After dallying with side projects after Season 1 of the anime, the post-Season 2 break will be blissfully short.
In recent years, an increasing number of anime TV series are taking seasons off between story arcs, often with the hiatus being a year or longer. In the case of series adapted from manga or novels, this gives the original creator time to produce more source material, which helps the series avoid the risk of upsetting its fanbase with anime-original endings or wheel-spinning filler story arcs.
Attack on Titan, though, had an especially long break, with its first season ending in September of 2013 and Season 2 not starting until April of 2017. During its absence, a number of side projects showed up, such as a pair of largely ignored compilation movies, a largely forgotten junior high school parody anime TV series, and two live-action films which many viewers would like to forget.
Attack on Titan Season 2 just wrapped up last weekend, and while watching the finale plenty of fans were no doubt filled with a sense of anxiety that once the episode ended, they were heading into another three and a half years of waiting for the next canonical animated installment. But it looks like the producers have realized that what people really want isn’t spin-offs, but more mainline Attack on Titan, and so they’ve already made the official announcement that Season 3 is coming, and this time the wait won’t be nearly as long.
The TV series’ official website has posted an announcement that Attack on Titan Season 3 will premiere in 2018, and there’s even a teaser video for the next installment already.
▼ Which is more startling to see in Attack on Titan: the ocean, or the color blue?
Unfortunately, the announcement doesn’t specify when in 2018 Season 3 will begin airing. Considering that Japanese TV divides its programming into four seasonal chunks per year, and that the “winter” season generally starts in January, a 2018 premiere would most likely mean September 2018 at the latest, and sitting tight that long should be a snap for Attack on Titan fans after all the patience they developed waiting for Season 2.
Source: Attack on Titan official website via IT Media
Top image: Attack on Titan official website
Insert image: Attack on Titan official website