Interview With Clifford Chapin

Read The Interview, Damn Nerd!

With pivotal roles in some of modern anime’s most acclaimed series, as well as a solid resume directing a myriad of genre-crossing projects, Clifford Chapin has secured himself as one of the voice acting industry’s greatest talents. He did bring the likes of the Keijo dub to the screen and serves as the voice of everyone’s favorite explosives expert in My Hero Academia. What more do you need?

Thankfully, amidst working on such hits as Attack on Titan and Darling in the Franxx, Mr Chapin was more than happy to chat with us about his anime inspirations, iconic roles as well as his methodology when it comes to tackling different shows.

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to let us probe your brain! 

“Thank you for probing! A sentence I never thought I would say, but I am happy to be here!”

Before we start off with any of your roles, can you take us back to the time where you found yourself first falling in love with anime? Was it a childhood passion or to did you fall into it through acting?

“Oh, man. We’re going pretty far back, then. I was always a big fan of shows growing up in the early 90’s. I was an avid fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers pretty much from the moment that I could speak (Transformers obviously having a lot of Japanese heritage on its own), and then Power Rangers debuted and I was completely hooked on that as well. I think the action and very apparent Japanese influences those series had really primed me for anime, which I fell into at the age of 8 when the Canadian dubs of Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon were airing on morning television. I can remember the station that aired them never showed the episodes in order, so one day Goku would be running on Snake Way, then the next Gohan would be in the woods with the orphaned kids, then Bulma would be fighting giant crabs on Namek, then Nappa would be destroying planes on earth, and I never had ANY idea what was going on, but it was really captivating and I wanted to know more. And then a few years later Pokémon hit the airwaves and from that point forward I had a really clear understanding of what anime was and a real affection for it.”

Going back to one of your first performances in Good Luck Girl, was there a moment while playing Tsuwabuki where you thought “I have fallen down the anime rabbit hole and am never getting out.”

“Hahaha, no, actually I was afraid that I was going to get thrown out of that hole. Tsuwabuki was the first thing I had ever recorded with Funimation after Chris Sabat recommended me to Joel McDonald. Joel called me in for an audition without ever hearing me on anything, and I thought I bombed it entirely. But then I got a message asking me to come back in and do a second (but this time paid) audition for Tsuwabuki specifically. So Joel must have liked what he heard enough that he was willing to really try me out, but he made it very clear that I wasn’t cast just yet. Then, about an hour into the second audition, I remember Joel giving me a piece of direction and saying, “Okay! On this second take I want you to put a little bit-oh, you got the part- a little bit-“ and then it’s all a blank after that because I was so excited that I had managed to actually snag a role. It wasn’t until a little while after we recorded the first season of Attack on Titan that I actually felt maybe I had any sort of staying power in anime.”

Despite his atrocities, Psycho-Pass’ Kamui was nonetheless captivating in his mission to become an agent of chaos. Was there ever a point that you found yourself drawn in by his sickly charm?

“Yes, and very early on! After Zach Bolton had me come in and voice Kamui for the first episode of Psycho-Pass 2, with the very little bit of information we had on the character at the time, I went back home and started watching the first season to get a sense of the show’s tone and world. I can remember distinctly that there was a point that I thought, “Akane SHOULD agree with me!…maybe I shouldn’t watch this show from the viewpoint of my character…” Haha! But that said, I always thought Kamui was an incredibly captivating character, and immensely righteous. Zach and I still, to this day, sometimes discuss whether or not Kamui was really a “bad guy.” I think we can all agree that he was by no means a “good guy” and he did horrible, terrible things, but he set out to expose a flaw and a failing of their society, and it changed because of him.  Which, when you consider that, it also sorta paints him as a (twisted) hero as well. Kamui was a very complex character and remains one of my favorites to this day.”

What would you rather? Be able to land one hell of a fastball like Assassination Classroom’s Sugino or be the ultimate robot girl puppeteer like Raishin in Unbreakable Machine-Doll?

“Probably the fastball. I’m sure some readers are going to cry foul (ba-dum-tsss), but Yaya always seemed like quite the handful.”

How did it feel to play one of the new generations of Super Saiyan in Dragon Ball Super? Most of us would give their left pinkie to earn Vegeta’s respect!

“It was unreal when I got called in for Cabba. Heck, even now when I get called in for him in the anime or a new game appearance, it feels unreal. As I mentioned before, DBZ was one of the gateway anime for me, and Sabat was the one who recommended me to Funimation, starting my entire anime career. Prior to Cabba, I had recorded a bunch of bit parts throughout Dragon Ball Z Kai: The Final Chapters, and I thought “Well, I got into Dragon Ball. I loved it as a kid and now I’m a part of it. And there is no more Dragon Ball after Kai, so this is as good as it’s ever going to be.” But then we did the first XenoVerse game, and I was called in to be one of the custom character voices, and I was like, “wait, so I can play as myself as the main character in a Dragon Ball video game, AND I can become a Super Saiyan? Well, now it DEFINITELY can’t get any better than this!” But then a few months after we recorded the new content for XenoVerse 2, I was called in to play Cabba for the DLC and I was absolutely over the moon about it. To be the first new (and canon) Super Saiyan in a series that I had loved for two decades at that point was something I never expected. And strangely enough, he shares a relationship with Vegeta that I somewhat parallel to myself with Sabat. Sometimes art really does imitate life!”

Prison School taught us many things, such as the power of bromance and to be fearful of high schoolgirls named Hana. What did this masterfully woven series teach you as a human being?

“Oh, god, so much. Hahaha Prison School was a wild ride that a lot of us in the cast were rather reluctant to be a part of, honestly, and then it turned out to be one of the funniest shows I have ever had the pleasure of being involved with. We laughed so thoroughly while working on that show. It was so disgusting, and yet wildly endearing. So if there was any lesson that series really taught me in life, it was the ever constant reminder of not judging a book by its cover. Haha!”

Shingo had no shortage of misadventures, but which moment had you nearly cracking up in the recording booth?

“Hmm… maybe the shower scene where Shingo “catches” Kiyoshi and Gakuto. I remember that one being really funny. I also really liked the scenes where Shingo was being manipulated by Meiko. I recorded a lot of bombs (joke takes we do to screw up other actors when they come in to record after us), and pretty much every scene Whitney Rodgers had in those episodes was a minefield. We actually have a cast-only blooper reel from Prison School that is a little bit of everyone, and then a whole lot of me going way, WAY off script to mess everyone else up.”

As far as modern bad boys go, Bakugo has simultaneously excelled at the stereotype while also defying it completely. What was it like seeing him mature from you’re a typical bully to someone so painfully relatable?

“Bakugo is, probably predictably, one of my favorite roles I have the privilege of voicing. He has so much pride and growth to go through, and as an actor, that’s almost all you could ever want in a role. He starts off so painfully unlikeable, and it’s so necessary for his character. Because you have to hate him at first. But as the series goes on, not only does the audience see how flawed he is as a character, but Bakugo himself sees it. What’s particularly interesting for me is, now when I see older episodes of My Hero Academia, I hear how much my portrayal of Bakugo has changed from the beginning. It was almost subconscious, that as Bakugo has developed, and become more internal with his true feelings, my voice became harsher, and my reads became more closed off to the other characters. And late into the second season, and now into the third, Bakugo has had to open up to others, He’s reached breaking points we couldn’t have foreseen two years ago. So growing with Bakugo has been an incredible experience. Honestly, I feel like it has helped me work through a lot of my own personal issues. Haha!”

Did you ever expect My Hero Academia’s resident firecracker to reach such heights with fans? Do you get a lot of “DIE!” requests?

“No, but I’m glad he did! I joke with everyone about Bakugo being the most popular character constantly. Haha !Typically, fans ask me to call them a “damn nerd,” which I’m more than happy to do!”

 Moving on to your stellar work as a director, what’s your approach to tacking shows as contrasting as Brother’s Conflict and Konohana Kitan? Would you say there’s a different mindset depending on the genre or it all amounts to just another day at the office?

“There is absolutely a different mindset. Every show has its own sound, and recognizing that sound is something I try to be very diligent about as an ADR Direcctor. Brothers Conflict was a series that Colleen Clinkenbeard directed first, and I came on to handle the OVAs. That show was a bit more stoic, and I had to be familiar with the performances Colleen established, but the OVAs were a little more out there and fun. So I wanted to really push the comedy as far as I could without breaking the sense of the world the series had established. Konohana Kitan, on the other hand, things are really whimsical and otherworldly. So we could play with voices and reads. If something didn’t exactly sound human or realistic, good! That benefited the world. But then we think about something like Genocidal Organ, which is a very realistic anime film (and not for kids!), and the tone of that world is very intimate, very “real.” With that one, I wanted the product to sound not like you were watching anime (which tends to be very big and broad in its deliveries), but instead as if you were watching a live action film. So there is one-hundred percent a different mindset to each and every show I take on. Sometimes even from episode to episode!”

Was it a herculean task or a dream come true to be the resident puppet-master on a modern shounen epic like Darling in the Franxx?

“Truly both! I knew going into Darling in the Franxx that it was going to be special to me, if not to everyone else, so I wanted to assemble a cast that was also going to see how special it was. At the time, Bryson Baugus hadn’t recorded anything with Funimation (though he’d been tearing it up at Sentai Filmworks for a while), so I knew I wanted to get him on board. Tia Ballard was someone I had worked with a bunch in the past but I had never heard her do anything like Zero Two, and I wanted to push her. Ryan Reynolds (not that one) was another person I had worked with a bunch, but never on very large roles, and I wanted to give her something she could really sink her teeth into. And so on. Everyone I put into the show was very calculated, no matter how big or small the role was solely because I wanted to be absolutely positive every actor was going to crush the performance they had ahead of them.

I poured a lot of myself into Darling in the Franxx, too. Every week, I would scrutinize the adapted script the writers made to make sure it was as true to the Japanese intention as it could possibly be while still sounding good when heard by an English ear. Sometimes this took as little as four hours of extra work, sometimes as much as sixteen. I thought a lot about the dubs people talk about all the time, like Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and Yu Yu Hakusho to name a few, and what it was that they brought to the table; what made those shows resonate and withstand the test of time as they have. And I wanted to deliver that same level of quality. Whether or not I actually managed to succeed in this manner obviously remains to be seen, but I do hope the series and the work we did with it is talked about for years to come. I am immensely proud of the cast and crew I had working on that series, and I don’t know that I could possibly be happier with the end result. That said, looking back, I don’t know if working on the show was really herculean or if I just made it so, but it absolutely was a dream come true for me.”

Recovery of an MMO Junkie stands as one of the most unorthodox yet heartwarning anime romances in recent memory. What was the draw for you in regards to Moriko’s mid-life meltdown?

“That it was so relatable. First and foremost, it was such a breath of fresh air to have a romance anime that was about adults rather than high schoolers. I can remember dating in high school, and yeah, it’s awkward, and weird, and you have all these feelings, but the “high school sweetheart” love story doesn’t always work out in the end in real life. But not a lot of animated media goes out of its way to depict a good love story for adults. Once you look past that element, the series has so much going on with it beneath the surface. Here’s a woman struggling with finding herself. It’s clear that she has some pretty intense social anxiety, and she’s all but given up on self-care. We are literally seeing Moriko at the worst point in her life as she thinks she has nothing to offer to anyone. But then, steadily throughout the series, thanks to the kindness of the people she meets in her MMO and in real life, she starts to come out of her shell. She may not in the course of the series ever see that she does have things to offer others, but she realizes that she wants to at least try to give others what she can. I think everyone struggles with those feelings from time to time no matter how confident a person is, so to see a story about a person coming out of their self-inflicted seclusion was really inspiring.”

And of course, by far the crowning achievement of your entire career; Keijo. How did you manage to construct such an intricate, breath-taking and downright masterful project? Some of us still tear up when we think of the introduction to Miss Kobayakawa powerfully potent posterior. 

“Ah, yes, Keijo. Truly a masterpiece. Seldom few anime can elevate themselves beyond the limitations of their animated boundaries with such form and dignity as Keijo did to make an entire world say, ”…what the heck am I watching?” hahaha Keijo was pretty much a never-ending barrel of laughs. We had so much fun working on that show, It got pretty daunting along the way just because the show was so girl-heavy, and I wanted to avoid casting actresses in multiple roles as much as I could, but it never stopped being hysterical. And it inspired a real life Keijo league! I can’t remember now what country it is that started it, but I can only imagine that in a few years’ time, we’ll be seeing Keijo in the Olympics. Just you wait!”

Cliff, thank you so much for your time! If fans want to message you and tell you how much they want Bakugo to make their faces explode, where can they find you?

“Thank you so much for having me! The easiest place to find me is on Twitter, @CliffordChapin. That’s where I’m most active and tend to call people “nerds” the most.”

And finally, as an honorary member of WatchMojo, if you could choose a subject for a top ten list, what would it be?

“Oooh, toughie. I’m a big comic book fan, so maybe something like “Top 10 Comic Book Storyline Adaptations” where all the times major comic book stories were adapted to other media well are counted down. Such as Secret Wars in the 90’s Animated Spider-Man series. A “Top 10 Moments of Bakugo Rage” would also be good. I would definitely watch that!”