Eren Yeager

• 1. Introduction

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  Eren Yeager is the hero of Hajime Isayama's manga Attack on Titan, and his own creator once called him "a slave to the story". Isayama has also said that, in the past, he struggled to make Eren feel "alive" on the page. That is a strange confession about a protagonist who screams, rages and charges straight at man-eating giants. It raises a question that runs through everything that follows. How does a character who is dragged along by events become the person who drives them? A second puzzle sits beside it. Critics first judged Eren too harsh for his age, and years later they were still arguing over whether to call him a hero at all. The answers lie in his creator's own childhood, in a boy's anger, and in a world far larger than the walls Eren grew up behind.

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• 2. Beyond the Mountains

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  Hajime Isayama grew up in a rural Japanese town surrounded by mountains, and one day he wanted to see what lay past them. That childhood itch became the walled town where Eren lives when the story begins. Isayama has said that Eren's wish to leave the walls is much like his own. He conceived Eren as "an ordinary youngster who gets paralyzed with fear" at the sight of a titan. For that reason, Eren was given none of the natural fighting talent that other members of the cast have. Looking back, Isayama feels the character suits the story he wrote, and he could relate to it.

  The name was a practical choice. Isayama picked "Eren" partly because it sounds feminine, which he thought would make it easier to remember. In the anime adaptation, the spelling changes to Eren Jaeger. His first plan for the character was also different. Isayama originally intended Eren to have known all along that he was a Titan.

  The visual design followed clear rules. Isayama paid particular attention to Eren's eyes so that he would stand out from the rest of the cast. He gave Eren thin eyebrows, because thick ones used to accent an angry personality felt "artificial" to him. Eren is energetic, so Isayama gave him black hair, which makes speed lines easier to draw around a figure in motion.

  The Titan form borrowed from combat sports. Its physique was modeled on the middleweight mixed martial artist Yushin Okami. Isayama also named Takanori Gomi's southpaw fighting style as a model for how that Titan fights. Reading back over earlier chapters, he singled out Eren's fight against the Warhammer as one of his favorite scenes.

  The final Titan form came from a stranger source. Isayama drew on Hallucigenia, a creature from the Cambrian era, to shape it. The result is massive and skeletal, with a disturbing silhouette that seems to defy anatomical logic. It was meant to reflect Eren's gradual loss of humanity. To see what that loss started from, Isayama's own description of Eren's temperament is the place to look.

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• 3. Victim Into Perpetrator

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  Isayama's stated aim for Eren was to portray a "victim who becomes the perpetrator". He describes the boy as a child who runs on rage, a rage born from weakness and from failing to save his mother from the Titans. Early in the story, that hatred mixed with inexperience. Eren acted dangerously and charged ahead recklessly. Many illustrations of him were brutal, because he was always fighting against unforgiving surroundings.

  Some of Isayama's choices were made for the sake of other characters. When Eren is revealed to be a Titan shifter, Isayama thinks he wrote him calmer than first planned. The reason was Armin. Eren relied on Armin to clear him of the military's accusation that he was an enemy to mankind, and Isayama wanted Armin to show more determination.

  An editor once asked Isayama who Eren's rival was. He first answered Annie, then realized that no such rivalry existed. What Eren needed was something to overcome in order to grow stronger. When Eren later confronts Annie, Isayama wanted to give him more responsibility, so he made Eren suffer the powerlessness of watching allies be killed by the traitor.

  Isayama also compared Eren with Luke Skywalker from Star Wars. He found it fitting that both characters have an inner conflict with their darker personas. A major turning point for Eren comes when he realizes that his powers are tainted, because his father Grisha manipulated him. Eren decides he should not live, especially on realizing that he killed his own father as a child.

  Isayama describes this personality as an emotional complex. As Eren's existing beliefs are gradually destroyed, he begins to treat preserving himself as a new standard, and he acts accordingly. Isayama admits that Eren has grown more familiar to him over time, though he still finds him hard to write. The clearest picture of how the character drifts away from his friends is a single image in the manga's 22nd volume.

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• 4. The Sea He Never Wanted

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  In the manga's 22nd volume, Isayama drew Eren looking at the sea, a goal that had pulled at him since childhood. Isayama compared Eren, Mikasa and Armin to high school students growing up together until graduation. He saw the moment the trio reach the sea as an alternate ending to the whole manga. From that point, he says, the three began to mature and to fill the positions left behind by their military superiors.

  Isayama says that seeing Eren as "dragged along by the story" became the essence of the character. Mikasa and Armin developed a habit of revolving around him and wanting to help. At first, Isayama compares their attitude to favoritism, like helping a relative or sibling in trouble even when onlookers question it. Despite their similar ages, the three had different states of mind. Their growth, he says, might lead to separation and even to opposing one another.

  He did not picture Armin and Eren as best friends forever. He also deliberately rejected the idea of a fated soulmate pairing between Eren and Mikasa. He often wrote about the two becoming estranged and gaining independence, though he did not see their drifting apart as necessarily a good thing to portray.

  The most striking correction concerns the sea itself. Fans read it as a dream Eren shared with Armin. Isayama says the truth was that Eren was never much interested in the sea. Armin had a curiosity about the whole natural world beyond the walls. Eren had only a self-focused indignation that humanity was denied the chance to see it, and part of him wondered whether that made him empty-headed. As their outlooks grew clearer, Eren's grasp on the sea faded. What that fading cost the world is told in the plot itself.

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• 5. Walls Within Walls

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  At ten years old, Eren lives in Shiganshina, a district of Wall Maria, and dreams of joining the Survey Corps to explore beyond the walls. A year earlier, he had gone with his father Grisha to meet the parents of Mikasa Ackerman. There he saved her from a group of kidnappers, an act that shaped his ideology at a young age. Then the Titans invade. Eren is powerless as an abnormally large titan with a permanent smile devours his mother, and he vows to kill every Titan.

  He enlists in the military, holding only hazy memories of last meeting his father, who gave him a key to the family basement. During his first mission at Trost, Eren sacrifices himself to save his friend Armin Arlert from a bearded Titan. He then transforms into a Titan himself, which proves his worth in the fight for mankind. He earns a place in the Special Operations Squad under Captain Levi.

  A female Titan hunts Eren, and Levi and Mikasa rescue him. She turns out to be his classmate Annie Leonhart. Eren defeats her, but she freezes herself in crystal. Chased by more of Annie's allies, Eren awakens a power called the Founding Titan and subconsciously uses it to direct a group of Titans against them. When the Smiling Titan returns, he commands another herd to beat it to death.

  The Reiss family comes next. Rod Reiss captures Eren and reveals that the Founding Titan had been in his family since their ancestor Karl Fritz created the walls, until Grisha stole it. Grisha is revealed to be the reason Eren became a Titan, having passed the power to his son at the cost of his own life. Eren's classmate Krista Lenz, who is actually Rod's daughter Historia Reiss, refuses to help her father and frees Eren.

  The Survey Corps under Commander Erwin then marches on Shiganshina to retake Wall Maria. Waiting there is an army of Titans led by Zeke, the Beast Titan. His subordinates are Bertholdt and Reiner, who are also Eren's former classmates and the true identities of the Colossal and Armored Titans. Erwin sacrifices himself in a suicide charge to distract Zeke while Levi creeps up behind. Zeke kills Erwin and most of the Corps with a volley of boulders. Levi then fights Zeke, wounding him badly, but Zeke escapes in his human form.

  Armin devises a plan to kill Bertholdt and charges in. Bertholdt burns him almost to death, but Eren pulls Bertholdt from his Titan and defeats him. Mikasa fires a missile into the Armored Titan's mouth and immobilizes Reiner. Levi uses a serum to turn Armin into a Titan, both to heal him and so that he can inherit the Colossal Titan's power by eating Bertholdt. Bertholdt begs for mercy from the people he tried to kill, and Armin devours him.

  With the district secured, the friends reach the Jaeger family basement and learn Grisha's past. Zeke is Eren's half brother and Grisha's first son. The people inside the walls came from another nation, Marley, and their true enemy is Marley itself. They live on Paradis Island as Eldians, called the Subjects of Ymir, descendants of the original Titan shifter Ymir Fritz.

  Ymir Fritz's power split into the Nine Titans, passed down among her people. Those Titans once conquered and subjugated many nations, Marley among them. Marley eventually overthrew Eldia and took control of seven of the Nine Titans. It then oppressed the Eldians left on the mainland, using them as Titan holders to conquer others, just as the Eldian Empire once had.

  The basement holds a private shock for Eren too. Holding two of the Nine Titans, the Attack Titan and the Founding Titan, he has only 8 years left to live. The Attack Titan can send future memories back to earlier inheritors, so through Grisha, Eren sees his own future. He sees his father slaughter the Reiss family, and he learns that his own future self influenced that act. He is horrified and deeply disheartened by the path he is bound to take.

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• 6. The World's Enemy

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  Four years after the basement, Eren is leading the Survey Corps in Liberio on a mission to extract Zeke. Marley has just won its war with the Mid-East Allied Forces, and Eren is assumed to have spent the interval fending off Marleyan infiltrators alongside Armin, who now holds the Colossal Titan. Eren has lost his left leg, and he moves through Liberio under the identity of "Mr. Kruger", a former Marleyan military officer.

  At a festival held by Willy Tybur to declare war on Paradis, Eren answers with an attack. He kills Willy, then devours his sister to gain the War Hammer Titan's power. He is arrested, but he escapes with a group of Survey Corps members loyal to him, called the Jaegerists. When he makes himself known to Armin and Mikasa, he shows them only antagonism. Soldiers led by Reiner ambush him.

  Eren tries to reach Zeke so that the Founding Titan's power can be activated, and Gabi nearly kills him. Zeke saves his brother, and it turns out that Zeke is the one who can control the Founding Titan. He is a member of the royal family who is not descended from the first King of the Walls, so that king's will never brainwashed him. Ymir Fritz, the source of the power, had also been bound as a slave to her royal descendants. Eren convinces Ymir to help him by giving her the choice to decide for herself.

  Revived, Eren frees the Titans within the Walls. He declares that he will exterminate all life outside Paradis to protect his people, and so he becomes the world's enemy. Hange fights the army of Titans but dies from the heat of the Wall Titans. The Wall Titans destroy all of Marley, along with the story's equivalents of London, Paris, America and Africa, killing most of the world's population.

  A team led by Armin fights Zeke, who has been hiding on one of the spikes along the spine of Eren's Titan. Once Zeke is dead, Mikasa and her allies reach Eren, and she decapitates him. His Titan form collapses onto the remaining Wall Titans.

  Armin wakes with a memory of Eren explaining everything in the Paths. The two embrace and accept shared responsibility. Eren wanted to wipe out everything because it differed from the world he had imagined, and Armin acknowledges that he put that dream in Eren's head. With Eren dead and 80% of the world's population exterminated, the Founder's power is lost, and the Titan shifters rejoice as they are permanently turned back into humans. Mikasa buries Eren's head under the tree where he napped as a child and marks it with a small gravestone.

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• 7. Giving Eren a Voice

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  Yūki Kaji, the Japanese voice of Eren, insisted that he should also voice the Titan form, because he considers it an extension of the character. After he visited the recording studio, he shared a meal with Isayama, who told him he found Eren a difficult character. Then the manga artist said, "You know Eren already", which gave Kaji confidence. For the second season, Kaji described Eren as a person who never changes despite his growth, a quality he thought important to the drama. He and the staff chose not to alter his approach. Yukimura, who had written the original Eren, thought Kaji's version was more heroic than the one he first created.

  Bryce Papenbrook, the English voice, was already a fan of the show before it was announced for dubbing. That gave him an advantage, since he knew the series' twists and could understand the delivery of many lines. Eren also felt new to him, despite a similar age and vocal range to his earlier roles. Of the sound he made, he said, "It's a very raw sound. Some of the noises he pulled out of me were just disgusting. I loved it. I loved every second of it."

  Papenbrook used three different kinds of voices: one for the child, a deeper one for the young adult, and a third "which was different from anything else." He recorded all three. He found the screams challenging, though not the hardest of his career. The English dub also briefly altered Eren's characterization, making him self-reflective and eloquent in some scenes.

  In the live-action films, Eren is played by Haruma Miura. Miura was proud of the part and surprised to be cast in it. He tried to stay true to the character because of the series' appeal, and he hoped Asian viewers would enjoy his work. He found the shoot challenging, including the training needed to move like Eren. He aimed to bring out Eren's naivety. The character's life did not stay confined to the screen and the page, as the list of his other appearances shows.

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• 8. Eren Everywhere

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  In the parody manga Attack on Titan: Junior High, Eren is a junior high school student obsessed with the Titans. In the visual novel Attack on Titan: Lost Girls, an alternative Eren appears alongside Mikasa, who fears that he is fated to die whatever changes in history. He is a playable character in Attack on Titan: The Last Wings of Mankind for the Nintendo 3DS, and his Titan form appears in that game too. Jin Haganeya's visual novel Burning Bright in the Forests of the Night makes Eren and Levi its leads. He also turns up in Granblue Fantasy and in the parody spin-off manga Spoof on Titan.

  After the manga ended, the newspaper Asahi Shimbun ran a fake advertisement showing Eren joining a manga in the isekai genre. Eren Jaeger also appears in Fortnite Battle Royale as part of the Chapter 4 Season 2 Battle Pass. In Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, he appears with Mikasa and Levi in a collaboration, and Eren is a skin for the character Yin. That collaboration began in January 2024, two months after the anime's final episode.

  Music follows his story as well. In the song "Akuma no Ko", Eren's motives and characterization run through the whole piece, mirroring the series' first ending song, "Utsukushiki Zankoku na Sekai". In "Itterashi", the anime's final ending song, Eren and Mikasa are shown reuniting.

  Merchandise began early. In December 2013, the Good Smile Company released an Eren Picktam! strap with straps of other characters. A nendoroid followed in April 2014 and a figma in May 2014. Bandai released a smaller Eren plush in December 2013 and a larger one in July 2014. Koubutsuya released a perfume inspired by his traits in fall 2013, alongside perfumes for Mikasa Ackerman and Levi.

  Fan polls tell the same story. In the 3rd Newtype Anime Awards for 2013, he was voted the eighth best male character. In Animage's Anime Grand Prix 2014 polls, he ranked fourth among male characters, behind Levi, who was voted the most popular. Kaji ranked first among voice actors, with Eren as his main credit that period. In an Akiba Souken poll, Eren was voted the most popular character in the series, with 50,143 votes. Whether he deserved that love was a question critics answered very differently.

  Jacob Hope Chapman of Anime News Network called Eren "almost deliberately not a 'likable' protagonist, even by 15-year-old boy standards". He noted that Eren is violent, impulsive, and not especially smart or strong. Yet Chapman liked that Eren inspires people by believing in his feelings and dreams, which makes him the "heart of humanity". Theron Martin observed that Eren starts with hardly any emotion besides anger but gains others in later episodes. Jeffrey Kaufman of Blu-ray.com found him compelling, more so after a surprising development a few episodes in. Ken Iikura of Anime Now praised how Eren's emotions are shown, and thought he appealed more through those emotions than through his powers.

  Others were harder on him. Nicole MacLean of THEM Anime Reviews called him "a frustrating protagonist" whose angry fits can be seen as highly childish. Elliot Gray of Japanator called him a "normal protagonist" and preferred Mikasa and Armin. Anna Neatrour of Manga Bookshelf described him as "in many ways a fairly brash and opinionated hero". Justin Wu of The Artifice saw his hotheadedness as a positive. Critics often compared Eren with Thorfinn from Vinland Saga, since both struggle with revenge.

  Some reviewers focused on the Titan form. Bamboo Dong of Anime News Network said nothing had unsettled her like watching Eren bite his own hand to transform. Elijah Watson of Complex liked the twist of Eren's Titan turning on other Titans so much that he called it a Worldstar moment. Kyle Charizanis of The Fandom Post found the early transformation amusing, calling Eren's look "almost pitiful" as he declares he will kill every Titan. Charizanis later said Eren's inner voice in the final episode had shifted from violent determination to "a kind of gleeful madness", and compared his tone to the Joker's.

  The third season brought a turn. IGN thought Eren found a notable character arc, though a painful one, because of how harsh he is with himself. MANGA.TOKYO praised his growth, from angry tantrums to a calmer mind seeking his people's freedom. For the final arc, Den of Geek and IGN said Eren becomes darker, almost a fallen villain, with Zeke as the apparent cause. Anime News Network compared the Attack Titan in the final season's opening frames with Hideaki Anno's Shin Godzilla, from 2016.

  The Crunchyroll Anime Awards captured that split. At the 6th ceremony, Eren was nominated for both Best Protagonist and Best Fight Scene, for his fight against the War Hammer Titan. He won Best Antagonist, and Kaji won Best Voice Artist Performance in Japanese. In the seventh edition, Eren won Best Main Character, and Kaji won again. At the 5th ceremony, Lucas Almeida won the Portuguese voice award for Eren, and Miguel Ángel Leal won the Spanish one in the ninth.

  The ending of Eren's arc in the manga divided readers. In the last chapter, Eren tells Armin that he committed mass murder to turn his friends into heroes, and Armin thanks him. The scene sparked controversy. Isayama clarified that Armin was not condoning the killing but acknowledging that he was Eren's accomplice. He admitted that Eren's motives and the themes of the final arc were difficult to depict, and that he regrets not fully expressing them. The final anime episode changed the exchange. Eren says he wished to exterminate the world to achieve a free one, and Armin tells him they will go to hell together for committing mass murder. Viewers received that version more positively than the original dialogue.

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