Apparently in 2015, Matsui was on an NHK show called Switch Interview, where two people from different fields take turns being the āinterviewerā and the āguestā as they learn about the other personās trade. Matsui was paired with architect and designer Oki Sato, the head of nendo.
Thereās a video of it on YouTube but it doesnāt have any audio and itās looped and a bit jumbled, so the episode proper has kind of been scrubbed from the internet.
Matsuiās āofficeā in his apartment complex has a nice view of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government buildings and Shinjuku Park Tower.
What was interesting to me were Matsuiās 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.
Hereās the list; italics are my own comments:
Karasuma - iPhone (black)
Sugino - Android (white case)
Maehara - iPhone (Zebra case)
Karasumaās subordinate (female) - Android (white case)
Karma - iPhone (white case)
Fake Ritsu - iPhone (white)
Terasaka - iPhone (black)
Sugaya - iPhone (white) (I donāt know why heās listed twice and with different colours)
Bitch-sensei - iPad (Kind of out of place here, but thatās 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 Matsuiās original papers have a lot of other scribbles and notes written on them, like screen tone numbers, or Shindouās phone model (iPhone 5) and phone case design which happens to be in the likeness of a baseball:
For the record, Shindouās baseball phone case is seen in chapters 50-51 of the manga, along with Suginoās white phone case. And if you squint, you can tell the latter isnāt using an iPhone either.
The anime didnāt keep most of those little details, though Suginoās 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 Ritsuās transfer.
One of the interesting things about the reference sheets is that Matsui appeared to have scribbled down voice actors beside each of the kidsć¼maybe 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 sheās 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 Miyanoās 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 (?) (Itās quite blurry though so Iām not entirely sure.)
Karasumaās subordinates
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 Matsuiās put out about the students and other characters really shows how much thought he, and Iām 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.