The official One Piece website has released a new interview with the voice actors Toru Furuya (Sabo) and Yamaguchi Kappei (Usopp) from the Japanese dub of One Piece.

What follows is an edited translation of the interview posted on the website with Yamaguchi Kappei as interviewer and Toru Furuya the interviewee, enjoy!

Kappei: With “Mystery Man” Sabo now finally making his appearance in the anime, how do you feel?

Furuya: Glad of course! I’ve barely been able to keep his true identity secret until now.

Kappei: Fans have kind of already gotten that “the mystery man is Sabo,” but since he hasn’t revealed his true self in the anime yet, we were told to not say it upfront.

Furuya: Yes, and it looks like Mayumi has been itching to say it because she’s been asking “Am I still not allowed to go out and say it?” for a while now (laughs). But! After this broadcast I’ll [finally] be able to formally go out and say it.

Kappei: Anyway, you’ve become involved with One Piece as [the role of] Sabo, but what do you think of the series?

Furuya: Actually, 14 years ago I appeared once in One Piece as a character called Daddy Masterson, but I can’t really say I’d been keeping up with it all this time though… To be honest, I didn’t know that it was a series that could move you this much until now! So getting involved in the series like this made me re-discover the appeal to One Piece and am now, though a bit late, really into it.

Kappei: This time Sabo[‘s voice actor] was decided through auditions. Furuya-san, are you the type to read ahead for series that are an adaptation of an original work like One Piece?

Furuya: For series that have an original work, I definitely do read ahead.

But when we heard about the audition for Sabo, there was only one week left before we had to come in to record our voices for the audition, so I researched as much as I could in the little time I had.

I read the chapters in the original work where Sabo appeared, and also listened to child Sabo’s voice that Junko Takeuchi did.

Besides that, since he’s the one to carry on Ace’s will after all, I believed I had to see what kind of acting Furukawa-san performed. So I watched Ace’s death scene, and went in to the audition keeping in mind how he did it.

However, because the audition happened after the recording for another series, my voice was a bit worn out so I was at the audition thinking “Wait, why’s my voice not properly coming out?!” But apparently they liked it all the more (laughs). Junko Takeuchi’s voice also had this nice, husky tone, and I was planning on going for low tone myself anyway. What we recorded for the audition were the phrases Sabo says when he makes his appearance when he meets Luffy. And also his attack names like “Dragon’s Claw.”

Kappei: Having you shout out attack names just like that, without preparing for it, that must be tough!

But after going through that audition it was decided that you’d become the voice of Sabo, and with the One Piece anime going on for 15 years, coming in as one of the main cast, how did that feel?

Furuya: A lot of pressure!

Kappei: Really! This might sound a bit rude, but you [still] get that kind of pressure?

Furuya: Of course I do!

I mean, we all go to conventions all over the world, right? And wherever you go, you can see the popularity of One Piece for yourself. And in One Piece you have these three “brothers,” and Sabo’s one of them so you’re getting a lot of attention, from the fans, because they read the original series, they already have this image of his voice…

Kappei: Very true. Well, all I can say is that we (the One Piece voice actors) were all also looking forward to see who was going to become [the voice of] Sabo.

Furuya: After we got the results of the audition, I was told that “Oda-sensei listened to the voice without knowing any of the [contestants’] names and he chose you saying ‘This person, without a doubt.'” Well, when I heard that I thought, “no doubt about it then!” and that I should be confident [in myself].

Kappei: Same here, when we were both in the recording studio and I heard your voice it just made me think that “Oooh! Now that’s Sabo!”

Furuya: I’m really glad to hear that.

Kappei: So, did you create [Sabo’s voice] based on how you thought he should sound without Oda-sensei or the director giving you any instructions on how to do so?

Furuya: At first, yes. I just brought out my voice based on what I had planned, and they told me that there wasn’t anything really wrong with it so.

Kappei: I really thought that first line by Sabo, “It’s been a while, Luffy”, was really well done when I heard it. When you understand the expectation from the viewers, you want to blow them away from the very first line, so you really want to just nail those kind of [important] lines, don’t you?

And Furuya-san, you were able to perform with that pinned down, you just had this aura of having already grasped the role of Sabo.

Furuya: Meeting Luffy again after 12 years, I thought about it as well as I could and well… I thought that Sabo had probably wanted to go show himself to Luffy for a while too… Sabo himself was probably really moved about meeting Luffy again, so much so he wanted to cry, but he also came with the purpose to stand by Luffy, and then there’s also the Ace thing… So I just made myself conscious of those complicated feelings and without actually thinking about the sound or how he should sound like because he’s a cool character, and as such, I just performed like that at the actual recording.

Kappei: It was really, amazing!! Which reminds me, when Sabo first appeared in episode 663, Furuya-san, you were abroad, right?

Furuya: Oh right, I appeared as a guest at Anime Weekend Atlanta in the U.S.A., so I couldn’t watch the broadcast in real time, so as much as I could I asked people on twitter what they thought of it, and if the voice matched what they imagined (laughs) .

Kappei: In Japan people got the “Sabo-Fever!”

And it’s going to pick up even more steam in the next broadcasts!!

Furuya: At long last! I hope you all enjoy Episode 679 “The Gallant Appearance of Revolutionary Army Chief of Staff Sabo” on January 25!

Be sure to check out the official One Piece website frequently, without which we wouldn’t even be able to read these cool interviews! So go to their website and bring them a lot of page views! You can also watch the episode right now on Crunchyroll or One Piece Official.