#snk reference

“Todo hubiera sido diferente, al menos con ella”

With Yuichiro Hayashi (Director) and Yusuke Tannaw (Design/CGI)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xClVSqTVAeg

I haven’t seen this talked about extensively but I’ve just watched the creators interview for season 4 part 2. It’s 40 minutes of the Director and Screen Designer discussing the challenges and joys of this anime season. 

They begin talking about how whenever they post about the series in an official way, the explosion of western reaction always surprises them. Neither had experienced that sort of western involvement before this series, but it makes them happy that Attack on Titan has a worldwide appeal.

An early challenge they discuss is having no idea how Eren’s Founding Titan form would move. They laughed quite a bit about that. You just can’t tell from the manga!!

Isayama’s Involvement

Isayama was quite busy with the manga while they were putting together season 4 part 1 so most feedback would fit on one A4 sheet of paper. This season, with the manga complete, it’s more like 2 sheets and he’s checking things more carefully. He seems to be very involved this season.

The OP

In the discussion of the OP, Hayasha said in contrast with the Season 4 Part 1 OP, which had no discernible characters, he wanted this one to focus on Eren. He called it “an intense song with that death growl to express Eren’s emotions”. Since SiMs songs are usually brighter than this, they requested that this song be “more yin and less yang” lol.

At first they wanted to avoid spoilers in the OP, but “decided to allow Kojima to create with his hearts desire, which would make far better visuals.” In the end they spoiled the rumbling but they love how it turned out.

The ED

With the ED they wanted something similar to the Season 1 ED that focused on Mikasa but “more orchestral and majestic”. They wanted it to be emotional, but not end to on a warm note. He wanted the ending to be a little more disturbing.

Yelena’s Face

"When you read the manga certain scenes stay in your mind and the fans look forward to seeing them in the anime. When you see that face, you wonder what kind of emotion’s behind it... Like a surreal comedy you're not certain if you should laugh or not”

The scene where Eren was shot

This is the scene where Hayashi invested most of his energy because of the importance of it, and also the challenge of visually conveying that time had stopped. He says awhile reading the manga, he hadn't noticed that fact. Everything about that scene was quite demanding on the crew but he didn't want to make any compromise on the storyboard. It was grueling.

The Flashback Scene

The breaking glass wasn't visually interesting to animate so he had the idea of displaying more chaotic overlapping memories. The eye looked like a live action shot because it WAS a live action shot. They applied an effect and animated the pupil. They called it "experimental but it turned out interesting."

Isayama explicitly told them to include GothKasa and Nerdmin in the flashback scene, but Hayashi wanted to add a surprise factor not in the original manga. The sauna shot of Reiner was his idea. Isayama loved it.

Grisha's Past/Eren’s childhood

They brought in the S1 elements but so much had changed stylistically from Season 1 til now that they had to adjust Carla and Grisha so they didn't stand out so much. The scene where Grisha pulls out the key was taken directly from season 1 because Grisha’s face isn’t in it. They also redubbed everything and enjoyed hearing Yuki Kaji change his voice to reflect younger and older Eren.

A few other random things

Hayashi loved the scene with Gabi and Kaya. He thinks that people have started to love Gabi. 

They were super complimentary about Grisha voice acting. Tannau said he cried while editing it. 

The talked about the challenge of animated the paths world. I didn’t notice this until they talked about it, but how to animate the branches of the tree was a lot of trial and error.

Th Shiganshina battle was an enormous effort but they are proud of it.

Thomas: Yea? Well, how long do you plan on staying in here

Gally: We're safe here! In fact there's no need for those runners to go out into the maze at all!

Thomas: Oh yea? Well how long do you think we're safe here? We're like cattle growing fat waiting for wolves to pounce upon us! How do you know the colossal titan won't come and break the wall any time soon?

Gally: ....

Newt:....

Chuck: ..Colossal what?

Y/N: I think I've heard that reference before

Ooooh semantics!! So you mean officially “finishing the manga” this year to meet his goal, but publishing a light novel next year to conclude the story? Who knows!  

I’m still on Team 134 which would mean the side quest to rescue Princess Kiyomi, defeat the Jaegerists, and commandeer the airship to get to Eren needs to happen quickly.

I don’t like a 134 ending, but its the only one that makes sense given the goals of the series.  The final arc is now at 21 chapters, making it the longest yet, but it if wraps at 134, it would still fit a two-cour anime season.

I asked reddit’s  _Puppet_  helped me out with the number. His forte is figuring out how the manga chapters will fit into anime episodes, and his track record on this is solid. So here’s the historical breakdown of the manga coverage of the anime seasons.

S1 - 33 chapters, 25 episodes (1.32 chapters per episode)

S2 - 18 chapters, 12 episodes  (1.5 chapters per episode)

S3 - 39 chapters, 22 episodes (1.8 chapters per episode )

S4 - If we end at 134, that would be 44 chapters of content. With a 25 episode season that would mean 1.76 chapters per episode which would would be on par with S3. If we get a 22 episode anime season, I’d expect a movie finale. If the manga does go to 138, my hope is we get a 25 episode anime and a movie finale. 

In case you can’t tell, I’m really gunning for a movie finale. I really think it could be an amazing way to end the series.

I ended that post by saying that Levi was more than violence and a vow and canon supports that. I feel like people are taking his vow almost as a sound bite without looking at the larger context or what it meant to Levi.  Levi’s vow to Erwin was to finish the fight and save his people. In Shiganshina, the Beast Titan represented that, but Levi has always put humanity above personal vendettas. Always.  His internal monologue in chapter 112 confirms this.

“So the bearded bastard really was our enemy all along.”I don’t think this could be any plainer. Levi was willing to consider that Zeke would help their cause. He was open to that possibility. He wasn’t blinded by vengeance. 

“and once we know that, there’s no reason to keep any limbs on our hostage.” Even now Levi is not planning on killing Zeke, but he wants to keep him from transforming. He is putting humanity first by making sure Zeke’s power will be transferred and not lost.

“…it took so long.”Four long years of waiting. Look at Levi’s face. Ever since Yelena arrived, Levi’s had to deal with the possibility that Zeke was on their side. For four years he put his grudge aside. Despite disagreement, Levi helped follow Zeke’s plan by building the port, he allowed Yelena and the Volunteers on his Island, he listened to Kiyomi, he helped retrieve Zeke from Marley, he babysat him in the woods, he put up with all of Zeke’s insults and snark–all because he wanted to make sure. Imagine how painful this was for Levi.

“Erwin, I think I’m finally going to fulfill the vow I made to you that day.”Levi never forgot his promise to Erwin and he’s relieved that Zeke is a confirmed enemy because, yes, he’s wanted revenge. Learning Zeke is the enemy also means that Erwin was right all along. Levi can once again wholeheartedly follow Erwin’s plan “to take down the Beast Titan” as part of the effort to save humanity.

“Your deaths had meaning. At last, I’ll be able to prove it.”Look at the change in expression here. If Zeke had been someone who was supporting their people and their nation, the suicide charge would have been unnecessary. Levi might have wondered if that day could’ve ended differently.  Conversely, the confirmation that Zeke is a total scumbag and enemy means that everything the Survey Corps had done was correct. All those deaths were necessary. Levi can now move forward, not with blind vengeance, but with the goal of saving his people. This time, with absolute certainty, this includes subduing Zeke and ending him.

Levi will never let go of his vow to Erwin because while the words were “I’ll take down the beast titan” the meaning has always been “I’ll fulfill our goal of saving humanity together”. Killing Zeke is now part of that. 

With the continued media blackout on Eren’s mindset, it’s been sort of amazing to see how the fandom interpretation of him has changed over the last year. Since I don’t have answers to your questions, I took a quick peek at some poll numbers instead.

In the chapter 99 poll, 70% believed that Eren and Zeke were working together.

In chapter 100, 87% believed Eren was working with Paradis and not operating independently in Liberio. 

In chapter 102, close to 50% believed that Eren was acting on his own will and was in total control of his action.

In chapter 103, 46% of the fandom believed that Eren’s attack on Liberio would result in a positive outcome.

In chapter 104, 60% of the fandom though he’d threaten the world with the rumbling but not activate the titans.

During the Marley chapters, 72% had faith in Eren Jaeger. When the action moved back to Paradis, and Eren’s actions became increasingly more worrisome, many people began to assume Eren was being mislead by Zeke or else controlled by a titan power.

In chapter 112 after the terrible conversation with Armin and Mikasa, 60% believed Eren was being controlled by Zeke.  In chapter 113 when we saw into Zeke’s mindset, that number fell to 29% percent. 

Most amazingly, in chapter 113 only 8% of the fandom believed that Eren was manipulating Zeke. Two month later, 2/3rds believe he opposes Zeke and a great many believe that Eren is the one doing the manipulating.

Anonymous asked: About half a million titans? Where did the First King found such amount of people? How many people are living inside the walls anyway? Or rather lived, I remember a lot of people died after Collosal titan's invasion.

What is the current population of the walled world?

We have a good idea of how many people are living within the walls after the fall of Shiganshina. Episode two on the anime states that 250,000 people died in the sham effort to reclaim Wall Maria. The manga calls that same number 20% of the population.

If we take both numbers as canon and do the math, it means there were 1.25 million people before the operation to reclaim Wall Maria and 1 million after. So the current population inside the walls is around 1 million people.

The 250,000 that were sent out were refugees--survivors of the fall of Wall Maria, so it represents only a fraction of the original population. I’d guess the original population of Wall Maria, including the outlier districts was close to a million before the wall fell. (Edit: @daylelight makes a good argument that this number might be much lower.)

How many titans are inside the walls?

According to chapter 86 the manga, the number is “tens of millions”, but it’s likely that number was Marleyan propaganda intending to scare the population. 

I’ve seen several posts on Reddit where people have calculated the circumference of the walls and the size of the titans. They put the number closer to half a million or less. I believe numbers are closer to the truth.

Who are the people contained within the walls?

I don’t know if we can trust all the history contained in Chapter 86, but it claims that the walls were in place before King Fritz brought his people there. This matches much of the art and mythology we’ve seen. The walls were in existence before the people came.

Nine districts have been identified in the manga, and a 10th in the “Harsh Mistress” spinoff series. See this post for details. The only district name that seems intentional thus far is Orvud, which means “Orphan” in Estonian. It’s the district where Historia became a literal orphan when she killed her father, Rod Reiss.