Attack on Titan Gets Official Day—99 Announcements, Free Manga

September 9 is now officially Attack on Titan Day. The Japan Anniversary Association registered the date to mark the manga's serialization start on September 9, 2009—which means the franchise is marking its 15th anniversary with what amounts to a coordinated flood of announcements.

The headline move: the first 99 chapters of the manga are free for 99 hours starting September 9. That's a significant chunk of the story, and it's a clean way to onboard new readers or let lapsed ones catch up.

Creator Hajime Isayama delivered a new celebratory illustration for the occasion. An official Attack on Titan YouTube channel has also launched, which suggests the franchise is consolidating its digital presence—a smart play for a series that's already concluded its manga run but still has theatrical and gaming projects in motion.

The merchandise and media pipeline is busy. Attack on Titan Part 1 -Guren no Yumiya- returns to Japanese theaters on October 23, 2026, and Koei Tecmo's Attack on Titan 3 game ships December 10. The collaborations span the expected range: Sanrio Characters, Good Smile Company, Kotobukiya, and others are producing tie-in goods.

The 99-announcement structure is deliberately cute—a callback to the manga's famous "99 years" plot device—and it works as a marketing scaffold. It keeps the story in motion across multiple channels without requiring new canon content, which is useful for a series that wrapped its narrative.

What matters: this is the first official recognition of the date, which signals that Attack on Titan has graduated from "beloved manga" to "cultural property worth institutionalizing." The free manga access is the real play—it's a low-friction way to pull in new readers before the game and theatrical releases hit. The franchise isn't done extracting value from this IP, and it's doing so methodically.

Source: Attack on Titan official website