Attack on Titan’s Eren Jaeger actor weighs in on polarizing season 4 part 2

The four seasons are divided into eight periods. 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. In the days leading up to the premier of Polygon, Rafael Motamayor wrote this article for Polygon. Attack on Titan Final Season 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.”

Bryce Papenbrook is the only person who has voiced Eren jaeger for the English dub. Attack on Titan, is unsure of where he sits on the question of Eren’s moral alignment.

Image by Funimation

“I don’t know. I haven’t made a decision on how I feel about him,” Papenbrook tells Polygon over Zoom. “I think Attack on TitanIt does this well. This creates this grey area and each episode drives the story forward with a very meaningful way. It pulls you in one way and then flips it around as you discover something completely different. So I’m not sure how I feel about Eren as a viewer and a fan of the show.

“As someone who has portrayed Eren, I know there are moments where he’s said some really terrible things to his adopted family, to Armin and Mikasa. He’s doing these things that a lot of people would view as horrific; killing people and attacking people and just being vicious and violent, and I don’t fully understand why.”

Although Papenbrook is the voice of Eren, he himself is unaware of the events of the manga’s finale, choosing instead to watch the end of the series along with everyone else as he attempts to define how he feels about the character. The truth is that the answer to this question changes from week to week as each episode airs. The finale of last week’s episode represented the anime’s most shocking and consequential heel turn yet, with Eren and his brother Zeke going back in time to the fateful moment in which Eren’s father Grisha murdered the Reiss family to steal the Founding Titan, revealing for the first time Eren’s own direct role in influencing his father’s actions to shape the future.

“I know in those moments kind of how he’s feeling, but I don’t know how much knowledge Eren actually has [of what’s going to happen],” Papenbrook says. “Is he is he a monster? Is he righteous in what he’s doing, and just so persistent, that he’ll never give up on what he’s deciding on, that he’ll just keep moving forward no matter what. I don’t know, I don’t know if that makes him a monster or not.”

Attack on Season 4: Part 2Every Sunday, the premieres on Funimation or Crunchyroll. On Sunday, February 13, Funimation will premiere the English Simuldub.