The fourth and final season of the Attack on Titan anime television series, titled, rather unimaginatively, Attack on Titan: The Final Season, is produced by MAPPA and, after undergoing a major reshuffle of its creative leadership due to the series switching production studios, directed by Yūichirō Hayashi, who is replacing Tetsurō Araki and Masashi Koizuka from the previous three seasons. Additionally, scriptwriter Hiroshi Seko took over the series composition from Yasuko Kobayashi, and Tomohiro Kishi replaced Kyōji Asano as character designer.
The fourth and final season of the Attack on Titan anime television series sees a big reshuffle of its creative leadership due to the series switching production studios.
The score is directed by Masafumi Mima and composed by Hiroyuki Sawano and Kohta Yamamoto. The opening theme song is ‘My War’ performed by Shinsei Kamattechan and the ending theme song is ‘Shock’ performed by Yūko Andō.
The fourth season of the anime series premiered in Japan on NHK General TV on 7 December 2020 and in the United States Adult Swim’s Toonami programming block began airing Funimation’s rendering of the episodes with English dubbing on 10 January 2021. Currently, 16 episodes have been announced for the season 4, with the previous seasons 1, 2 and 3 having 25, 12 and 22 episodes respectively.
The final season covers the ‘Marley’ (chapters 91–106) and ‘War for Paradis’ (chapters 107 onwards) arcs from the original printed manga series by Hajime Isayama, who recently announced that the manga series will be concluded after an 11-year publication run on 9 April 2021.
Deployment of armoured trains and heavy weapons against the Warrior Titans causes Marley to realise they need the power of the Founding Titan more than ever.
The season opens during Marley’s expansionist phase, when it is engaged in a prolonged four-year-long war against the Mid-East Allied Forces in its attempt to conquer Paradis Island. In order to achieve this objective, Eldian soldiers are being used as cannon fodder during the attack on Fort Slava, while simultaneously, from an airship above the fort, Eldian humans are transformed into Pure Titans and are dropped down, causing panic, mayhem and massive destruction on an unimaginable scale. The fort is eventually captured and the battle won, but it comes at a great cost and colossal sacrifice by the Eldians. Moreover, the existence of armoured trains and heavy weapons, such as cannons, capable of injuring even the Warrior Titans causes Marley to realise that they need the power of the Founding Titan more than ever...
TRIVIA: The original source of the anime adaptation Attack on Titan is one of the best-selling manga series of all time with over 100 million printed copies sold as of January 2020.