Why Did Eren Yeager Turn Evil In Attack on Titan? Is He A Villain Or Just An Anti-Hero?

From the moment I cracked open the first volume of Attack on Titan, its dystopian narrative ensnared my imagination. The unforgiving battlegrounds, where humanity teeters on the edge of extinction, really kept me hooked on the whole series.

Eren Yeager emerged as a character of profound intrigue among the ensemble cast, leaving both anime fans and manga enthusiasts in contemplative silence.

His evolution traversed a riveting path, steering him from the archetypal Shōnen hero towards a figure sparking fervent debate—is he an evil villain or a complex anti-hero?

Within this article, I’ll delve into the factors that paved the way for Eren’s morally ambiguous deeds. A consistent yearning for freedom entered Eren’s psyche and then never left.

The crucible of trauma molded his vision of a utopian world, attainable solely through cataclysmic upheaval—known as the Rumbling. It’s within this transformation that Eren’s mantle shifts, casting him as an anti-hero.

1. Eren Yeager – Character Profile

I. Childhood

First, let’s start by exploring Eren’s childhood. When he saw a Titan take away his mom, Eren’s happiness had already shattered during his formative age.

Then, his innocence was taken away when he saved and protected Mikasa Ackerman, his adoptive sister, by ruthlessly stabbing and killing her human traffickers. No matter where he looks, Eren sees death everywhere — there’s no running away from this world.

II. Ideals

As he grows up, striving for freedom becomes his drive against an imprisoned world. His hatred doubled against the Titans attempting to steal freedom from him.

To Eren, these “villains” took away his childhood, home, family, and innocence. All the while, he remains a helpless and weak child.

These are some reasons why he decided to join the military at just 15 years old. As he grows up, Eren holds onto his goal of Titan’s extermination. He ultimately believes they rob citizens’ freedoms time after time.

III. Plans

Eren’s villainous transformation started after the 4-year time skip (Chapter 91) when he began to think maturely and more about the future.

Readers thought that Eren was cooperating and planning with Zeke, Eren’s brother, so that they could overthrow the military and murder Dhalis Zachary, the military leader.

At this point, fans would deem Eren’s actions evil since assassinating fellow humans is already in his mind. However, it’s later revealed that Eren’s actions went in this direction so that he could manipulate the Founding Titan.

The Founding Titan is a unique titan whose ability can control all other titans through memory modifications and body compositions.

2. Eldia’s Destruction

Why did Eren want to destroy Eldia, you say? To be fair, the Eldian nation is already in the middle of a terrifying holocaust.

Therefore, in his mind, Eren deems the whole world his enemy, where the Eldians are the perpetrators. Besides, Eren thinks that Eldians living in Marley are unredeemable.

Eren’s actions shock and horrify his former comrades in the Survey Corps, who have learned the truth about the world and the history of the Titans from Zeke and other sources. They realize that Eren has become a threat to humanity and decide to stop him at any cost.

3. Eren Yeager – A Murderer?

In recent chapters, it was revealed that Eren had been the mastermind behind the killings of the Royal Government’s families.

He had been manipulating his father, Grisha Yeager, to murder the families so the rulers of Paradis Island would be no more.

The Big Reveal

When Mikasa and the others reach Eren, who has transformed into a gigantic skeletal titan resembling Ymir Fritz, they find him unresponsive and protected by a horde of Wall Titans.

In the Paths, they encounter Eren, who appears as his younger self, and Ymir, who watches over them silently.

Eren reveals that he has seen everything that will happen in the future through his father’s memories, which he inherited when he touched Historia’s hand.

He claims he is doing everything for his friends’ sake, even if it means killing or making them hate him. He also confesses his love for Mikasa and asks her to forget him after he dies. He then declares that he will not stop the Rumbling until all life outside Paradis Island is wiped out.

4. When Did He Change? – The Conclusion

This also begs us whether Eren changed — whether that view of the ocean in Chapter 90 started changing his mindset. From childhood to adulthood, Eren has been living in what seems to be a hopeless, dystopian world.

As a brave and emotional soldier, he was traumatized mentality, had his emotions hurt, and his frustrations were bound to catch up to him. Despite all this, I believe he was the same since the beginning.

To reiterate in Eren’s own words (Chapter 121), “I have always been this way. Ever since I was born.”

In other words, Eren hasn’t changed; instead, he grew more stubborn in eradicating the Titans. In the process, his obsession with freedom and its importance to his free will becomes more unchangeable; this is only magnified through several disruptive events around him.

Villain or Anti-Hero?

At 19 years old, Eren’s ill-twisted potential to commit omnicide (extinction of human beings through nuclear warfare) renders him an anti-hero of the series but not a villain.

True, he’s creating sequential events to massacre nations and destroy the world.

However, this is also because Attack on Titan’s worlds and nations continually change, prompting Eren to alter his persona from protagonist to anti-hero.

He has always been a man desperately seeking freedom against tyrants to save others, even if it meant giving up his life.

But understanding his childhood traumas and seeing his numerous fights and sacrifices, especially after the battle of Trost District, should help us sympathize with his complex character.

Eren began as the boy with Titan’s eradication plans to save humanity. Still, he used all Titans to exterminate humanity.

5. About Attack on Titan

Attack on Titan is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hajime Isayama. Kodansha publishes it in the Bessatsu Shonen Magazine.

The manga began serialization on September 9th, 2009, and ended on April 9, 2021. It has been compiled into 34 volumes.

Attack on Titan follows humanity settled within three concentric walls to protect themselves from the terrifying titans that prey on them. Eren Yeager is a young boy that believes that a caged life is similar to that of cattle and aspires to go beyond the walls one day, just like his heroes, the Survey Corps. The emergence of a deadly Titan unleashes chaos.