Major spoilers for Attack on Titan down below! If you're not caught up, stop reading now!
There are anime that I connect with, and then there's Attack on Titan. This anime has had a chokehold on my life, and when AOT came to an end in 2023, and the general public found out about the ending, it was divisive. But when I spoke to English dub actors Bryce Papenbrook and Trina Nishimura about what they ended up thinking of the ending, they set the record straight rather quickly. I totally get it.
For those who don't know, Papenbrook and Nishimura perform the English voices of Eren and Mikasa, arguably the two main characters of the anime, and they somehow avoided spoilers for the entirety of the show (unlike me who caved and read the manga). In honor of the compilation film, Attack on Titan: THE LAST ATTACK releasing, I knew I had to ask the two about their thoughts – and Papenbrook instantly said he loved the ending and didn't know how else it could end:
I love the ending. When you're building this incredibly layered and complex story and telling it from all these perspectives, I couldn't figure out how to end the story. I couldn't guess what was going to happen, but it felt like all the pieces matched so beautifully, so incredibly well, almost like Isayama-sensei wrote the story backwards. That's how incredible I thought it was. So I absolutely loved it, and I don't think every story needs a happy ending. I think Attack on Titan had the right ending.
Nishimura took that stance as well, although the voice actress openly admitted that, of course, she wanted the happy ending everyone else wanted – but it was just the ending that "had to happen:"
I don't think the story could have ended any other way, and done it justice in my heart of hearts, which is often the most heartless. Yes, of course, I wanted them to stay at the cabin. 'Can we just chill here for a minute?' Throughout the entire series…they never got a moment to exist and be okay. And when we were recording it, and they were at the cabin, I was like, 'Was it all a dream? Are they okay? Is everything okay?' But the ending was so beautiful and so moving, and so were so many other parts of Attack on Titan.
Nishimura is referring to the moment when Eren takes Mikasa to a cabin in what fans theorize is an alternate reality where they could have run away together from all the chaos—a moment of peace. Nishimura had no idea it would happen, but of course, it ended up becoming just a vision.
You're hoping for the best, and then you don't want the worst thing that you can imagine happening, but then it has to happen. And it had to happen exactly that way. It was how the story had to end. And I mean, I wanted a happy ending, but this is the ending that had to happen.
The two voice actors have been with the popular dark anime since it aired in 2013, so it's not that surprising to hear they agree with the series' ending, as they've had such a longtime connection with the show. Papenbrook even had the chance to meet with creator Hajime Isayama, and I can only imagine what it was like.
Still, fans online have been critical of the ending, often giving theories as to what else could have happened or how they could have avoided the Rumbling and everything else. In my mind, I would call AOT's ending more realistic than anything—Eren is now dead, and most of the world has been wiped out, but his friends are alive, and they can rebuild, but at what cost?
It's bleak. But in this world where Attack on Titan's most heartbreaking deaths will rip your soul in half, I'll take most of the main characters surviving until the end, even if it was at the cost of everything else. Hell, most of the AOT arcs have splintered my spirit enough that the conclusion, to me, is like a cakewalk at this point.
While they agree on the ending as I do, I'm sure it will be a hotly debated topic for years to come among fans, and it's only a matter of time before we get another big theory video on whether "Eren was right" or not. Regardless, it's still one of the best anime to start on, no matter what you think of the ending, and like Papenbrook and Nishimura's iconic voice performances, the series will live on forever.
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