What is the Attack on Titan Full Color Edition?

Manga is a black-and-white medium with colour covers, and Attack on Titan’s reputation rests on Isayama’s ink. In November 2020 Kodansha announced a full-colour serialization of the series in Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine, chapters recoloured panel by panel, and collected it as the Full Color Edition, beginning in Japan in 2021.

The edition is a study in what colour does to this particular art: the Titans gain flesh tones that make them harder, not easier, to look at, and the quiet landscapes of the late covers become the interior norm. It re-uses Isayama’s cover compositions in retouched, brighter form (volume 1 is shown below against its standard counterpart). As a collecting line it is the youngest state of the text and the one most often missed by Western listings, which rarely distinguish it from the standard Japanese volumes it resembles at thumbnail size.