Attack on Titan was the biggest, most popular anime of 2013 by far, and Shingeki no Kyojin was also huge, reaching second place in manga sales in Japan for 2013 and defeating One Piece's five year reign as most popular manga in sales in 2014. Naturally the question comes, how good could it be?

STORY- 8/10
While the manga suffers from even more pacing issues than the anime did in the first half, the overall storyline is decent, even with some characters dying that you don't care about. While the story does deviate from Titans for a certain period, it does so for an understandable reason, even if it gets kind of boring in some of the dialogue scenes.

Didn't like how Eren and the gang went from seeing their hometown get screwed over as kids in Chapter 2 to having to participate in the largest scale battle in the series so far two chapters later. The pacing does get better later on as Eren gets introduced to the Survey Corpsmen and they go off on their expeditions.

ART- 7/10
SnK's art reminds me of rough pencil sketches, and are pretty crudely drawn. That might put some people down but can also help a reader see the dark aspects of the story with the bleak faces on the characters. Could've been better, like in Levi's side story No Regrets, but still readable and enjoyable. Scenes with the 3DMG in use were pretty cool though.

CHARACTER- 8/10
So...the three main characters are okay, but not great, apart from maybe Armin. Eren the badass main who seeks to kill all the Titans, Mikasa the even more badass female lead who seeks only to protect Eren, and Armin the crybaby who is secretly a brilliant strategist and actually does stuff. The side characters are many and aren't very well known at first, but are eventually unraveled to have their own motives for joining the military.

While there were problems with the characters in the anime, as many weren't fully developed by the time Season 1 ended, the manga sufficiently solves those problems by fully developing a good portion of the cast that was neglected during the first season and even gives some of the more generic characters (Mikasa and Levi for example) some more character depth. Still some deaths of minor characters we don't care about, but still better than what Season 1 of the anime could do. The introductions of the characters weren't that great and I had to do some reading before I could fully understand them.

ENJOYMENT- 8/10
Being a fan of the anime, it was only natural that I would come to like the manga too. Seeing how the characters develop and the twists in the plot. Action sequences were nice, we learn more about the world of the Titans and some of their motives behind the actions.

OVERALL- 8/10
While there are still some problems in the story, along with some plot gaps and confusing scenes, the manga is still a very good series to read and one of the better ones out there, even with its pacing issues and such. Would recommend to people who are fans of dark action/post-apocalyptic and the casual reader. Not recommended to those who enjoy extremely well-thought out storylines with anti-heroes that have struggles with their humanity and such, and have extremely high expectations in manga.