Interview with Tachikawa Yuzuru (director) and Kameda Yoshimichi (character designer) from PASH! Illustration File 2017

-----Even after ending, Mob Psycho 100's popularity has yet to fade out. Please tell us about the charm of this work.

Tachikawa: Mob Psycho 100 is a story that's filled to the brim with all kinds of elements, with a focus on psychic powers, but its biggest charm point to me is definitely how each of its characters are so unique.

Kameda: There's a lot of characters that leave a big impression on you, even when they don't do much.

T: I was reminded of how easy it was for me to write the characters interacting when I was making scripts for the recent event ("Mob Psycho 100 - Assembly of the Psycho Helmet Cult - Special Event") held on January 29. The script for the anime directly follows the lines in ONE-san's manga, but the script for the event was a completely original product, so I ended up being the one to write for it. Even when writing the story from scratch, I found it easy to imagine how each character would reply to one another.

K: In my case, since none of the main characters are very flashy in how they dress, I spent a lot of time worrying about what poses would best express their personalities. But as I continued to draw official material for the series, I somehow developed a sense of how each character should be.

T: Do you think you've got a good grasp on the characters' charms now?

K: Yes. Now that all the episodes have aired, I finally feel like I could express everything about them that I wanted to express.

-----Tell us your thoughts about this amusement park piece that was drawn specifically for this magazine.

T: I've always entertained the scenario of having Mob Psycho 100 characters go to an amusement park, so I'm quite fond of this piece. They look like they're having fun.

K: There wasn't much room for a peaceful scene like this in the anime, after all.

T: We would've liked to put an episode like in the anime if we had the chance to.

K: But Reigen and Ritsu-kun aren't on very good terms, so if we did something like this in the anime, I feel like the air around them would be really tense (laughs).

T: (Laughing) Would it? But after the 7th Branch arc, Ritsu should be seeing Reigen in a bit of a different light, so I don't think it'd be as bad as it was in the beginning.

-----We're quite pleased to hear that so much detail and thought went into this!

K: Turning the horses on the merry-go-round into evil spirits was the idea of our art director, Kouno [Ryou]-san. When I first saw them, I wondered, "Do Matsuo and the other Claw members manage this park?" (Laughs)

T: (Laughs). There's that mechanical cat in the corner of the image, too - is that the same cat that Tsubomi has a charm of on her bag?

K: That's right. Sitting on top of it are Mezato and Tome-san -- our key animator Yoshihara [Takuya]-kun added them in as a bonus (laughs).

-----We thought it was rare to see the female characters in an official piece like this. Out of all the pieces that have been published in PASH!, is there one that left a deep impression on you?

T: Probably the one published in the August 2016 edition with Mob, Reigen, and Ritsu in the alleyway. It took us a long time to figure out what colors should go on each of their suits.

K: That piece was made before we started airing, so I didn't have a strong grasp on the characters yet, and had a hard time figuring out what would work best on them. I think this was the first "eccentric" type of material that we officially put out -- "eccentric" in that Mob-kun and the others weren't wearing their usual outfits.

T: Maybe that's why it left such a deep impression? The three of them look like they belong to the mafia (laughs). I'm also personally fond of the piece in the December 2016 issue, with the ramen shop. We didn't get many opportunities to show Mob and Reigen eating ramen together, so I was pretty happy with this.

K: The only time we got to do that was with the vase story in episode 7, where they went to eat tsukemen. Between this amusement park piece and the piece from the February 2017 issue of PASH!, I feel like security guard Ekubo's been getting a lot of spotlight (laughs).

T: Lately, we've been getting more orders* for security guard Ekubo than his regular green version (laughs). Even before his introduction in episode 9, we knew he was fairly popular among fans, so we had an idea that this would happen, but...

K: After episode 9 aired, I was really surprised that "security guard Ekubo" made its way into Twitter's trends. But either way, I'm glad that we're still receiving requests from all kinds of media outlets for official material, even after the broadcast finished.

T: We're very thankful.

-----When you were working on producing the anime, did you receive any specific requests from ONE-sensei?

K: At first, we talked about bringing the show in a "cool direction." At the time, ONE-sensei's other work, One-Punch Man, was also in the middle of production. I wondered if he wanted to bring some of the coolness of One-Punch Man's flavorful art style and flashy action scenes into Mob Psycho 100, too.

T: But he was also willing to listen to what the people involved with the production wanted to do with the project. ONE-san is the kind of person that'd get happy when we'd say, "We want to make the work look cool in this way," or "We want to keep it close to the original." In the end, since the entire anime staff wanted to make the most of the manga's original charm, we made sure to have ONE-san check over all our character designs and make slight changes to them.

K: Most of those changes was me making the jawlines a little rounder. Also, I'm glad that we made Reigen's tie be pink. It's black in the manga, but I wanted to bring out some of Reigen's shadiness. So we narrowed down our tie color choices to pink, blue, and purple with the anime staff members, and consulted ONE-sensei about them.

-----And in the end, his tie became pink.

K: Right. I think the first thing I consulted ONE-sensei about was the color of Reigen's tie. I talked with him about that, and the exact type of blue that should go on the girls' uniforms. I wanted to make them a bright blue like Usagi's uniform in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, but that blue didn't really suit Tome-san well (laughs).

T: It worked fine on Mezato and Tsubomi, but it didn't look good on Tome at all (laughs).

K: It looked really good on Mezato, since her hair is a bright color, too! So to make it fit on Tome, we adjusted the blue to be a little darker, and went to get ONE-sensei's opinion in it...

T: Right, right. And he said, "Isn't it a little too blue?"

K: So we toned the blues back a little bit.

-----Are there any other conversations you had with ONE-sensei that stood out to you?

T: This doesn't have much to do with the anime production, but I bumped into ONE-san at last year's end-of-the-year party, and we started talking about what we start with when making a new story. For me, I make the story after I decide on exactly what themes I want to depict, and insert characters into that world afterwards. But ONE-san is the complete opposite. He starts off by making the characters.

K: Apparently, the first character he made for Mob Psycho 100 was Reigen.

T: Reigen used to be the protagonist. After he made the "self-proclaimed psychic" character, he made "a boy that's a real esper, but doesn't really want to use his powers" to serve as a contrast to that character.

K: So it's like Mob-kun was made to bring out the best of Reigen's personality.

T: Since the first thing he thinks about are the qualities of each character, it makes sense that there are so many charming characters in ONE-san's works. According to ONE-san, once he has a really charming character in place, the story naturally builds itself around that character. Also, I asked him if he based any of the characters of Mob Psycho 100 on people he knew, but he said not in particular.

-----Then, tell us about the things you had to pay attention to or found difficult working with in both the character designs and the actual animation.

K: I based the character designs off of the art in volumes 9 and 10 of the manga, but when using those designs to tell stories from the first volume of the manga, I wanted to bring each character's facial expressions and general atmosphere closer to how they were in volume 1. I felt like we wouldn't be able to bring out this work's unique atmosphere if we didn't try to preserve the atmosphere of the first two volumes. So I put a lot of my efforts into bringing as much of the manga's charm as I could onto the screen.

T: With the character designs, the only ones that we kept asking ONE-san about were Mob and Reigen's, weren't they?

K: Tsubomi-chan too, I think.

-----Regarding the two mains, Mob and Reigen - exactly what about them did you talk to ONE-sensei about?

K: We talked about the color of Reigen's tie, as I mentioned earlier, and about how much "cooler" we could make Mob and Reigen. The looks of all the other characters depend on how Mob-kun and Reigen feel. I can get a good grasp of how much cooler I can make those characters based on them. For instance, Ritsu shares a lot of facial features with Mob-kun, but he still has to look cooler than him. So when drawing Mob-kun, I had to be careful not to make him stand out too much.

T: By the way, Kameda-san, when you draw characters, what part of the character do you start from? ONE-san said that he usually starts from the nose...

K: I've heard that, too. I don't think I could start from the nose... I usually sketch out the shape of the face first. But once when I saw ONE-sensei drawing on an autograph board, he started with the hand!! When I saw that, I figured that he must immediately have an image of what he's about to draw in his head. What do you start from, Tachikawa-san?

T: I start with the shape of the face first, too.

K: On the topic of faces, in Mob Psycho 100, the characters' faces are a lot rounder than ones from other works. Most other characters are drawn with large foreheads or sharper chins, but Mob-kun and the others don't have as much variety in the shape of their faces. I try to pay attention to that when drawing them.

-----They do seem to be fairly round-looking.

K: Another thing that I personally paid close attention to were the ears. The antitragus (part of ear above the earlobe) on the ears that ONE-sensei draws stand out more than in your average design. I didn't specifically tell the other animators to do this, but I myself made sure to imitate the way ONE-sensei draws ears. I've gotten so used to it that now I want to draw that shape in all my other works (laugh).

-----We've asked you two a lot about the characters so far. Which characters would you call your favorite?

T: Reigen for me. I like how human he is. My favorite Reigen is in volume 9 of the manga, so I'm a little sad that we couldn't get that far in this season of the anime...

K: Some of Reigen's best moments come after what we could put into season 1, after all. My favorite is Mezato. In my opinion, she's way cuter than Tsubomi-chan!

-----By February 22nd, all of the Blu-rays and DVDs for the series will have been released. Out of all twelve episodes, which episodes would you like viewers to pay special attention to?

K: I would say episode 8. That episode marked off a chapter in Mob-kun and Ritsu-kun's relationship, so we put a lot of focus into the expressions in that episode. Also, we put a lot of effort into episode 1 of the series, because that was where we had to show off what Mob Psycho 100 is all about. Between the normal everyday scenes and the comedic scenes, Mob-kun's facial expression doesn't change a lot, so we warped Reigen's face a lot to make up for it. In the end, that made Reigen look like he was carrying a comedy routine all on his own (laughs). He became a lot more animated than his manga counterpart.

T: I mean, Mob's not that expressive, so he had to be. I think I'd have to go with episode 11. There's the part where Mob's emotions begin to steer out of control and Reigen slaps him on the cheeks, saying, "When things go south, it's okay to run away!" After that, we enter a scene showing Mob and Reigen's first meeting. I actually planned to put this scene in from the very beginning. One of the reasons behind that was because I wanted to focus on developing the story with Mob and Reigen at its center. But the chief reason was because I felt that without it, we wouldn't be able to properly show that Mob decided it was "okay to run away" because Reigen told him that he'd "show [him] how to use [his] powers." I'm glad that it worked so well in the episode. In the manga, that entire scene takes place in a long windowless corridor, but for the sake of dramatization, we destroyed the building in the anime and turned it into an open space where you could see the sky and the moon.

-----There were several other scenes in the anime besides the one about Mob and Reigen's meeting that came from later volumes.

T: The meeting scene comes from volume 9. We wanted to do the "Fake Vase" omake story from volume 2, too, so we added that to episode 7.

K: There was also the "Terrifying Haunted Spot" omake manga from volume 1 that we put into the second half of episode 1, and the all-girls school infiltration chapter from volume 7 that we brought into episode 2.

T: We wanted each episode to have its own little incident to wrap up, and we also wanted to fit some exorcism stories in because they were fun.

K: But starting from episode 3, Ekubo showed up...

T: And in episode 4, Teru gets introduced, so the story kept moving along on its own...

K: In the end, we could only give the first two episodes their own little stories to wrap up. But since they both dealt with exorcisms, I think they did a good job in showing Mob-kun and Reigen's relations to each other and their strength as a combo.

-----Finally, please leave a message for our readers.

K: I'm extremely happy that this work is still receiving this much support, even after the broadcast ended. Personally, I believe Mob Psycho 100 has so much more to offer beyond the 7th Branch arc that we could show in this season. With your continued support, I think we'd be able do a second season, so we would greatly appreciate your help.

T: Mob Psycho 100 is a work that anyone can enjoy over and over again, so I encourage you to rewatch it. I'd also be happy if you enjoyed the specials in the Blu-ray and DVDs, along with the drama CD. I would be glad to continue the story past season 1 as well, so please take good care of us.

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