Anime monsters come in various shapes and forms, from Hellsing's Baskerville and Naruto's Ten-Tails to the Vasto Lorde in Bleach. Hajime Isayama's Titans, however, fall in a unique category. The mangaka's first attempt at creating Attack on Titan described the titular human-eating monsters slightly differently — the creatures' weak points were known as nuclei and they could transform back into a human at will.
The Titans in the final story are far less powerful than their rough draft versions, but they are as creepy as ever. Their most terrifying feature is their appearance: despite looking exactly like humans, they want nothing more than to nibble on actual human beings.
10 Only One Race Can Become Titans
Many anime monsters are derived from individuals, like FMA: Brotherhood's Envy or Toguro in Yu Yu Hakusho. Others are limited by species — DIO's vampirism affects every human he shares his blood with, in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
Titans are genetically linked to a specific race. Attack on Titan explains that only Ymir's descendants are capable of turning into Titans because of her own affiliation with the Founding Titan. Given that every Eldian in the current timeline somehow traces their ancestry back to Ymir, there are presumably thousands, if not millions, of people fit to become Titans.
9 Titans Are Accessed Via The Path-Coordinate Network
Both Eldians and Titans are referred to as Subjects of Ymir, not just because of their bloodline but because Ymir can technically control them through the Coordinate.
It appears that Titans exist only because Ymir sculpts them out of the magical sand in her eternal desert. All Eldians are supposedly connected to each other and to Ymir via a labyrinthine network of extradimensional avenues known as the Paths. The exact nature of these Paths remains a mystery.
8 Some Of Them Are Not Like The Others
Most Titans are Pure in that their behavior and appearance are more or less predictable, but the Abnormal Titans operate on seemingly fickle rules. Abnormals might run, leap, and contort their bodies in ways that Pure Titans cannot.
Further, there have been instances of Abnormals capable of speech and human emotions, like the eerie Titan which weeps and wails when it eats Ilse Langnar. It is impossible to estimate the actions of an Abnormal Titan as they are unpredictable, and, therefore, extremely dangerous. More importantly, the qualitative differences between Pure and Abnormal Titans aren't clear enough to designate them as a separate species.
7 Titans Focus All Their Attention On Human Beings
For as long as the Walls have been standing, the people within them have lived in fear of Titankind. Titans are automatically drawn to human beings, almost as if by instinct, ignoring everything else in the process. From a Titan's outlook, birds, trees, animals, buildings, and vehicles might as well not exist.
It's likely that a Titan's sensory field is an empty, blank space of nothingness until a human wanders into their visual range. This analysis can be extrapolated from the fact that Titans regularly run into walls and other objects while pursuing their human prey.
6 Their Existence Conflicts With The Scientific Definition Of Life
The universal scientific definition of living organisms includes five major properties: growth, internal equilibrium, metabolic activity, evolution, reproduction, and sensitivity to the environment.
Titans fulfill none of these essential roles, making them little more than humanoid automatons — like robots, except with blood instead of electronic circuitry. It is later revealed that every Titan used to be a human at one point, but their bodies and minds have been permanently and irretrievably altered (unless they're lucky enough to eat a Titan Shifter).
5 Most Titans Are Solar-Powered
Titans are obviously not organisms that evolved through natural selection. They consume humans in order to restore their original forms, so they are naturally unable to extract energy from their "food" as animals do. Hange discovers that Titans are solar-powered, suggesting a tenuous relationship with the Plant kingdom.
The sun is a common concept in shonen anime, although it's mostly used in conjunction with traditional elements. An example would be Tanjiro's Sun Breathing in Demon Slayer, not to mention certain Fire-Type Pokémon get stronger in the presence of sunlight. On the other hand, Titans utilize solar energy for movement and nothing else.
4 They Are 100% True Neutral
Titans are notorious for sporting wide grins at any given time, an expression that terrifies humans beyond measure because they know exactly what those teeth are capable of. Titans don't really care what humans think; in fact, they are incapable of understanding the difference between right and wrong.
Titans don't hunt for food or sport — they are neither evil nor good, but morally neutral. The families of their victims are justifiably upset and may desire revenge, but Titans have no agency, which means they are unable to accept responsibility for their crimes, let alone redeem themselves.
3 Titans Don't Follow The Rules Of Physics
Titans don't adhere to fundamental cosmic laws. They are practically weightless, but their limbs produce enough force and pressure to pulverize brick and bone. Titans constantly emit heat from their skin, a standard outcome of high metabolism, except there's no real energy exchange taking place within their bodies.
The sheer quantum of energy required to generate them flies in the face of thermodynamics and contradicts the flow of entropy. There are anime monsters who share a few of these implausible traits, but not all of them simultaneously.
2 Their Anatomy And Physiology Are Practically Alien
Titan bodies are externally human — they possess arms, legs, torsos, eyes, noses, ears, mouths, and hair. Aside from the absence of genital organs, Titans are basically enlarged people. Exploring beyond the outer shell of a Titan is when things start to get bizarre.
These creatures have an esophagus that inevitably ends in a stomach-like "bag," but there's no real digestive system to speak of. Interestingly, Rod Reiss' gigantic Titan reveals what looks like a small intestine, so there's clearly no anatomical consistency among Titans.
1 Titan Origins Are Still Unclear
The Source Of All Living Matter blends its essence with Ymir and transforms her into the first Founding Titan. This undefined entity proliferates into the Nine Titans and is claimed to be the source of all Titans in existence.
Nobody understands what it is, where it comes from, or what its goals are — only that the so-called Shining Centipede is somehow responsible for the Titan plague. Most anime monsters, even those with nebulous backstories, are grounded in logic. However, this spiny worm makes no sense.
Source: Trendz OH
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