The star behind The attack of the Titans‘s Eren Yeager explained how he approached the character in a new way for the fourth and final season of the series! The series has finally returned for the next part of its final season along with the rest of the wave of new anime for the Winter 2022 anime schedule, and fans are starting to see Eren go through with his bloody plans for the future. The first half of the season showed a much more different Eren than the third season as he changed physically, mentally and emotionally for the upcoming final season.
This new version of Eren goes to dark places, and so Yuki Kaji, the voice actor in the Japanese dub, had to approach the character in new ways. Explaining in a new interview ahead of the Part 2 premiere (as detailed by @AttackOnFans on Twitter), Kaji revealed that he had some trouble with this new version of Eren at first because he wasn’t sure where the story (or Eren) would go next. It took a few tweaks to his new performance to smooth out the rough edges.
“At the time of Part 1, the story wasn’t over yet. So Eren, even I didn’t know how the story would end,” Kaji begins, “That’s why I was worried about how to play [Eren]… At the time of [the MAPPA stage event], the director told me he didn’t know how Eren would be voiced in the final season. I felt the same, so I was very nervous about the voiceover in Part 1. However, when I started playing it, Eren started moving naturally with a different awareness than mine. And then Eren Yeager introduced himself as a wounded soldier named Krueger.”
Elaborating further on this point, Kaji revealed his first more difficult patches at the start of his recordings: “When I voiced it in Part 1 for the first time in front of the microphone, I didn’t know what kind of voice to put on. But then the sound director told me, “He’s away from his family now. So what kind of voice does Eren put on?” “Through that, I could imagine what kind of expression he had, and I even wondered if I could imagine myself making that kind of sound. I remember being very nervous when I had to start speaking, so I had to force myself to think that I was in a different place and in a different environment. That’s when I started walking like I was Eren.
But what do you think? What do you think of Kaji’s approach to Eren for the final season? What do you think of Eren’s new self in the final season so far? Let us know all your thoughts on this in the comments! You can even contact me directly about all things anime and other cool stuff @Valdezology sur Twitter!
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