Attack on Titan’s Bryce Papenbrook weighs in on whether Eren Jaeger is a monster
Over the course of four seasons and eight years, Attack on Titan has elicited passionate and heated debates concerning what many describe as the series’ fascist subtext, particularly in light of the uncomfortable real-life historical parallels and pro-imperialist themes many have seen evidenced in final chapters of Hajime Isayama’s manga.
Most of the debate surrounding the series’ questionable message revolves around one character in particular: Eren Jaeger, the series’ protagonist, who over the course of four seasons has transformed from a tragic and idealistic hero attempting to defend humanity’s last city from a horde of man-eating giants into a mass-murdering extremist, apparently willing to euthanize his own people in order to further his own agenda.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Attack on Titan Final Season Part 2 episode 79 “Memories of the Future.”]
Opinions of Eren’s arc are split among fans of the series, so much so that the character has been nominated as both the year’s best protagonist and best antagonist in this year’s Crunchyroll Anime Awards. As Rafael Motamayor wrote for Polygon in the lead up to the premiere of Attack on Titan Final Season Part 2, “By ‘both sides’-ing the central conflict of Attack on Titan, and asking the audience to consider Eren as a monster while sympathizing with characters like Gabi and Zeke, the show finds itself on an even more nihilistic path than the one hinted at by its initial premise.”
Even Bryce Papenbrook, who for the past eight years has voiced Eren Jaeger in the English dub of Attack on Titan, is unsure of where he sits on the question of Eren’s moral alignment.
“I don’t know. I haven’t made a decision on how I feel about him,” Papenbrook tells Polygon
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