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What Can We Expect From the Staff Changeover for Attack on Titan The Final Season?

If the show looks and feels very similar to the first 3 seasons I will not really care who is behind the helm. What I really want to know is how long it would be, 50 episodes, 39?

angelmcazares wrote:

If the show looks and feels very similar to the first 3 seasons I will not really care who is behind the helm. What I really want to know is how long it would be, 50 episodes, 39?

As someone that’s read the manga, I feel as though a 24-episode season would be sufficient enough to cap out the series. Though they might opt to split the two cours as they’ve done in the past. That would help production considerably. But we’ll see how things are handled.

Is there any fat to trim, or is every page important to the story?

As someone that’s read the manga, I feel as though a 24-episode season would be sufficient enough to cap out the series. Though they might opt to split the two cours as they’ve done in the past. That would help production considerably. But we’ll see how things are handled.

At this point, I'll leave the question to the readers: What are you hoping for or expecting from Attack on Titan The Final Season?

So, for someone that's "read the manga", having the belief that a 24-episode season would cover the remaining manga through its ending is just plain wrong

My biggest fear for the new season is actually the music composition. Is Sawano only credited because the final season will re-use some tracks from previous season? And no, Sawano is perfectly capable of composing music for political and serious dramas aside from action spectacle he is known for (his pedigree for TV drama composition speaks volume).

That is indeed a big shoe to fill for new music composition Khota Yamamoto (his role is quite similar on Seven Deadly Sins' later seasons, which are workable) ; as well as Mappa itself. while Jujutsu Kaisen is done by an entirely separate Mappa team (same series composition doesn’t count) that utilized lots of Korean outsourcing, they still relies lots of Mappa in-house resources, so how much AOT final season is being done in-house, remains to be seen

a) As much as I loved season 3 part 2, I thought it was the weakest one in terms of direction and animation, and we all know how much Wit Studio struggled during the last stretch of the series. So having a new studio take over may not be such a bad thing. There's this element of unpredictability that makes me even more eager to see how the final season will turn out.

Also, making a prediction by comparing the length of each season with the number of manga chapters each one of them covered is not really accurate, because you are not taking into account the adaptation choices made by the anime. Season 1, for example, had 3+ episodes worth of content that either wasn't in the manga or that was stretched out, and then you have season 3, which cut out a lot of stuff.

Eddy564 wrote:

As someone that’s read the manga, I feel as though a 24-episode season would be sufficient enough to cap out the series. Though they might opt to split the two cours as they’ve done in the past. That would help production considerably. But we’ll see how things are handled.

The anime's 1st season covered volumes 1 through 8 and those were 36 chapters in 25 episodes; the 2nd covered 9 through 12 with 16 chapters in 12 episodes, and the 3rd one covers 13 through 22 with 40 chapters, for a total of 22 episodes. The Marley arc has 16 chapters in 4 volumes, and the War for Paradis one has more than 28 chapters compiled in 7 volumes so far, and that's not even counting the upcoming chapters and volumes yet to be published, however much they are. So, for someone that's "read the manga", having the belief that a 24-episode season would cover the remaining manga through its ending is just plain wrong, since this last season would have to adapt 11 volumes for those 2 arcs, plus the volumes/chapters yet to be released, and that's a much bigger volume/chapter/episode ratio the 1st season's 25.

Also, there was a tweet from someone who uploaded a photo of an episode's script, and the cover said "The Final Season: Part One". Make of that what you will.

As someone that’s read the manga, I feel as though a 24-episode season would be sufficient enough to cap out the series. Though they might opt to split the two cours as they’ve done in the past. That would help production considerably. But we’ll see how things are handled.

There were leaks that this season's gonna be split. 16 episodes for part 1 and x episodes for part 2 (or a possible movie to close the series). Many speculate that this split is mainly because Kingdom S3 is coming back in Spring 2021. Which make sense since AoT and Kingdom share the same time slot on NHK. (Btw, poor Kingdom got delayed for almost a year because of COVID.)

Eddy564 wrote:

As someone that’s read the manga, I feel as though a 24-episode season would be sufficient enough to cap out the series. Though they might opt to split the two cours as they’ve done in the past. That would help production considerably. But we’ll see how things are handled.

24 episodes won't be enough unless they're planning to Uprising Arc-ed this season. This season by far have the most chapters to adapt and there's little to no filler (and Isayama didn't "regret" these arcs as he did the Uprising Arc). So it should be AT LEAST longer than S1 but hopefully with S3P2's pacing. So preferably 27-30 episodes. And with the rumors that the season is gonna be split, those numbers can still be achievable.

I have no doubt that in terms of animation, MAPPA will deliver. We might get some dip in quality here and there, but let's not pretend that S3 didn't had some inconsistent animation quality throughout its airing time. I'm not crapping on WIT, but you can really tell that they were struggling hard behind the scenes to finish S3.

But I do worry about the character design consistency with MAPPA. Correct me if I'm wrong, Kyoji Asano was both the character designer and the chief animation director for the previous 3 seasons right? From what I understand, if a character designer is also the chief animation director, then the characters would look more on-model when they're moving or having expressions. WIT nailed this with the past 3 seasons. Sure the animation can be inconsistent at times, but the characters were always so well-drawn and on-model.
But this time around the character designer (Tomohiro Kishi) isn't the chief animation director. Kishi is a very talented character designer. His design for the characters that we saw in the 2nd key visual looked so detailed (especially since they aren't wearing cloaks anymore). Waaaay too detailed in fact, I can almost bet that they won't be able to maintain those details in every frames of the actual show. They gotta cut some corners with the character design. No hecking way the characters would look as good as they look in that key visual at all times. Instead of simplifying the design, Kishi went all out to make it as manga accurate as possible. It ain't gonna be pretty for the animators.

I do have faith in Hayashi as the director. Every forum/website that I visit that talks about the Final Season, they always praised Hayashi as a visionary director. And after watching Dorohedoro (and bits of Garo & Kakegurui) now I understand why. I was a big fan of Tetsuro Araki's direction in S1, I thought his bombastic, in your face directing style really fits AoT. However I do find Masashi Koizuka's direction in S2 & S3 to be lacking in a lot places. So Hayashi might just be an upgrade that we needed.

I'm not too bothered with the music. The track that Yamamoto composed for the PV was actually pretty good and Sawano will still be there. Plus we know that those two are basically buddies and has worked together numerous times. So I don't see any reason to get worried.

Bottom line, despite the staff change and all the negative rumours surrounding the hellish schedule that MAPPA's currently facing, I'm fairly positive that they're gonna pull it off. I'm actually more worried with how Isayama's gonna end the series. Hopefully he nails it.

I've been seeing this stupid tendency of trashing Wit Studio not only in this article, but almost everywhere where fans are concerned. Suddenly, everything the show was and the producers did that made it famous is utter crap since the animation will be so inferior to what Wit made, and now MAPPA is the best studio animation ever .