Attack on Titan Episode 13.5 “From That Day” Preview Images

This week’s episode of Titan will be a unique one. There is no staff and there is no summary as Episode 13.5 will a half series recap episode. Ever since that call for extra animators went out, there was that niggling doubt that WIT had the capacity to handle their intended project, and the animation quality of the last episodes has noticeably  suffered in some places, not to mention that Fukuoka incident. Because of that, everyone is theorizing that this episode is going to serve as a break for WIT to recompose themselves and come back stronger in the next half, and because of that, the preview images for this episode, the colossal titan reaching over the wall, Eren crying as Hannes carries him off, Mikasa’s rallying cry, and the above picture of Titan Eren carrying the Trost plug boulder, are all things you’ve seen before.

There is, however, still a new “Training Corps.” It’s not just the audience poking at WIT.

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Panel 1

Irvin: So your intention with this “key” is to save humanity from its despair with it?

Panel 2

Rivaille: This asshole probably doesn’t get it, but I’ll explain it to you who knows nothing.

Panel 3

Rivaille: In spite of being in charge of the basement “key,” in which the “key” will become an important item and be “secured,” Irvin does it WIT style.

Panel 4

Rivaille: Furthermore, the “key” will “secured” with high level technology…
Irvin: Forgive us on that side…

This one is a little complicated because of puns, so bear with me. What I translated as “secure” is “掛ける” (kakeru.) It can mean “to secure” but it can also mean “to begin (but not finish.)” When you think of it like that in combination with the word “key,” it’ll come to you. That one took me a bit.

A fully new episode next week. Hope for WIT’s rest to be a fruitful one.

(Image from Shingeki.tv. © Hajime Isayama, Production I.G., WIT Studio, and The Attack on Titan Production Committee.)

We Only Needed Enough Animators for that Help Wanted Sign. Now We’re Fine.

You remember this, right? It wasn’t too long ago that Kyoji Asano surprised all the Titan fans and posted a classified ad on his twitter asking for any animators that would be interested in working on the show to come in and do some work. We were all worried because the show’s animation quality was one of it’s selling points. I wouldn’t have checked out the show that has now become a manga I follow regularly if the OP and trailer animations hadn’t really grabbed my attention.

Well, Asano came along a little bit after that and tweeted again that this wasn’t some sort of horrible animator deficiency that would destroy the show. He only needed a few more for the moment and the show will proceed as planned. He also apologized for worrying everyone.

So it was kind of like I said. There was some personnel issue, maybe like someone leaving, that necessitated a quick staff boost. It hasn’t killed the show, but we’re still early on. Attack on Titan is going to run for a full season, so there’s more than twenty episodes for this to catch up to WIT. Let’s hope they can stay ahead on their animator amount.

(Thanks to RBBToday for the article that I learned this from)

Hire More Animators so We Can Draw a Help Wanted Sign

That is a tweet from Kyoji Asano, a character designer and animation director from WIT Studio. He’s the chief character designer for Attack on Titan as well as the animation director on episode 1 and a key animator on on the OP. That’s why this tweet is so bizarre. It is a classified ad. That tweet is asking for any active animators who are interested in the show to come on in and help out. The link there goes to the IG Port WIT Studio page where you can get their email and contact them for further questions.

I don’t know if I should laugh at this or not. If you’ll remember, WIT is part of IG. They’re not some random group that IG picked out of nowhere to animate this show they’re producing, so you’d hope that they’d have plenty of animators already for a full season show. I don’t know if this means that a few people left unexpectedly or the project is bigger than they thought at first or what. Everyone’s worried that the animation quality, the thing that roped people like me into the show mind you, is going straight to hell because of this omen, but who knows what this could spell. Maybe it’s a good sign. Maybe WIT needs a bunch of new staff because the next few episodes are going to have beastly animation quality and they just need more people to throw at it. I’m… just surprised. I’ve never seen this one before.