Department of English

This paper focuses on the figure of the Titans in Hajime Isayama’s best selling manga series Attack on Titan. Grotesque, horrifying, but most certainly entrancing in their violence, I argue that the Titan is a representation of the mecha (humanoid robot) trope in manga and anime, at once human and monster, in form, and technology, in allegory. The connection between human and technology, though known, is often taken for granted. The body of the Titan is where the human and machine meet, the site where their interdependent dynamic is explored. Just as the pilot is necessarily connected to the mecha, humanity is necessarily connected to technology, being its creator, user, and thus the autonomous agent behind its operation. In the doomsday setting of Attack on Titan, the vehicle of the apocalypse is neither explicitly technology nor humanoid machine, but rather the Titan: giant, macrocosmic manifestations of the human. On a larger scale, the Titans become a site of self-reflection, magnifying some of the more neglected aspects and tendencies of human nature.