Armin is a very important character in the Attack on Titan franchise and although there are a lot of interesting things about him, in this article, we are going to tell you whether he is a boy or a girl, which often confuses people.
Armin Arlert is a boy in Attack on Titan. His appearance might be a bit feminine and there were some joke texts labeling him as female, but it has been confirmed by Hajime Isayama himself that Armin is, in fact, a boy, and that is how it was intended to be from the very beginning.
In the rest of this article, we are going to tell you what you need to know about the issue of Armin Arlert and his gender. It is now clear that he is a boy but we are going to explain how the issue arose and why some people thought that Armin was actually a girl.
Is Armin a Boy or a Girl?
Armin is an elite soldier in the Exploration Battalion. He is also a childhood friend of Eren and Mikasa, and one of the main protagonists of the series. Although physically, he appears to be one of the weakest in the 104th Training Brigade, his intelligence and genius make him an indispensable strategist in the military, especially when he joins forces with Major Hansi.
After the Battle of Shiganshina District, he succeeded Bertolt as holder of the Colossal Titan. He too participates in the Battle of Revelio by single-handedly destroying Mahr’s fleet thanks to the power of the Colossal Titan.
After this battle his feelings with Eren are no longer all the more reciprocal hence he will hit Eren for his conduct towards Mikasa which ends in Eren’s victory.
As a result, he helps the rest of the Exploration Battalion defeat Eren’s Original Titan. He will then be appointed 15th Major of the Exploration Battalion succeeding Hansi upon his death. After that Armin faced his lifelong friend in a titan fight where Eren transformed into a Colossal titan to compete with his friend.
But they succeed in defeating the Original titan and canceling the curse of the people of Ymir. Armin also seems to have an attachment with Annie with whom he blushes at first sight.
As you can see, a short overview of Armin’s life definitely confirms that he is a boy and while he may look a bit feminine, that is not strange for anime characters. Not really. The things that affirm that are:
- His appearance is for the most part male. This isn’t always telltale, due to traps, but in this case – it was.
- Armin uses distinctly male language in Japanese. (He refers to himself as 僕ぼく (boku), a male pronoun, which is fairly rarely used by females unless they are traps.)
- The Attack on Titan Wiki refers to him as male.
- Armin is a boy’s name in the West.
- He is voiced by a male in the English dub. Though he is voiced by a female in Japanese, this is common for young or weak boys (Koshiro Izumi, Edward Elric, etc.). However, a male voicing a female character is exceedingly rare, and Isayama would hardly have allowed it.
Also, if you observe this video more closely, you’ll see Isayama answer the following question:
Q: アルミンの性別はどっちですか？
What is Armin’s sex?A: 男です。
Male.
All of this clearly confirms that Armin is a boy and there shouldn’t be any doubt about it.
Is Armin Voiced by a Girl?
In the anime, Armin is voiced by Marina Inoue in Japanese. Marina Inoue is a female voice actress, whose credits, along with Attack on Titan, include Gurren Lagann as Yoko Littner, Smile PreCure! as Nao MIdorikawa/Cure March, Skip Beat! as Kyōko Mogami, Haganai as Yozora Mikazuki, Date A Live as Tohka Yatogami, Freezing as Chiffon Fairchild, Rin-ne as Sakura Mamiya, Hayate the Combat Butler as Wataru Tachibana, My Hero Academia as Momo Yaoyorozu, Owarimonogatari as Sodachi Oikura, Beyblade Burst as Valt Aoi, and Jujutsu Kaisen as Mai Zen’in.
In the English dub, Armin is voiced by Josh Grelle, who is known for his anime voice work. So, the English dub casts absolutely no shadow on Armin’s gender, but what about the Japanese dub?
In anime, it is absolutely not strange that female voice actresses voice male characters if they’re young and/or weak. This is usually to add more authenticity to the characters, as young boys rarely have distinctively male voices at an early age. English dubs usually don’t follow this trend, while some other dubs (like German dubs) do.
This is really nothing strange for anime, and we can name some examples that you’ll certainly know of. Naruto was voiced Junko Takeuchi; Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist was voiced by Romi Park; One Piece’s protagonist Monkey D. Luffy is voiced by Mayumi Tanaka; Ash Ketchum is voiced Rica Matsumoto; many Digimon male characters had actresses voice them; and Shinji Ikari from Evangelion is voiced Megumi Ogata.
As you can see, this is absolutely nothing strange for the world of anime, and it doesn’t suggest that Armin is actually a girl. It has been officially confirmed that Arnim is a boy, which makes the decision to have him voiced by an actress one based on authenticity, rather than him being a trap character (like Kubo tricked everyone with Yoruichi in Bleach).
Why Is Armin so Feminine?
Now, while we now know that Armin is most definitely a boy, he doesn’t necessarily look like one, and since he is not a transgender character, people certainly wondered why Armin looks so feminine. If you observe some scenes carefully, along with the visual look of other Attack on Titan characters, Armin certainly does look like a girl from time to time.
Armin’s haircut is feminine, his voice is feminine and he is so gentle, and so fragile that you can’t actually blame someone for thinking that he might, actually, be female. There are a lot of signs pointing to that, although it’s not really true, as we have determined.
Armin is a fragile and gentle character. He is also seemingly the weakest member of his group, which certainly accounts for his looks. Such gentle characters, in anime, are often gender-fluid in terms of looks, but are distinctively male.
Still, Armin is not nearly the most fluid character in anime and he is not nearly the most feminine one. Some male characters in anime have even more feminine aspects, which makes the confusion about Armin funny more than anything else.
Armin is undoubtedly male and everything feminine about him is just a reflection of him as a character and should be accepted like that.
