No need to introduce SnK, the most popular anime and manga of this last decade.
Everyone at least heard about it, everyone watched the anime, but maybe not everyone read the manga?
At least I did, and really, it's one of those success I can't explain. Now I'm not attacking the general opinion, but the general arguments people give. Because a lot of what is heard about SnK is plain wrong.


STORY
SnK is about a group of humans, surrounded by Titans, living inside walls that Titans can't break. Then it's about a battle between this group and a group of humans turning into Titans. Then it's about a religious group reigning inside these walls. Then it becomes a f*cking western cowboy show. Then it comes back to survival. Then it's about an all-out war.

Let's be real, that story is a HUGE MESS. I'm not talking about the storyline, but about HOW IT UNFOLDS.

- Things get repeated twice in a row.

- On the contrary, other things come out of nowhere, then there's a flashback or a dialogue explaining what the reader should already know.
It's like you try to tell a joke, then in the end your buddy doesn't laugh and you say "oh, I forgot to tell you that dude is Irish, that's why it's funny!".

- Then there are major revelations thrown out without any kind of staging.
Sometimes it's like Darth Vador told "Oh, btw, I'm Luke Skywalker's dad" in the middle of the movie. A revelation is a MAJOR plot point, it needs to be a MAJOR moment.

- My biggest personal issue with this story is the amount of BS thrown out through the entire manga. So, Titan powers can manipulate everyone's memories, huh? SO easy. I put it at the same level as the Dream theory: it's just too easy.
The same for all the other Titan powers. It can do pretty much anything the story needs. I suspect there's a Titan able to cook spaghettis somewhere...

- But the biggest problem, as I wanted to put in evidence above, is the LACK OF PROPER DIRECTION. First it's a survival story, then it wants to be an investigation series, then it's western, then it's an all-out war, and so on. It just keeps changing its course!

It's just bad storytelling. Now it seems the author knows where he is going, and THAT is really praiseworthy! Clearly the storyline is not improvised.
BUT clearly, he doesn't know how to properly tell a story. The manga is full of moments where it seems the author tells "oh, I forgot to tell you this" or "crap, I forgot this scene, let's put it here as a flashback".


Now, a word about the philosophy. You'll here many fan(boys?) tell how deep this story is. It's not.
It's the classic "racism is bad" message, good morale but that's not something you'll LEARN by reading SnK.
Not only that, it doesn't go any deep into anything. There's a part about religion, but it tells so few about it. Also, obviously, the manga wants to show human cruelty. But it's made in such a simplistic way ("bruh, look how bad humans can be, booooooh!"), it can't even be called philosophy, that's just insulting. Something is deep when it dives in the subject, but SnK stays vague about its themes.

I'll be blunt, there is NOTHING TO LEARN from this manga. It won't change your way of life. It won't dive into any subject.


Now, I trash-talked a lot, but there is one UNDENIABLE MAJOR GOOD POINT: the ambiance.
SnK is CRUEL. It's cruel with its characters, it's cruel with the reader. It's epic, serious, violent.
And THAT's what made it popular. Because it's a trend in this century: things have to be dark for people to enjoy.


ART
It's just trash.
- Too many useless traits, it makes it look like a draft and it doesn't make it more detailed than any other manga.
- The battles are a mess on paper.
- But the worst has to be the chara-design. The edges are way too thick and irregular, and so many characters look way too similar. Christa and Armin, despite being different genders, have the exact same face.
Many secondary characters have the same haircut and face as important characters, so when they come on stage, it's easy to miss who it is.
- Finally, there's way too much dialogue, to a point that I seriously believe there's more bubbles than there are drawings on each page.

(Yes, I don't really like the manga format, HOWEVER there are some that I find decent or even great ; take One Punch Man for example).


CHARACTERS
That's yet another point where I'll have to be mean. I hear many people praise SnK for its chara-development and its complex characters.

... Where exactly do you see all that? Most characters are purely one-dimensional!

- Livai is the edgy guy who doesn't care about morales.
- Erwin is the wise strategist, who has almost literally ONE SINGLE FACE in the entire thing.
- Mikasa is a female warrior who cares about Eren.
- Armin is the clever boy who's not confident enough.

And that's them ALMOST THE ENTIRE TIME. Sometimes, a character gets a chapter about their story. It develops them a little, then it comes back to its one-dimensional self. Or they completely disappear from the story.
The only characters with decent development are Eren and Reiner. The rest barely changes the entire time and many of them don't really matter. Well, Armin does get more confident, but it's not like it was any major drift in the character.



Now it's not all bad. The characters are badass, and that makes them cool. But don't let it blind you, they're still one-dimensional.



ENJOYMENT
While I really enjoy some parts of the anime, I can't explain the manga's success. I mean, the arguments I hear in favor of it are so obviously biased.

Now I do understand why it is popular: its cruelty is not something we see all the time in anime. It's fresh, and let's be honest, seeing imaginary people suffer is often a guilty pleasure. That's why violent shows and games are so popular. Sometimes, it's even the only reason, and I suspect it's the case for the SnK manga.