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Aniplus Asia Streams English-Subtitled Interview With Attack on Titan's Tetsuro Araki

Southeast Asian channel Aniplus-Asia began streaming a subtitled interview video on Wednesday with Attack on Titan second season chief director Tetsuro Araki regarding his thoughts on the new season. The video is a subtitled version of a video that Pony Canyon posted on Monday. (Note: The linked Japanese video above is region-locked in Australia, Mexico, South Korea, New Zealand, and the United States).

Pony Canyon also streamed a non-subtitled interview with director Masashi Koizuka (Note: The linked video is similarly region locked.)

The series will premiere in Japan on 21 networks on April 1. Aniplus-Asia will begin airing a simulcast of the anime in Southeast Asia on April 2. Funimation announced in December that it licensed the second anime season for North America, and it will begin streaming the series on April 1. The company also began streaming the first promotional video with English subtitles in December.

While the original announcement in July for the show's returning cast had included Keiji Fujiwara as Hannes, the video doesn't list Hannes in the cast section. Fujiwara announced in August he was taking a break "for a while" from his voice acting activities to undergo medical treatment for an unspecified illness.

Tetsuro Araki, the director of the first anime season, is acting as the chief director on the second season, and episode director Masashi Koizuka is taking over as director. Many of the other main staff members, including series writer Yasuko Kobayashi, character designer Kyoji Asano, and composer Hiroyuki Sawano are returning from the first season. WIT STUDIO is again producing the animation. Linked Horizon is returning to perform the opening theme song. The main cast is also returning.

The first 25-episode season aired from April-September 2013. Aniplus-Asia premiered the series in December of that same year. The first season also inspired two compilation anime films in 2014 and 2015.

Hajime Isayama's original manga has also inspired numerous spinoff manga, several novel series, a two-part live-action film project, a spinoff live-action television series, and an OVA. Two of the spinoff manga — Attack on Titan: No Regrets and Attack on Titan: Junior High — received anime adaptations of their own.

Isayama launched the manga in Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine in 2009, and Kodansha published the 21st volume in Japan on December 9. Kodansha Comics publishes the manga in print in English. Various publishers in Southeast Asia publish the manga in their respective countries' native languages.