Interview Piece: Clint Bickham (Part 2 + Bonus)

We finally conclude our interview with Clint Bickham, scriptwriter for Funimation's One Piece. He is not only a writer for the series but a huge fan.

In this part of the interview, we talk about the scriptwriting process for One Piece. We even talk about some of Clint's favorite parts in the upcoming season of One Piece.

Things to note: This interview was taken during the April of 2012. So some things may be out of date. You can read the first part of this interview here.

 

MS: Which shows do you find enjoyable to work on?

CB: Which series?

MS: Yeah. Which series do you find enjoyable to write or work on?

CB: Hmm…You know, I have enjoyed every single series I have worked on in different degrees. I can’t really think of a series that I have worked on that I really hated. I did Air Gear a couple of years ago and that was fun because it had a lot of profanity. So I could just write anything and I focus on writing modern sounding slang.

So when I can take a direction like that then that’s fun but I really really really love working on One Piece even though the lipflaps are kind of frustrating but I love these characters. I spent hours and hours and hours with them and I can really feel like what Luffy would say here or something. And I can think about other characters across so many episodes and so many manga chapters and I have so much to pull from that sometimes I can write a line, you know that is not much different from the Japanese, but more entertaining or reference something.

I can feel “I really channel the character” there or something. I don’t remember but there one from Nami where she was just fed up and she had complained so many times. I think I eventually just wrote, “Why am I just so smart and you so dumb.”

(Laughter)

And that really made me laugh. It is really great to be able to write something and feel like you can hear the character saying it and if I can make myself laugh then I am, “That’s it! That’s the line!”

MS: That is the perfect line right there.  How much do you worry about lip flaps when you writing the scripts?

CB: I have to worry about it a whole lot. It differs with director to director. The older dubs I work on before I worked with Funimation, they were usually a little bit more lax on it just as long the person talking, their lips have to be flapping and they have to be talking. The shape of their lips didn’t matter but Funimation is very precise on a lot of shows.

If a character’s mouth never closes at an end of a line then you have to do a vowel sound because your lips will close for a vowel sound. That was very hard to get use to and it is very difficult. With One Piece, the flaps are so mess up that Mike (McFarland) has decided to rather than break his back and make the lines sound more natural matching the sometimes unnatural flap to just worry about writing the line the best that you can. 

  

MS: So, you guys write it to the best that you can and it works?

CB: Yeah. Occasionally, they’ll have animation mistakes. I’ve play a very small role in it and in one scene my character’s lips were not flapping at all. Their mouth was just like a circle and me and Mike were joking, “Well, the accurate thing to say would be ‘WOOOOO!’”

“Well, no. I have to say something. I just can’t do that.” So you have to try to match the flaps but you can’t be married to them too closely or you would be shooting yourself in the foot.

MS: Okay. I am going to try to rush though these last few questions because we are going pass ten minutes. What future characters of the series would you like to voice if you could?

CB: Oh gosh! Okay. I am going to get myself in trouble for this. Umm, I do not want to shoot for as high as I can because I know I be, “Oh! I would love to be Brook” because he is the last crew member. But, if I had to pick, probably Duval.

MS: (Laugther)

CB: I really, really like him. He has the best catchphrase. He is so great. I have a Duval keychain. I can’t believe they made one but I was like, “Duval! They have them!”

MS: I have seen that keychain before. 

CB: It is hideous! 

MS: Yeah. It is hideous. It is a horrible, ugly looking but it is fun to look at.

CB: You know, Chopper is probably my favorite crewmember but my favorite noncrewmember has got to be Duval. He is so great.

MS: Who is your inspiration? Who has inspired you to be where you are today?

CB: Who inspired me? It is hard for me to say exactly where I am today. (Laughter) I can’t say anyone in particular inspired me as a writer because an ADR Writer is such a strange and narrow field. As an actor, I guess as growing up, the first voice actor that I knew by name was Michael Donovan. He did Conan the Adventurer. I was big into that as a kid and I started to recognize that he was in a lot of, if not, ton of shows. That was the first name that I recognize and made me think of voice acting as a profession.

I was like, “Wow! I would love to do that!” and that was before I was really into anime. So, I always say to people who are fans who want to get into it because they are fans, “You have to be an actor first. You have to be interested in acting.”

MS: As you said earlier, “You have to be a professional first and then be a fan.”

CB: Right. So, I guess I don’t have anyone. Still, that is the first name that comes to mind.

MS: Okay. My last question. What should the fans expect from the upcoming season? 

CB: You mean?

MS: Season Four. Water Seven. Foxy.

CB: Okay. We did Foxy. Man that went on for a long time. That was one of my favorite parts in the manga and they added stuff in the anime. Some of it was actually really good. I was really surprise. Sometimes when they do filler episodes, the animation quality will drop a little bit but I felt that the writing quality was actually pretty solid the whole time. A lot of the stuff the added was really good.

The Davy Back Fight is a great thing and it kind of its own little story. I feel like it will get people back into it that hasn’t seen it in a while. Water Seven, in my opinion, is the first really phenomenal arc. So people who haven’t seen that, it is going to blow you away. I think there will be some real- You know, if you are asking what people should expect then maybe I shouldn’t do any spoilers.

MS: Most people who are going to read this already know what will happen in Water Seven. Still, try to-

CB: Oh, yeah. Well, the part with Usopp is very emotional and people don’t expect that from him. So that is big. 

MS: That is one of my favorite parts of the series.

CB: Yeah. That is the episode I am writing now. That is really, really exciting. You get a lot more from Robin. The villains are really great. New crewmember. It is really one of the strongest arcs in the whole series.

I went back and read the whole arc again. I was like, “I just read a little bit at a time to try and refamiliarize myself with it.” And literally, it is like ten or fifteen books, and I read the whole thing in one sitting. It is just so exciting. It had brought me to tears again. That was really like, “This is still so good!”

MS: Was that during the (Going) Merry thing?

CB: Yeah. That was really intense. It was really unexpected too.

MS: Well, thank you for having this interview with me. I hope that the con goes great for you. 

I hope you enjoy this interview with Clink Binkham and gave you an insight on the scriptwriting process at Funimation. 

Still, I do have a bonus where Clint raves about One Piece: Pirate Warriors. We went on for a good while after the interview concerning the game so I share a little bit about what we talked about.

BONUS

CB: Final note! If you are a One Piece fan and you don’t have Pirates Warriors. Go get it. Get it. Get it. It is so good!

MS: I wish I had a PS3.

CB: It is totally worth it! I was a little iffy about it because it didn’t have Thriller Bark and that was a big downside to it because it was one of my favorite arcs.

MS: And that is when Brook comes in. I heard they work around it.

CB: Yeah. Well, the way that Brook is in it. Well, you don’t have to record this.

MS: I just throw this in as an extra.

CB: Okay. The way they do the game is that it starts late. After the Time Skip when everybody is meeting together. Then it is the crew on the Thousand Sunny and they are talking to Brook about everything that has happen before. So the game plays out as a flashback with them explaining it to Brook. The thing that is kind of sad about it is when they get to where Thriller Bark would be, Brook is like, “What about my story?” And they are like, “Nobody cares.”

MS: So they bluntly say out loud that nobody cares.

CB: Yeah. They kind of do. They kind of blow it over.

MS: That is sad. I know that Thriller Bark gets a lot of flak from the fans. I actually like Thriller Bark. It is a nice and interesting little arc.

CB: I think the reason why they didn’t do it was because of the budget would have been just insane. They can recycle Marines and thugs for all the other levels. But they would have to render all these new zombies and some of the fights like with Oars. How would they pull it off?

MS: Yeah. That would kill the engine.