This year marks the tenth anniversary of Studio Bones’ anime adaptation ONEsupernatural coming of age series, Mob Psycho 100. And to celebrate the occasion, the creators who brought anime to life visited Anime Expo to reminisce about humble beginnings for the series in 2016 and his brooding finale in 2023.
Of all the anime I’ve covered at Anime Expo this year, I’m particularly partial to Mob Psycho 100. In fact, in mine Kotaku’s list of the best anime of the decade, Mob Psycho 100 slapped at the top of the leaderboard as my absolute favorite show. And I’m not alone in this. The series has a rich richness own memes. Key among them is teacher Reigen Arataka’s claim to fame Sexyman Tumblr, baptized Survive creator Toby Fox Sans x Mob Psycho fanfics. And who can forget The crowd’s bland expressions graced the headlines of American newspapers in the funniest way imaginable.?
Mob Psycho 100 it’s a show that packs a punch, not just for the neurodivergent among us, but as a masterpiece with lush sakuga and resonating themes of coming into your own. It’s also pretty damn funny, as you’d expect from a wonderfully absurdist mind One Punch Man.
Likewise, it was a great honor to celebrate the anime’s 10th anniversary at Anime Expo by speaking with the director Yuzuru TachikawaShigeo “The Crowd” Kageyama is an actor This is Setsuoand actor Reigen Arataka Takahiro Sakurai about what the series meant to them ten years later.
Isaiah Colbert, io9: This year marks 10 years Mob Psycho 100. Looking back, what does reaching this milestone mean to each of you, and when did you first realize you were working on a series that would leave such a lasting impact on the anime community?
Yuzuru Tachikawa: The difference between my understanding of it now and what it was before is a huge difference. When we originally did the anime adaptation, we started with a promotional video—we would call it a PV. This was a short video to show it to fans of the original manga and potential future fans so we could find creators to work on it with us.
But the reaction, and so I’m like, OK, people are going to see this and say, Oh yeah, I want to work on that. I want to be a part of it. I want to be a collaborator on this project.” But actually, when we posted the promotional video, a lot of people saw it and said, “Oh, that looks complicated. Oh, it looks difficult, and I don’t think I want to work on it because it looks too difficult.” So we had a hard time finding a lot of staff to work on it in the beginning because of that.
After we finished the first season, we had some time in between to grow and the merch was launched, then we got picked up by different magazines. By the time we got to season two, there were more people saying, “Oh yeah, I want to work on that.” At that time, it was much easier to get employees to work on this project. And then I realized that the reach of it was going to be pretty big because we were able to get people involved.
It’s been ten years. New products appear every month. And now we are called to come to speak at a debate in the United States. I think about it every day, but it wasn’t always like that.
Setsuo is: For me personally, this title was the first of many things. So far, I haven’t worked on many things that I’ve been recognized for as a voice actor. But on the other hand, if you asked me, when I realized it had a big impact, it was kind of on the way. At some point I just knew. But the moment I realized it was basically when someone said, “Whoa, are you the voice of the mob?” It was the first time for me. Up until this point, I had not been a voice for anyone that anyone would recognize. But I think it’s great that I was able to be. I was grateful to be able to be a part of something that had such an impact.
If I had not been chosen for this role, I think I would have given up voice acting. After all these years for me, Mob Psycho 100 it’s also the title that allowed me to continue being a voice actor. It was a continuation for me and I appreciate it.
Takahiro Sakurai: For me, I wanted people to take away from it what I got from it. What I mean by that is that I came to this rank after a long career. Of course I liked the visual aspect and the design. But there were also words and lines of the characters that influenced me, impressed me in a different way. I felt this was the title for me. I felt this was the story for me. I felt it reflected my own emotions in a way. I felt like it represented me and said something I couldn’t put into words.
So I wanted other people to take that away from it as well. Because I worked on this title, because I was a part of it, other people can see it and feel the same way. Feel, “Wow, that’s saying something. That’s telling me about me,” or “I identify with that,” in a way that maybe they wouldn’t if I wasn’t on it.
But at the panel on stage today, I was reminded of the impact of this story. The story itself of being the original author of the manga, ONE—his work is fantastic. And that we had a fantastic director working on this anime. I was reminded of all this at the panel today on stage.
Mob Psycho 100 is streaming on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Netflix.
io9 is at Anime Expo 2026. We’ll be bringing you news on all the biggest panels, screenings and announcements, as well as exclusive one-on-one interviews with the people behind some of the best and most popular anime. You can check out all of io9’s Anime Expo coverage here.
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