Adaptation of the manga web series by One, Psycho mob 100 It is a psychological shonen anime featuring an entertaining cast of characters, a unique art style, and endless creative applications of psychic abilities. The story follows Shigeo Kageyama, nicknamed Mob, a young boy who suppresses both his latent psychic powers and his emotions, struggles to connect with those around him and is generally a freak show, despite being authentic. Mob works with self-proclaimed broker Arataka Reigen, a con artist with no psychic powers of his own. These are two characters among many, and they all end up being very entertaining, especially the ones with psychic powers who manage to raise Mob’s internal emotional meter to 100%, after which he unleashes his true power.
At this year’s Anime Expo, we had the pleasure of speaking with some of the people who make anime possible. This included Yuzuru Tachikawa, the director Psycho mob 100Setsu Ito, the Japanese voice of Mob, and Takahiro Sakurai, the Japanese voice of Reigen.
Portions of this interview have been lightly edited for clarity. This interview was conducted with the assistance of a translator.
Q: The main characters from the creator ONE are often depicted in a plain style. When directing/voicing the anime, how did you manage to balance keeping that simple element while also creating opportunities for Mob to shine?
Tachikawa-san: When I read the original manga, I couldn’t even imagine the action – because of course there is no action in the manga. However, since Mob and Reigen are the two heroes, I wanted to make them the same. However, at the same time, Reigen, is a con artist. It’s a little more dynamic. Then in the beginning, Mob is just a middle school student. So it would have been a little more stable. In that sense, Reigen ends up being a little more dynamic and Mob a little more static.
This-san: For us as voice actors, we’re given a script and some images to work with, and we have to get rid of them. And of course if there is movement or action, there may be more movement in the sound. If not, there is a little less. For Mob, I think his nervousness level or stress level was something I had to take into consideration as well to reflect that in the sound I did. And I think we’ve done a very good job of that. However, Mob – he doesn’t actually talk much. So there were actually more instances where I experimented or added things or said things that I was told were not necessary at all.
Sakurai-san: This goes along with what the director was saying, but I wanted to make sure I created a contrast with the simplicity of Mob. And then, my character is a con artist. So I wanted to be a little more extreme and have some excesses in the way I did the sound, but without getting to the point where it would be annoying. I still want the character to be attractive and cool. So that was what I focused on.
Q: Tachikawa-san, what was the process you went through to capture exactly the right atmosphere from the original source material? How did you iterate and end up where the anime did?
Tachikawa-san: At first when I read the manga, I noticed that the drawing style was very distinct. It was very unique. We were faced with whether to try to make anime this way or whether to try to imitate what was happening in other popular anime around that time. So we did some experimentation, some research about what we would do and where we would go with that, between those two extremes.
And actually, in the beginning, we started out by drawing Mob as a pretty boy, as a really cool-looking guy. And I still can’t forget how uncomfortable it was and how weird it was to have a mob like that. So we ended up saying, “Okay, look, we’re going to make him exactly the same. His character — not pretty or anything like that, but making it as close to (the original) as possible.” We do the same thing with visual style. We did some consultation with the character designer, and we ended up trying to get as close to the original manga graphic style as possible. We also know that this made it interesting. It was more fun for us to find a design where we could do that as well.
Q: Itou-san, Mob, suppresses his emotions, as his emotional outbursts are linked to a specific emotion. In moments when you are tasked with showing your emotions 100%, what approach will you take?
This-san: Honestly, I was going to try it – it was a process of experimenting and trying what I thought would work and seeing what people told me. I’ll try something. I’ll experiment a little bit and then maybe go and get some direction from the director who’ll say, “Why don’t you do this? Why do you do that?” So there’s some feedback there. And in that process I was just looking at, well, what are they going to accept? What will they tell me? No, don’t do this. Yes do that. Don’t do that. It’s been a process of figuring it out and learning. There was a lot of learning.
Tachikawa-san: Well, I mean, for example, when you had to act out the anger 100% and put that in your voice, did you remember something that you were angry about at home or something?
This-san: No, I didn’t actually relate it to my home life or my personal life that much. I really didn’t draw much from my own experience. But what I drew a lot were the cartoons I watched and other shows and plays I watched for example. So I’m very inspired by these things, but not from my personal experience.
We would like to thank Yuzuru Tachikawa, Setsu Ito and Takahiro Sakurai for taking the time to talk with us about Psycho mob 100 And Crunchyroll to coordinate the interview. You can check Psycho mob 100 Anime On Crunchyroll.
© ONE,Shogakukan/MobPsycho100 Project 2016