I Interview Justin Briner and Clifford Chapin About MY HERO ACADEMIA and Season 5 Dub Gets a Release Date
Funimation has revealed that the first episode of the dub for My Hero Academia season 5 will be available on the anime streaming service starting April 10. The season will start off with fans learning a bit more about the aftermath of Endeavor’s fight with High End. All of My Hero Academia is available to stream now on Funimation and I cannot wait to watch the dub of season 5 on Funimation. All of your favorite voice actors return including Justin Briner as Deku, Clifford Chapin as Bakugo, Luci Christian as Ochaco, David Matranga as Todoroki, Zeno Robinson as Hawks, and Patrick Seitz as Endeavor. Speaking of, I had the opportunity recently to interview Briner and Chapin. We talked about the show, how the COVID-19 has impacted their work, and more.
Tommy: Hi Clifford. Hi Justin. How are you guys?
Clifford: Doing all right. How are you?
Tommy: I'm doing okay. Just getting caught up on the day, making sure life's going well. We've got quite a bit to talk about with My Hero, don't we? You guys have season five coming up here soon, the dub of that, I imagine that's been quite a trip. Real quick though, we're going to do a bit of a softball question for you guys. When it comes to My Hero Academia, do either of you read the manga or watch the sub version at all to kind of get ahead of what's going on?
Justin: It sort of comes in waves for me. Like I'll let the manga generate a little bit and then catch up. I'm currently in one of those waiting periods, but I like to keep involved, like up to date, on what's happening. I know it's not the same for everyone, but just me personally, maybe I just can't wait. But also, you know, sort of related I don't watch the subbed episodes beforehand, but we do always reference them when I'm recording. So I do still end up with a pretty good sense of the cast and their dynamic. So yeah, it's, it's still a part of I feel like I get exposed to it.
Tommy: And what about you, Clifford?
Clifford: Conversely I do not read the manga. I wait for it to be in the anime first, but I will, if I have the opportunity, I will watch the subtitled version first. That's kind of varied from year to year. But I will watch the Japanese version first, if it is something I can do mostly because I usually want to know how much I'm going to have to scream in any given episode. So that's usually what I'm watching ahead for is to see how much screaming and yelling I have for the session that I have probably already scheduled.
Tommy: Gotta know which days to really rest that voice, huh?
Clifford: That's right. That's right.
Tommy: That's great. So Justin, if I may, I have not read the manga, how accurate to the manga is the anime?
Justin: I mean, I'm always pleasantly surprised. It seems like every moment that they cover in the mango where I'm like, this is awesome. I can't wait to see it animated when it is animated. It just blows me away. Like I remember as early as the sports festival in season two, that was something early on. I was like, I just can't wait to see how this pans out and sure enough, it was such a highlight of my experience so far. So yeah, pretty much anytime something cool happens. I'm like, Oh, just you wait,
Tommy: That's always great. It's always great reading a manga. And then seeing it actually unfold on a screen where things can actually move. I have loved doing that with other anime and so I imagine it's just as awesome. Because My Hero has some amazing sequences in it. I was just catching up on season four and you've got that whole Endeavor fight against the Nomu at the end. That's just nuts. We've had quite a bit happen in the last year. It's affected a lot of people and a lot of jobs. Here we are doing this via Zoom. How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect your guys's work on My Hero? How has that changed kind of your work? I assume that you guys are recording at home or I've done at least some recording at home, and then maybe found some time to go into a studio. What's it been like for you guys?
Clifford: Well, it completely changed everything, the entire landscape of voiceover and this industry had to adapt or die a year ago. And, you know, when it, when everything happened, when we went into full lockdown now just over a year ago, almost almost a year and a month ago we were still in the process of recording season four. We were just past the episodes where Bakugo and Todoroki were interacting with the young students, the young children. And we were only a little bit past that at that point. And so to stop production, literally mid episode Justin had started recording that episode in-studio and then had to finish it at home. Like, weeks later because everything had to change. We all had to like innovate and get your home space set up and test it and work with this. Does it sound okay? Like, all kinds of different things were put in and tested back then. And so I don't know about Justin as of right now, but I mean, I'm still recording from home. I haven't set foot inside of a a recording booth in and over a year now.
Justin: Yeah, pretty much it was a huge shift to have sort of my work life come knocking on my door. And I'd be like, "well, come on in, let's figure this out." But it's, it is such I think a testament and I'm grateful to the overall voiceover community that they did sort of go out of their way to take care of their own and make things happen as a community to keep these productions running. So I'm just grateful for that. I'm grateful for all the amazing technology that lets us do stuff like this. And I'm especially grateful for the day I can go back to the studio and let the professionals do their work. So yeah. But it's been really nice to see folks surviving in some cases, even thriving in these new conditions. It's just been really interesting.
Tommy: How do you think that going forward, do you think that we're going to see a lot more at home recording for shows with just the occasional studio? Do you think we're going to go full on back to the studio for voice acting?
Justin: I think an ideal lies somewhere in the middle. There's the great equipment available at studios that we'd all love to have access to. But I think this has shown us that the boundaries of what we're able to achieve are greater than we expected. So I think just more, more in the future of everything. Yeah.
Clifford: Yeah. I think ideally we we've sort of been living in an all or nothing kind of situation right now. And I think ideally what will happen is we find a middle ground that that is more apt and advantageous for everyone because in the old days, we would do some remote recording like what we do now, but never, never to the extent. It was always kind of like, "okay, we've got to connect with this other studio. The actor has to go to that studio. The two studios have to be in communication with each other." Now I think about it, I'm like, well, now we have a better situation that if an actor is not available to go to a studio or whatever, for whatever reason, if they have a good enough home setup ideally they could just do it from home and produce the same level of products and quality that we did before. And there's, there's obviously limitations to it. You need, you need your home set up to be at that level. But I do feel like this has exposed to us like just how much is actually possible. And hopefully we continue to see it grow in its own way that this opens up new opportunities for a lot of other people.
Tommy: Sounds great. Getting back into, into My Hero I'm sure it's been kind of weird. I mean, you guys were recording mid season and now you're starting up a whole new season at home it sounds like, but I want to just hone in for a little bit...in the world of My Hero Academia, 80% of people have quirks of some kind. What do you think would be your role in the world of My Hero Academia? I know it would depend slightly on what kind of quirk you had or if you even had a quirk, but what role do you think you would be? Would you be a hero, a villain, a bystander?
Justin: I feel so sure that my own in-universe quirk would be something so esoteric. I just like, it would be hopeless, but I would want it to be something that like compliments what I end up doing is like a job or day to day around the house. So I'd hope it's convenient at least, you know what? This doesn't have to be heroic, but
Clifford: Yeah, I don't know. It's so hard to say and so hard to speculate because for me personally, all I ever wanted to be, when I grew up with somebody who was involved in media. I wanted to be a director. I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to be one of a writer, you know, these sorts of things. It was all I ever wanted. I can't imagine...I cannot imagine an alternate universe version of myself that wanted to do something else. And so if it were based on anything, it would have to be whatever my quirk was. And it just, like Justin says, it's like, I imagine your quirk would have to be something useful. You know, in the world of My Hero Academia, it's so lucrative and popular to want to become a hero, but like, there are a lot of people who aren't heroes. So I, I imagine, I imagine I probably actually wouldn't be on the hero course unless my quirk was just something phenomenal and just so perfectly suited to that.
Tommy: Okay. I believe I have time for about one more question. This is one that I'm sure you guys probably think about this every now and then. But you each play very prominent characters in My Hero Academia. Justin, you played Deku. Clifford, you play Bakugo. They're very different characters. How quickly did each of you connect with your character and what was it about them that helped form that connection?
Justin: Personally, I felt that there's a lot of deco to tap into right from the beginning, even sort of the core three, you meet, him, Bakugo, and All Might are so well fleshed out in those beginning episodes that it was, I could see how to how Deku embodied sort of the spirit of a real kid in these situations. You know, obviously everyone has super powers, everyone's breathing fire and stuff, but there's still a lot of humanity to these characters and in these situations they are acting honestly, I think. So I mean, yeah, there's obviously a lot that's happened to these characters and Deku since then, but early on, I think I had a pretty good idea of where we were starting out for this kid.
Clifford: Yeah. I agree. You know, they are so well fleshed out even from the beginning and Bakugo, especially in the beginning, he's such a bully to poor Deku. I don't fancy that I was a bully as a kid, but I do remember there being kids who were, and just that sort of cockiness that a lot of them carried just in their day to day lives is a lot of what I tried to sort of bring in, in the early episodes. Whatever that was, whatever it was that made those guys think they were so cool back when I was a kid is, is sort of what I tried to bring into it in the beginning. And especially in the earliest phases where all we kind of saw was him, you know trashing Deku's notebook and you know, telling him he's never gonna amount to anything. And very quickly we got to see like more of his, his upbringing and why he is that way. But I think that's sort of how I connected to him is that I was like, maybe Bakugo wasn't the kid that I was growing up, but he was a real kid. He was a kid I knew, you know? And that was sort of where I tried to connect to him and bring him to life from.
Tommy: Well, Clifford, Justin, thank you so much. As we go, any last second teases for season five, I know it's coming out soon. Any last second teases for fans,
Justin: In my opinion, it feels like it just gets better every season. So let's, let's find out.
Clifford: Heck yeah.
Tommy: Thank you both so much for your time today.
Clifford: Thank you, man.
Justin: Of course. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.