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High Score: Attack on Titan

High Score: Attack on Titan

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‘Epic’ is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days. Originally reserved for awe-inspiring displays of enormous magnitude, ‘epic’ has since become trivialized to the point of mass delusion; frequently used to describe a well made cheese sandwich or a decent dubstep remix you heard the other day. But sometimes, even in today’s mixed up world, the original meaning shines through. Sometimes you witness something so majestic, so impossibly thrilling, so heart-in-your-mouth terrifying that only one word will do it justice. Attack on Titan was one of those somethings. In the truest sense of the word, Attack on Titan was epic. 

 There were a lot of contributing factors to that; the bad-ass characters, the barbaric Titan’s themselves, the rampant strain of seemingly random main-character-sudden-death syndrome that tears through the cast, and of course, the music. Hiroyuki Sawano (whose you can also hear on the currently airing Kill la Kill) brought his AAA game to Attack on Titan with a score that doesn’t just blend colossal orchestral grandeur with driven, pulsating electronica, but slams them together with such ferocious confidence that you’ll find it difficult to imagine them without each other. 

Rittai Kidou

Let’s start things off with that electronica. Rittai Kidou rises ominously to life with a synth bass arpeggio before layers of distorted guitar and orchestral percussion coax the piece along to the first main melody, presented in nothing less than the most triumphant of brass motifs. This sequence repeats while the tempo slowly increases, all the while leading us by the hand to the half way point where Rittai Kidou changes tack completely and bursts into a frantic, percussive chase theme. It’s fitting with how quickly victory can turn to panic in AoT; where letting your guard down for a split second can change everything. 

Counter Attack Mankind

Dubstep in the western world may have ended the second that Taylor Swift song came out, but the stuff is still pretty popular elsewhere, particularly in Japan, so it came as no surprise that Sawano drew on some half time beats and splat snares to add some oomph to some of his work on AoT. Counter Attack Mankind is built around one such beat, layered with ambient guitar and percussive synths. At least until it’s halfway point, where it becomes another beast entirely. Are you sensing a pattern? If you’ve seen AoT, you know first hand just how unpredictable it really is, but maybe you hadn’t noticed just how well the score reflects that unpredictability.

E.M.A

E.M.A kicks off with some rolling orchestral percussion while the strings and choir carry the listener to the first motif which, again, appears in the brass. At 1.41 the strings join the horns to create a melodic passage that just demands your attention. Like all the others in this list, E.M.A turns on its heels halfway through and becomes the soundtrack to something else altogether. There’s even another dubstep drop hiding in the last three minutes, amidst all the soaring strings and glitching electronic samples. 

Eren’s Berserk Theme

Without going into obvious spoiler territory, this is one of the last pieces of music you’ll hear in season one of Attack on Titan and thankfully, it is every ounce as epic as the ultimate fight sequence it accompanies. Eren’s Berserk Theme constantly teases you with the promise of a gargantuan orchestral assault on your senses and eventually delivers it at around 1.41. Epic doesn’t even begin to describe it. 

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Attack on Titan wasn’t perfect. It had a lot of pacing problems and by leaving the door open for season 2, an awful lot of loose plot ends were left dangling unattended to. But when it was on form, it was really on form and one area where it managed to stay consistently awesome was in Hiroyuki Sawano’s incredible score. 

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