>He has super powers, and he's still boring and one-dimensional.
"Boring" is obviously YMMV, so okay. But, "one dimensional".
>It's even more of a shame because the rest of the characters are intensely interesting and have actual motivations and stakes within this world.
>implying that Eren doesn't have a distinct motivation that he shares with Armin. Or any distinct motivation for that matter.
He was sooooo boring and cliche. All I remember from him was him yelling and looking a bit mad all the time. If I re-watch and pretend that he's suffering from mania and post traumatic stress disorder, that helps.
I imagine that he's not even the protagonist anyway. It's that one guy with the blond hair, the tall one who seems like a leader. Or literally anyone else at all. Maybe that's his point. He's so familiar and cliche, you can't help but find interest in other characters. Like the soon-to-be-renamed Designated Protagonist Syndrome
It is what it is.
But this doesn't confront my points. Like, saying that he's boring isn't anything that I'm going to confront you on, because that's clearly YMMV. His character archetype is definitely a familiar one— not going to debate you on that. But I never even talked about his character archetype; I confronted the idea of him being one-dimensional. I confronted the idea of him not having any motivations.
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Unique world-building, unoriginal protagonist
If you like really unique world-building, this is something to check out. The story is set in a neo-medieval world where Titans, which are basically giant zombies, have been stalking the last remnants of humanity outside of the last human city. Paranoia runs high throughout the entire story, and the desperate situation causes children (the main trio of Erin, Armin and Mikasa) to sign up as basically teenage soldiers/cannon fodder to fight the Titans.
The plot is best categorized as a military thriller, and the action scenes have the terror of The Walking Dead if all the zombies were Godzilla. Pacing in anime always bothers me, so I go into every anime expecting to have problems with it. The pacing in Ao T isn't as atrocious as I was expecting it to be because there are enough genuine plot twists to make it worthwhile. I also liked how the series expands to focus on more characters as it progresses.
There's something intensely likable about this story (anime and manga), even though it does have a major drawback. The protagonist is the most cliche part of the story. He has super powers, and he's still boring and one-dimensional. Even his mysterious dad and the mystery behind his powers doesn't fully save him from being dull. It's even more of a shame because the rest of the characters are intensely interesting and have actual motivations and stakes within this world. Mikasa is a bad ass, Armin takes a few shots at actual cleverness, and the other characters (there are lots and lots of them) in the military are well done as well. The best parts of this story are when it doesn't focus on the main character, which means that Eren was a poor choice for the main character.
If you're a casual anime fan, bearing with the slower pacing early on pays off. 3.5/5