What is Spoof on Titan?

Spoof on Titan (Sungeki no Kyojin) is a four-panel gag manga by hounori, serialized on Kodansha’s Manga Box app from December 2013 to December 2014 and collected in two volumes (August 2014 and April 2015). Its historical footnote is a publishing first for the franchise: Manga Box released it simultaneously in English, an early experiment in day-and-date translated manga delivered by phone.

As a text it is pure deflation: chibi soldiers, Titans as slapstick neighbours, the apocalypse as office life. Shelved beside Junior High and School Castes, it completes the trilogy of official parodies, and the three together say something real about the parent work: by the end of 2013 Attack on Titan was already secure enough in its readers’ affections to survive, and profit from, being laughed at in three different registers at once.