The last installment of season 4 of ‘Attack on the Titans’ is coming loaded with action, combat and many important twists for the story, which is already entering its final stretch. The plan of Eren jaeger to defend Paradis has affected its inhabitants and not necessarily for the good, so we have also had more than one quite shocking scene.
Yuichiro Hayashithe director of the anime, has recently talked about what has been one of the most shocking deaths in the series and how complicated it was to make this scene.Warning, spoilers for ‘Attack on Titan’ follow!
A scene full of technical complication
In a twist that many fans didn’t see coming, the anime’s 78th episode ended with the shocking (apparent?) death of Eren, the series’ protagonist. Just when it looked like Eren and Zeke were going to be reunited, Gabi fired the anti-titan weapon at Eren and literally blew his head off, which Zeke manages to catch before he hits the ground.
Even so, Eren managed to put his plans in motion to awaken the Rumble and the current episodes of ‘Attack on Titan’ are dealing with the consequences… But as explained by the director of the series Yuichiro HayashiEren’s death scene was one of the most complicated to perform and to transfer from the manga to the anime.
“In fact, it’s the scene I put most of my energy into. Eren gets his head cut off…and the whole sequence is a series of slow motion cuts,” the director said. “In that scene, there’s a moment where time stops as his head flies away… When I read the manga, I didn’t realize that time stopped, and it’s because in the manga it’s a single drawing .”
“Even in anime, it’s very difficult to pause time, and when it’s done it’s simply giving the shot more time by separating one frame from the next. I think it’s very difficult to express everything with a single drawing.”
Eren’s death scene is one of the most complicated we’ve seen in anime, since a three-dimensional stage was raised and the camera moves through it while showing us all the characters at that precise moment in the that time has frozen. Hayashi also decided to give the scene more impact by using contrast and special effects.
“I also decided to express the stillness of this moment by using the smoke that fills the screen during the battle. There is smoke in the air, but when time stops, the cloudy sky clears up completely,” the anime director continued. “It’s like cold winter air. That’s how I created the contrast… we tried all kinds of things for this. Everybody worked really hard and the result has been amazing.”
