This year, the event I was most excited about at Anime Boston was FUNimation’s English Dub premiere of Attack on Titan. I had heard about the premiere about a month before the convention, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do a little happy dance. Attack on Titan is a great manga and anime series, and I was excited to see what FUNimation had to offer. In the weeks leading up to the convention, FUNimation released names of the voice actors who were cast (cast list can be found here); however, they kept the voice actor playing Eren Jaeger, the main character, a secret so they could announce it at the premiere. All the more reason to go to the panel!
On the Saturday of Anime Boston, after waiting in line for almost three hours, I got my seat in the packed auditorium space. To start, FUNimation showed the Dub trailer, introduced via video clip by the voice of Eren Jaeger: Bryce Papenbrook, known for his roles as Masaomi Kida in Durarara!!, Rin Okumura in Blue Exorcist, and Kirito in Sword Art Online. They also announced that episodes 1-13 will be available on DVD and Blu-ray on June 3, 2014, and that fans could preorder the Collector’s Edition or a Limited Edition version.
After that the fans were shown the first three episodes of Attack on Titan English Dub, which I personally think was very well done. To end the panel, they held a Q&A session with voice actors Trina Nishimura (Mikasa Ackerman), Josh Grelle (Armin Arlert), Matthew Mercer (Levi), and Mike McFarland (Jean Kirschtein). They all expressed how excited they were to be a part of the project, answered fan questions about voice acting and their characters, and clips from future episodes, featuring each of their characters, were presented. The clips and trailer from the event are all available here on YouTube.