The Attack On Titan Season 4 release date is certain to be highly anticipated since the fourth season of the Shingeki no Kyojin anime adaptation will finally reveal the secrets of the larger world.
The anime season is officially titled as Attack On Titan: The Final Season since it will be adapting the Shingeki no Kyojin manga’s ending (the final chapter should be released in early 2021).
At the same time, some fans may fear Attack On Titan’s final season since it will not be produced by WIT Studio! That means director Tetsuro Araki, action animation directory Arifumi Imai, character designer Kyoji Asano, and chief animation director Satoshi Kadowaki will not be returning for producing the final season.
There were also rumors that the Shingeki no Kyojin Season 4 release date might be delayed to 2021 due to the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus pandemic. The final season was originally scheduled for fall 2020, but then official announcements from NHK and Studio MAPPA dropped those references.
However, in September 2020 NHK officially confirmed that Attack On Titan Season 4 is releasing on December 7, 2020, Japanese time. Crunchyroll will be streaming the first episode at 3:45 PM EST on December 6, 2020. (See the release date section below for more details about Crunchyroll, FUNimation English dub, and Netflix.)
Based on information from Netflix Japan, it’s predicted that the Attack On Titan Season 4 Part 2 release date will be in 2021. But some anime experts believe that an Attack On Titan movie ending the series will be necessary. (Please see the news stories in the links for more details.)
Attack On Titan Season 4 was initially confirmed to be in production by WIT Studio’s AoT series director Tetsuro Araki during a concert in June 2019. Since Araki initially confirmed the production of Shingeki no Kyojin Season 4 it was hoped he might return for producing the fourth season in some capacity.
Instead, it seems like Araki was present at meetings when WIT Studio declined the project. Knowing the production status didn’t necessarily mean he’d be involved directly.
What’s more, producing Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress Season 2 is Araki’s passion project, which makes sense for WIT Studio financially since the company is on the anime production committee since they developed the IP internally.
A new trailer was released in late May 2020 and it showed off the story details the final season.
At least we know the upcoming story will be enough to make Erwin Smith jealous. Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman, Armin Arlert, and Levi Ackerman will be taking to war against an overseas foe after discovering Grisha Yeager’s journals in Eren’s father’s basement in the Shiganshina district.
Audiences may be surprised by what the Survey Corps finds on the other side of the ocean, and may think this story has the potential to go on endlessly, but the 800-ton Titan sitting quietly in the corner is the fact that the story the anime adaptation is based upon is swiftly reaching an ending. Apparently, the fourth season will not leave room for Attack On Titan Season 5.
The new trailer confirmed that all the Japanese voice actors are returning. In November 2020, the official Twitter account also revealed the new Marley characters.
- Natsuki Hanae as Falco Grice
- Ayane Sakura as Gabi Braun
- Manami Numakura as Pieck
- Toshiki Masuda as Porco Galliard
- Ayumu Murase as Udo
- Yumi Kawashima as Zofia
- Masaya Matsukaze as Colt Grice
There will also be an entirely new production staff and a new studio. The Attack on Titan 4 anime will be produced by studio MAPPA, which is known for Yuri!!! On Ice, Netflix’s Dorohedoro anime and the upcoming Zombieland Saga Season 2 (Zombieland Saga Revenge).
Former Chief Director Tetsuro Araki will be replaced by director Yuichiro Hayashi, who just wrapped up directing Dorohedoro. Similarly, character designer Tomohiro Kishi also worked on Dorohedoro and is replacing Kyoji Asano, but that’s not surprising since Asano is a WIT Studio co-founder.
As might be expected, the entire animation team is different, but MAPPA has pulled together some good talent. Former AoT Chief Animation Director Satoshi Kadowaki was directly attached to WIT Studio so he’s being replaced by Daisuke Niinuma, who’s known for his work on Banana Fish, Kakegurui, Punch Line, To The Abandoned Sacred Beasts, and Deadman Wonderland.
Art director Kazuo Ogura also directed the art for notables like the Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie. 3D CG Director Takahiro Uezono worked on the 3D production for Kill la Kill, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and Yuri!! On Ice.
Keep in mind that many anime creators are contractors so they’re not tied to WIT Studio. That means some of the staff are returning from the previous Attack On Titan Seasons to work at MAPPA.
Most importantly, AoT Seasons 1 through 3 scriptwriter Hiroshi Seko (Vinland Saga, Mob Psycho 100) is returning. Attack On Titan music composer Hiroyuki Sawano is also returning, although he’s joined by Kohta Yamamoto who is known for his work on The Seven Deadly Sins anime.
The Attack On Titan Season 4 OP (opening) theme song music will be “My War” by Shinsei Kamattechan, while the ED (ending) is “Shock” by Yuuko Andou. Shinsei Kamattechan is the same band that performed the ending theme song of Season 2.
The Attack On Titan Season 4 Part 2 OP and ED have not yet been announced.
-
Updated December 5, 2020: Added final key visual before the Attack On Titan Season 4 release date.
-
Updated December 2, 2020: Added Attack On Titan Season 4 OP/ED info, new poster art, and Shingeki no Kyojin Season 4 Part 2 info.
-
Updated November 2, 2020: Added new Attack On Titan Season 4 cast.
-
Updated September 23, 2020: NHK confirms Attack On Titan Season 4 release date. Added FUNimation confirmation and new key visual.
-
Updated September 4, 2020: Attack On Titan: Final Season production status.
-
Updated June 1, 2020: Added Attack On Titan Season 4 Fall 2020 rumor.
-
Updated May 29, 2020: Attack On Titan Season 4 studio change confirmed. Release date delay rumors, new trailer, and key visual added.
-
Updated December 27, 2019: Added new info about the WIT Studio rumors.
-
Updated July 1, 2019: Added more on WIT Studio quitting and final season analysis.
-
Updated: June 30, 2019: Added official announcement and the time frame for the Attack On Titan Season 4 release date. Updated all related analysis.
-
Updated June 11, 2019: Added confirmation of the production of Attack On Titan Season 4 by series director Tetsuro Araki.
-
Updated May 20, 2019: Added the news that WIT Studio is not producing Attack On Titan Season 4
-
Updated May 2, 2019: Added a newer interview with manga creator that indicates the manga might end in either 2020 or 2021. Changed analysis of the Attack On Titan Season 4 release date based on this info.
-
Updated April 16, 2019: Added Adult Swim air date for AoT S3 Part 2 and additional information related to Attack On Titan Season 4.
-
Updated March 27, 2019: Added exact release date for Part 2 of the third season, Part 2 key visual, and a video explaining why Part 2 is not considered Attack On Titan Season 4. Updated miscellaneous manga details and spoilers.
-
Updated December 3, 2018: Added final panel of the Attack On Titan manga, a related video, and quotes from the creator.
-
Updated November 14, 2018: Added confirmation that the manga is entering its final story arc and how that affects Attack On Titan Season 4. Added interview about differences between the third season and the manga.
This article provides everything that is known about Attack On Titan Season 4 Part 1 (Shingeki no Kyojin Season 4 Part 1) and all related news. As such, this article will be updated over time with news, rumors, and analysis. Meanwhile, let’s delve down into what is known for certain.
Attack On Titan Season 4 release date on Netflix, Crunchyroll, and FUNimation
Episode 22 of the third season (Episode 59 of the entire series) concluded by announcing the fourth season by saying, “Will be continued.” The official NHK page has officially confirmed that the Attack On Titan Season 4 release date will be on December 7, 2020.
Keep in mind that Japanese time is 13 hours ahead of the eastern time zone in North America. The anime is broadcasting on Japanese TV late at night, past midnight local time.
Thus, Crunchyroll has confirmed that the Attack On Titan Season 4 release in the USA will be at 3:45 PM on December 6, 2020.
SnK Season 4 will be streaming internationally on Crunchyroll in U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Latin America.
Similarly, FUNimation’s Attack On Titan Season 4 English sub is scheduled to come out the same day as the Japanese broadcast. FUNimation announced that Attack On Titan: Final Season “starts later this year in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Ireland.” The fourth season will also come out later on FUNimation in Brazil and Mexico.
In addition, FUNimation’s Attack On Titan Season 4 English dub episodes, or SimulDub episodes, will start streaming on January 10, 2021. The release dates for later dubbed episodes will be announced on FUNimation’s Dub from Home page.
Netflix U.S. currently is only streaming the first season. Netflix’s Attack On Titan Season 4 release date is scheduled for December 11, 2020, but it will not be available on Netflix U.S., which only features the first season at this time. Instead, the fourth season will be streaming in Japan, the Philippines, and other select Netflix territories.
From May 2020 anime news leaker Spytrue was claiming that AoT Season 4 is still coming out in fall 2020. While the anime news leaker got that one right, Spytrue also previously claimed in December 2019 that the studio change wasn’t happening so these news leaks should be taken with a grain of salt.
Originally, the Shingeki no Kyojin Season 4 premiere date was set for “fall 2020”, which typically means an October release time frame. The initial official announcement was almost made well before COVID-19 impacted the entire Japanese anime industry so it’s possible the final season was delayed a little.
Many studios’ schedules suffered from cascading effects due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the worldwide mitigation efforts. In fact, when anime news leaker Yonkou Productions was asked in May 2020 if “Attack On Titan [is] getting delayed” he replied, “That’s the word around town.”
For a time it seemed like the final season could be delayed all the way into 2021. The official MAPPA Twitter account simply says to “look forward to the anime broadcast”. For many months the official website’s Broadcast Information page simply showed a graphic for the NHK broadcast schedule but didn’t actually list any time frame.
In mid-September 2020, the announcement by Japanese public broadcaster NHK was quietly changed. Instead of saying Shingeki no Kyojin Season 4 “will broadcast in fall 2020 on NHK General TV”, the web page simply stated that NHK will broadcast Attack On Titan: Final Season without any mention of a release time frame.
Also in September 2020, the manga made the front cover of magazines. Release dates are typically announced in September ahead of October premieres, but the magazine only stated that the final season was in production.
Attack On Titan Season 4 Part 2 very likely
The only remaining question is the number of episodes for the final season. Will there be an Attack On Titan Season 4 Part 2?
By the time the fourth season premiered in December 2020, the monthly manga was up to Attack On Titan Chapter 134. Part 2 of the third season adapted the ending of Chapter 90 of Volume 22. Manga readers can ahead by starting with Chapter 91.
So why is Attack On Titan Season 4 waiting so long to come out? It could be argued that the third season’s stopping point already gives the production studio over 44 chapters to work with for producing Attack On Titan Season 4, which is more than enough for a single-cour season.
Unfortunately, the current chapters for Volume 29 do not provide an optimal stopping point for the fourth season that provides a semblance of closure to the middle of the final story arc.
Instead, the closest thing to a decent stopping point is Chapter 110 since the ending of Volume 27 concludes with a major turning point in the story. There is also Chapter 113, which included a surprising battle. But since neither stopping point is optimal it’s probably best the anime’s final season is covering all of the remaining manga chapters to the ending.
However, in order to keep up the production quality, it’s possible that the fourth season will be a split-cour, which means it’ll be split into two parts just like the third season. That could mean the ending of the anime will be titled Attack On Titan: The Final Season Part 2.
For more details and analysis, please see our news story about the Attack On Titan Season 4 Part 2 release date.
Attack On Titan Season 4 Will Not Be Animated By WIT Studio! MAPPA takes over SnK anime
In May 2019, anime fans were shocked to hear that WIT Studio would not be producing the fourth season of the anime series. Unfortunately, other than teasing fans about the fourth season, WIT’s staff never addressed the rumors head-on.
This news was confirmed by multiple reliable sources, but the official announcement confirming the Attack On Titan studio change waited for a full year.
At first, it was just a rumor that started with a Chinese animator who works as a sub-contractor. He was celebrating starting work on AoT Season 3 Part 2 Episode 10, but he ignited speculation when he called the current season the “final season” of the anime series.
Then another Chinese source claimed the third season “would be the last season WIT [Studio] is in charge of. No updates on which studio would take the job or when the new season airs.” He was told multiple times by several different sources “that even the chance of [WIT Studio] returning is nearly zero” due to “many complicated reasons,” which the user believes “implies that there [is] a good amount of information that must remain confidential.”
The situation was very confusing to anime fans for a while since the official WIT Twitter account released photos of their artists apparently working on scenes for Attack On Titan Season 4.
In response to hearing these rumors, reputable anime sources Yonkou Productions and Sakurabooru independently reached out to “staff on the show” and confirmed that SnK Season 3 Part 2 is the final season of Attack On Titan being produced by WIT Studio.
“I’ll be honest and admit that before everything blew up yesterday I’d simply assumed the prior whisperings were fan speculation gone wild, but after checking multiple first and second-hand sources, I can say with certainty that these aren’t mere conjectures,” claimed Sakurabooru. “WIT [has] said they’re done.”
Not every anime news leakers got the story right. Anime news leaker Spytrue is respected but he claimed that WIT Studio wasn’t quitting the AoT anime series. The reason was that Spytrue claimed that “Vinland Saga Season 2 is not [being scheduled] for 2020 [so] that [Attack On Titan S4 may be done] by WIT” in 2020.
kVin of the Sakurabooru blog also correctly predicted in 2019 that Attack On Titan Season 4 would be produced by MAPPA.
“Other than the easy choice of Production IG, I might go with a larger and reckless studio like MAPPA,” kVin wrote at the time. “And I genuinely believe they could put together a different team with exceptional qualities of their own to offer a new take on the series.”
Thankfully, publisher Kodansha (which controls the rights) honored the fans by putting together a great team for finishing off the anime’s story. Let’s just be glad nobody said the words “J.C. Staff” or “Studio DEEN” in a committee meeting (to be fair, both do great work when their production schedules are not overloaded).
Shingeki no Kyojin Manga Ending Soon! What That Means For Attack On Titan Season 5
The story for the anime series is based on the Shingeki no Kyojin manga by creator Hajime Isayama. Since 2009, the mangaka has released one chapter around the 8th of each month, with each chapter being about 45 pages long.
To put both the manga and the anime adaptation into perspective, most of the events of Season 2 were already shown in manga chapters released way back in 2013.
The hardcover tankobon format book volumes usually come with four chapters each. As of September 2020, the manga series was up to Volume 32.
The English translation by publisher Kodansha USA historically tends to come out within several months of the Japanese release. As of December 2020, the English Volume Volume 32 is already out and Volume 33 is scheduled to come out on April 27, 2021, and Volume 34 on August 3, 2021.
For years now, fans have known that the ending of the Attack On Titan manga series was coming. Back in 2015, Isayama estimated that he was about 60 percent done when Volume 16 released. While there is no set date for the manga’s ending, the publisher later confirmed in 2016 that the manga had at least three years left in it, which would have meant 2019 but it seems the story is going to be longer than expected.
Fast forward to December 2017 and the mangaka had reached Chapter 100. Isayama said in a blog post that he had started putting thought into exactly how he wanted to end Attack On Titan. He also mentioned that people kept asking him whether the story had been deliberately stretched out.
“I know there is an impression like that, but to me, in fact I don’t think particularly in that way. If you ask me whether it is true, I’d rather say ‘if it gets stretched, isn’t it very bad to the whole sense of completeness of the story?’ I fear things like that will happen,” Isayama wrote. “Same as other people, I also think it better to keep the length short… Although this is what I have in my mind, when I actually implement the ideas appropriately, the story gets inevitably long.”
Warning: The following paragraph contains minor spoilers.
Based on the way the story progressed in 2018 and 2019, new ideas pushed out the ending even further. For example, Attack On Titan Season 4 will open with the newest manga story arc involving multiple time skips. In a March 2018 Q & A session, Isayama was asked, “Any plan to draw the four-year period back on Paradis island?” Isayama responded, “That’s something I can’t tell you for now,” and his editor Kawakubo Shintaro jumped in and said, “Isayama-sensei won’t tell you anything, but please look forward…”
By June 2018, manga fans knew the real answer. Starting with Attack On Titan Chapter 106 and 107, Isayama has slowly begun filling in the time gap by showing what happened from the perspective of the Survey Corps.
⚠MANGA SPOILERS⚠
According to the new documentary, this is the "last panel" that Isayama has in mind for the last chapter! 😱😱😱
「お前は自由だ…」➡ "You're free…" pic.twitter.com/8JPlriY0Ei
— Attack On Fans (@AttackOnFans) November 18, 2018
However, flashbacks won’t delay Attack On Titan’s ending indefinitely. In a May 2018 interview with NHK Japan, Isayama confirmed that he had already mapped out the manga’s ending. By November 2018, MBS’ Jonetsu Tairku documentary announced that the manga was indeed entering its final story arc.
The program even revealed Isayam’s rough layout draft for the final manga panel of the entire story. While it does not show fans what happens to Eren Yeager or any of the main characters, it does show from the back a long-haired man holding an infant. The dialogue simply states, “You’re free…”
In April 2019, Isayama gave an interview with Japanese newspaper Yomiruri Shimbun. The article does not directly quote Isayama but it states that the manga series will “end in one or two years”.
In early November 2020, he announced that he was about 1 to 2 percent away from completion. Therefore, the Attack On Titan manga’s ending would have to be in early 2021.
Isayama has not revealed the chapter number for the ending, or which book volume the final chapter will release in, but he has stated in the past that he hopes to finish the SnK manga quickly for the sake of the work itself.
Since Attack On Titan Season 4 is the final season, and the anime is premiering near the end of the Fall 2020 anime season, that probably means the anime adaptation will likely finish off with around 30 episodes. There could have been room for Attack On Titan Season 5 if the final story arcs had been broken up (and not a split cour like the third season) but that’s apparently not the plan.
As for Isayama’s future, he’s worried about meeting the expectations of fans. The manga artist frequently speaks about how tired he has become working all night to meet deadlines. He does have an idea for what he wants to draw after Attack On Titan’s ending, but he’s uncertain if he’ll want to create it.
“I might not be able to draw it. It’s probably more likely that I won’t be able to. I wonder if I’ll have it in me to continue,” he said.
Attack On Titan Manga Compared To The Anime Adaptation: Part 1 Of The Third Season Diverged Significantly
The first cour of Season 1 adapted 20 chapters, while the second cour adapted 16 chapters with 12 episodes. Similarly, the Clash of the Titans story arc of Season 2 was a ratio of 16 chapters to 12 episodes. Without getting into spoilers, Attack On Titan Season 3 attempted to adapt two story arcs composed of 20 chapters each. Therefore, the third season adapted the chapters at a rapid pace compared to the second season.
Well before the anime aired, it was known that WIT Studio would change the Uprising manga story arc being covered by Attack On Titan Season 3. In an interview published in the Season 2 Blu-Ray box set, manga author Isayama Hajime revealed that he was “disappointed” with his own work in the manga volumes that covered the events of the Uprising story arc.
“After writing Volume 12, in the period between 13 and 16 was when I felt the most disappointed with my work,” he said. “Hopefully, now that [Attack On Titan] Season 3 is being made, I’ll have the chance to wipe away that regret and replace it with something I’m proud of.”
The mangaka says he suffered a “personal fallout” where his personal energy was “totally exhausted due to nothing but my own incompetence” after he completed Volume 12. Rather than take a break, he kept working hard to turn manuscripts in on time. Due to this agitated state, he believes the quality of Volume 13 through 16 was harmed. He now believes he “reluctantly extended” the manga chapters and made them “duller each month.” (How that explains his creation of the so-called “shit machine” is anyone’s guess.)
That meant Shingeki no Kyojin Season 3 is significantly different from the manga. Based on a recent blog post from Isayama, it was revealed that the overall story remained the same, but how it was executed and the ordering of events changed.
Shortly after the airing of Attack On Titan 3 Episode 1, Isayama wrote about how he worked with screenwriter Kobayashi Keiko to create a “clear and succinct backbone for my messed up manga.”
“At least, in my self-reflection I was weak-minded. Thus, when Season 3’s anime production first started, I discussed with the staff members and expressed that I hope they could appropriately rearrange the sections and functions of storylines in Volume 13 through 16 from the get-go,” Isayama wrote in his personal blog. “As a result, they delivered an idealized script for me. This time, the story has a structure that I had no way of accomplishing with my own skills!”
While many fans love the Uprising story arc since it really dug into worldbuilding, critics disliked the dialogue-heavy stories that were not as action-packed as previous story arcs. While the exact changes to the third season were left undefined, Isayama did say that writer Seko Hiroshi “turned some poorly-written plots in the original manga into more compelling forms.”
Finally, the Attack On Titan creator thanked director Araki Tetsuro for bringing “together guidelines for the overall production … as well as all members who participated in the production.” Back in June 2018, Araki had already discussed how WIT Studio planned on changing the structure of the third season.
“Whether it is structural composition or animation, [Attack On Titan] season 3 differs from the previous two quite a lot – it almost feels like an entirely new series. Whether it is Eren, Levi, or other characters, the production now focuses on their innermost attributes, and it will be quite clear that up to now, we’ve only understood them on a surface level. Even just looking at a key animation draft, it’s apparent that this is not a direct extension of the previous seasons.”
The November 2018 issue of Pash! featured an interview with screenwriter Kobayashi Yasuko where he dived into the changes. Kobayashi says “the first episode’s presentation was completely produced in accordance with Isayama-sensei’s wishes. The timeline, setting, and contents were all courageously reshaped.” In later episodes, extra action sequences involving Levi and Kenny were added, as well.
“The first step was to organize all the information, so we wrote each development onto separate pieces of paper. Then, in accordance with a chronological timeline, we attached and reorganized the papers one-by-one onto a wall, grasping each development individually while crafting the overall story. This was because we must thoroughly understand who communicated what to whom, and what emotions the characters felt due to those interactions. There were even times that if we changed the order of a single event, a character would not be aware of a specific piece of information – thus, the work became complicated (Laughs). This was especially true for episode 38, where significant changes took place in terms of both setting and story, which made our work very challenging. That was the season 3 episode that we spent the most time conceptualizing.”
But the biggest change was the characterization of the revolution itself. The Uprising story arc originally showed how human society pushed the royalty out, not just the military. But the anime version left out the alliance between Levi and Dimo Reeves.
“Throughout the third season, we omitted the elements pertaining to ‘revolution’ from the original work. Ultimately, the scenario we wanted to showcase was ‘coup d’état,’ which was a point that never changed. Hence, the anime’s storyline skewed towards that direction. The citizens, such as the Reeves family and the journalists, definitely belonged as part of a ‘revolution’ rather than a ‘coup d’état.’ It was unfortunate that we had to remove their screentime. In order for the plot to become more comprehensible, we only retained the most essential of the developments.”
In the manga, Dimo Reeves was also the person to utter the line, “Give him a punch after you become queen.” Since the anime had already killed the character off by then, that line was given to Mikasa.
While some fans may dislike it when an anime adaptation changes the source material, Isayama believes the differences made the third season even better than his original vision. In fact, he says, “This time, I can ascend to heaven right after I die!”
Shingeki no Kyojin Season 4 Spoilers
Note: Attack On Titan Season 3 Episode 12, Night of the Battle to Retake the Wall, has the same title as manga Chapter 72. The following spoilers for Attack On Titan Season 4 assume that the beginning of the fourth season will correspond to Chapter 91 of the manga.
One year after the battle of Trost district, the Survey Corps finally set about beyond Wall Maria for the first time in several years. They find the ocean in the year 851, reaching the border of Paradis Island. While others played out scenes from the inevitable anime beach episode, Eren is focused only on killing enemies across the sea.
The secrets inside Eren’s basement proved that the true history of the walled world is about as flip-flopped as anyone might guess. The Eldia world map is based upon a reversed Madagascar and Africa and it turns out Paradis is simply an isolated fraction of humanity.
The empire of Marley was created during the Great Titan War when the Marleyans rose up against Eldia and expunged the Eldians from all of the territories except for Paradis Island. The highest authority in the nation is the Tybur family, Eldian nobles who sided with Marley during the Great Titan War. Marley sent Warriors into Paradis to recover the Coordinate, but after that failure Marley officially declares war on Paradis in the year 854.
What’s more, the rest of humanity is at war with each other, as well. The beginning of Attack On Titan Season 4 will open by presenting to anime audiences the viewpoint of the Warriors of Marley. For the last four years, they have been battling against the Mid-East Allied Forces, a coalition of territories located in areas physically similar to a reversed real-life India or Arabian Peninsula.
The Mid-East Allied Forces had declared war when Marley lost the Colossus Titan and the Female Titan thanks to Eren and his friends. Marley had other Titan types to spare, but the Allied Forces had anti-Titan artillery, machine guns, Naval dreadnoughts, and other military hardware.
But Reiner Braun’s Armored Titan and Zeke Yeager’s Beast Titan intend on taking a stronghold called Fort Slava in order to put an end to this war. And they do it in dramatic fashion by taking a zeppelin and raining Titans down from on high. While the four-year war is brought to an end, the fact that weapons capable of harming the Warriors’ Titan exist means the age of relying only on Titan power is coming to an end.
Meanwhile, Marley’s forces have realized that every ship sent to Paradis Island has been destroyed, which means that Paradis must be in control of at least several Titans: the Founding Titan, the Attack Titan, the Colossus Titan, and the Female Titan. Besides developing more conventional weaponry to retain their strategic advantage, Zeke recommends to the Marleyan military that seizing the power of Eren’s Founding Titan become a military imperative. It is believed that Paradis Island must be crushed because they are a threat to the rest of the world.
The story also follows Reiner as he meets with children who are Warrior candidates. Reiner regales them with tales of living among the devils of Paradis Island. Audiences will be introduced to Falco, a candidate for inheriting the Armored Titan from Reiner. Falco becomes suspicious of Reiner because of the older man’s behavior and the fact that he described the people of Paradis Island as being just “different” rather than fully evil as Marley’s propaganda would suggest.
Marley’s military is entrusting the power of Titans to children who go through intense training. Through many flashback sequences, audiences will also get to see the childhoods of Reiner, Bertolt, Annie, and Marcel and see why they are so motivated by hatred toward the people of Paradis Island. The anime will also show the attack on Wall Maria, which led to the death of Eren’s mother, and the subsequent military training with Eren from the perspective of the four Marleyans.
While the opening episodes of Attack On Titan Season 4 will be mostly about backstory and developing the Marleyan characters, the action will finally start to heat up when Eren successfully infiltrates a Marley city called Liberio with the help of an unwitting Falco. Eren meets a shocked Reiner and both of them talk openly of their beliefs regarding the world they live in. With both men’s motivations and beliefs laid bare, Eren proceeds to transform into the Attack Titan and kill Marleyan citizens, including children, who had gathered for a speech.
The surprise attack turns into a battle against the War Hammer Titan, one of the Nine Titans capable of creating weapons and structures out of hardened Titan flesh. Mikasa joins the fight armed with thunder spears and other members of the Survey Corps, including Levi, attack using anti-personnel vertical maneuvering equipment.
The battle quickly escalates into full-out war between the Survey Corps and Marley’s Warriors. The Survey Corps has a grand plan for taking on Marley and the rest of the world to secure the future for the hated Eldian race.
But the military’s plan causes loyalties to shift and friends to take up arms against each other. Even former enemies suddenly find themselves on the same side.
Attack On Titan Chapter 115 ended on a huge cliffhanger involving fan-favorite character Levi. There have also been several more huge revelations, including a new type of healer character who is able to bring another character back from the dead.
Unfortunately, anime audiences will have to wait until the Attack On Titan Season 4 release date happens to see how the story goes. Stay tuned!