The Attack on Titan series became a
Colossal hit when the anime debuted in
2013. It might have even been your first
anime! Years later Attack on Titan is
still going strong
with the manga and season 2 currently
airing. What do you may not be aware of
are several changes from the original
story that the author created. You're
going to find out about those today!
Whether you got introduced to Attack on
Titan from the anime or manga you may
have gotten a slightly different start
into this world. Either way both begin
with the fall of Wall Maria. What you may
not have known is that the original work
did not start off here. It instead began
five years later after Eren and the
main cast graduated. The reason for this
change was that the first two chapters
for Attack on Titan were not originally
planned. The version that the author Mr..
Isayama submitted are what correspond to
chapters three and four in the manga.
Fortunately for him and us the Shonen
magazine company loved these two
chapters. This was the reason they decided to
serialize the Attack on Titan series. These
two chapters for what the company signed
off for what would debut in their
upcoming magazine. In the months leading
up to the release Mr. Isayama instead
went back and made two completely new
chapters to kick off the series. This is
introduction you know where a young Eren
sees the Colossal Titan appear and bring
down wall Maria. Of course these changes
ended up getting approved and the
original chapters he showed later became
chapter 3 and 4 instead. Could you
imagine how different Attack on Titan
would be if episode 1 start off with the
scouts graduation instead! I think you
would agree that the Colossal Titan left
a giant impact on your first
introduction to Attack on Titan.
If you read the original work there
might be a slight difference you may not
have noticed. It's the year when this
story takes place. If you're a hardcore
fan I'm sure you got the Year 107
memorized at the date that Wall Maria
fell. In the original work for Attack on
Titan the story first began 120 years
after the walls were created, so Mr.
Isayama originally decided to go with
the nicer rounder number. Another numeric
difference from the original Attack on
Titan comes from a couple of distinct
size differences. This involves the walls
and Titans themselves. I think you would
agree that the Colossal Titan towering
at 60 meters is the face of the series.
Besides that hot and sexy one the
biggest Titan recorded was up to 15
meters tall. This was different in the
original. The biggest Titan anyone had
known had gone past 15 meters. It was up
to 20 meters tall.
So noticeably bigger. Likewise this meant
changes for the size of the walls. With
the known Titans being much taller you
would imagine that they would need
taller walls. It's funny since the exact
opposite is true. The original size of
the walls was actually 40 meters tall,
twice as tall as the biggest known Titan.
Compare this to the size of the walls in
the final product.
Each wall being over three times the
size of the biggest Titan. This right
here is a first hint that the depth of
the walls had not originally been
decided. More on this later.
In the world of Attack on Titan you know
the three walls as Wall Maria, Wall
Rose, and Wall Sina. If you're watching
this I trust that you know the
importance of these walls. The
interesting difference about the walls
from the original is their ordering. Wall
Rose was originally the most outer wall
followed by Wall Maria and then finally
Wall Sina. So two of these walls were
swamped. It does seem like a small
difference but looking back at them now
these walls have become pretty iconic
for this series. Talking about iconic
things all the various symbols for the
military groups in Attack on Titan come
to mind. Those are the Garrison, the
Survey Corps, and the Military Police.
Except for the Military Police the
original symbols for the other two looked
different. First off the Garrison. This
one only had a slight change. Notice the
difference. The lower left flower was
smaller than the top right one. It almost
seems like this flower is more in the
background too. As for the survey corps the
wings of freedom symbol has a drastic
difference. The original one had much
smaller wings, really only four feathers
on each side.
It was then followed by that zigzag
pattern at the bottom. I don't know about
you but I'm definitely glad for the
change! Let me know what you think in the
comments. Which one do you like more the
original or the final version?
In Attack on Titan
you see Mikasa's back story during the
battle for Trost city. The original
Attack on Titan story actually lets
you find out about Mikasa super early on.
You see her full flashback about her
parents dying and being adopted in the
introduction. Notably this version of the
events does not show Mikasa's
mom struggling against the
kidnappers. Both of the parents are
already shown dead. It's interesting to
notice how they move this flashback to
way later on in the series. Since the
original Attack on Titan story starts
off five years later there is an
interesting change for one character and
that's for Hannes, that lovable drunk
uncle! In the manga and anime you see
Hannes at the very beginning just
getting drunk with his Garrison buddies
during the day. It's not until after Eren,
Mikasa, and Armin graduate that they run
into this former Ex drunk Hannes. Now
compare this to the original. Eren and
the group happened to run into Hannes
during their graduation party. Hannes was
completely drunk! He was walking around
town with an open bottle in hand too. So in
the original his character development
did not happen at least not yet. Another
difference I'll squeeze in here is that
this drunk Hannes has a flashback here
to how he saved all three of them
leaving the mother behind. Of course this
flashback does not happen in the manga.
It just goes to show how much Mr.
Isayama tried to squeeze in into
this introduction.
So as you found out Attack on Titan
originally kicked off during the
graduation of the scouts. Everyone was
having a blast during this graduation
party. The interesting thing to notice
here is something that was cut out. An
interaction scene between two characters.
It was a small little playful thing
between Ymir and Christa. It was super
short too, so weird that they got cut.
Perhaps it was cut to throw more focus
on the three main protagonists. Mr.
Isayama has mentioned before how he
wished that he had fleshed out some of
the side characters earlier on in the
story. Perhaps he was making a reference
to a small scene like this that did not
make it into the final product. The
original story for Attack on Titan was
drawn super quickly for the important
meeting that would decide whether the
series would be serialized or not. This
is why these drawings look super rough.
Despite that most of the drawings and
panels do match to one to one to what
you see in the published manga. This is
especially true even for the rough
looking drawings of the main characters,
except for two or three cases. The first
is the infamous potato girl. Sasha look
totally different! Her hair got a
complete makeover. The second character
is Eren's father Grisha. These early
drawings of the father look even rougher
than some other other characters but
even so, Eren's father does not resemble
his final design at all. Perhaps his
whole role in the story hadn't been
decided at this point. Finally last one
up is the Colossal Titan. You could
decided if this one looks drastically
different. The original work only shows a
single close-up panel of it. Compare this
to the colossal Titan in the manga or
anime. This one here doesn't look like a
had that skinless flesh design although
hard to tell without any color. Perhaps
the colossal Titan originally had skin
like all the other Titans. What do you
think? Does the Colossal Titan look
drastically different to you?
The biggest difference with this
original Attack on Titan work is how the
walls were presented. The walls in the
original notably did not have any
district cities. I'm talking about those
outer districts that are supposed to
draw in Titans. It was only three walls and
that was it.
No backup defense. This means that the
outer cities were created later but
that's not the only thing. The whole
functionality and what these walls
really are was something that Mr..
Isayama
came up with later or at least at this
point hadn't fully fleshed out at the
time. You would agree after hearing about
these other changes. The original story
did have a Colossal Titan destroying the
wall except that here he literally
destroyed a random part of the wall. It
was not one of the gates. This happened
twice.
Before the colossal Titan appeared that
second time Eren made an interesting
comment about how the wall were now seven
times stronger than five years ago. This
of course being a drastic changed to how
the walls not only functioned but how the
walls were handled in the final story. So
as a summary this original Attack on
Titan story had smaller walls, there were
no outer districts, somehow humans were
able to reinforce the walls by seven
times, and that Colossal Titan that did show up
randomly broke the wall instead of
exactly aiming at the city gates. It
makes you wonder how different the
current Attack on Titan of story would be
if all these changes were not made! Hey
guys thanks for watching! Hope you
enjoyed this Attack on Titan video and
learned something new about the
creation of your favorite series. Please
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