A Colossal Beginning: When Humanity Met Its Monsters
When Attack on Titan Part 1 hit Japanese cinemas in 2015, it wasn’t just a movie — it was a bold attempt to bring one of the most intense anime universes to life. Directed by Shinji Higuchi, this live-action adaptation of Hajime Isayama’s world-famous manga carried sky-high expectations and equally enormous challenges. Fans had spent years imagining how those towering Titans and their apocalyptic world would look in real life. The result was a visual experience that sparked both awe and debate.
The Story That Shook the Walls
The film unfolds in a dystopian world where humanity is trapped inside massive walled cities, built to protect them from gigantic humanoid creatures known as Titans — beings that devour humans without mercy or reason.
Eren (portrayed by Haruma Miura), the young and restless protagonist, dreams of breaking free from the walls and seeing the world beyond. His fiery personality and desire for freedom mirror the frustration of a generation stuck behind invisible barriers — something very relatable in today’s society. Alongside him are his childhood friends Mikasa (Kiko Mizuhara) and Armin (Kanata Hongo), each carrying silent fears and unspoken dreams.
When the Colossal Titan — a monster taller than the walls themselves — suddenly appears and breaches the city’s defences, the nightmare begins. Chaos, bloodshed, and terror consume the land. Eren’s life changes forever as he witnesses the destruction of everything he loved. From there begins a brutal and emotional journey of vengeance, survival, and rediscovery of what it means to be human.
Haruma Miura’s Real-Life Connection to Eren
The late Haruma Miura, who played Eren, delivered a performance that still lingers in fans’ hearts — not just because of his intensity, but because of how deeply it connected to his real-life struggles. Miura, known for his dedication and vulnerability as an actor, often spoke about the pressures of fame and the search for personal meaning — much like Eren’s restless soul.
Behind the camera, Miura reportedly trained hard to embody the raw physicality of Eren’s character, performing many of his own stunts and enduring the emotional weight of portraying a young man pushed beyond sanity. Sadly, Miura’s passing in 2020 added a bittersweet layer to the film — fans now look back at his portrayal as one of his most emotionally charged roles, filled with the same pain and passion that shaped his real life.
Kiko Mizuhara: Strength Beyond Beauty
Kiko Mizuhara, who played Mikasa, had to face immense pressure. Fans of the anime had high expectations for her character — a warrior known for her silent strength and emotional depth. Kiko, primarily known as a model before this film, surprised everyone by taking on intense combat scenes and exploring Mikasa’s complex attachment to Eren.
Off-screen, Kiko’s own life as a half-American, half-Japanese artist in Japan mirrored Mikasa’s sense of being “different.” She once mentioned in interviews how she felt like an outsider growing up, which helped her emotionally connect to Mikasa’s loneliness and fierce protectiveness. That authenticity shines through in her quieter moments in the film.
Building Titans: The Challenge Behind the Scenes
The vision of the Titans was no easy task to accomplish. Shinji Higuchi, following the success of Shin Godzilla, was responsible for blending practical effects, prosthetics, and CGI w market-grade monsters. Rather than rely solely on CGI, many of the Titan scenes were shot with real actors in heavily modified digitized suits, giving them a raw, nightmarish realism.
The forgotten sites of the country, juxtaposed with Japan’s abandoned structures served to amplify the Titan’s fearsome posture throughout the filming. Every shot was designed to be diffuse and enclosing, not in the physical sense, but emotionally. The Attack on Titan series exhibits a world that’s bleak, broken, and suffocating, and the characters stripped of all hope.
When Fans Divided the Walls
The film’s release saw the reception split in two. Many were pleased by the bold execution and thrilling visuals, but others were let down by the lack of adherence to the anime’s plot. In time, however, people started viewing Attack on Titan Part 1 as an ambitious cross-culture experiment, an attempt to reinterpret the source material within the confines of Japan’s cinema, rather than a direct anime copy.
In many respects, what the creators of the film set out to achieve was the emotional DNA of Isayama’s work — the rage against fate, the feeling of freedom, with the world so overwhelmingly big, and the utter despair of solitude, defending so passionately. There was a search-cutting the manga was less of a panel of the text than it was into the human aspect of fear and survival.
A Film That Was Cultivated Over Time
In the case of Attack on Titan Part 1, it is the first of the 2 parts of the film, and it features characters that are complex with visuals that are haunting and tragic subtext, it still is and in many cases, was the first held pivotal and cinematic event of the era and battle of the titans, and also prides itself on being controversially recollected on. There is a theme of impulse that is not solely represented through the titans, for the deeper the dive, the bigger the walls, for the walls are only set to frame the human impulse to withstand through collapse.
For a lot of people, the recent passing of Haruma Miura has changed the way in which this is engaged with. One aspect of emotion the film touches upon is represented through endless battle and his will to achieve freedom — it reinitiates that with the longing and control Miura herself was facing in reality.
Every viewer is able to relate and empathize with this and that is perhaps the reason stalker has influenced people even in the modern era. It is an imperfect film with a humanity that is not only raw, but so unrelenting in the desires they feel.
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