Board Thread:Anime/@comment-27321453-20200529112435/@comment-44328804-20200530005310

RuneLai wrote: Attackcjc wrote:

Oh if I had my way, there be no breaks at all. But I can't speak for anyone else, but the reason I'm set on split cour happening again is due to the network. It was surely NHK's decision to break season 3 into 2 parts. I can tell that cuz I've seen other networks do the same thing: take off one of their shows for a certain amount of time to give something else its time slot. It also makes sense cuz Attack on Titan was new to NHK so it wasn't that high on the list compared to other stuff that was surely on their network longer. So its kinda a given they're going to do it again, and I'm just being realistic about it now instead of being devastated later. That's not how the majority of anime (including Attack on Titan) is handled. It's not like in the US where the network pays for the show and the network earns the money back through the advertising it sells for the timeslot. A few shows are supported by advertising and air during daylight or early evening hours (Detective Conan for example). But most air in late night time slots, like Attack on Titan.

Late night anime slots are paid for by the production committee, who buys time from the network and/or TV station. The production committee makes their money back from BD/DVD sales and merchandising (and increasingly by licensing to other countries). So when it comes to NHK, they're just selling the timeslot. They obviously have to be comfortable airing what's in the timeslot (so I get why people were concerned about censorship last season), but as long as they're comfortable with it, it doesn't matter to them whether it's Attack on Titan or twelve episodes of whale watching. Wit was part of Attack on Titan's production committee (they might not be anymore), so they would have been involved in buying a time slot.

The split cour for Season 3 was almost certainly Wit's decision. They did back to back in Season 1 and you can see the rough edges. They made a lot of fairly intensive touch-ups for the home release and we had a recap episode in the middle of the two cours, which is what studios do when they run behind schedule. That wasn't to get viewers caught up. It's literally because they needed to put something together to buy time for the next real episode to be completed.

This also means that in terms of planning, there was a whole other episode that never happened because Wit scheduled for 26 episodes, but had to blow a slot on a recap taking them down to 25. This wasn't a big deal in the first season since Wit was adding a numbers of scenes anyway that didn't happen in the manga, and it didn't hurt the viewer at all (aside from being disappointed in a recap), but from a studio perspective, they essentially paid for air time they ended up shoveling a rerun in. It's not a good use of money. Splitting cours likely gave them the breathing room they needed to avoid another recap.

MAPPA has successfully done back to back cours for multiple series without recap episodes, and every two cour show they've done to date has been back to back, so I think there's a good chance AoT's season 4 will not be split. I appreciate you bringing this up to me, as I wasn't aware about alot of this. I didn't even notice "rough edges" back in season 1 lol but what you said does make alot of sense, as WIT did let on that they NEEDED to step away from the series, hence why MAPPA has the job now. I was certain back in 2018 that the hiatus wasn't due to production issues, as not only that would've prevented part 1 from airing surely, but when it started, we were immediately notified in that teaser that it would return April 2019, and they don't give dates like that for production issues so it def felt like a planned break, one I'm used to hearing networks administer, not the crews.

So maybe "production issues" isn't the right term for it, but I get what you're saying and it does track with what WIT brought to light about them working on the series. I sometimes forget anime production happens around the same time as airing, like other shows and that also affected my take on it. We may never know for sure why that hiatus happened, but you did pretty much win me over here, even if I don't drop my initial guess.

As for MAPPA, I admit I'm not familar with them, but I heard alot of good things today with the trailer. Speaking of, that trailer looked awesome and (atleast some of) it was PRE-ANIMATED, so its going to look even better when the season releases. I'm feeling pretty good about them all things considering, and it'd be cool if there are no breaks. The season 3 break kinda devastated me lol so if that doesn't happen with season 4, I'm happy! Besides, say if there is, and the trailer didn't break tradition on keeping second cour stuff secret, that means part 1 is going pretty far if I'm not mistaken. Imagine if it ends at chp 123, how crazy would that be? But I'm only theorizing that cuz the flipside is there being no breaks, which would be AWESOME, but considering the manga is still ongoing and Isayama's aspiration to complete the series was looking doubtful, even before we misssed this month. Not saying it can't end in 7-8 chps, but I see the possibility that we may get a few chps in 2021, especially considering Isayama loves to think something will only cover a certain length, only to then realize it needs more time.

But another possibility, which has been making the rounds today, is that the season may be delayed. People had been noticing that the end of the trailer didn't say "FALL 2020" where it usually has a date. Given what's going on in the world currently, its a real possibility we should prepare for, more than hiatuses or whatever lol