While 2020 has not been the kindest of years to many people it may be something good for anime fans in general as the fourth and final season of Attack on Titan is set to arrive this month. The key thing about this season though is that there will be a new animation studio and staff handling things for the season as a whole. This isn’t fully uncommon for shows of this nature as series like One-Punch Man and even The Legend of Korra have undergone animation shifts over the course of their runs.
The Director of the final season of Attack on Titan is Yuichiro Hayashi, and he has stated many things about the final season as well as his studio coming in to finish things. For example, one of the biggest moments for him was seeing the reaction to the initial trailer for season 4. Nothing that he was “surprised by the overwhelming response” to it.
Comments from MAPPA staff about #AttackOnTitan The Final Season during MAPPA SHOWCASE 2020 translated into English by us! ☺
Source: https://t.co/AKQ5KfZW1N pic.twitter.com/7l1ajJATSG
— Attack On Fans (@AttackOnFans) November 29, 2020
He said that he knows that he and his team have taken on a major task by agreeing to do the final season of this beloved anime. And that they were working very hard and that there was “no turning back now” in regards to trying to stop what was coming.
However, what might interest fans of the anime the most is his comments on the finale. Mainly in that he notes “no one knows how the manga will end” and that seems to imply a kind of “Game of Thrones” situation where the team behind the show is going to have a different ending than the source material. That didn’t go so well for Game of Thrones so you have to wonder if this could be repeating history.
Or, he could be pulling a feint and stating that the FANS don’t know how the manga ends but they do…it’s hard to say, and only time will tell.