Titan Lunch

Balanced Lunch for Titans:

A well fed American child with a side of broccoli.

Our younger son would very much like to go to the Universal Studios park in Osaka and feed himself to a Titan.

Sadly, there is no "Attack on Titan" area in the Universal Park here in the US.

Attack on /of Trump

On the Eve of Presidents Day:

If you asked either of our sons to do an impression of President Trump, he would squint, purse his mouth, and then say, "We have to build a wall!" They are aware of other Trumpisms and policies, but the wall concept seems to upstage everything else.

In the wildly popular (in Japan) manga and anime series, "Attack on Titan," humans live in small cities surrounded by huge walls, attempting to shelter from huge, apparently irrational and monstrous, naked humanoids or "Titans" who roam the countryside beyond the walls, attempting to eat any regular sized humans they can get their giant hands on. Most of the human protagonists of the series are members of the Survey Corps, an elite fighting unit trained in physics-defying tactics to try to protect humanity from the overwhelming Titan threat.

The iconic image for the series in its print, film and television formats, is that of the largest of the Titans- "the Colossal Titan" looking over the suddenly insufficient wall, with the hero of the survey corps standing in the foreground, facing him.

So what does this have to do with Presidents' Day and Donald Trump?
Well, perhaps the wall is enough?

There's been a good bit of Trump as Titan in Japan apparently. And some memes involving Trump, the Attack on Titan wall and Mexico.

We debated who should be facing off against the colossal Trump on our napkin. The kids suggested the president of Mexico, but this seemed like an obvious and an unfortunate solution to me....and hard for me to convey in a drawing.

I felt like the problem inside the wall might be related to the problem outside the wall.

In "Attack on Titan," the situation is revealed to be more and more complicated as the series progresses. It turns out the politics of the wall are not at all clear cut and that the Titans and the humans inside the walls have more in common than our heroes believed at the beginning. The Titans turn out to be more than just irrational inhuman monsters who lack external genitalia. And regular humans can be inflated to Titan proportions.

President Trump has definitely made it clear that the contemporary American political landscape is more complicated and fraught that many (myself included) previously would have thought, and that threats might come from inside as well as outside...or as in "Attack on Titan" even from within the walls themselves.

Deadpool with Colossal Titan

Deadpool wears red so that Titans can't see him bleed.
(But does the Colossal Titan think that Wade has good taste?)

Bedtime reading this week has been the latest installment of Attack on Titan- volume #18, and some of the recent collected Deadpool comics. Wade seems to be sharing custody of a child with a SHIELD agent who has a robot body. I cannot even attempt a comparable synopsis for AoT. I am moderately confused by what is supposed to be going on in both storylines. My sons will sometimes try to explain the story arcs to me, but I have accepted a significant amount of ignorance in both cases.

But why not put them together? The Titans and Deadpool share implausible abilities to regenerate from catastrophic physical damage. Deadpool claims that he needs to eat a lot of junk food in order to regenerate. I'm not sure if the Titan shifters have ever discussed needing any supplements to their diet in order to grow their huge Titan bodies.

But they are probably not eating hot dogs and chimichangas.

Hardcore Attack on Titan

What's better than a combination of two super violent things that you're too young to see?

After stumbling across the trailer for "Hardcore Henry," our younger son was utterly convinced that he has to see the movie. He is nine and the movie is rated R, so I afraid that I will unable to help him satisfy this need in the near future.

The preview definitely looks like a frenetic first person shooter style video game brought to life. And brought to video with significant difficulty, apparently, as the camera had to be mounted on actors' faces while they performed a remarkable number of extreme stunts.

R rated movies are a touchy area for us lately as the younger brother was furious when he found out that his brother had seen the R rated "Deadpool" movie courtesy of a friend's parents. While my husband and I immediately regretted authorizing this outing when we saw the movie ourselves, the 13 year old has at least been mature enough to restrain himself from quoting choice bits of dialogue from the movie at the dinner table.

I am not optimistic that the 9 year old would be so reserved. In principle, he does not accept the idea that the four year age difference between him and his brother should matter when it comes to such things.  And in practice, unfortunately, it often does not: If the 13 year old is playing a video game in the living room, then his 9 year old brother might as well be playing it also.

But this does not mean that I am taking a 3rd grader to see "Deadpool."

There is more than one "Attack on Titan" movie out there, and those movies may be age-inappropriate as well. As these films are still difficult to see in the United States, it is unlikely that our kids will have an opportunity to see them in the near future even if they are not rated PG..

Age-inappropriate violence aside, I am afraid that the main problem with a first-person-shooter-style portrayal of the Survey Corps fighting in "Attack on Titan" would be the intense motion sickness brought on by all the physics-defying flying around with "3-d maneuver gear."

At least that would be the case for me. Maybe I am just too old to watch that sort of thing.

Colossal Minion at Wall Maria

I think we have all agreed:
Enough with the Minions.
 
But....the kids are always open to a reference to the colossal Titan reaching over the wall from the manga/anime series "Attack on Titan." And there is a giant Minion in the recent movie, so the comparison was inescapable.

Ok. Now we are done with the Minions.
For a while, at least.

Some of our previous Titan-at-the-wall examples:

Deadpool

Pikachu

Ganondorph

Colossal Titan Deadpool

Attack on Titan meets the regenerating degenerate:

This image was a very specific request, as my older son is working on a short animation at summer camp which will feature this sort of Deadpool vs giant Deadpool scenario.

I suppose Wade Wilson has more than a little in common with the Titan Shifters of AoT.  They defy both the law of conservation of mass and basic logic in their ability to heal from any sort of physical abuse, resurrecting themselves and replacing body parts.

This fantasy of immortal bodies that can be regrown an infinite number of times is pretty compelling...particularly since the physical destruction can be grotesque and ridiculous without any permanent consequences.

Eren Jaeger and Link

"Legend of Zelda" meets "Attack on Titan"
Back to Back Badasses Team up:

When I thought about drawing my kids' two favorite sword wielding heroes, it seemed like they should be posed back to back. Unsurprisingly there is an "official" TV trope of action heroes posed this way called "back to back badasses"
Regrettably, "badass" was my sons' favorite word last week. Their enthusiasm does seems to be waning, finally.... But I certainly did not mention the name of theTV trope when I offered up the napkin.

Speaking of badasses...I do find it winning that Eren and Link do not seem to need to be macho in order to be effective heroes. One might even describe them as being a bit girly.

Girly Badasses.

Attack on Titan Legend of Zelda Mashup

Link meets Colossal Titan Ganon:

My not very successful attempt to execute my older son's request for today.

Our sixth grade son eats in the cafeteria during the school year, so it is a special event for him to take a packed lunch with a napkin. There was much hand wringing last night about what sort of image he would want. 

I suggested a "Frozen"/"Attack on Titan" mashup as he has been belting out "Let it Go" constantly in recent weeks.  That idea was terribly abhorrent to him, of course, but led to the Link meets Colossal Titan concept.

I had been afraid that I was not capable of pulling off the Frozen/AoT combination on a two napkin evening....Clearly this combination was beyond me as well.

Archer looked at the napkin this morning and said, generously, "Well....It's KINDA cool...."

Attack on Link

Link takes on a Colossal Ganon:

Apparently we can plug practically any story into the "Attack on Titan" model with satisfying results.

This one is based on the "unofficial" poster for the forthcoming live action movie of the AoT franchise. 

Somehow I have managed to dodge learning much of anything about the "Legend of Zelda" universe.  For those who know even less about it than I do, (and Mom, I am talking to you, because I assume that anyone else who takes an interest in these sorts of things already knows chapter and verse on Zelda)  I can only offer that Link, the blond, pointy eared guy in the Robin Hood outfit, is the hero of the franchise. His ultimate nemesis in "The Ocarina of Time," is a guy named Ganondorf who morfs into a large boar creature at the end.  This facet of the Zelda story hails from a 1998 Nintendo game which was the 5th in the Legend of Zelda series, and according to Wikipedia, is "now considered by many critics and gamers to be the greatest video game of all time."

Ansel says that few in the second grade know anything about Link and Zelda. But there is one cool kid who has an 8th grade sister and is therefore up on the game.

Since one cool kid might get the reference, this napkin was OK for today.

Attack on Pokemon

 

Or maybe it should be "Attack on Ketchum"

Unsurprisingly, none of my son's second grade classmates are familiar with the "Attack on Titan" series, but Pikachu is always good.

"Attack on Titan" and "Pokemon" seemed like good candidates for a mashup as they are both manga and anime series that engage in serious violations of the law of conservation of mass. The Titans, including the "Colossal Titan," who looms so compellingly over the barrier wall, spring instantaneously from normal sized humans.

And Pokemon somehow fit in those little balls.

Attack on Titan Survey Corps Cake

I have used something in excess of 16 sticks of butter over the last 23 days.

Due to poor long range planning on my part, the kids' birthdays are only 22 days apart.

This makes for a challenging February for me, as there are two birthday cakes and two classrooms' worth of "birthday snack" cupcakes to be baked, and more importantly, to be frosted. Baking is definitely not one of my talents, but I do have a fair amount of experience with squirting colored frosting .

The kids claim to have outgrown frosting depictions of things like dragons and puppies. Both asked for geometric cake decorations. Given my haphazard style of frosting application, this proved to actually be harder than drawing a superhero or a dog. Ansel requested a target and Archer asked for the insignia from the Survey Corps capes in the manga series "Attack on Titan."

When laboring over the the fussy geometric pattern on Archer's cake at 1am a couple of days ago, I actually thought back fondly on previous cake requests like "The Predator Riding Godzilla."

"Attack on Titan" Style Colossal Pumpkin Titan for Halloween

We've gone back to reading the "Attack on Titan" series again.  A couple of months ago, we had read all 13 books in the series, except Book 12 which was mysteriously missing.

Ansel and Archer had been waging a campaign for me to buy another copy of 12, because how could we go on without it?  I resisted, however, fairly certain that it was merely obscured by a pile of toys in their room and annoyed that they weren't actually making any attempt to look for it.

Perhaps you remember thinking that your mother always knew where to find missing objects during your childhood?  I am pretty lousy at keeping track of  my own stuff.  If my phone didn't ring, I would have had to give up long ago on having one at all.  However, the kids' missing things are usually easy to locate because not even the most minimal effort has been made to find them.

At any rate, Book 12 turned up pretty much where I thought it was, and now we are back to reading about teen drama and monstrous cannibalism by huge naked zombie like people.

I thought about drawing the kids in their Halloween costumes for today's napkin, but was overwhelmed by the task of reading Ansel's mind and portraying him in a way that would not mortify him.

So, giant pumpkin titan it is.



The kids' costumes are pictured below from a test drive last week.  Ansel is wearing a costume of his own design: an amalgam of Ezra Bridger from "Star Wars Rebels" (the helmet) and Star Lord from "Guardians of the Galaxy" (the coat) and an unnamed cool guy who would wear a Minecraft t-shirt and fingerless gloves.  Archer is Eren from "Attack on Titan" in his non titan, non pumpkin, form

Colossal Titan and Gypsy Danger

"Attack on Titan" meets "Pacific Rim"

Due to a cancelled vacation and a sick parent, we are festering at home this weekend watching too much TV. To be more specific: we are watching too many Minecraft Youtube videos mirrored on the TV.

Rewatching "Pacific Rim" last evening was a welcome respite for me from "mod showcases."  This is not to say that I do not continue to marvel at the appeal of those mod videos.  If we think about the vast sums of money necessary to create a film like "Pacific Rim" versus the minimal overhead involved in a Minecraft mod showcase, and then consider that my sons seem to find the two equally compelling....I'm not really sure what my point is...perhaps I am coming down with something also...

But there are hundreds of Minecraft mod videos available to watch right now, while we will be waiting impatiently for a long time for the "Attack on Titan" movie and the sequel to "Pacific Rim."

Attack on Titanfall

"

"Attack on Titan" and "Titanfall" seemed like an obvious combination that we were going to have to get around to sometime.

These two games allow a player to not only maneuver in three dimensional space while fighting against Titans but also to inhabit those Titans. 

My poor sons are still horribly deprived of access to "Titanfall" as it is a M rated game, but they have been playing the "Attack on Titan" tribute game.

Attack on Colossal Titan by LEGO Survey Corp

"Attack on Titan" is a licensing opportunity as of yet untapped by the LEGO corporation. 

My sons were displeased to hear that this drawing was not based on a presently available product.

LEGO minifigures and their constituent parts are constantly underfoot in our house, causing me significant physical pain, no doubt akin to that which the survey corps cause to the colossal titan. At least they cannot reach the nape of my neck yet.

Archer told me this drawing would have been cooler if only I had included the clouds of exhaust coming out of the back of the "3D maneuver gear," but there are no revisions on napkins.

Attack on Teen Titans

 

An obvious mash-up that we could not resist.

We are now on the 12th volume of  "Attack on Titan." Our older son would happily read another 12 volumes if they were available.

The Teen Titans are not so high on the list of popular shows at the moment, but Robin never completely loses his appeal.

I suppose that if this were a genuine mash-up of the two shows, Robin and company should be naked, but I just could not even try to imagine that.

Godzilla and the Colossal Titan

Monster size matters:

Godzilla and the Colossal Titan from "Attack on Titan" seemed too obvious a pair to pass up.

Of course, it had to be "classic' Godzilla and not the star of the 2014 movie, as the new kaiju has grown to something  in the neighborhood of 100 meters. The Colossal Titan is a mere (and much more plausible) 60 meters.

For those who are sticklers about super-monster size, I know that the classic Godzilla should be a bit shorter, at around 55 meters, but perhaps he is standing on his tippy toes. 

Eren in Fire Titan Form from "Attack on Titan"

The obsession with "Attack on Titan" continues to blossom at our house.
We only have 5 of the 13 (and counting) manga volumes, but it is clear that I am going to have to come up with the others sometime soon.

As images of saucer-eyed children being devoured alive by giants passes for relaxing bedtime fare around here, I've been reading the books out loud in the evenings.

Doing so has made it clear why our sons love the series.  It is a fine distillation of the youthful fantasies of being able to rocket through the air to successfully battle giant monsters.

The fact that the heroic young protagonists are rendered in generic anime style as big-eyed waifs and most of the titans are more realistically drawn to look like schlubby, clueless adults is also an appealing facet, no doubt

The main large-eyed young protagonist Eren, can morph into a titan himself, but his titan is muscular, pointy-eared and can burst into flames, so he is definitely no schlub.

Eren's Titan from "Attack on Titan"

 

Archer is still thinking a lot about "Attack on Titan"... the game, the television series and the manga books.

I have managed to remain mostly ignorant of what is apparently a big cultural phenomenon in Japan, but this probably cannot last. With particular delight, Archer showed me a Subaru commercial featuring attacking titans, arguing that this was evidence of the broad popularity of the franchise. I said, well, yes, it must indeed be popular in Japan. "How do you know this commercial is only running in Japan?" he asked. Well... it is in Japanese. I think the American equivalent would probably feature a General Motors vehicle being used to escape a horde of zombies.

Archer asked for the main character Eren's titan for today's napkin. In the "Attack on Titan" story, not only is the world endangered by giant naked (but genitaless) humanoids, but some regular humans can morph into these creatures in order to battle the others. (Still no genitals, though.) Perhaps this is an essential difference between Japanese and American culture? America's favorite monsters- zombies and vampires- are rarely naked.

Levi from "Attack on Titan"

We still haven't seen the "Attack on Titan" TV.  Archer is in fact lobbying against watching it because he thinks it will be too scary for his younger brother...just benevolently concerned for his brother....

But he still wants to read all of the books.
And my manga-style drawing could still use a lot of help....