Attack on Titan

Overview

Attack on Titan is Hajime Isayama's completed manga about people confronting man-eating Titans and the mysteries of their walled world. Its adaptations span anime, film, games and stage.

At a glance

First publication / release: Sep 9, 2009

Synopsis

People live behind immense walls to protect themselves from Titans, humanoid creatures that eat humans. Eren Yeager, a boy from Shiganshina, cannot accept a life that trades the freedom to explore for safety. When the Colossal Titan breaks that apparent security, he loses his home and mother. Together with his childhood friends Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert, he takes the path toward military service. The early story follows their training and first battle. Military careers expose a contradiction that troubles Eren: the most successful recruits can enter the Military Police and live in the safer interior, while the Survey Corps ventures beyond the walls. He wants the latter. The choice connects the practical business of fighting Titans to the question of what freedom is worth. The conflict gradually becomes an investigation into the Titans and enemies concealed within human society. An unsuccessful expedition can bring political consequences as well as battlefield losses, placing the military's authority and Eren's position under scrutiny. Decisions about trust, loyalty and the people worth protecting complicate the relationships at the story's center. This introduction focuses on the premise and early setting without revealing the final identities or ending.

Publication history

Hajime Isayama wrote and illustrated the manga for Kodansha's Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. It began in the inaugural October 2009 issue, released on September 9, 2009, and ended in the May 2021 issue, released on April 9, 2021. The serialization lasted eleven years and seven months. The main story concluded in 34 collected volumes, with the Japanese final volume released on June 9, 2021. The magazine's cover month should not be confused with its actual release date. The series received the 35th Kodansha Manga Award in 2011. Its tenth-anniversary campaign in 2019 combined limited-time digital reading offers with a Twitter reading-group initiative. Special editions announced for the final volume included booklets of early or concluding chapter layouts, offering a look at the work behind the finished manga. Kodansha publishes the official English edition as Attack on Titan. Later related publications include the Attack on Titan: FLY collector's set, which combines an art book and other items with a special manga booklet labeled Volume 35. Kodansha lists the English set's release as June 3, 2025 and describes the new manga as focusing on Levi. This separately packaged booklet should be distinguished from the main story's 34-volume run.

Creators

Isayama is from Oita Prefecture and made his publishing debut with orz in 2008. In an interview for Kodansha's aspiring-creators site, he recalls bringing work to editorial departments at nineteen while attending vocational school and finding an editor at Magazine. After a newcomer award, he considered several new story proposals before his editor suggested developing an earlier Attack on Titan one-shot into a series. The serialized version emerged through that editorial collaboration. During MBS's 2018 documentary coverage, he connected his hometown of Hita, encircled by mountains, with the desire to leave an enclosed place. He also identified Jurassic Park and a human-eating Mona Lisa episode in Jigoku Sensei Nube among his inspirations for being eaten by something terrifying. These are attributed influences, not evidence that the fictional setting is a literal reconstruction of Hita. In an interview originally published in Weekly Shonen Magazine's 2017 issue 41, he described starting character creation with appearance and imagining personality from it. He favored memorable distinguishing features and designs suited to a character's intended narrative role, while acknowledging that some personalities changed during serialization. His account allows for both advance planning and discoveries made while writing.

Media expansion

The television anime began in 2013 and continued through Season 2, Season 3 and The Final Season. The first season was directed by Tetsuro Araki at WIT STUDIO, with series composition by Yasuko Kobayashi. The Final Season was directed by Yuichiro Hayashi at MAPPA, with series composition by Hiroshi Seko. The staff and studio therefore vary across the adaptation. The concluding Final Season specials aired in March and November 2023. The 2024 film Attack on Titan: THE LAST ATTACK reassembled them into a 145-minute theatrical presentation, with revised footage and 5.1-channel sound. It presents the final battle and conclusion in a different format rather than continuing the television ending with a new story arc. Related works extend into novels and spin-offs, live-action film, games and stage performance. Attack on Titan -the Musical- credits Go Ueki as director, Masafumi Hata as writer and KEN THE 390 as music director. Its official site lists a New York engagement in October 2024 followed by Japanese return engagements in Tokyo in December 2024 and Osaka in January 2025. As of September 26, 2026, Koei Tecmo's North American site lists Attack on Titan 3 for a planned December 10, 2026 release on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S and Steam. That date describes an announced upcoming game, not a release that has already happened.

Behind the scenes

When THE LAST ATTACK was announced, director Yuichiro Hayashi explained that he had originally storyboarded the finale with a single film presentation in mind. The theatrical image and sound revisions gave that approach another form. In a Kodansha interview published in May 2021, Isayama discussed changing the final chapter's layouts after an editorial meeting and working within the magazine's page limit. He intended to use the extra space available in the collected volume to include material that would not fit in the magazine. His account illustrates how publication format affected the finishing process. Fan response has also been documented with specific limits. Tomoyuki Nozawa's April 20, 2021 article for Kodansha C-station analyzed Twitter posts from April 7–13, observing thanks to the author, discussion of foreshadowing and concern about spoilers. It explicitly disclosed a data gap of roughly three hours around the finale's release. The findings describe the collected posts from that period, not a unanimous verdict by all readers. On September 2, 2026, the anime's official site announced the recognition of September 9 as Attack on Titan Day, tied to the manga's original serialization date. Commemorations, related publications and stage adaptations have continued after the conclusions of the main manga and anime.