The subversion ofshōnen main charactertropes in the most brutal of ways. The greatest example of a villain-protagonist who planned to make the world a better place for his people in the most horrible of ways.
The Attack Titan himself. Eren Yeager is often praised as one of the best anime protagonists of all time and with good reason. Not many characters are as complex and intriguing as Eren is, with his mixture of highly admirable and detestable traits. Here’s a list of some of the most interesting traits of Eren’s, the good, the bad, and the controversially captivating.
Best: His Passion
An Insatiable Energy
One of the first things you’ll notice about Eren Yeager when you start Attack on Titan, is how insanely passionate he is about absolutely everything. Especially as a child. Eren strikes viewers as an interesting, fresh take on the typicalintense and high-energy anime protagonist, but with a grittier demeanor about him.
He isn’t afraid to express how he feels at a particular moment and is often shown to have the highest energy in the room. It’s this same intense passion for life itself and his ideals that drives him to be such a great recruit, ranking 5th out of the Cadet Corps.
He isn’t afraid to shout from the heavens about how he’s going to kill all the titans, or do the work that is required for him if he wants to achieve this goal.
Worst: His Impulsivity
Fight First, Plan Later
The same level of intense passion that allowed Eren to rise near the top of the ranks over more talented comrades, is the same passion that almost ended the story of Attack on Titan abruptly. Eren is not the type of person to think before he acts.
A great majority of the time in the earlier seasons, he takes action without the thinking part ever entering his mind. This cost him a leg early in the first season, when he impulsively rushed into battle against titans and led to him being swallowed by one whole soon after.
Had it not been for his titan-shifting abilities,Eren would have died without killing even a single titan.
Best: His Ambition
The Grandest Of Goals
Every shōnen protagonist has a ground goal that they scream and shout about achieving to inspire audiences. Luffy has his rise to becoming pirate king, Light has his desire to be the God of the new world, Deku wants to be the number one hero, and Eren wants to kill the titans, every last one of them.
Even before he has killed a single one,Eren has an ironclad belief that he will end the titan threat from the beginning. His incredible belief in himself and his land’s cause is what inspires a great number of his comrades to fight this perilous war.
Worst: His Rage
The Most Hot-Blooded Of Protagonists
Eren is undoubtedly an angry young man. It comes with the territory of being so unbelievably hot-blooded. It was the trait of his that irritated fans the most when the series had just begun. Many could not stand the constant hot-headed, rage-fueled rants and tirades Eren would get into.
Many fans could not bear to listen to his all too often screams, shouts, and cries. As the series goes on, Eren’s anger is tempered, replaced with a quieter and far more dark and dangerous manner of expression. Still, the memories of the raging and crying Eren aren’t too far behind.
Best: His Willpower
A Violent Determination
Eren is the type of man who believes he can do anything through sheer determination and willpower alone. In some senses, he is right. As mentioned in an earlier entry, he was able to become a high-ranked cadet despite not having the talent for it, purely due to his passion and willingness to work himself to the bone.
Eren was someone who was born with the innatedesire to be freein the world. Throughout the story, he sees his personal freedom being impeded and is willing to do anything to impose his will on the world so that he can take that freedom by force. For better or for worse.
Worst: His Bloodlust
An Innate Desire
Based on Eren’s circumstances, some may not be surprised at how bloodthirsty he is. He was a young man trapped within a land of walls, hunted down by horrific monsters who he later finds out was the cause of a historical war and that proved how much his people were despised. But even without all of that, mangaka Isayama shows us that Eren would be just as bloodthirsty, even if he was free from the strife of war.
In the Attack on Titan: Junior High series, Eren is shown to live a normal schoolboy life, yet is bored to the point of depression, and actively wishes for something like a zombie apocalypse to take place. No matter his circumstances, Eren was born to be wild.
Best: His Loyalty
An Eldian Through And Through
Whilst many parts of Eren’s character changed over the years as the series went on, there was one thing that always stayed the same. From beginning to end, Eren was loyal to his people. From the time when he was pre-teen looking to join the Cadet Corps to the moment when he became the most awful God of destruction, Eren’s goal was to protect his people at all costs.
The people of humanity within the walls and later, the people of Eldia and his friends, were always Eren’s chief concern. He was disgusted byZeke’s euthanasia planto stop Eldians from having children, thus ending the titan curse. It wasn’t just the plan itself that disgusted him, but the fact that Zeke would ever believe Eren would go through with such an idea.
For Yeager, it was his friends and comrades over everything.
Worst: His Brutality
The Greatest Villain-Protagonist
Eren is infamous among anime protagonists for being one of the most deadly around who committed one of the worst acts of genocide ever put into Japanese animation.
Yeager’s well known goal from the start of the story was to kill all the titans. By the end of the show, with all the new knowledge he had developed about their world, this goal changed to killing everyone who wasn’t a part of his land or people. Eren releasedthe Colossal Titansfrom the walls and used them to trample over 80% of the human world, killing an ungodly number of people.
Though his plan had some noble intentions underneath, the sheer magnitude of death and destruction he caused was cruel beyond measure.
Best: His Love
A Hidden Beauty In Horrible Actions
For all of Eren’s personal faults and negative traits that led him to do the most obscene of things, one thing that cannot be denied by the ending of the show, was that he held a lot of love in his heart for his friends.
Even at his worst, Eren went above and beyond when it came to helping his friends. Part of his brutal plan to crush 80% of humanity underneath titan feet was to construct a scenario where the only people who could defeat and kill him were his comrades, ensuring they would be lauded as heroes and no longer despised for their blood in the new world.
He said he wanted his friends to live long and happy lives that he could not, especially the likes ofMikasa and Armin. At the end of the day, he did achieve that, at least.
