Attack On Titan's Reiner Is Actually Screaming A Name When He Transforms
Spoilers for "Attack on Titan" follow.
If you watch anime dubs, you'll notice a lot of the same voices coming out of different characters' mouths across many different series. That's because many series are dubbed by the same studios, which employ the same stable of actors. One of the biggest dubbing studios is Funimation. Founded in 1994 by since-retired Gen Fukunaga and based in the Dallas, Texas metro area, the studio rose to fame by dubbing "Dragon Ball Z." The company has since been merged with and rebranded as Crunchyroll, but the talent remains largely the same.
Some voice actors you might hear over and over in Funimation/Crunchyroll dubs include Chris Sabat, Colleen Clinkenbeard, and Mike McFarland. The latter is a particularly important lynchpin of the studio since he's not just a voice actor, but also an ADR director, writer, and line producer.
One of Funimation's hottest properties is "Attack on Titan," the soon-to-end anime adapting Hajime Isayama's post-apocalyptic manga. McFarland is both the English dub's ADR director and the voice of the supporting character Jean Kirstein. In 2022, McFarland sat down with Rolling Stone alongside his co-stars Bryce Papenbrook (Eren Yeager) and Trina Nishimura (Mikasa Ackerman). Their co-star Robert McCollum (Reiner Braun) wasn't present, but McFarland shared a fun detail about his performance.
Titan Shifters
The Titans are humanoid monsters with an appetite for human flesh — the series' Japanese title, "Shingeki No Kyojin," translates more accurately to "Advancing Giants." They are so ravenous that humanity is (supposedly) almost extinct and the survivors all live behind three layers of walls; the ruling class lives behind the innermost Wall Sheena, the middle class behind Wall Rose, and the lower classes behind the outermost Wall Maria.
The story begins when two Titans, a skinless Colossal one and one with tan armored plates, break down Wall Maria. This strategic attack is the first hint of the awful truth: Titans are actually transformed humans. A select few, called Titan Shifters, can control their transformations and have special powers to boot. During his first battle as a Scout, Eren discovers that he's a Shifter. It turns out that the Colossal and the Armored are part of a group of Shifters sent to exterminate humanity within the walls. Worst of all? It turns out that the former two Shifters are really Eren's friends Reiner (the Armored) and Bertholdt Hoover (the Colossal).
While the Titan Shifters retain their personalities and self-control when transformed, most of them don't speak. Instead, they roar. The sound of those roars is one of the biggest differences between the original Japanese audio and the English dub.
The screams of Titans
In the original "Attack on Titan" audio, the Titans sound like deep-voiced men yelling when they roar. In English, the roars are higher-pitched and more inhuman; the best comparison I can think of is a "Jurassic Park" velociraptor the size of Godzilla.
In the Rolling Stone interview with the "Attack on Titan" dub cast, interviewer Jon Weigel called attention to this difference and quizzed McFarland on how the dub team created their Titan roars. McFarland said that each actor who voices a Titan Shifter's human form also supplies the roars for their Titan; Papenbrook does the roar for Eren's Attack Titan, McCollum does the same for the Armored Titan, etc.
At Nishimura's urging, McFarland revealed "the Rob Story." He didn't explicitly name the actor or character to avoid spoilers, but the gist is this: When McCollum is voicing the Armored Titan's roars, he sometimes says his own name. McFarland noted that, "The word 'Rob' is close enough to the word 'Roar.'" He added that the subsequent sound mixing also distorts the original sound so that "Rob" becomes indistinguishable. Next time you watch the series, you might be tempted to look for the "Rob roar," but McFarland says the sound mixing means it's impossible to make out.
"Attack on Titan" streams in America on Crunchyroll & Funimation, Hulu, and Netflix (season 1 only). The series finale is set to air in Fall 2023.