Attack on Titan fans are rejoicing as the final season of the popular anime series premieres today. The show, which has been airing since 2013, has grown and gained a huge fanbase of anime fans and those who read the manga.
We have been working with Funimation on several projects recently, including Digimon: Last Evolution Kizuna and My Hero Academia, by sharing our exclusive interviews with popular voice actors who help translate the series and the characters into the English Dub that many fans have grown to love. Now, we've moved on to Attack on Titan.
So far, we have shared our chats with the actresses who voice Mikasa and Hange (Trina Nishimura and Jessica Calvello). We also have an exclusive conversation with Connie voice actor Clifford Chapin, who voices Bakugo in My Hero Academia, heading your way this week. Today, however, we are thrilled to share what the main character in the series' voice actor has to say with you.
Chatting with Bryce Papenbrook and Josh Grelle, who voices Eren Jaeger and Armin, we learned a ton about how they see their characters and get into them, including the emotion. Eren's voice actor, Bryce, told us in detail what he usually does to evoke the main character's anger, and it's definitely interesting!
"For Eren, the one emotion that I think runs through the entire show is his anger. And I know we're meeting for the first time, but I'm not as angry. I'm normally happy and laid back. And so I had to do a few different things, and I would use a few different tools to get that anger out of me and find that anger. When we were recording Season 1, Funimation is in Dallas, Texas, and I'm from Los Angeles. I would fly out to Dallas and actually stay with Mike McFarland, the English voice director. And we would drive into the studio every day, about 30 minutes from his house. And Mike listens to metal music, so it was like 30 minutes of loud music and screaming. Hours and hours of 'rah rah rah rah rah!' So I embraced the metal through the entire record process.
So that's one thing I always think about; the other thing I do is think about things that genuinely make me angry, like traffic in Los Angeles, yelling, and traffic. And another thing that I know I've used a couple of times in the show, and as an actor, you can leverage different things in your life. So I have two poodles, they're little Maltese Poodles. They're little white fluff ball dogs. Their names are Micro and Mini. They're amazing. And I love them, but I had this bag of chips that I was really looking forward to eating, and those poodles, they ate my chips! And that's what I use to get into the headspace of Eren Jaeger."
Listen to our full chat with Eren and Armin voice actors Bryce Papenbrook and Josh Grelle below, and be sure to check out the trailer and synopsis for Attack on Titan's final season. Don't forget to share your thoughts in the usual spot!
*This interview has been edited for clarity.*
With Eren and company now at the shoreline and the threat of Marley looming, what’s next for the Scouts and their quest to unravel the mysteries of the Titans, humanity, and more? Well, we’ll just have to find out when Attack on Titan Final Season comes to Funimation.
The final season of Attack on Titan began today and can be seen on FunimationNOW and Crunchyroll.