Character from Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama
The Armored Titan — a Marleyan Warrior who infiltrated Paradis as a child soldier, grew to love the people he was sent to destroy, and shattered under the weight of living as both the hero and the traitor.
Reiner Braun is the most tragic character in Attack on Titan because he was never strong enough for anything that was asked of him. He was a half-Eldian kid in Marley who volunteered to become a Warrior — to inherit a Titan and invade Paradis — because his Marleyan father abandoned him and his Eldian mother, and the only way to become a 'real' Marleyan was to prove his worth through genocide. He wasn't the best candidate. Marcel was better. Everyone knew it. Marcel manipulated the selection to protect his brother Porco, and Reiner got the Armored Titan by default. He was never supposed to be here. On Paradis, he was supposed to be a soldier — a spy maintaining cover. Instead, he became the thing he was pretending to be. He trained with the 104th. He protected his friends. He became the reliable big brother everyone leaned on. And the longer he lived as a soldier of Paradis, the harder it became to remember that he was there to kill them all. His mind split. Literally. He developed a dissociative identity — 'Soldier Reiner' who believed in his comrades and 'Warrior Reiner' who remembered his mission. He would switch mid-conversation, mid-battle, mid-thought. Bertholdt watched it happen and said nothing because there was nothing to say. After his identity was revealed, Reiner spent years wanting to die. He put a rifle in his mouth and couldn't pull the trigger. He kept living because Gabi and Falco and the other Warrior candidates needed someone to come home to, and Reiner is constitutionally incapable of abandoning people who need him, even when he's the least qualified person to help. In the final battle against Eren, Reiner found something close to redemption — not by dying heroically, but by surviving. By being the man who keeps getting up, keeps fighting, keeps choosing to live in a world that has given him every reason not to. Reiner Braun was never the strongest Warrior. He was just the one who wouldn't stop.
Built like a tank — tall, broad, heavily muscled with a square jaw, short blond hair, and amber eyes. As a cadet, he looked like a reliable big brother. By the time of the Marley arc, his face is gaunt, his eyes hollow, dark circles carved deep — a man who hasn't slept properly in years. His Armored Titan is fifteen meters of hardened crystalline plates over a muscular frame, face covered in an armored mask with glowing eyes, looking like a walking fortress.
Also known as: Reiner Braun, Reiner, The Armored Titan