New anime: Shingeki no Kyojin

Being terrificly old and all (28), it takes a lot of convincing nowadays to get me to start watching/reading/listening to something new.  Simply intrigued by the sheer number of Shingeki no Kyojin cosplays I saw at my local convention, I finally looked it up to see what all the hype was about.

Fandom works in weird ways.  Sometimes you end up becoming insanely attached to something everyone you know has already gotten over (Bleach).  Sometimes becoming a fan sneaks up on you until you find yourself immersed in the world of inside jokes, tropes and shipping weirdness and loving it before you know it (Hetalia) And sometimes you become totally indifferent to something you thought you would love. (Legend of Korra, Evangelion 2.0, FMA: Brotherhood)

I tried to start many of the recent big names (Fairy Tail, Code Geass, Black Butler) that were so highly recommended but all of them failed to hook me in the first few episodes.   Then came the indifference. Maybe I was out of touch with anime.  Maybe I was looking too hard or in the wrong places.

Shingeki no Kyojin deserves the hype.  It has action, character development, original concepts and an extra element of horror/gore that captures your attention and adds what other action anime lacks: an actual sense of danger and terrible consequence, making you especially invested in the plot and the characters.  It made me feel very lucky to be discovering it this late in the game because I could marathon the series without interruption, experiencing all the trauma, plot twists, shocking reveals and epic moments one after the other.

Myself as a Shingeki no Kyojin character, so fed up with you romanticizing this horrible nightmare world

As for the fandom, maybe I am too old but I found myself equal parts impressed and disturbed by how lighthearted the Shingeki no Kyojin fanbase seems to be.  It is a dark and violent anime!  And people are still concerned with character attractiveness and pairings?  Really?
I would daresay the stakes are even higher than they were in Evangelion.  The approach even seems more mature, as I can't recall SnK having to resort to fan service.

And finally, maybe it is just me, but of all the anime universes that I have become invested in, the universe of Shingeki no Kyojin is one that I would never want to be a part of.  Seeing cosplayers in the uniform and doing the salute gives me spooky chills, as the anime has iterated many times that wearing that gear and being a soldier means putting your life on the line constantly, always running the risk of becoming fodder for the titans and almost guaranteeing a low chance of survival.  (I know this is not how some cosplayers feel, but I do and can't seem to get around it)

In short, Shingeki no Kyojin is great.  It has incredible production values, a storyline that moves at a great clip and never crawls and a premise that will haunt you... or haunted me at least.
Like, walking home from work at night and having the horrible thought: what if a titan attacked right now...? kind of haunted.  Luckily after a fevered discussion with my husband, it was determined that titans would be no match for our current level of military technology and firepower, and humanity need not be driven to extinction.  
Yet.