Eren Yeager

A boy from the border town of Shiganshina whose mother is devoured when the Colossal Titan breaches Wall Maria. Hot-tempered, stubborn and incapable of backing down, he enlists swearing to wipe every Titan from the earth. Graduating fifth in his class, he is thrown into the desperate defence of Trost, where he discovers he can transform into a Titan himself - a power that makes him humanity's brightest hope and its most feared prisoner.

A lean, wiry teenager of average height with a perpetually tense posture. He has messy dark brown hair parted in the middle and falling to just above his collar, and large blue-green eyes that the series repeatedly frames in close-up when his temper flares. His face is narrow with a stubborn set to the jaw. He wears the standard cadet and Survey Corps uniform: a short beige jacket with the Wings of Freedom crest, white trousers, tall brown boots and the leather harness of the vertical maneuvering gear. In Titan form he is roughly fifteen meters tall, sinewy and muscular, with exposed teeth, pointed ears and no lips or skin over the jaw.

Eren is driven by a hot, uncomplicated fury. Where most people inside the Walls have made peace with confinement, he treats it as humiliation, and he insists loudly that anyone content to live like penned livestock has already surrendered. That conviction makes him brave to the point of recklessness and stubborn past the point of sense; he charges at problems and improvises afterward. He is loyal to a fault, quick to protect Armin from bullies and slow to admit he needs protecting himself, which makes Mikasa's constant vigilance a source of embarrassment. He can be cruel in argument, blunt with friends and openly contemptuous of cowardice, yet he is capable of self-doubt, guilt and genuine gratitude once his anger burns down.

Eren grew up in Shiganshina District, the outermost town of Wall Maria, with his physician father Grisha and his mother Carla. His childhood was ordinary by the standards of a walled society: chores, arguments with his mother about joining the Survey Corps, and afternoons with his friend Armin, who shared forbidden books describing oceans, deserts and fields of ice beyond the Walls. When Mikasa was orphaned by human traffickers, Grisha and Carla took her in and she became his adoptive sister. Eren also helped his father with patients and absorbed a little of his medical knowledge. He idolized returning Survey Corps soldiers even as the townspeople mocked them, and he despised the Garrison troops who drank on duty atop the Wall.

1. The Fall of Shiganshina

   After years of peace, the Colossal Titan kicks a hole in Wall Maria and Titans flood the district. Eren watches his mother pinned beneath their collapsed house and devoured while he is carried away by a soldier. Evacuated behind Wall Rose and put to work on resettled farmland, he swears to exterminate every Titan and enlists in the military the moment he is able.

2. 104th Training Corps

   Three years of brutal drilling shape him into a soldier. He struggles badly with the balance test for the maneuvering gear until a faulty harness is discovered, and he earns respect for effort rather than talent, finishing fifth in his class. His stated goal of joining the Survey Corps isolates him from cadets who want the safety of the interior police.

3. The Battle of Trost District

   The Colossal Titan reappears and Trost is breached. Eren is bitten in half saving Armin, then reappears inside a fifteen-meter Titan that kills other Titans. Rallied by Armin's plan, he carries a boulder to plug the gate, sealing the breach. Afterward he is put on trial, threatened with dissection, and finally handed to the Survey Corps under Levi's supervision.

4. The 57th Expedition Beyond the Walls

   Assigned to Levi's Special Operations Squad and housed in an old castle, Eren learns to control his transformations and, more painfully, to trust his comrades' judgment over his own instincts. During the expedition the Female Titan hunts him through the Forest of Giant Trees. His decision to fight rather than obey costs his squad their lives and leaves him captured.

5. Assault on Stohess

   Recovered and grieving, Eren is used as bait in Erwin's plan to expose the Female Titan inside the capital's inner district. Confronted with a suspect he knows personally, he freezes and cannot bring himself to transform until the deception is undone, then fights a devastating running battle through Stohess that levels streets and ends in a crystal.

Mikasa Ackerman

Adoptive sister

The person who protects him most and whom he resents most for it. He insists he does not need a guardian, yet the bond forged the day he saved her life governs both their choices throughout the season.

Armin Arlert

Childhood friend

The one who first showed him a book about the outside world and gave his anger a direction. Eren trusts Armin's mind absolutely, defends him from bullies, and is saved by his advocacy at the gate and at trial.

Grisha Yeager

Father

A doctor who vanished after the fall of Shiganshina, leaving Eren with a key to their basement and a fragmentary, drug-hazed memory of an injection. His absence is the central unanswered question hanging over Eren.

Levi

Superior officer

Beats him bloody in the courtroom to secure custody of him, then becomes the commander who tries to teach him that obedience is a skill. Eren fears, resents and steadily comes to respect him.

• He watches from a soldier's shoulder as his mother is eaten in the ruins of their home.
• He is swallowed whole while shoving Armin clear of a Titan's mouth in Trost.
• He hauls a boulder through a ruined district to seal the breached gate.
• He is put on trial before the three military branches with his own execution as one of the proposed outcomes.
• He confronts the Female Titan in the capital after hesitating for a long, agonizing moment.

• His surname is commonly rendered both as Yeager and Jaeger, echoing the German word for hunter.
• He graduated fifth in the 104th Training Corps despite having little natural aptitude for the maneuvering gear.
• His initial failure at the balance test was caused by defective equipment rather than lack of skill.
• Fellow cadets nicknamed him for his suicidal eagerness to join the Survey Corps.
• Yuki Kaji's performance in the role won him multiple Japanese voice acting awards.

• Mikasa Ackerman
• Armin Arlert
• Levi
• Erwin Smith
• Hange Zoë
• Jean Kirstein

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