Attack On Titan Creator Now Regrets Turning Eren Evil

Humanity sure seemed hosed at the beginning of Attack On Titan. The Titans were a lot bigger, a lot stronger, and liked to chow down on people. Their only weakness was at the back of their necks, a spot that took some training to reach with a blade. But then the tide started to turn when one citizen named Eren Yaeger discovered he could turn into a Titan.

That hope lasted until neat the end when Eren switched sides and became the biggest villain himself! His former friends now had to find a way to take him down. An unexpected twist, so why did it happen? Hajime Isayama, the writer of the original manga, has the answer…along with regret.

There’s now an Attack on Titan Museum in Oita Prefecture and someone spotted a block print on display that was written by Isayama and is, essentially, an apology for Eren’s heel turn. “Eren became a protagonist who committed mass slaughter on a scale rarely seen in other works of fiction,” Isayama explains. “As for why I conceived such a story from the beginning, part of it was my desire to create a narrative with a major twist, where the victim becomes the perpetrator.”

Why’d he do it? Isayama says because he was a young edgelord. “A large factor was also my own immaturity and foolishness at the time, when I was in my early twenties. That aspect became the core of Eren’s character, leading to the point where he confesses not as someone forced into wrongdoing by circumstances, but as someone who harbored a desire to do harm.”

He now believes this was a mistake. “However, Attack on Titan had long since ceased to be mine alone, and Eren became a character loved by many readers. In the end, without fully committing to portraying him as a detestable figure, I found myself depicting him with a certain closeness and sympathy. As a result, I feel there remains a sense of insincerity in the story’s conclusion, at least in my own assessment.”

Maybe, someday, a remake of Attack On Titan will be made that undoes Isayama’s regret and turns Eren into more of a heroic figure (you know Studio MAPPA tried to wring every last yen out of the original).