Spoilers for Attack on Titan are down below – beware if you're not caught up on the dark anime!
When the finale of Attack on Titan was released in 2023, I knew that trying to avoid spoilers for the months we had to wait was going to be near impossible for me. As someone who's chronically online, the idea of sidestepping them on social media felt improbable, so I caved and read the ending through the manga. However, the English voice actors told me something they did regarding spoilers, and honestly, I can't believe they were able to do this.
In honor of the compilation film Attack on Titan: THE LAST ATTACK, releasing for a limited time in American theaters from February 10th to the 13th, I had the chance to speak to Bryce Papenbrook and Trina Nishimura, the English dub actors behind Eren and Mikasa. I knew I had to ask if the two knew the story going into the show, and Papenbrook revealed that both he and Trina made a pact not to be spoiled – for the entire story:
Both Trina and I chose not to be spoiled. We chose not to read the manga and not to know and to go on this journey with our characters. And I think that really helped to feel that emotion in the moment. So when those lines come across, they come across as true and authentic.
The idea of somehow not reading Attack on Titan when you are literally working on the show sounds like my actual nightmare. Still, Papenbrook said that it was something he and Trina really wanted to experience first-hand. The voice actor even said that he had the chance to meet the creator of the manga – Hajime Isayama – and told him that he didn't know what would happen next. The creator's response was everything:
I was honored to have 15 minutes in his schedule to be able to talk to him – and we talked for 45 minutes and it was incredible. I told him that I didn't know what was going to happen, and at this point, we were in the middle of recording Season 4, and his response was the best response I've ever heard. He just said, 'Eren knows more than you,' and that is the best thing you can tell someone at that point in the story.
Trina Nishimura (Mikasa, who is one of the most badass non-Titan user characters) also stuck to their "no-spoiling" rule and also said that a big reason aside from their pact is that their English director, Mike McFarland, said, "go on the journey" with the character rather than finding out ahead of time:
He and I had worked on several projects before, and he was like, 'Hey, I really want you to just kind of go on the journey with her and don't watch ahead of time and don't read ahead of time…' it was definitely amazing to be able to experience the world as Mikasa was experiencing it and not know what was going to happen and just fully immerse yourself in the story. It was hard. I had to get off Twitter. People would come up at conventions or I would meet people and they'd be like, 'Oh, have you read the end? Do you know what happens?' I'm like, 'Please don't tell me, please don't tell me!' It was really hard to avoid spoilers, but somehow we did it for 10 years. That was pretty cool
Ten years... my God! Attack on Titan is a great series and honestly one of the best anime to start out on, but somehow avoiding spoilers for that long astounds me, especially regarding the voice actors. I mean, avoiding that bittersweet ending? Eren's death? I can't even fathom it.
It's not even that they were voicing the characters for that long—between 2013 and 2017, there was a four-year break in the anime, so they had to try to avoid spoilers during that time, too. I'm literally having a panic attack thinking about it.
Some people out there are just getting into and finishing Attack on Titan for the first time and experiencing the fantastic world the series has to offer. But at the very least, Papenbrook and Nishimura know the ending like the rest of us, so we can all take a collective sigh of relief.
The two did get to reprise the roles for the new post-credit scene in Attack on Titan: THE LAST ATTACK, so be sure to check it out in theaters for its limited release – and then relive the pain of the anime all over again with AOT's heartbreaking deaths. Let's keep the pain train going for all of us and avoid giving spoilers to those who haven't seen the show!
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