If you did not know, the time has come for fans of My Hero Academia to suit up once more. The show has made a big comeback this spring with its fifth season, and all eyes are on Izuku following the events of season four. With One For All acting unusual, Izuku is slated to face some big challenges in this new season, and that means the anime’s dub cast will have some great material to play with.
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Recently, ComicBook.com got the chance to speak with two of the dub’s stars thanks to Justin Briner (Izuku) and Clifford Chapin (Bakugo). It was there the actors got to talk about everything from Season 5 highlights to pandemic recording and more. Plus, if you’re curious about Briner’s thoughts on Izuku being a mass murderer, we’ve got your covered below.
ComicBook.com: Season 5 is here and obviously, we’re super excited. There are millions of people online who are super excited, but I want to know what both of you are most excited about with My Hero Academia season five so far?
Justin Briner: Oh, gosh. I mean, right off the bat, anytime we come back for a new season feels like such a celebration from the entire group of fans who are excited for this to come back, me included. That’s been great. I know we’re getting some 1-B appearances from a whole other class of heroes, which just blows my mind. I’m excited to see more superpowers. That’s always the coolest thing to me — what new quirks are we rocking this time?
Clifford Chapin: Heck, yeah. I personally am just excited to finally see Bakugo rocking his winter outfit. I’ve seen pictures of that for years at this point, and I thought we were going to see it at the end of the last season. I was mistaken. So I was excited about it a year ago, over a year ago.
Now that it’s finally here, I’m like, “Ha, yay!” I finally get to see this thing. I talk about it all the time, but all of the other kids in Bakugo’s class with very few exceptions have had innovations done to their costumes. They’ve changed something, something about it has been added or removed or tweaked. And Bakugou hasn’t had any sort of thing like that up until this point, his costume has always been consistent. To see him feature a new design if only for a little bit of time, is very exciting because it’s his first time changing the look. I’m eager to see it and see what it brings with it.
Obviously, the Funimation dub for Season 5 will be coming out very shortly. Everything has been crazy with COVID, with the pandemic. We’re well over a year at this point. I wanted to ask both of you, what were some of the challenges that you faced, trying to do production or the dub for this season of My Hero Academia that you never thought you would ever have to deal with?
Chapin: For me, I didn’t have any real means of recording from home set up at all. If I had to record an audition from home, I made the most pathetic pillow fort you could imagine, and just try to reduce some echo for an audition. But it was very few and far between I would do that. If anything else, I would try and do it when we were at the studio or see if somebody would let me borrow a booth for a minute to do an audition.
Once it was like, we were all sent home, I knew we were still recording Season 4 at the time, then I was like, “Wow, we’re going to have to figure out how to record from home here. I’m going to have to do something because I don’t have anything set up.” I ended up investing in setting up a home booth. I’ve kind of always wanted to do one anyway, but I didn’t foresee it as something I had to do, which is why I hadn’t done it. Once it was like, “Well, we’re going to have to be doing stuff from home,” it was time to innovate and invest and try and make something work.
Briner: Yeah, similarly, I always knew I should invest in a home setup. I didn’t anticipate the ‘dot, dot, dot or else.’ It’s definitely been a challenge. If anything, it makes me appreciate the hard work that goes on behind the scenes even more because I am so not qualified to do my own engineering and mixing and all that. So, especially now that we’ve — and it’s super cool, I mean, that the technology is there at all to do this. Now that we’re set up more and some of the kinks have been worked out, it’s gotten smoother, and I’m just so thankful that it’s possible at all.
You know at the end of My Hero Academia Season 4, we had the massive cliffhanger with Izuku having this weird dream hallucination where he seems to have met some of the predecessors. I want to know, Justin, what are you excited about for Izuku to kind of learn more about?
Briner: That’s just it, is that there’s so much mystery surrounding it. Who’s wielded it in the past and their relationship to the rival All for One. So there’s clearly a lot that needs to be discussed because it’s so much bigger than even All Might. I really don’t have theories. I have ridiculous ideas in my head of what it could be and I’ll keep them to myself. I think me and everyone else are just excited for more or any little nugget of information that we can start to theory craft off of.
We have Season 5 coming forward and we’re very excited. They also announced that the movie is happening and Justin, you had the funniest tweet about it. In the trailer, they’re accusing Izuku of committing mass murder. So I wanted to know, first and foremost, do you think he’s guilty?
Briner: Oh, he’s been up to some crazy stuff.
Do you think sweet Cinnamon Roll Izuku could really do that?
Briner: In my mind, in my heart, no, but the journalists, the information, the news is all saying it, so I don’t know what to believe. I truly don’t.
My Hero Academia almost feels bigger than ever, which is strange because it was huge before. Whenever I’d go to Anime Expo or other conventions, Bakugou was everywhere, everywhere there was Aizawa, and now it just feels like all of that energy has been transferred online to Twitter, to Tumblr, to all these places that, in lieu of being able to gather in person, the online community has just exploded. What do you have to say right now to fans who are so excited for season five during this weird uncertain time?
Chapin: I would just say, thank you. For the fans who have been along the way the entire time, and to the fans who have only just discovered it, thank you for coming on and supporting it and being a part of this crazy ride. When this show started five years ago now, we were told, they thought it was going to be a big show, but by that point, our understanding of what a big show was, was completely different than what My Hero Academia has become. It’s like you said, every year, it just feels like it’s bigger than it was. And, that’s just unbelievable and wild to me every single time. So, thank you. Thank you for making My Hero Academia what it is. It’s humbling to be even a small part of it. And I’m so excited to see where it goes.
Briner: Yeah, pretty much exactly the same. It’s crazy and hard to believe, but also super exciting and electric and, to have gotten the good fortune to meet so many people who work on the show here and also overseas is, I think it’s just such testament to all the hard work that goes into making a show like this, and I’m just excited to see it grow even more.
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You can stream the dub of My Hero Academia on Funimation now with Season 5’s new episodes updating weekly.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Megan Peters directly on Twitter.
