The Attack On Titan Finale Features A Reference To A Steven Spielberg Masterpiece
Spoilers for "Attack on Titan" follow.
Despite all the twists along the way, the final arc of "Attack On Titan" returned to the initial premise (and threat) of the series: humanity face-to-face with extinction in the form of humanoid giants. These giants march across the Earth as "The Rumbling," flattening everything in their path underfoot. As our heroes fight to stop this onslaught in the series finale, the episode cuts to a crowd of people running from the advancing Titans.
Once they reach a sea cliff, many people start pouring over the side (a beat taken from Chapter 134 of Hajime Isayama's original manga). Then, the episode's animation team (led by directors Yuichiro Hayashi and Tokio Igarashi) makes a striking color choice. The scene goes black-and-white, except for a mother and her baby who retain their color. The mother eventually falls over the cliff but lifts her baby off to others; the crowd passes it around, holding it up as a symbol of their will to survive and retain humanity.
The baby's swaddling blanket is colored red; this can only be a reference to Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List." Said film is about the 20th-century German industrialist Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) who saved close to 1200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories.
Spielberg and his cinematographer Janusz Kamiński chose to shoot the film in black and white, but there's a pivotal use of red too.
Why red?
Spielberg's creative reasoning for making his movie black and white is cited in "The Making of Schindler's List: Behind The Scenes of An Epic Film" by Franciszek Palowski: "The Holocaust was life without light. For me the symbol of life is color. That's why a film about the Holocaust has to be in black-and-white."
There is one exception, based on a real moment in Schindler's life. While watching the Krakow ghetto being cleared out by Nazi shoulders from a hilltop, Schindler notices a young girl wearing a red coat. He and the camera follow her through the terrifying scene; the audience's attention never wavers either, for her coat is the only bright shade in a sea of monochrome. The choice of red carries thematic resonance; the girl, standing in for all the innocent Jews murdered by the Nazis, wears clothing the color of blood.
Spielberg elaborated in an interview with Richard Schinkel about how the moment reflects willful ignorance about suffering — an ignorance Schindler decides he can't stomach (especially when he sees the red coat in a pile of bodies). Spielberg says:
"The Holocaust was known about in very small secret circles, but certainly Roosevelt and Eisenhower knew. Nothing was being done to slow down the industrialized progress the Nazis were making in the total annihilation of European Jewry. The Allies did nothing except they were pursuing the war effort. So that was my message in letting that scene be in color. It was as obvious as a little girl wearing a red coat walking down the street."
Coloring in manga
"Attack on Titan," which tackles themes of ethnic hatred, has alluded to the Holocaust before. Still, its "Schindler's List" homage can't compare to the original's power since its story is about fictional atrocities, not real-life ones like the film. Spielberg favored handheld cameras and documentary-style shooting to sap any cinematic artificiality out of the harrowing tale he was retelling. Likewise, the baby in "Attack on Titan" ultimately lives, a happier ending than the one for the girl in the red coat in "Schindler's List."
However, this color choice also opens up a conversation about how manga and anime can depict identical scenes with different renderings. Manga is most often printed in black-and-white and "Attack on Titan" is no exception. The monochrome brings out the detail in Isayama's penciling and shading, making the Titans look downright ghastly and offering a greater sense of horror than the action-fueled motion of the anime.
Animes, even when they are so loyal that the manga panels function as storyboards, add the full spectrum of color and that can change a scene's mood. Toussaint Egan at Polygon recently wrote about how in Netflix's new anime "Pluto," a certain scene loses some impact compared to Naoki Urasawa's original manga. Why? The entire series is in color instead of just that moment like the manga, so it stands out less.
This moment in the "Attack on Titan" finale is essentially the exact opposite. The scene deploys monochrome coloring to make the moment stand out, which would be impossible in the manga since black and white is the default there. It then brings in the red because the anime has, again, a more varied arsenal of artistic tools.
Knowing how and when to use color in a scene is one of the most important skills a filmmaker can have. Following Steven Spielberg's instincts? Not a bad idea at all.
"Attack on Titan" is streaming on Crunchyroll.