Attack on Titan

[Manofevil]

Who else has seen this particular anime and recognized it's particular Ravenloftish potential? The episodes are very much like seeing PCs working their way through a long stry arc and constantly wondering, who's the DarkLord?.

[alhoon]

AoT is one of my favorite anime... but I wouldn't call it Ravenloft Material. It has isolation and in a way "borders" in the first season, but it is not Gothic horror IMO.

[Manofevil]

Well, I would argue, who says it HAS to be Gothic per se, to begin with. The point is it's adaptable. The city dwellers are like the Ravenloft peasants trapped in their houses after dark while the monsters wander around outside looking for ways in and terrorize them just by their presence, then there's the fact that a large part of the military are just drunken secret police like a combination of the worst aspect of Drakov's Talons and the Kargat, plus there's how quick the population is to panic. This show has given me the best vision I've ever seen of what it's like to live in Ravenloft at street level. People there may know there's a ruler someplace and may have heard some rumors about them but the idea that they're a cursed Darklord is beyond their comprehension. Life is just the daily struggle to stay fed and stay alive. They are as trapped by the titans outside the walls as they are inside them. They're at the business end of the food chain, again, just like Ravenloft, and they're quick to turn on each other. I tell ya, this just screams Ravenloft to me.

[alhoon]

I have several disagreements with the presented points of view, both for Ravenloft and AoT.

- The Military Brigade are a faaar cry from the Talons and they are not monstrous like the Kargat. Sure they have their bullies and some corruption but nothing that approaches the brutality of the Talons.
I don't know how far you are in the anime, so I won't go into too much detail, because there are some Kargat throwbacks later in the show. Much later.

- Life inside the walls was actually not bad. It was not a daily grind and it was very safe. The walls enclose an area about the size of Texas. There was stability. The reason so many had to be expelled after Wall Maria fell was because it would take time to bring up food production to feed them - and because story trumps realism.
Even after the fall, the size of the human lands inside Wall Rose was about as big as Sweden.
There was no struggle to stay fed or alive before the fall nor two years after the fall.
(In short, Eren's 'we are trapped inside our cage' is his own skewed perception and nobody takes him seriously... because he's dead wrong. Their "cage" is large enough that you would need years of travelling to see every forest, mountain or village).

- The people in Attack of Titan are not at the business end of the food chain.
For 102 years Titans have been kept at bay and it was very rare for someone to die by titan - except the scouts. Aside of the scouts and the Garrison of Wall Maria most people have never even seen a Titan, which is why you see them freezing and panicking when they do. Even the 'veteran' garrison that show up to defend Trotsk go "Oh, that's how a Titan looks like?"

- The people in Ravenloft, except Verbek, the new Valachan and a couple more domains are not at the business end of the food chain, they are mostly safe from big monster attacks.
It is the exception that someone dies to monsters in most domains of Ravenloft, not the rule and it is what makes it so shocking and horrific when it happens.