‘Little Witch Academia’ Season 3 Release Date On Netflix: Akko, Sucy, Amanda, Diana Discussed By Yoh Yoshinari

The voice actress for Akko Megumi Han is hinting that that Studio Trigger may soon announce Little Witch Academia Season 3 (also called Little Witch Academia Season 2, if you are Japanese). What’s more, an official update to the LWA website provides more clues and Trigger director Yoh Yoshinari has been talking about plans for the anime sequel.

Netflix’s label of Little Witch Academia Season 3 will probably leave Japanese LWA fans a little confused. After all, Episode 25 of Ritoru Witchi Akademia Season 1 aired in Japan in the spring of 2017, and a second season hasn’t yet been announced, so when did the third season of the anime manage to sneak out from Luna Nova Academy on a broomstick?

The answer is based on Netflix’s episode scheduling. They want Engish anime fans to watch Little Academia in binge-watching sessions, yet they also want to split up popular TV series into bite-sized chunks. For example, the third season of Voltron: Legendary Defender was originally planned out to be a normal 13-episode season, but then corporate officials decided to split the episodes up into two distinct seasons.

In this case, the first season of Netflix’s Little Witch Academia was labeled as two seasons since it is a two-cour anime. A “cour” is how Japan defines TV seasons based on the natural seasons, with anime being divided up into winter anime (January–March), spring anime (April–June), summer anime (July–September), and fall anime (October–December). A Japanese anime season that runs continuously for more than these three-month, 13 episode units is referred to as having multiple cours, whereas Netflix has been labeling each cour as a distinct season. Therefore, Little Witch Academia Season 3 on Netflix will actually be the second season of Ritoru Witchi Akademia released in Japan.

Little Witch Academia Season 3 Release Date

As of this publishing, Netflix has not announced anything official about the Little Witch Academia Season 3 release date, although this article will be updated as soon as the anime sequel is confirmed. However, there can be reasonable speculation about when, or if, the Little Witch Academia Season 3 premiere date may occur.

Animation studio Trigger is responsible for conceiving and creating the Ritoru Witchi Akademia anime. It is an original story that’s not based on a Little Witch Academia manga or light novel. But Trigger may have hinted at their true intentions in September of 2017 because the official website for the series now redirects to a web page that refers to the “1st” anime. Trigger still has not confirmed their intentions, but if there are no plans for a “2nd” season then why make the changes to the website?

On January 8, 2018, Akko voice actress Megumi Han decided to tease followers on Twitter by suggesting that a major announcement is coming up soon. First, she celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Japanese release and then stated she would receive an opportunity to “meet” Akko again.

“I will make an announcement again soon,” Megumi tweeted out.

Trigger director Yoh Yoshinari has discussed his desire to create another season of the LWA anime, but it is likely that other projects will take priority first. During Anime Expo 2017, Trigger announced four new anime projects: Promare, Gridman, Inferno Cop Season 2, and Darling in the Frankxx.

In addition, Steven Universe Season 5 was recently discussed by series creator Rebecca Sugar and Trigger has provided animation production assistance in the past. Studio Trigger is also providing the opening animation for a video game called Indivisible, never mind the animated cutscenes for the video game Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time. Needless to say, the anime studio will be quite busy for the foreseeable future.

In the past, Triggered announced the first season of LWA about six months before it aired in Japan. The entire season was streamed on Netflix Japan as the episodes were released, but the international launch of Netflix’s LWA episodes were delayed by almost six months. Therefore, assuming history repeats itself, once the Little Witch Academia Season 2 release date is officially announced by Trigger, then English-speaking fans should expect the “third season” to premiere on Netflix about a year later. If the next season is a two-cour anime then the second half will probably be labeled as Little Witch Academia Season 4.

LWA Season 3 Discussed By Yoh Yoshinari

Anime production studios will often go to locations within Japan when designing their scenes and LWA was no different. The appeal of Netflix’s Little Witch Academia is international, and director Yoshinari said the team visited the United Kingdom.

“It was more like we went there to understand the atmosphere rather than location-hunting,” Yoshinari said, according to Manga Tokyo. “We went to Edinburgh, London, Oxford, and the Cotswolds. Like Japan, the UK is an archipelago, but there aren’t really any mountains, so the landscape is quite flat. That left quite the impression on me. Also, I’m sure a lot of people have the same impression already, but there are so many old buildings made from stone. In Japan, the modern buildings look totally different from the old ones, but I felt like over there the modern buildings are built with an atmosphere in keeping with the old ones.”

Yoshinari says the main Little Witch Academia character, Akko Kagari, came to Luna Nova Academy with preconceptions about mahou shoujo (magical girl) only to find out that reality is different. Japanese anime fans are familiar with the magical girl tropes, but LWA was not intended to fit directly in that category.

“There are many stories about witches and wizards. A lot of them came from the West, like Lord of the Rings and many others. There are even the Arthurian legends if you look back even further. They came over to Japan but were morphed into the mahou shoujo genre,” Yoshinari said. “Most Japanese may be familiar with mahou shoujo, but if you look back at where it came from, they may realize that the magical stories are not how they expected them to be. I’m hoping to express to the audience, and to Akko, the history that has built up over time and show a respect for it. I’m still lacking in knowledge when it comes to history and old things so I would like to do it with respect.”

This interview with Yoshinari took place before the first season had finished airing in Japan, but the director said he’d “like to slowly unveil the depth and interests of the characters over the course of the TV series.” Unfortunately, Yoshinari could not develop LWA characters like Amanda and Jasminka as much as he wanted since the story was focused on Akko.

“There are so many things I want to do, but there’s not enough time to do them,” he said.

Shortly after Episode 25 aired, the director started talking about ideas for the next season. When English anime fans watch Little Watch Academia Season 3 on Netflix they might expect to learn more about the history of Diana Cavendish and American Amanda O’Neill. He would also like Trigger to produce a spinoff anime focused on Ursula Callistis/Shiny Chariot. Another interesting idea he’d like to develop further is the Night Fall (or Naito Foru) books that appear in the anime as a comedic spin on the Twilight book series. The director believes the story could also be adapted into its own anime.

The Trigger director did not give an exact time frame for the next season, but it does seem likely fans can look forward to an eventual Little Watch Academia Season 3 release date on Netflix. Stay tuned!

[Update January 12, 2018] Added information from Megumi Han. Rewrote beginning of article.