The fourth season of Attack on Titan has been renewed for a third installment. Here’s what that means for its viewers.
For those of you who have been following the anime Attack on Titan for the past nine years, you know that it’s been a wild ride. With major character deaths and twists not even the most analytical of viewers would have predicted, this show has enraptured millions across nearly every continent. Of course, now that it is nearing its end, Attack on Titan has risen even more in popularity, as well as in quality.
For its final season, instead of continuing with Wit Studio, production of AoT was picked up by MAPPA, a recently popularized Japanese animation studio. The shift in art style was initially a source of contention, but was eventually put to rest as more fans began expressing support for it (reference the trending hashtag #ThankYouMAPPA on Twitter). There will always be those opposing the new style simply to oppose the bandwagon, but this has definitely not deterred new viewers from starting the show.
Initially, the hype surrounding the premiere of season 4, part 2 was because it was marketed as the end to the ‘final season,’ but viewers have been left on a cliffhanger for another year after the release of the most recent episode. In the final moments of the season, the Titans previously hidden in the walls of Paradis, alongside Eren Yeager in his Titan form, have reached the mainland after leaving Paradis. Thus commences the beginning of the end. This leaves 9 chapters of the manga, colloquially known as the Wall for Paradis arc, to be adapted into animation in part 3, but there have been discussions of a possible movie in the works as well.
Of course, this means that fans have to wait at least an additional year to see the conclusion to a show that they were hoping to experience this season. That, however, hasn’t turned them away from the show, seeing as how they’re already discussing how they think the arc will be adapted for the screen. Overall, the screen adaptation has remained faithful to its paper counterpart, but many fans dislike the ending of the manga, so they are hoping the final installment will contain a different ending.
No matter whether the anime is revealed to have a different ending or remains the same, it’s clear that this final installment will be the most anticipated one yet, likely surpassing part 2 in its ratings. In its tenth and final year of production, we will see the conclusion to a show that has taken the world by storm (quite literally, in a fictional sense).