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Mob Psycho 100 Director Yuzuru Tachikawa Shared Cut Reigen-Focused Scene

At Crunchyroll's "Go 100%! Mob Psycho 100 10th Anniversary Celebration," voice actors Setsuo Itō (Mob) and Takahiro Sakurai (Reigen) and director Yuzuru Tachikawa reminisced about the anime and shared anecdotes from the series' original run, including an intimate peek into his storyboarding process.

During a strict no-recording segment, Tachikawa played a six-minute video of his storyboard drafts and corrections. He let the screen capture run while he laid out the boards and made changes for Mob Psycho 100 II episode seven, where Reigen is reading an email from his mom. This provided direct insight into Tachikawa's process, in which he crafted an anime-only scene focused entirely on the emotions weighing heavily on Reigen's mind. After Kirin Jodo publicly humiliated Reigen for failing to exorcise a child, the con-man's mother provided an apology letter for him to read at his upcoming press conference.

Within the chief director's screen recording, he added frames and notes with relative ease. “Back in the analog days, I would have to cut out frames and glue them where I wanted to move them. In the digital era, I can copy and paste, so it has improved productivity quite a bit.” Drawing the structure and grayscale shading of a single background frame in the storyboard template took Tachikawa about 12 seconds in real time. A thirty-second scene can take up two pages of storyboards and up to three minutes of his time to expound the movement in written detail.

“I wanted to record my entire process to show everything that I do, but I work 10 hours a day behind my computer. I don't have enough hard drive space, so I had to record bits and pieces.” These included notes and movement from frame to frame, such as “a Reigen who is fading away,” background music, camera direction, and a short written explanation of what's happening in the scene.

Regarding how he determines who works on the storyboards, Tachikawa shared that Mob Psycho 100's first season wasn't “too popular” in the industry. Because of that, he wasn't able to assign the responsibility to others. However, after its release, he received many enthusiastic requests to work on certain scenes for the second season. “I had a lot more people who volunteered and could assign episodes to people who wanted to work on them.”

Given the anime's flexibility when adapting the manga's story, Tachikawa took liberties with the action while keeping true to ONE's vision. “I wanted to keep the goodness of the original manga as much as possible, so I was as faithful with nuances and camera angles with the scenes that I really loved.” He added dynamism to action sequences, creating a spectacle in moments that didn't exist in the original work.

“When I'm working on emotional aspects of Reigen, it's more of an original addition to the manga.” Whether it's lighting or framing, Tachikawa added elements to heighten his “heavy emotional investment” in Reigen.

During the press conference, a reporter confronted Reigen about his graduation essay. Tachikawa left no stone unturned, adding a note to the video explaining that the bug's movements are likened to those of spirits and ghosts drawn to lamps, mistaking them for moonlight. Although the fake psychic doesn't speak, an intense eight-second scene visually delivered his internal conflict. A black-and-white sketch of him fades as he imagines one of the moths landing on the ground and dying; a scene not featured in the episode.

Unfortunately, not every boarded moment made the final cut in the episode, either due to timing or flow. At the same time, Tachikawa's rare discussion and example of the story process helped the audience understand the scope of production. Had there been more time in the episode and series, the chief director would have included even more of Reigen's perspective.