Attack on Titan (TV series)

• 1. Introduction

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  Attack on Titan is a Japanese dark fantasy anime series that began as a manga by Hajime Isayama in 2009 and became, by nearly any measure, one of the most watched television programs on earth. On the 7th of April 2013, the first episode aired on Mainichi Broadcasting System. By 2021, it had outpaced every other show on American television during one stretch of the year, only losing the top spot to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. That is a remarkable thing for a subtitled foreign-language series to do. It was the first non-English language show ever to hold the title of world's most in-demand TV program, a distinction previously held only by The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones.

  The series ran for a full decade, from that April 2013 premiere to its final broadcast on the 5th of November 2023. Two studios animated it across four seasons. Tetsuro Araki directed the opening years at Wit Studio. MAPPA took over for the final season, bringing in Yuichiro Hayashi and Jun Shishido as directors. Composer Hiroyuki Sawano scored the music from the beginning, and his work won awards across every season of the show's run.

  At its heart, the story follows Eren Yeager and his childhood friends Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert. They live inside walls that protect the last remnants of humanity from giant humanoid creatures called Titans. When a Colossal Titan breaks through the wall of their hometown, Titans flood in and eat Eren's mother. That loss sets everything in motion. The show that unfolds from that moment would eventually grapple with war, genocide, imperialism, and the blurred line between victim and aggressor. How it got there, and what it cost along the way, is the story worth telling.

• 2. Inside the Walls

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  Eren Yeager witnesses his mother's death in the very first season, devoured by a Titan while he watches helplessly. That image drives him to enlist in the military, training alongside Mikasa and Armin until they graduate and join the Survey Corps, the elite soldiers who venture outside the walls to fight Titans. Their first real test comes during a battle to defend the Trost District, where Eren is himself swallowed by a Titan and, impossibly, survives by transforming into one himself.

  The second season expands the mystery. When Titans breach the walls again without any visible entry point, cadet Connie Springer travels home to his village of Ragako and finds a limp, weakened Titan collapsed on the roof of his childhood home. The sight raises a question the show lets hang in the air: where do Titans come from? Three other cadets turn out to share Eren's ability to shift into Titan form, and the Beast Titan, an abnormal creature that can speak to both Titans and humans, manipulates the chaos around them. What had looked like a simple story about soldiers versus monsters starts to crack open.

  By the third season's two-part structure, the enemy is no longer only outside the walls. The Survey Corps is hunted by the Interior Police, working on behalf of a secretive royal government. Serial killer Kenny the Ripper and his Anti-Personnel Squad are tasked specifically with capturing Eren and a young woman named Historia Reiss. Historia has been hiding her identity under the name Krista Lenz. Her father, Rod Reiss, is revealed as the true king of the walls, and he wants Historia to become a Titan and consume Eren in order to reclaim a power called the Founding Titan for the royal bloodline. She nearly complies, until memories of her half-sister Frieda Reiss, the previous holder of that power, surface and break Rod's hold over her. Historia kills her father, becomes Queen, and the government is upended. The season closes with the Survey Corps finally reaching the sea, a horizon they had only imagined. Beyond the walls is not an empty wilderness. It is a world full of other people, with their own histories and their own grievances.

• 3. The Final Season

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  Four years pass between the Battle of Shiganshina District and the opening of the fourth season, subtitled The Final Season. The story shifts perspective, opening in the enemy nation of Marley and introducing the Warrior Unit, soldiers from Marley who had been embedded within the walls. The war that follows is not between humans and monsters. It is between nations, ideologies, and competing claims over who controls the Power of the Titans.

  Eren Yeager, transformed over the course of three seasons from a grieving boy into something far more frightening, eventually uses his powers to release hundreds of thousands of Colossal Titans from within the walls. The act triggers what the show calls the Rumbling, a cataclysm meant to destroy the world beyond Paradis Island. The former Scouts and the Warriors are forced to set aside years of violence against each other to try to stop it.

  The final season was produced in four parts, spread across several years of broadcasting. Part 1 aired from the 7th of December 2020, to the 29th of March 2021. Part 2 ran from January 10 to the 4th of April 2022. Parts 3 and 4 were broadcast as television specials, with the first airing on the 4th of March 2023, and the second airing at midnight JST on the 5th of November 2023. Production was notable for the scale of the transition: the entire creative leadership changed when MAPPA took over, including directors, character designer, and the lead scriptwriter. Hiroshi Seko replaced Yasuko Kobayashi as the person shaping the series composition. Kohta Yamamoto joined Hiroyuki Sawano to share the music duties for the first time. A fifth and final compilation film covering the finale was released on the 8th of November 2024, and includes a new post-credits scene based on the last chapter of an alternative-universe short manga originally printed at the end of volumes 21 through 34.

• 4. The Sound of the Story

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  Hiroyuki Sawano composed the music for every season of Attack on Titan, and his score became as recognizable as any element of the show. The first soundtrack CD, released on the 28th of June 2013, by Pony Canyon, contains 16 tracks including 6 vocal tracks performed by Mika Kobayashi, mpi, Cyua, Aimee Blackschleger, and a group called CASG. The music won Best Soundtrack at the 3rd Newtype Anime Awards, Best Music at the 13th Tokyo Anime Award, and Sawano was recognized again at the 9th Newtype Anime Awards for Season 3.

  The opening theme for Season 1, performed by Linked Horizon, became an immediate cultural touchstone. The single it appeared on, released on the 10th of July 2013, sold over 100,000 copies in its first week. Linked Horizon returned to perform opening or ending themes in multiple seasons, including the final one. The Season 3 opening, "Red Swan," was performed by Yoshiki featuring Hyde, a collaboration that won the 30th International Pop Poll Awards for Top Japanese Gold Song. SiM performed "The Rumbling" for Season 4 Part 2, and the song won Best Anime Song at the 7th Crunchyroll Anime Awards.

  Sawano's scoring work was recognized at France's Japan Expo Awards across multiple years, including the Daruma for Best Original Soundtrack in 2016-2018, and for The Final Season's final chapters in 2024. When Kohta Yamamoto joined him for the final season, the shared credit won Best Score at the 7th and 8th Crunchyroll Anime Awards. A compilation of the full soundtrack was released on the 17th of July 2024, nearly a year after the series finale aired.

• 5. Acclaim and Records

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  A 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes sits alongside something harder to quantify: the scale of the show's reach outside Japan. In 2021, during the first part of the final season, Attack on Titan ranked as the most viewed television program in the United States for a stretch of time. It held the Guinness World Record for the most in-demand anime TV show, and also claimed the record for most in-demand animated TV show of any kind, a title it held until Jujutsu Kaisen surpassed it in 2024.

  In Japan, the series averaged sales of 52,067 copies across its nine Blu-ray and DVD volumes, totaling 468,603. It was the best-selling TV anime of 2013 in Japan and ranks as the eighth best-selling anime of the entire 2010s decade in the country. In the United States, sales reached at least 200,000 units. The series was also the top streaming anime on Funimation in 2014.

  Critics noted not just the action but the show's willingness to handle difficult subject matter. Rebecca Silverman of Anime News Network called it "both gorgeous and appalling in its visuals," and drew a comparison to 18th-century Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe's distinction between horror and terror. Phelim O'Neill of The Guardian described the animation as "spellbinding." Maya Phillips of Vulture praised the series for finding something new to say in a landscape of dystopian storytelling. The series' handling of war, genocide, and imperialism drew particular attention, with critics noting its allusions to the Holocaust and other historical crises; that commentary was praised for its depth and also, by some, criticized for not taking a clear position.

  At the 9th Crunchyroll Anime Awards in 2025, Attack on Titan was the first recipient of the Global Impact Award, a recognition of its role in expanding anime's audience worldwide. TV Time places it at number 47 on its list of the most followed TV series ever, making it the only Japanese title on that list.

• 6. Censorship and Controversy

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  In 2015, China's Ministry of Culture banned Attack on Titan as part of a list of 38 other anime and manga titles. The ministry cited scenes of violence, pornography, terrorism, and crimes against public morality. The stated goal was to protect what it called "the healthy development of youth."

  Malaysia's censorship laws required that parts of the human body deemed indecent be covered. In the case of Attack on Titan, this applied to the corpse of a Titan wearing a bodysuit, which was partially obscured for Malaysian broadcasts.

  In July 2021, the Russian government banned Attack on Titan among other titles, citing concern for youth welfare. The situation became more complicated in February 2022, after Russia's military invasion of Ukraine began on the 24th of that month. Crunchyroll, through its parent company Sony, shut down its Wakanim and Crunchyroll EMEA subsidiaries in Russia following international sanctions imposed by Japan and the United States. Russian viewers could no longer legally stream the series through the final parts of the final season, meaning the show's conclusion was inaccessible through official channels in one of the world's largest markets.

• 7. A Story Beyond the Source

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  Hajime Isayama drew the original Attack on Titan manga from 2009 to 2021 and remained actively involved with the anime adaptation. During the third season, which aired from the 23rd of July 2018, through the 1st of July 2019, Isayama revealed that he had regrets about how he had handled a specific portion of the manga. He personally asked the animation studio to make changes. Wit Studio honored the request, which is why the first part of Season 3 differs from its corresponding manga chapters in ways that reflect the author's own revisionary wishes.

  The English dub premiered at Anime Boston before its television run, and when it did air on television, it debuted on Adult Swim's Toonami block on the 3rd of May 2014, at 11:30 p.m. EST. The dub ran on Toonami until the 7th of January 2024. Voice actor Yuki Kaji performed the Japanese role of Eren Yeager from beginning to end, winning Best Voice Actor at the 3rd Newtype Anime Awards and Best VA Performance at multiple Crunchyroll ceremonies. On the English side, the cast received recognition from the BTVA Anime Dub Awards starting in 2015, with wins across lead, supporting, and ensemble categories.

  The show's final compilation film, released on the 8th of November 2024, contains a post-credits scene drawn from an alternative-universe manga that ran at the end of volumes 21 through 34 of the original manga. That short series, set in a different world entirely, had existed as a quiet aside within the main manga for years. Its inclusion in the final film points outward beyond the end of the story: the world Isayama built was always larger than the walls that defined it.