Attack on Titan Filler: One Recap and Five OADs
No filler in the television run: one recap, episode 13.5, and five OAD titles released on disc. What each OAD adapts, where the evidence runs out, and what to skip.
Attack on Titan has no filler episodes in its television run. The only numbered entry that does not move the story is episode 13.5, "Since That Day," a recap dated between episodes 13 and 14 of the first season. Everything else that looks like filler sits outside the series: five OAD titles, eight episodes in all, released on disc rather than broadcast.
How this list was checked
Episode numbers and dates come from ANN's episode list for the first season, which marks 13.5 as a recap, and from ANN's entries for the later seasons, which list no recap or special between their numbered episodes. CBR's survey of anime with little filler says that across the 75 episodes then aired "the entire manga has been adapted into the anime." That is one publication's judgment rather than an episode-by-episode check, and we have not compared each episode with the manga ourselves.
The recap
| Episode | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 13.5 | Recap | "Since That Day" (あの日から), dated July 6, 2013, between episode 13 on June 29 and episode 14 on July 13. ANN's list notes: "This is a recap episode." ANN |
Skip it if you are watching straight through; a recap adds nothing a continuous viewer needs. If you are coming back after a break, it does the job of a refresher.
The OADs
The OADs (original animation DVDs) were released on disc, Ilse's Notebook and No Regrets with limited editions of the manga in Japan, and came to streaming in December 2021. ANN's report on that streaming release counts eight OAD episodes: three it files under Ilse's Notebook, two of No Regrets and three of Lost Girls. ANN's encyclopedia lists Ilse's Notebook, A Sudden Visitor and Distress as three separate OADs, which is how the five titles below reach the same eight.
| OAD | Episodes | What it adapts |
|---|---|---|
| Ilse's Notebook | 1 (December 9, 2013) | Bundled with the limited edition of manga volume 11, per ANN's report. In ANN's summary, Hange finds the notebook of a soldier named Ilse during the 49th expedition. |
| A Sudden Visitor | 1 (April 9, 2014) | Script by Hiroshi Seko, per ANN's entry. We found no source that names a story it adapts. |
| Distress | 1 (August 8, 2014) | Script by Noboru Takagi, per ANN's entry. As with A Sudden Visitor, we found no source for what it adapts. |
| No Regrets | 2 | An adaptation of the No Regrets spin-off manga by Hikaru Suruga and Gun Snark, bundled with the limited editions of volumes 15 and 16 in 2014 and 2015, per ANN. ANN's summary follows Levi from the Underground into the Survey Corps. |
| Lost Girls | 3 (December 8, 2017) | An adaptation of Hiroshi Seko's spin-off novel, which collects three stories centered on Mikasa and Annie, per ANN. |
None of them is needed to follow the series. No Regrets and Lost Girls adapt published spin-offs, so they are side stories rather than filler in the usual sense; the Attack on Titan watch order suggests saving the OADs until after the main series.
What is not filler
The finale is the part most often mistaken for an extra. The Final Chapters specials and their other presentations are the ending itself, not a recap and not filler; the watch order explains which version to pick. ANN lists Attack on Titan: Junior High as a separate television series, not part of the numbered run, and lists the films, Chronicle and THE LAST ATTACK among them, as movies outside the episode numbering. Past that, the anime is a straight run through the manga, and the ending explainer covers where it finishes.