isabel's death in the manga, though a major mix of Nightmare Fuel and Tearjerker, is also hard to take seriously. She literally falls onto the butt of a Titan and then another one eats her. The image makes it look like a Titan biting into another Titan's butt and blood spraying from the wound.
  • Armin's voice in the English dub can get particularly narmy, especially when he screams. A notable instance is after Eren's supposed death. For some fans, however, this also crosses into Narm Charm.
  • The English dub gets hit by this a lot since it changed the booming and deepened Titan howls, which border on being raspy, into high-pitched screeches that sound very wobbly as if the one screaming had a lot of phlegm. Compare and contrast.
  • Some people feel this way about Mikasa's line towards Eren: "If I died, I wouldn't be able to remember you."
  • Rod Reiss's Titan Form, because of its design and method of travel, ends up looking like an enormous cooked turkey in still images like the manga.
  • In Episode 36, when Mikasa attempts to rescue Eren from Bertolt only to be thwarted by Reiner at the last second, her immediate response is to shoot a Death Glare at Bertolt through Reiner's fingers in frustration. The only problem is that the anime made her look completely unhinged to the point of absurdity. The manga version of the same scene was far less overblown.
  • Despite having confirmed heights, the size of the Titans tend to vary, whether it's between humans and Titans or Titans and Titans. One egregious example is during the anime's adaptation of the Return to Shiganshina arc, where Eren's Titan grapples with the Colossal Titan. Despite the Colossal Titan being only four times bigger exactly (60 metres to Eren's 15 metre Titan), Eren barely looks like he's larger than the Colossal's shin. He's even smaller than the buildings. It's like a toddler hugging their parent's leg!
  • In Chapter 84 / Episode 55, when Eren protests Levi's decision to save Erwin instead of Armin, Levi viciously backhands Eren, throwing him to the ground and knocking out a good number of his teeth. This crosses over into Narm when it is clearly visible that Levi's punch knocked out exactly half of Eren's teeth.
  • Yelena's WTF expression in Chapter 118 towards Armin; it's so intense even by the manga's usual standards that it's almost impossible to take seriously.
    • It gets even more awkward in the anime where Armin just turns around for the camera to pan up to that damn face, with all audio cutting out. An attempt to be something of an understated Jump Scare then gets undermined by Yelena reverting out of the Art Shift on-screen back to normal like it never happened.
  • Chapter 126:
    • Pieck's last name is apparently revealed to be "Finger". Pieck Finger. Make of that what you will.
    • The Avengers-style alliance meant to signify the hopeful union of two enemy nations was quick to be mocked due to its cheesiness, its lack of proper pacing leading up to it, and/or the fact that some fans still have not forgiven the Warriors for their horrific actions.
      Connie: There’s no time. We’re going now.
      Reiner: Going to where?
  • Chapter 137 has several moments that should be impactful but come across as ridiculous.
    • Bertolt, Grisha, Krueger, Ksaver, and Armin pose together in what should be a touching moment, especially considering they're about to commit a Heroic Sacrifice. Unfortunately it looks like something from the Ginyu Force.
    • Levi finally kills Zeke and avenges his squad. Since Zeke had simply grown out of Eren's titan body and cheerfully waved at Levi, only to get decapitated, the whole thing ends up as almost pure Black Comedy.
    • Zeke suggests that Ymir has lingered in the Paths for so long because she "wants to be connected with others"... after Ymir has killed off eighty percent of humanity.
  • Chapter 138:
    • Mikasa decapitating Eren and kissing his severed head with Ymir Fritz in the background staring at them with a satisfied look on her face is very difficult to take seriously despite the horrible situation.
  • For Romanian viewers, Floch can be hard to take seriously due to his name being phonetically pronounced exactly the same way as the Romanian word "floc/floci", which means "pubic hair".
  • Chapter 139:
    • Eren reveals to Armin that what he really wanted was to live happily with Mikasa, something many viewers noted he could have done easily as Mikasa had been in love with him for the entire series. This especially did not go well with Eren/Historia shippers or fans who believe that Eren and Mikasa's relationship was underdeveloped, to have Eren state that he doesn't even want Mikasa to find another man after he dies. Even Armin calls him kind of pathetic.
    • One translation had Armin specifically thank Eren for becoming a mass-murderer. While what he means is Eren becoming a villain for the sake of his friends, it sounds like Armin's just happy that Eren killed billions of people.
    • Armin insists that thanks to Eren, there's a true chance at peace now. Yet by Historia's own words, the world is in almost the exact same position as it was before: the world united against Paradise. The only difference now is that there's no titans.
    • In the paths, Armin hands Eren a seashell. The problem being that, in one of the panels, it looks a bit like a dog turd.
    • The scene with Mikasa and the bird was likely supposed the symbolize Eren's soul finally being free. However, many fans saw this scene as an implication that Eren had literally been reincarnated as a bird. It turns what should have been a very touching scene into a joke, as fans quickly made numerous memes about "Bird Eren".
  • In the OVA adaptation of A Choice with no Regrets, the scene where the usually stoic Levi — in a moment of Unstoppable Ragefuriously hacks apart the Titan who murdered his two best friends Farlan and Isabel to Sad Battle Music would normally be a pretty somber moment. But for those who watched Spongebob Squarepants, Levi's enraged scenery-chewing can be unintentionally humorous, due to sounding a bit too much like Squidward screaming.
  • The opening of the Final Season's second half is meant to be dramatic, tragic and apocalyptic. Too bad that one of the last things it closes out on is Eren inexplicably letting out a soundless, massively over-animated scream that looks rotoscoped and just plain hilariously off. People took it and ran with the sheer Wangst the entire moment exhumes.
    • The Final Season in general has moments of this with the now predominantly 2D Visuals, 3D Effects where Titan fights are entirely 3D graphics. Unfortunately, this means a lot of the visceral violence and dramatic scenes gets undermined by excessively stiff animation or Titans suddenly jumping around like they're downright weightless where the prior seasons lent an eerie weight to their motions.
  • During episode 84, Reiner confesses to Jean his role in Marco's death. It's a tense and emotional moment absent of any music whatsoever... until a bunch of tree branches are shown in rapid succession as he tells the story. While it's clearly a case of Rule of Symbolism, it comes off as MAPPA really loving the trees and forgetting to cut to Reiner and company.

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