My Hero Academia Voice Actor Robbie Daymond Approaches Heroes And Villains With The Same Complexity
"My Hero Academia" is a series that was popular before it even aired on TV. Based on the highly successful manga by "My Hero Academia's" creator Kohei Horikoshi, the series combines the high-flying action of superhero stories with the impressive animation styles of Bones — the popular anime studio behind "Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood." One of the biggest indicators that an anime has made it big is when it lands its first movie.
For "My Hero Academia," that time has come three times over. The latest film in the franchise is "My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission," and the strong critical reception to the third movie shows that there's still plenty of gas in the tank when it comes to telling new stories in this world (via Rotten Tomatoes).
The movie focuses on UA students tasked with helping to take down a villain known as Flect Turn (Kazuya Nakai/Robbie Daymond). Flect Turn wants to bring the superhuman society to its knees by murdering quirk users on a massive scale thanks to deadly gas attacks.
Daymond says villains are better when they feel like they're real
While this might sound like your classic supervillain plot, Robbie Daymond — the English voice for Flect Turn in "My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission" — tried his best to bring enough realism and authenticity to the antagonist so fans could better understand him and where he's coming from.
Sitting down with Coming Soon, Daymond was asked whether he approached heroes and villains differently, and he was quick to say that he tries to play them the same way. "I like to approach them just the same, as people. Some people have good motives and bad, some people have good backstories and bad, and some people's life just hands them what they get," he said.
Ultimately, this is a smart way to add nuance to an evil character, as no realistic villain really thinks of themselves as the villain. "Depending on their moral compass, they do what they do, so — fundamentally — I don't think I would play it any different from an acting standpoint," Daymond said. As the world of "My Hero Academia" becomes increasingly murky from a moral standpoint, it sounds like Daymond took the right approach for his character.
Still, Daymond was happy to embrace the darkness behind Flect Turn in "My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission." "For someone like this," Daymond said, "he's got a fun, complicated backstory that I won't blow, but I think it makes him a really scary villain."