Any path can lead to disaster … so which is the right one?
Creative Staff:
Story: Tomoyuki Fujinami
Attack on Titan Created by: Hajime Isayama
Translation: Kevin Steinbach
What They Say:
You are a member of the 104th Training Corps. You’ve survived the Battle of Trost, and now, one month later, the Survey Corps encounters something unprecedented on its 57th expedition outside the Walls – a Titan appears intelligent. Even the long-distance enemy-scouting formation, brainchild of Commander Erwin, is hard-put to deal with this so-called “Female Titan.” Under the enemy’s relentless assault, the formation heads into the forest. Will they be able to capture this Titan? Will you?
This adventure books allows you to experience life in the world of Attack on Titan. Join Eren, Levi, Hange, and more, and confront the Female Titan!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
You are a nameless soldier of the 104th Training Corps who survived the Battle for Trost, and after the colossal titan breached the surrounding barricade do you stand in horror and watch one of your classmates, Eren Yaeger, transform into a titan himself. In order for him to seal the hole in the wall, you must protect this monster from other abominations who are attacking, but as you watch your fellows fall to hands and teeth, you have no idea how anyone will survive. It is only after collapsing and awakening from what seems like a feverish dream do you realize all that happened was real and it is only now does the true struggle begin.
In Summary:
The Attack on Titan franchise has been noteworthy due to its combination of extremely bloody and gory action, tense melodrama and gripping decisions which can prove to be the difference between life and death, however, this does not mean everything attached to the license will be an automatic success. Case in point, the thought to mold a Choose Your Own Adventure book around the premise of the series might have seemed like a good idea, but in practice, the execution is lackluster and does not promote something which is smooth to read or easy to understand. Plus the use of a second person point of view narrative does not help communicate the direct impact of the story, although it allows you to be a participant, but seemingly objective since your choices can be changed just as easily as going back and taking a different path on a new page.
Anyone who grew up reading this series knows how simplistic the books are, with easy to follow language and page lengths with rarely passed over one hundred. The stories were choppy since you constantly have to flip back and forth between sections to create a cohesive narrative and even then it is slipshod due to parts which do not fit smoothly together. Finally the main drawback of this type of narrative – if you chose a wrong path, you have to start all over again, rereading previous sections until you reach a new series of interactions, making the entire book farcical for adult readers which is what this narrative should be geared to due to the mature material.
As I outlined in the Contents section, this tale should be addressed to people who are at least familiar with the basic background of Attack on Titan. My summary is the basic starting point for any reader, and it is from there where choices begin, which may seem free willed, but you are guided from the beginning into making the right ones with simplistic paragraph structure which rarely passes page of double-spaced script. However, this is where the problems begin since each range of choices are listed at the bottom, next to the page number. Although this system may be simple to understand, it is confusing since there is a tendency to see a page number as the range which is in bold print. This is only the beginning of your tedium for this book.
The juvenile need to skip back and forth between choices quickly wears thin, and for someone who is sixteen, the starting age for this story, I suspect they will grow tired of the repetition since the idea for the book is based on children from seven to fourteen. Then there is the choppy nature of this narrative, having to constantly flip between pages, sentences and/or paragraphs does not make for a smooth or consistent telling of what should be an amazing story. In order for the reader to truly enjoy a book, it must be equal in quality throughout, but with the stuttering necessity, you are left with something which almost makes one nauseated like motion sickness from a bumpy car. Then lastly add the need to insert a game aspect to collect something akin to friendship points, and it makes you lose what sanity it left before you started this nightmare roller coaster.
Attack on Titan Choose Your Path Adventure – The Hunt for the Female Titan is not an easy book to pick up, and you are better off with something using a continuous narrative like the light novel or the manga. Anyone who is patient enough to finish this story deserves a reward, but too bad the two hundred fifty plus pages do not account for much of a satisfying tale for this amazing story arc. With the premise of this book genre, the story immediately collapses due to the repetitive nature to create an individual telling, instead of what should be a cohesive narrative to make sense of the tension. If you have a choice, avoid this book, or you might end up feeling like you actually did going into battle with a Colossal Titan … and lost, now being slowly digested within the sickening remnants of previous disappointing meals.
Content Grade: D+
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: Teen (16+)
Released By: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: May 15, 2018
MSRP: $10.99
