Apparently in 2015, Matsui was on an NHK show called Switch Interview, where two people from different fields take turns being the “interviewer” and the “guest” as they learn about the other person’s trade. Matsui was paired with architect and designer Oki Sato, the head of nendo.
There’s a video of it on YouTube but it doesn’t have any audio and it’s looped and a bit jumbled, so the episode proper has kind of been scrubbed from the internet.
Matsui’s “office” in his apartment complex has a nice view of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government buildings and Shinjuku Park Tower.
What was interesting to me were Matsui’s reference sheets. One of many which were stuck around his desk outlined whether characters used Android or iOS phones, no joke. Sato thought it was funny that Maehara in particular had a zebra-striped phone case.
Here’s the list; italics are my own comments:
Karasuma - iPhone (black)
Sugino - Android (white case)
Maehara - iPhone (Zebra case)
Karasuma’s subordinate (female) - Android (white case)
Karma - iPhone (white case)
Fake Ritsu - iPhone (white)
Terasaka - iPhone (black)
Sugaya - iPhone (white) (I don’t know why he’s listed twice and with different colours)
Bitch-sensei - iPad (Kind of out of place here, but that’s what it says.)
And these three only had colours listed beside their names:
He also had character sheets for Class E put up around his work space, laid out in their class seating arrangement:
These character models are found as an extra in one of the volumes too, but Matsui’s original papers have a lot of other scribbles and notes written on them, like screen tone numbers, or Shindou’s phone model (iPhone 5) and phone case design which happens to be in the likeness of a baseball:
For the record, Shindou’s baseball phone case is seen in chapters 50-51 of the manga, along with Sugino’s white phone case. And if you squint, you can tell the latter isn’t using an iPhone either.
The anime didn’t keep most of those little details, though Sugino’s phone still looks like it runs something vaguely similar to Android:
Back to the character model sheets, we actually get a cleaner look at one of them which happens to be the one containing all the kids sitting in the two rows at the back of the class prior to Ritsu’s transfer.
One of the interesting things about the reference sheets is that Matsui appeared to have scribbled down voice actors beside each of the kidsーmaybe he had voices in mind when he created them. Or maybe he just scribbled them down when they greenlit the anime. Other important characters are also listed on the side with VAs beside their names.
This image is a bit sharper.
Karasuma: Nakamura Yuuichi (Funnily enough, Sugita Tomokazu, who is good friends with Nakamura Yuuichi, ended up voicing Karasuma in the TV anime.)
Bitch-sensei: Kawasumi Ayako (Aguri in the TV anime)
Board Chairman (Gakuhou): Sakurai Takahiro
Woman in flashback: Ohara Sayaka (Likely referring to Aguri. This interview aired in early March 2015, right around the time volume 13 was released; the magazine serialization was running somewhere at chapter 129-130 [volume 15], which is the big reveal with Kayano, and the anime was only about seven episodes in, hence why she’s still listed as the woman in flashbacks.)
Terasaka: Konishi Katsuyuki
Karma: Miyano Mamoru (This is hilarious to me in hindsight because Miyano actually voiced Asano in the anime. Also, Matsui actually missed a kanji in Miyano’s name, but what he wrote can still be read the same way.)
Muramatsu: Yoshino Hiroyuki
Chiba: Fukuyama Jun (Korosensei in the TV anime)
Okuda: Kanemoto Hisako (Kurahashi in the TV anime)
Hara: Inoue Marina (?) (It’s quite blurry though so I’m not entirely sure.)
Woman (Sonokawa): Fujimura Ayumi
Ryuuki (the leader of the delinquents who abducted Kayano and Kanzaki on the school trip) was also listed in the bottom right hand corner, but no VA was attached to him.
Lots of random information. To say nothing of the phones (long live Sugino and Sonokawa, the only Android users on that list), all the supplementary material Matsui’s put out about the students and other characters really shows how much thought he, and I’m sure a lot of other authors as well, put into their characters.
Maybe in some strange parallel universe, they got Kamina as Terasaka and Jotaro as Korosensei instead.