In case you missed it, there was an announcement about a month ago that Attack on Titan would officially be receiving it's second season, after a four-year hiatus. There was finally more material from the season after we got a bootlegged clip what feels like forever ago from what will, presumably, be one of the first few episodes. Fans of the series were dying for more right out the gate, and there is a reason that the anime took so long to get it's new set of legs...but does anyone really care about the series that much anymore?
Watch the Season 2 promo via Funimation! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmWAEQ8qIc4
If a show goes off the air for about four years without much news, or at least several false reports, about it's return, usually it's dead in the water. I think the main reason that you'll hear about it now isn't so much excitement for the series returning, but instead people just thinking "Finally, it's been how long?"
Attack on Titan, when first released, garnered a humongous following (including yours truly) and had worldwide popularity before it even got it's English release. It was rivaling One Piece and Dragon Ball Z for a while there. People ate it up, binged in a matter of days (if not a day), and have been clamoring for more ever since that cliffhanger happened. We've gotten some new material, sure. Attack on Titan: No Regrets and a few other OVA specials have been released alongside volumes of the manga to satiate fans, but it's all not critical to the overall story.
Manga sales for the series have been pretty high as of late...well, until One Punch Man and My Hero Academia came along. One Punch Man has yet to leave the New York Times' Best-Seller list, and My Hero Academia has also gained some momentum in that list thanks to the anime it got last year, which was well-received by fans new and old. Attack on Titan has stayed on the list, but hasn't had that domination it had a few years ago.
Now, obviously, there are some that care about the series. I still follow the manga monthly on Crunchyroll, and clearly some are buying it off shelves to see what the gang is up to now. The anime, though, isn't talked about as much. Or, at least, not in the communities I've noticed it in. The series has become so overshadowed, and new series have become such new hits, that it'll be incredibly hard for Attack on Titan to contend as the most popular, or really branch so far out again, anime.
One of the minor reasons for this is the resurgence of Toonami, and all of the shows it's brought to the table. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and it's many sequels, have been mainstay anime classics for a while, but only now is it getting to Toonami and being allowed to expand it's fan-base. The aforementioned One Punch Man was huge on that network and got me hooked on the series. While Toonami will no doubt end up getting to air the series, it's unquestionable that Attack on Titan is an after-thought now compared to what it was.
This is especially the case with the two series Toonami is bringing into the fold this very weekend: Dragon Ball Super and Dragon Ball Z Kai: The Final Chapters. Toonami is practically synonymous with Dragon Ball. The show is irreplaceable on the network for the long-standing impact it's had. I guarantee you'll see ratings go up for "Super" when it premieres at 8 EST. There's not a chance Toonami will replace one of those series with Attack on Titan.
There are a few things that can help the series gain popularity, thought they're a bit obscure. One is the obvious upcoming SimulDub it'll have with Funimation. Attack on Titan is one of Funimation's biggest scores in terms of licensing, so they'll definitely get the English Dub out for it as part of it's big "Funimation Now!" push to how they approach their English Dubs. The problem is that the community that watches Dubbed content online is almost minuscule to the the Subbed community, so Funimation airing only the Dub isn't the biggest gain. Still, that's how I'm going to watch it.
Another thing that may help is a huge marketing campaign. Comicbook.com was the one that initially released the promo, and I already had one of my friends who has never seen the series say he's intrigued to watch it. If more websites like that promote the show, it'll be in good hands. Crunchyroll will no doubt make the series it's big one for the Spring season. Tumblr was the way that I found out about the series, so if enough people there generate hype, we may see it rise back a bit.
But it'll be really had to catch that lightning in a bottle again. It's rise to fame was insane. A big reason for that was the animation and art. The art was beautiful and the animation was crisp, solid, something we'd seen so rarely in an anime series. In a movie it was commonplace, but to see animation like that almost regularly was insane. It looks as if they'll have the same quality this time around, but that may not stand out as much as it would've four years ago. We've had beautiful new anime come along that, in some ways, do dwarf what Attack on Titan did.
Perhaps another reason is that, where the anime is headed with regards to the manga, there isn't excitement in the story. No spoilers here, but there is exciting story elements coming up...as well as some downer ones as well. Not to say downer like "oh I'm so sad" but downer as in the story really drags it's feet and takes forever to get to the point. Perhaps that's because it's just a monthly series and that slow pacing became incredibly relevant, or it's because I lost interest in what was going on. Things got really complicated and complex to follow, especially for a story that had a pretty simple plot in it's early going: SURVIVE.
So there are some that obviously do care about the series returning. I do! Like I said, there are some beats and moments I've wanted to see animated for a long time. There are mysteries still hanging over the show that turned a lot of viewers off that do have answers coming up. But it's been four years. Four years to fall in love with new series and forget about old ones. I barely remember what I was watching four years ago because there have been so many great new series that have come out to replace them in my memory.
I do hope Attack on Titan Season 2 succeeds, honestly. I never want a show to be bad, that doesn't make any sense. It just seems like the series is expecting a big return home, when really it's going to be some dedicated fans and not the masses screaming it's praises. The heyday has passed.
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