Attack on Titan’s Time Skip is the Blueprint For How to Make The Trope Fresh & Interesting

Time travel and time skips are incredibly common in anime, but Attack on Titan offers a refreshingly unexpected twist on this common trope. The series’ time skip doesn’t occur until the final season, providing a deviation from the established story that no one was expecting. In a Crunchyroll interview, creator Hajime Isayama spoke about his intentions behind the season four time skip and how it contributed to the larger narrative of the series.

Attack on Titan’s season four time jump went beyond what anyone was expecting, introducing a new cast of characters and abandoning the previously established characters for the first half of the season. Rather than focusing on the Eldians, as the first three seasons of the show had done, season four took a unique approach by telling a new story, that of the Marleyans.

Although this completely changed the show, it worked out phenomenally well, setting up the latter half of the season and the finale beautifully by showing the situation through a different perspective than Eren’s and the Eldians’.

Attack on Titan’s Time Skip Offered A Fresh Perspective And Set Up The Finale

Introducing fans to the “enemies” was a shocking twist that completely changed the story of Attack on Titan

In an interview, Isayama explained his plan and why he chose this angle for the beginning of season four. Bringing in completely new characters and no previously existing ones was a bold and almost unheard-of move for a new season of an anime series, but Isayama’s brave choice made season four one of Attack on Titan’s most dramatic, emotionally compelling, and intense seasons yet. Furthermore, the show also jumped forward in time, which is a more common anime trope. However, Isayama used this trope innovatively, to introduce a whole host of new characters outside the Island of Paradis.

Other anime series often utilize a time jump to skip past necessary but uninteresting aspects of the show, like training or the characters growing up and preparing for future battles. Although this was likely an aspect of Attack on Titan’s time skip, the series differs from others like Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, and One Piece, by making the time skip an integral part of the story and a tool to flesh out new heroes, rather than just a way to skip over filler material. Isayama mentioned how he wanted to “switch the perspective to the enemy’s side,” an innovative and thought-provoking decision.

The Time Skip In Attack on Titan Is Markedly Different From Other Anime Time Jumps

Other animes such as Naruto use time skips simply to pass over training arcs, but in Attack on Titan, the trope is crucial to the story

Isayama’s motivations for unveiling the Marleyans in this way make a lot of sense, as at this point in Attack on Titan, viewers were only receiving secondhand information about the opposing side. Upon watching scenes of the Marleyans, learning their stories, and realizing they had the same fears, struggles, hopes, and dreams as the Eldians, they became more humanized and sympathetic. This makes the time skip one of the most excellent aspects of Attack on Titan, as it is the catalyst for viewers to realize that the “enemies” of the series are not really enemies after all.

“It’s actually something I’ve always wanted to do as a storyteller. First, we have no information about the characters that we’ve familiarized ourselves with and switch the perspective to the enemy’s side – or who we thought was an enemy – and start to explore their perspective as well. And then just around the time we start to familiarize ourselves and sympathize with their point of view, we introduce the main characters as their enemies. How I would feel about it and how the audience would be feeling about it was kind of beyond my control, but it was always something that I wanted to do and intended to do.” – Hajime Isayama, Crunchyroll

In the show itself, it took much longer for the Eldians and Marleyans to reach some form of peace and begin working together. However, the time skip contributed to this, by giving viewers the opportunity to meet and grow to love the Marleyans along with the Eldians, as each group realized that the war itself and the Titans were the true enemy, not the opposing group. This is a pivotal and heartwarming message and one of the most memorable and important in the entire series, showcasing the anti-war and anti-hatred perspectives Isayama intentionally integrated as the true meaning of Attack on Titan.

The Time Skip Introduces New Characters And Proves The Fruitlessness Of War

Attack on Titan intentionally depicts the inevitabilities and horrors war brings

Although a perfect finale would have proved too unrealistic, at the end of the series, there is undeniable hope. In interviews, Isayama has explained that Attack on Titan didn’t end with one concrete, final resolution because this would seem too unlikely since war would not be eradicated altogether that simply. However, the Eldians, Marleyans, and others throughout the world did join together to fight for true, lasting freedom, community, and non-violent solutions to the world’s problems. These previous enemies finally meeting and getting to know one another as people and not as targets in the war, contributed to this push for peace.

The time skip is largely responsible for the story’s resolution and the characters’ eventual realizations that perhaps war is not the answer after all. In this way, Attack on Titan’s usage of the time skip trope is the most innovative of all and truly no other series has used a time skip so cleverly to advance the story arc and bring characters together. Isayama’s talented genius is evident in this choice and, even if the time jump was shocking and confusing at first, it led Attack on Titan to one of the most heartbreaking, but brilliantly written conclusions of all time.

Source: Crunchyroll

Watch on Crunchyroll