Iman Vellani is the kind of movie star whose enthusiasm, humor, and openness radiates off the screen and feels positively incandescent in person.
The 21-year-old actress, best known for her role as Kamala Khan in 2022’s Ms. Marvel and 2023’s The Marvels,is unabashedly open in sharing her love of all things MCU-related, from playfully debating the finer points of canonical continuity with Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige to co-writing a Ms.
Marvellimited series with Sabir Pirzada. But Vellani has other passions beyond Marvel — her most recent being anime. Earlier this year at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards, Vellani shared with Polygon what convinced her to finally take the plunge into exploring Japanese animation. “I was very intimidated by anime until very recently,” Vellani said. “I started watching anime about a year ago, so this is a new obsession for me, but I’m totally into it now.
There’s just so much content, I didn’t know where to start. I mean, I can barely keep up with all the Marvel content that’s out there.” Vellani attributes her nascent love of anime to Attack on Titan, which she was introduced to via family and friends and proudly names as her current favorite anime. “They just talk about it all the time,” Vellani said, “and Attack on Titan kept coming back up whenever they would talk about anime.
I started watching it and was like, This is a story that seems like it’s about humanity. I think I can get into it.” Of the entire ensemble of characters that appear in Attack on Titan, Vellani pointed out one in particular whose story resonated the most with her. “I love Mikasa Ackerman,” Vellani said. “The way that she kept Eren’s scarf at the end of the show, even though Eren told her to give it up and forget about him.