#mob meta

[scribefindegil]

MP100 does such a good job of committing to its theme that psychic powers don't make you better than anyone else. It's really common for media with magic or superpowers to pay lip service to the idea that the people who have them aren't any better than the people who don't, but then have their actual plots constantly undercut that message.

But not Mob! It takes its non-powered characters seriously; Mob's time with the Body Improvement Club and his friendship with Tome and the other Telepathy Club kids are just as important to his character development as any big psychic battle. On multiple occasions, Reigen's big contributions happen specifically because he *isn't* psychic--I'm thinking of the Shimazaki fight and the scene where he realizes Minori is possessed, but there are others.

And even when there are fights, they're ideological as much as they are physical. That's why Mob defeats Serizawa with an offer of friendship. That's why in the confrontation with Dimple in broccoli arc, Mob wins by *giving up* his powers, recognizing that they were preventing the two of them from actually talking. And that's why the thing that stops ???%'s rampage isn't another psychic; it's Reigen finally admitting to his own powerlessness.

#mp100 #it's. good. #(no use trying to guess what i'm vaguing in the first paragraph there are like 5 things just off the top of my head) #(this is also why i'm completely uninterested in fics that give psychic powers to other characters; it r #it feels like they're really missing the point #and why i set up the emergency contact fic with a totally non-esper ensemble) #mob meta

[luciferstit]

Spoilers for the Mob Psycho 100 manga below (Reigen-centric analysis)

So, Reigen was trying to reach Mob in the middle of the tornado. He has no powers, no protection, and no idea what’s going on. What does he do?

He takes off his shoes.

Actually, he first sends Serizawa, his only protector, back to the shop. The he gets his ass handed to him by Mob a few times. And then he takes off his jacket, his tie, and his shoes.

Why?

Serizawa said it himself—inside the tornado, they might as well be inside a blender. And gravity is much stronger in the tornado, making the falls harder and the hits stronger. There’s debris and rubble flying everywhere. Reigen may as well dive naked into a tsunami. Perhaps more than ever before, he needs those shoes.

So why would he undress like that? His clothes didn’t seem to be hindering his mobility. Additionally, any wasted time is another step father away Mob gets, and therefore another step closer Reigen has to struggle.

Well. Mob had really done a number on him by this point. He’s taken more than a few blows of concrete to the head, and the blood on his face shows it.

And it’s only after this that Reigen decides to get a little more comfortable. And even though running after someone while dodging shrapnel and rubble seems like a great time to have reliable, protective shoes, we get half a page dedicated specifically to Reigen holding his shoes in his shaking hand and staring in terror at ???%!Mob.

In Japan, taking off your shoes before committing suicide began as a dramatic shot in fiction and media, but then spread to real-life occurrences. It’s actually quite a well-known phenomenon now. It’s symbolic; you’re taking off your shoes before you enter the afterlife in much the same way you do when entering someone’s house in Japan. If there is a note, it is often left with or on top of the shoes.

Reigen did not believe he was going to survive this. Mob had leveled the city by this point, demolished entire buildings with a thought. In that moment, staring up at the eye of the tornado, completely defenseless and alone, he decided he was willing to die for this, and he took off his shoes and left them with his coat and his tie.

I would actually suggest that his death, or at least his maiming, was a certainty. We all know that there’s no way Reigen could do this. The show plays around with this idea of Reigen having special moves or secret powers, but it’s all a trick, and it would not protect him now. In this exact moment, Reigen is defeated.

If it wasn’t for Dimple holding on to everything he had left to help him, Reigen wouldn’t have made it for sure. Reigen says as much to Mob once he finally catches up to him.

Rushing headlong into certain peril—perhaps even certain death—is something Reigen has done multiple times throughout the series and always in defense of Mob. It’s actually the quality that makes his whole character work.

Hell, Reigen has no fucking clue what’s going on through this entire chapter. You can see it in Serizawa’s facial expression that Reigen just doesn’t understand psychic powers at all. He’s not equipped for this.

He doesn’t have the powers that Mob and Serizawa do, but he works as their boss because regardless of that, he tries his best to help out anyway. When kid Mob first found Reigen’s office, Reigen didn’t have the powers little Mob thought he had, but he tried his best to help him anyway. Reigen walked directly into that Claw branch and challenged those espers in Mob’s place, chose to stay in a room with a possessed girl who shoved her hand through her fathers chest not even an hour before to watch over Mob’s body, and showed up at the top of the Cultural Tower in front of a psychopathic domestic terrorist with a Nerf gun and half a prayer—it’s probably a poetic death, to die saving Mob from himself. It’s what he was prepared for, and probably what he thought he deserved.

I’m scared for the Reigen episode.

#mob psycho 100 #mp100 #mp100 spoilers #mob psycho season 3 spoilers #mp100 manga spoilers #mp100 finale spoilers #reigen arataka #character analysis #mob meta #mob psycho season 3 #suicide mention #suicide cw

[brown-little-robin]

I'm head over heels into mob psycho 100 again, so in case anyone who follows me wants to know (for tag blocking purposes or otherwise), my MP100 tag system has three main tags:

#Mob Art 🖤🤍🖤 (for fanart)

#mob meta (for analysis of the show by me or others)

#mob-blogging (specifically for what I have to say about the show: liveblogging and so on).

There's spoilers in most of my mp100 reblogs and I don't tag them, sorry! on the other hand, most of the spoilers don't hit as hard or even make sense if you haven't watched or read the story. so there's that. take this under consideration <3

#thank you that is all #Robin speaks #I guess I'll put all three tags on this post too. why not #I'm not sure how to save the post otherwise #Mob Art 🖤🤍🖤 #mob meta #mob-blogging

[halcified]

ok. falls to the floor. something interesting i find about this omake is that reigens reaction to terus living situation is pointedly Not shown. reigen finds out that teru has no one and spends entire months alone in his apartment and his first course of action is to try to set up positive relationships for this kid while acting casual about it so as to not trigger terus defenses. insane actually

#mp100 #mob psycho 100 #mp100 meta #sooorta #im in a moodsorry #text

[yaraneechan]

The parallels!

Mob learning from Reigen to work hard on himself and constantly reaffirming that he can change and be a better person, AND he joined a club about something he's not good in so he can get confidence from getting better at something with effort, so that he doesn't feel that powers are the only thing he has.

Vs Touichirou's lack of self confidence about any charactaristic of his except his powers, so his response to 'Shou is raised watching you so we need to be gentle' the "Shou is interested in my powers" so he doesn't have to confront how he's not good at being kind/gentle or consider that he can make an effort to change.

and then Mob saving him with 100% kindness anyway. Because charactaristics aside the truth behind one's charm is kindness!

#mp100 #mob psycho 100 #mp100 meta #reigen arataka #suzuki touichirou #kageyama shigeo #excuse the medium shift the anime didnt show 'kindness 100%' #mine #yes i said all that before and im saying it all again

[russenoire]

i don't think the background art in mob psycho 100's anime adaptation gets nearly enough love. it's full of mundane objects depicted in the most exquisite watercolors.

like this electrical pole here. with its giant soup can-like transformer and attendant power lines against a cloudy twilight sky, all shot through with vibrant pink and lilac and creamy butter yellow.

not only does this painting–and it is a painting–bring new meaning to the phrase 'golden hour', it's still one of the most glorious things i've ever laid eyes on. and you might pass one of these utility poles every day without a second glance. since seeing this image? i haven't been able to.

this is a single frame of animation. there are hundreds of thousands more in this series, maybe just as beautiful. i wanted to call your attention to this one. just because.

it reminds me to pay attention.

to notice, and keep noticing, the beauty in ordinary things (and beings!).

#mob psycho 100 #mp100 #mp100 meta #mp100 anime #art #watercolor #2D animation #background art #official art #thank you studio bones #image description in alt #image described #power lines #a screenshot of an electrical pole and its connected power lines against a vibrantly pink cloudy twilight sky #it's not just mob psycho #while infrastructure shots are ubiquitous in anime #they're not always this grand #i believe they are a call to viewers #to appreciate all the little things we don't think about #that make our lives work #but that's another post #分析

[exilepurify]

“You know a lot of big words.” — Determining Shigeo’s Kanji Literacy

An analysis in four parts:

Jouyou kanji and Japan’s compulsory education system, explained.

An introduction to the analysis—what I did and why I did it.

A presentation of data, evidence, and counterarguments.

The truth revealed: can Shigeo write a reasonable amount of kanji for his age group?

Jouyou kanji and Japan’s compulsory education system, explained

Let us begin this analysis by establishing a basic understanding of how Japan’s education system is structured.

As you may already know, only elementary school and middle school are compulsory in Japan, meaning that high school and college are completely optional. Therefore, compulsory education in Japan consists of grades 1-9, with grades 1-6 being 小学校 (primary school) and grades 7-9 being 中学校 (middle school).

The term 「常用漢字」(jouyou kanji, “Daily-Use Kanji”) refers to a list of 2136 kanji that the Japanese Ministry of Education requires be taught throughout education grades in Japan due to their importance and frequency of use in Japanese daily life. Knowing all 2136 is defined by the Japanese government as the baseline for basic, functional literacy in Japanese. The jouyou kanji list is further divided into two sub-categories: 「教育漢字」(kyouiku kanji, “Education Kanji”) and 「中学・高校漢字」(chuugaku • koukou kanji, “Secondary School Kanji”).

教育漢字 (kyouiku kanji, “Education Kanji”) (A.K.A. 学年別漢字配当表 [gakunenbetsu kanji haitouhyou, “list of kanji by school year”]) is the Japanese term for the 1006 kanji that are taught over the 6 years of primary school in Japan, grouped into different grade levels by difficulty and complexity.

「中学・高校漢字」(chuugaku • koukou kanji, “Secondary School Kanji”) is the term for the 1130 kanji that students are expected to learn throughout middle school and high school. This list of kanji is not strictly divided by grade level, though a general grade level is often provided, because students in secondary school—whether it be middle or high—are expected to learn kanji more independently. Though the responsibility of learning these kanji is shifted from the classroom to the individual, the importance of knowing these kanji by the end of one’s education, if that be middle school or high school, cannot be overstated. Once again, these 2136 kanji are considered the basics of Japanese kanji fluency.

According to the “Kanji Frequency Number Survey/漢字頻度数調査” conducted by the National Cultural Affairs Division in 2000, in 385 books published by a major publishing company, 8474 different kanji were used (not including duplicates). However, speakers are able to understand 99% of them if they know the top 2457 kanji, and 99.9% of them if they know the top 4208 kanji. And as is true for speakers of every other language, people can generally read more words than they can write.

I determined the “grade level” of each kanji in this analysis according to the grade level provided in my Japanese-English dictionaries, but consideration will be made for Secondary School Kanji due to the lack of official grade divisions and the less organized circumstances involved with learning them.

An introduction to the analysis—what I did and why I did it

In this analysis, I focused specifically on Shigeo’s ability to write kanji, not to read them. This is most obviously because it’s much harder to determine whether or not someone can actually read something, especially in anime, without it being explicitly mentioned. However, it is also because the meaning of kanji can be inferred from knowing the meaning of radicals, and as mentioned above, it is common for people to be able to read more words than they can write. The true mark of knowing a kanji is being able to write it.

To determine Shigeo’s kanji-writing ability, I studied screenshots from a few scenes from the anime, specifically a couple of scenes from the Reigen OVA where Shigeo is writing a LOT, and a couple scenes from the regular anime where Shigeo is explicitly seen writing stuff down and the audience is shown the writing.

The data has been organized into two different excel charts—one for kanji he uses correctly, and one for kanji he doesn’t know or messes up. The kanji in each of these charts have been color-coded and organized by grade level, with readings, translations, and explanations provided. There is only one kanji in the entire analysis that is not considered a part of the jouyou kanji, and this kanji has been marked by “N/A” in the grade level section.

I will provide each chart alongside a percentage likelihood that Mob will know any given kanji from each grade level based on the information gathered from the anime. Please note that the sample size is obviously limited, but I’m working with what I have. If there is a kanji with some sort of detail worth consideration, I’ve marked it with a (**) in the chart and will explain below.

Lastly, I included kanji used in names in the chart here after some deliberation. Name kanji are tricky in general, because multiple kanji share the same pronunciation and people usually don’t know what kanji are used in someone’s name unless they are shown by that person (unless it’s some crazy common name like 高田 or 森 or 田中).

A presentation of data, evidence, and counterarguments.

Shigeo’s known kanji:

Shigeo’s unknown kanji:

IMPORTANT NOTE: There are one or two instances of Shigeo NOT using a kanji at all that I’ve decided not to include on the chart. This is because it is common for Japanese speakers to omit kanji for super common verbs and write them in kana instead, either for personal style reasons or for convenience. Since the verbs are so fundamental and commonly-used, it’s unlikely that they will be misunderstood or mistaken for another word if written in kana. So, if Shigeo wrote the verb for “to read” or “to eat” without using kanji, I didn’t include it, as I highly highly highly doubt he doesn’t know those kanji and I felt like it would unfairly skew the results against him.

米** = I don’t blame Shigeo for not knowing this kanji. It’s fair to assume that Mob might not have seen Mezato’s name written out and therefore wouldn’t know which kanji to use. On TOP of that, “me” for 米 is a special nanori (used for names only) reading and is super obscure and uncommon. I couldn’t even find it in my name dictionary by searching “Mezato”, I had to find her name written in kanji in S1E3 and go from there. I wouldn’t expect this kanji to be in anyone’s top ten possible kanji guesses for the “me” in “mezato”. I included it because rules are rules, but wanted to mention this to make it fairer on the boy.

世** = I want to make it known that Shigeo does successfully write this kanji in the image shown here, when he writes 「世紀」(century):

HOWEVER. However. He messed it up SO BAD before that I think it actually overpowers him using it correctly and brings it back around to a “not properly known” kanji, especially because it’s a kanji taught in second grade that he shouldn’t be messing up at all:

The subtitles intersect it but I’ve rewritten what Shigeo wrote there at the bottom. He tried to write 「世の中には」”In the world…”, but tried to write the kanji, messed up, crossed it out, and then rewrote it in kana. Didn’t even try to write it a second time. This is egregious and, in my juror’s power, cancels out his later usage. This would be like misspelling “world” in English. I’m willing to entertain arguments that he just wanted to write it in kana for some reason, but as it is now, I don’t think that excuse is compelling enough against such damning evidence, so in “missed kanji” it goes. (It’s partly cut off but what gets me is that it doesn’t even look wrong in the first place lol but if he crossed it out, it means he didn’t know it well enough, which allowed him to doubt, which is still damning enough.)

造** = Just like above, Shigeo actually does successfully use this kanji once in the show when he’s filling out his paperwork for the Body Improvement Club in S1E2 (forgive my awful kanji, it’s hard to draw on the phone lol): 

However, that was not only on an official school document, it was also in the presence of a student council member and Saruta (#2 in the grade lol) so I have to assume he either asked someone for help or got corrected. Either way, the instance where he doesn’t use the kanji is when he’s in his bedroom alone, writing in his personal notebook—a much more casual environment, and one that takes place AFTER s1e2 (can’t argue he learned it):

This leads me to believe that Shigeo does not naturally know the kanji, as he can’t reproduce it in casual day-to-day or when alone.

焉** = This kanji is not only not included in the jouyou kanji, but it is also used in an obscure word. In fact, it took me a minute to locate it in my Japanese-English dictionary app. It is absolutely not reasonable to expect Shigeo to know this kanji off the top of his head, and he probably wouldn’t know it even if he were a kanji ace. It is included and working against him, however, because the kanji he initially tried to write in its place was 「円」, a.k.a. the kanji for YEN/¥:

Sure, 「えん」is a reading for「円」, that part makes sense. But 「終焉」means “the finals years in one’s life”, so I’m really struggling to understand why Mob would think the yen money kanji would be a part of that word and why he would try to write it with that kanji instead of just writing it in kana first, like the majority of the kanji he didn’t know. It’s truly an enigma to me. I’m bewildered he even tried that, and for that, I’m holding it against him.

BASIC STATS:

GRADE 1 KANJI:

- Total known: 17

- Total unknown: 0

- Grand total: 17

- Shigeo knows: 17 out of 17

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 1 kanji: 100%

GRADE 2 KANJI:

- Total known: 16

- Total unknown: 3

- Grand total: 19

- Shigeo knows: 16 out of 19

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 2 kanji: 84.2%

GRADE 3 KANJI:

- Total known: 13

- Total unknown: 6

- Grand total: 19

- Shigeo knows: 13 out of 19

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 3 kanji: 68.4%

GRADE 4 KANJI:

- Total known: 11

- Total unknown: 0

- Grand total: 11

- Shigeo knows: 11 out of 11

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 4 kanji: 100%

(Baby apparently had a great year in fourth grade.)

GRADE 5 KANJI:

- Total known: 3

- Total unknown: 4

- Grand total: 7

- Shigeo knows: 3 out of 7

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 5 kanji: 43.9%

GRADE 6 KANJI:

- Total known: 0

- Total unknown: 2

- Grand total: 2

- Shigeo knows: 0 out of 2

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 6 kanji: 0%

😭

GRADE 7 KANJI:

(No known or unknown 7th grade kanji found)

GRADE 8 KANJI

- Total known: 5

- Total unknown: 6

- Grand total: 11

- Shigeo knows: 5 out of 11

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 8 kanji: 45.5%

^ To Shigeo’s credit, this isn’t bad at all considering he’s only halfway through his eight grade year at this point in the story.

% OF JOUYOU KANJI SHIGEO KNOWS:

% known from observed data:

65/86

75.6%

# of jouyou kanji: 2136

75.6% of 2136 = 1615 jouyou kanji

Here’s a graph for your visualizing pleasure:

Finally:

(All values are rounded up)

There are 1006 kyouiku kanji. There are 1130 secondary school kanji. Because high school in Japan is not compulsory, we’ll assume that the secondary kanji are to be learned over the three years of middle school. That means about 377 words per middle school grade. If Shigeo is halfway through eighth grade, let’s say he should generally know 1006 + 377 + (377/2) kanji, which comes out to 1,572.

There are 80 kyouiku kanji assigned to first grade, which Shigeo should know 100% of—80 total.

There are 160 kyouiku kanji assigned to second grade, which Shigeo should know 84.2% of—135 total.

There are 200 kanji assigned to third grade, which Shigeo should know 68.4% of—137 total.

There are 200 kanji assigned to fourth grade, which Shigeo should know 100% of—200 total.

There are 185 kanji assigned to fifth grade, which Shigeo should know 43.9% of—81 total.

There are 181 kanji assigned to sixth grade, which Shigeo should know… 0% of…. 0 total.

This all totals out to:

80 + 135 + 137 + 200 + 81 + 0 = 633/1006 elementary school-level kanji. That’s 63% of the kanji required for elementary school.

(Didn’t include a calculation for middle school kanji due to having 0 data on seventh-grade kanji and also him being halfway through eighth.)

The truth revealed: can Shigeo write a reasonable amount of kanji for his age group?

Uh… no. Maybe? Well… probably not, no.

I mean, of course there are flaws with my methods. I had a super small sample group and applied the stats there to all of the jouyou kanji, which is almost guaranteed to be lower than reality. I just didn’t really have another choice. Also, I’m very certain that Shigeo MUST know some 6th grade kanji, even if in the results here I considered the probability to be 0%. That’s assuredly not accurate. There were just, by chance, only two instances of sixth-grade kanji in all of the sample writing and he happened not to know either of them. This is just for fun, anyway. I can say with confidence, though, that he certainly isn’t a writer, and he definitely knows less kanji than the average eighth grader, but I wouldn’t take my numbers for anything more than entertainment.

But yeah. Shigeo is…. a little kanji-impaired. Which explains why he struggled with Emi’s writing and is only ever seen reading Shounen Jump volumes lmao. I believe in him though. He makes it work. My illiterate king. Who needs the other half of your elementary sight-words anyway?

All jokes aside though, he really started to scare me with the 世 and 円 things 😭😭😭😭😭

#mp100 #mob psycho 100 #FINALLY IT IS DONE. This took me forever bc i’ve been SOOOO busy this past week #i’ve missed posting on here #so here’s a super long post as apology lol #i actually had a lot of fun with this #im so tired rn tho so i’m desperately hoping it makes any damn sense at all #our illiterate boy #i love him #like i said don’t take it too seriously. it’s all in good fun #kageyama shigeo #shigeo kageyama #mp100 analysis #mp100 meta #described in alt text

[littlebigmouse]

No you don't understand. Reigen does not commit tax fraud or insurance fraud. He doesn't actually have psychic powers, not even a little, or empath powers or what you have it. His family are regular ass people with regular ass jobs and frankly, so is Arataka, a young, self-employed guy living pay-check to pay-check because that's what most people starting out self-employed do. He spends most of the day at work and then gets take-out not because he's bringing college-student energy to the table, but because that's what the average single and fresh member of the japanese work force does. Because holding on to friends at that age is hard enough without existential-crisis-induced self-loathing.

It is so, so important to me that Reigen is the most statistically average twenty something japanese man there is. He's literally just a guy. A perfectly average middle schooler who liked to slack off and forgot his lunch that one time and wanted to be someone one day, when he was filled with youthful optimism, before life got complicated, before he realized he was just another fish in a really, really big ocean with a LOT of other fishes. One perfectly average fish among thousands of other, average fishes that become perfectly average members of society.

#mp100 #reigen arataka #mob psycho 100 #this isn't a front against people who like to give reigen a little bit of spice in fics #i like those too #but it is so so important to me that reigen is the most normal guy around #his skills are a patchwork of half-assed skills and long-dead-hobbies and youtube tutorials #because that's just what it's like #mp100 meta

[eshithepetty]

I feel like not enough people talk about how desensitized Mob is to horror. As in, there's literally an omake where he watches all through a horror movie with a straight face, only flinching because of the sounds, and also, his percentage never ticks up just because of a spirit, even if it's an objectively terrifying one. I mean, it's obviously because he grew up alongside spirits and so they are a perfectly normal part of his life, but like.. that's so fun i think?? And it has a lot of comedic potential methinks.

Like, imagine his school friends inviting him along to a horror movie night, expecting the seemingly timid and naive boy to get scared shitless, but instead they're the ones who end up clinging to each other, hiding behind their hands and crying, all the while mob is nonchalantly watching, and lowkey falling asleep even - and they're all just "???? How??? Are you so fucking calm??!?" And Mob just shrugs and points to a being missing a jaw in the corner of the screen and says "i like that one. It looks cute". They all stare at him like he's insane;

Or him helping Ritsu when he realizes the younger has been struggling with getting used to spirits now that he's an esper - seeing shadows in the corners of his vision, knowing there's things watching him as he goes about his day, decapitated bodies and strange creatures roaming the streets - and tries to help him see that they're not always harmful, and teach how to get them to go away if need be, and reassures him that they can't get in their house due to Mob's aura, so he's still safe there - which is to say, at least, now Ritsu knows for sure that there are no spirits in his room, still traumatized from a comment or two Mob made when they were kids and never bothered to elaborate on, lmao. Mob apologizes for not clarifying that they were long gone, it just never occured to him that that would probably be scary to any other normal kid;

Or imagine him entering the s&s office one day, and Reigen greets him as usual, until he looks up from his computer and there is a fucking eldritch abomination of some sort of misshapen child hanging off of Mob's shoulders, and, as one might expect, he Freaks, and Mob is just like "Shishou, stop screaming. This is Lily. I promised to help her with her homework so she can pass on on her own". Etc...

Like, it's just really funny to me. Let Mob be a bit strange and off putting, he deserves it <3

#mp100 #mob psycho 100 #kageyama shigeo #i feel like people sometimes forget that mob can see spirits tbh jdshs #like thats just a normal part of his life. he would not be scared of them. #(no offense to the people making the funnies about mob 'hallucinating' ghosts and getting terrified of course jdhdhdh. i find it funny too #i just dont think its entirely accurate) #kageyama ritsu #reigen arataka #headcanon #meta #my own post #i just really like thinking about spirits in the mp100 universe and mobs relation to them tbh......

[shigayokagayama]

"wow it's so weird that teru immediately became nice once mob kicked his ass"

#mp100 #mob psycho 100 #teruki hanazawa #pic #i have a teru meta post on google docs but its formatted for twitter and incomplete so i dont feel like posting it </3 #maybe later

[exxaltioras]

Something about Mob Psycho 100 I truly adore is how beautiful and real the platonic love is. I know this has been said again and again but as a younger brother it just slaps me in the face sometimes. I feel like casual platonic intimacy between people who care about each other is so undervalued in media in general, and the way Mob loves people unabashedly and with open tenderness is so important to me.

His open adoration for Ritsu, despite the hurt underneath. My sister and I have hurt each other like breathing over the years, but there is no one on this Earth I would give my life to protect like her. No one else knows me like her. And I see that in Mob and Ritsu.

Mob’s deep love and appreciation for Reigen. The way Mob sees his own loneliness reflected back in Reigen. The way Reigen is the only person who can tell Mob it’s going to be okay and make him believe it. The way Mob collapsed into his arms when he said his family was okay, even when Reigen was lying through his teeth. Not even Dimple’s word was enough. He finally felt safe enough to sleep. How Mob disrupted and terrified an entire room of reporters on purpose, when he’s already scared of his powers, so Reigen wouldn’t have to look so sad and cornered and alone anymore. Remembering his birthday, even when they’d been apart for a long time. Reigen always crouching down, hand on his shoulder, eye-to-eye; mutual saviors. They both entered each other’s lives at the perfect time to say, “You’re going to be okay.”

Even Mob’s love for the ones who have hurt him. His unwavering resolve to help Toichiro Suzuki apologize to his wife and his son—to see them again, to make amends, to build a better life than the one that saw him wandering the world for years and years alone, looking for something more. To channel his vision and his drive into a future that Shou deserves. The way he embraced Serizawa when he felt his fear and his pain and welcomed him into a better life without a shadow looming over his shoulder, accepted him as a peer and a friend that he never had. How Shou burned down his house and nearly made him destroy the world in horrible grief for his family, but still he was roused with anger to defend him from his father’s hand. “I’m sure you have a lot going on. I mean, look at what your own father has done to you.” Look at what the pain has done to all of you. What has it done to me?

Mob and his heart full of love, and the story of how, eventually, that loving heart learns to love itself. God. Shit.

#mp100 #mob psycho 100 #mp100 spoilers #mob psycho 100 spoilers #mob psycho 100 s3 #mp100 s3 #shigeo kageyama #reigen arataka #ritsu kageyama #shou suzuki #mp100 meta #mp100 analysis #this show #man #this show…

[scribefindegil]

The thing that really gets me about Separation Arc is how utterly mundane it is. One exorcism at the beginning, a call Reigen shouldn't have made leading into all those words he shouldn't have said, and then nothing until the cameras at the press conference start floating like some kind of miracle.

Which makes sense, of course. The arc follows Reigen instead of Mob and he doesn't have powers so there aren't powers. But there's more to it than that. It's a deliberate choice; it would have been easy to show that Reigen needs Mob for practical reasons, for him to come up against an actual spirit and end up scared or hurt because he couldn't exorcise it on his own. But the show doesn't do this. His business is fine. He's savvy enough to stick to jobs that he can actually do, and he gets enough of them that he's busy (and contrary to the fanfictions, truly dangerous jobs are a rarity to begin with). Practically, Reigen is doing perfectly fine. It's the mundanity that breaks him.

I've made a million posts about how Mob Psycho being a story about connection means it's also a story about loneliness, and I don't ever feel that more deeply than I do here. When there's a metaphor or a layer of fantasy obscuring things, no matter how awful they get, it feels safer. You don't actually have to worry about an evil ghost trapping you in a nightmare dimension. You don't actually have to worry about a giant vegetable brainwashing all your friends. The emotional impact hits, and it hits hard, but there's a layer of distance to it.

But there's no distance to Separation Arc. There's just the awful crushing inescapable everyday loneliness, the kind that it's so easy to fall into. The feeling of being in your late twenties, at the point of your life where you've finally had a few years of making your own decisions--and feeling like every decision you've made with that agency has been wrong. The feeling of having drifted away from the friends you used to have and not knowing how to make new ones. The feeling of getting emails from your parents and not answering them because you don't have anything to say that wouldn't make them even more disappointed and worried. The feeling that you've thrown away anything good or important in your life and not knowing how to fix it. That you're stuck. And not having anything or anyone else to blame. Only yourself. It's all so real and so overwhelming.

And the arc shows you all of this, unvarnished and unblinking, and then says It's okay. It can still get better. This isn't the end. No matter how lonely you've been, no matter what you've done, you can find people who will love you. You can make better choices. And no one has to stick around if you've pushed them away, no one has to forgive you if you've hurt them. But maybe they'll choose to anyway, and it will feel like a miracle.

#mp100 #mob meta #hello i was also extremely lonely in my late 20s so now i have to cry about Reigen Arataka forever. sorry.

[glittter-skeleton]

Most anime girls feel like an estimation of what a high school girl is by an alien. Not these ones tho, these cringe ass losers get me

#anime meta #mp100 #mob psycho 100 #mp100 tome #tome kurata #keep your hands off eizouken! #feminism

[bandtrees]

mp100 is a very very kind show, i love how compassionate it is and how forgiving it is, but i also love how hard it hammers in that there’s no such thing as a perfect person with endless bounds of patience and forgiveness, and that living your life only to please others isn’t living much at all.

the confession arc is very special to me for this reason, and below the cut is some analysis as to why! obviously, this contains spoilers for all three seasons of mp100.

the confession arc takes mob, this very kind loving sweet person who’s compassionate and has been able to see good in and treat with kindness people like mogami, touchirou, etc, and tells you... hey! this kid actually has (reasonable) building resentment and unresolved issues from being constantly people-pleasing and forgiving and not really acknowledging peoples’ flaws!

and no, it’s not a case of mob having this evil dark side who hates everyone, it’s just a case of mob... being human! expecting him to brush off the way reigen treats him and the way he and teru met and the danger to his life shou and touchirou were, as compassionate and mature as he is about them, isn’t realistic! because no human person is just a walking well of love and forgiveness, and for as mature as mob is, he’s still only a kid!

mob, as ???%, is very violent towards teru and reigen, and i choose to interpret this as how intensely he’s repressed his unresolved resentment for them that he swallowed down in favor of forgiveness and being the bigger person - the wider theme of mp100. we never really see mob express any discomfort around teru for nearly killing him, or around reigen for lying to him and generally treating him like trash sometimes, or around shou for burning his house down... and while i can’t express enough how important the messages of compassion and forgiveness are in this story, i think it’s also equally important to see, in ???%’s rampage, it’s not some evil side of mob or some shadowy separate personality in his body who’s deciding to hurt teru and reigen, it’s mob himself, because he never unpacked his conflicting emotions towards them, and now, when he can’t control himself, they’re running wild.

and this isn’t me saying teru and reigen are horrible people who never earned mob’s forgiveness. of course not! they’re very important people to him, he cares for them a great deal, they help to bring mob down from his violent episode... but as we hear in the mogami arc...

mob, kind as he is, isn’t some all-forgiving, forever-loving kid, and the same goes for his relationships with others. he cares about teru as a friend, he has resentment towards him for what he did that he never unpacked until now - these things coexist!

and there’s the ultimate catharsis when reigen tells the truth about himself, revealing to mob that he’s a complete liar who’s been using and exploiting him from the beginning. he lied to him from the day they met, and those lies ultimately led to the disaster in seasoning city that we’re seeing now. it was mob’s honest belief that reigen was a strong, powerful adult who had everything figured out -

- that led to him being unable to accept the contradictions within himself, and so reigen laying those bare, the fact that he’s a liar and an exploiter, that he too, this person mob has admired and learned from for the whole series, has a part of himself he hates for how it thinks of other people, is what’s able to let mob finally accept himself. 

reigen being a liar doesn’t make him an evil monster who deserves nothing but mob’s resentment - and in turn, mob destroying the city and trying to kill his friends doesn’t make him a violent, hateful murderer. it makes him and mob flawed humans, whose relationship couldn’t ever have healthily continued if those things weren’t unpacked - if reigen never honestly confessed about who he was, if mob kept forgiving reigen without looking inward to ask how he felt. at best, it would have been shallow and dishonest for them both until the end, and at worst... well, mob wouldn’t have been able to repress his emotions, dangerous as they are the more he hides them, forever...

this is why the scene of mob breaking down and crying is so important to me. finally, he feels safe expressing ugly, crude, selfish emotions. until now, when we see mob cry, it’s either tasteful tears running down his face, not changing much of his actual expression, or the complete opposite direction in exploding and bawling his eyes out with 100% sadness and 100% rejection - either mob’s emotions are pretty and subdued, or soul-crushing explosions he has no control over.

(sidenote: 100% rejection is one of the coolest explosions in the series to me and i wish it was talked about more!)

now, though, with the reassurance that he can cry, full-on cry, and it won’t hurt anyone, that he isn’t some selfish evil for being a middle school boy devastated he got rejected by his crush, that he’s allowed to feel broken up and miserable and have it not be an explosion that destroys the city... he cries! he feels all those negative emotions he’d held back, and because he feels safe expressing them, they’re not dangerous at all, they’re just... again, a middle school boy crying because he got rejected by his crush.

mob’s emotions, on their own, aren’t dangerous. it’s his refusal to express them, and the violent outbursts that leads to, that is.

something i love so much about mob psycho 100′s ending is that it’s not an ending at all. it’s just the beginning - finally, after three seasons, mob can actually feel and safely express his emotions. he can be on even footing with teru, reigen, all of them. he can start balanced, open, communicative relationships with those around him, showing that the compassion mp100 preaches goes far deeper than simply forgiving those who hurt you, or giving people chances.

mob’s kindness is so, so, so important to me, and where season 2 was about extending kindness to others, culminating in mob sitting down with touchirou after deciding that letting him die alone would only have been needlessly cruel and reinforcing the man’s worldview that he needed nobody, and that extending kindness towards him was what he needed to properly change - season 3, culminating in mob confronting the parts of himself that may have wanted to leave touchirou behind, is about extending kindness to yourself.

#babbles #long posts #mp100 #mob psycho 100 #mp100 analysis #mp100 meta #mp100 spoilers #shigeo kageyama #mob shigeo #mob mp100 #this is sorta rough as i think my first time doing a meta post like this but ough. ough. confession arc. (taking psychic damage) #it hits close to home as the. hyperempathetic autistic who struggles with separating kindness and selfishness its so damn good #mob so important to me. squeezing my plush so hard.

[halcified]

dont get me wrong, i like tsubomi as much as the next mob psycho guy and i understand the desire to see more of her but i do think theres something to be said for the exact amount we Do know about her

shes the device through which the story is framed-- we begin on mob deciding he wants to impress her and end on finally asking her out. theres a lot that could be attributed to mob/shigeos inner state and how he sees her, and you can definitely say that the narrative is contained in the time it takes mob to accept himself, but since that sense of self is so deeply linked to his view of tsubomi its sort of difficult to separate the two, especially when that shadows onto her so heavily.

its important that their relationship is only referenced or implied, because this show is as shaped around her as mob is, and as such its important that We, The Audience dont know a lot about her, on a meta level. we get gleams of her personality from other characters but its never allowed to be substantial, because if mob Knew tsubomi through his main arc things would have to be significantly different, there would be a genuine chance at not being rejected in the end which would (arguably) unravel Other threads. the idea that you must be kind for the sake of it, for the sake of self improvement, would then conflict with the incredibly solid ending of Doing the right thing, being the kind person, but ultimately having to do it for yourself instead of to impress/win over someone else

this is also why tsubomis writing has never come across as shallow or like, misogynistic to me, bc in a lesser show she would be perfect and unattainable and mob would get with her at the end as a reward for being a good person, but mobpsy ISNT that show. it treats tsubomi with the same amount of care that it treats any other character. even more minor characters like mezato and the claw members, who dont have a lot of depth as a whole, have Something to say for themselves. there is something you could find there. so the amount of details put into tsubomis character (as the Leading Force of the show) is then made so much more deliberate. the one thing emphasized by this show (especially over time) is that shes a person. a regular person. and thats the best way she could have been treated

#mp100 #mp100 meta #mob psycho 100 #text #grins at you #look at my post boy

[yaraneechan]

Lemme talk about Serizawa and Reigen's slow burn relationship actually, because there's something cool about how they met each other at the right time when it comes to their character arcs and the way they grew as characters fit together (1.8k words)

So from the very beginning, we see Reigen's main character flaws in telling Mob to come to work on short notice, ignoring Mob asking him to stop.

And when Mob tells him that he's worried he's wasting his youth, Reigen encourages him to stick with going home club, says Mob doesn't need to have a life outside of work cause just learning how to use his powers from Reigen is enough. Because If Mob has no other commitments, then he has more time for his job at spirits and such. for Reigen, it's half about the money half about Reigen wanting company

he's not intentionally malicious, but he's isolating Mob and is in the way of his growth.

Mob doesn't go by his advice and joins a club anyway.

other times Reigen does have a positive influence on Mob's growth when gives good advice otherwise and takes responsibility. (See after lol cult arc, after teru fight, end of 7th div arc)

In urban legends arc, spirits and such starts getting more work because they got more famous. Reigen ends up getting Mob to stay overtime till it's night and didn't even have time to get him soba. the arc ends with him realizing he fucked up. Mob is growing up and is trying to understand himself, and he's losing his sense of self in how he feels distant from both spirits and humans, they time they spend hanging out is much more important than jobs, then they do go get soba.

then Mogami arc happens: 1) Mob experiences being all alone and says he will appreciate the people in his life more. 2) back in lol cult he refused to acknowledge humans can be bad and that it wasn't Tsubomi who was mean but it must've been an evil spirit. in Mogami arc he accepted that Minori was really bad but people can change.

So in separation arc, 1) when Mob again tells Reigen not to call him on short notice (again) cause he was hanging out with friends, Reigen felt threatened. he's losing his monopoly on Mob. He tells him that they must be using him (he's projecting) and that he should should cut contact with them for it (this comes back to bite him)

2) Mob recognizes Reigen has said something bad and needs to change. the theme of recognizing someone can say something terrible and can still change carries over from lol cult arc to Mogami arc to separation arc and he stops coming to spirits and such.

at the press conference, Reigen realizes he was holding Mob back from his growth/ experiencing the world, and realizes that he should acknowledge that Mob has grown instead of being in his way.

Afterwards, Reigen did change and have a character development. he even lies about having free time so he can help out Mob practicing for the marathon (an anime added detail shows his calendar mostly booked)

now lets talk about Serizawa

Serizawa works for Touichirou, and while Touichirou is helping him with using his powers and gives motivating advice that helps him be more confident, he's still isolating him, preventing him from experiencing the outside world so he can stay reliant on him. The umbrella both helps him go outside but is also an extension of his room. He just wants Serizawa's loyalty and he wants to use him as spare battery. He tells him he needs to not hold back on using powers and that he can be stronger by being arrogant and self centered like him (this will come back to bite him)

when Serizawa protects Reigen, he has grown within Touichirou's advice and ideals, so Serizawa tries to tell Touichirou that he's grown and gotten more couragous thanks to Touichirou's support, that he did it in good faith and that they all are on the same side. but Touichirou didn't actually care about Serizawa, and because Serizawa gaining courage/ Serizawa growing means Touichirou can't unconditionally use him anymore, Touichirou considered Serizawa's action a betrayal.

at the end of wd arc, Touichirou had realized he was in the wrong. and to cleanly break off their relationship, he tells Serizawa that he only saw him as a tool, so he shouldn't feel indebted to him for anything.

Touichirou's last advice for him, an advice he intentionally didn't give him when he was using him, is to not to let others take advantage of him.

So after wd arc, Serizawa starts working for Reigen at spirits and such, now the manga goes right ahead to Serizawa's first job at the office, Reigen calls out Serizawa for not telling him there's a curse and Serizawa is still confused what he's supposed to be doing and the dynamic and etiquette at the office. But the anime has the ova events happen before this

In the onsen ova, Serizawa has done his research on how to be a good employee and even has notes in his sleeve. one of the things he learnt from it is that he's just supposed to follow boss's orders (which honestly I'd say he should've already figured out why not to do that, but the ova is more or less filler (aka has character development constraints). but anyway this caused the miscommunication between him and Reigen about the whole spirit trapped him in a never ending train thing. Reigen explains that he appreciates and even needs for Serizawa to have his own thoughts and to voice them.

this genuine and equal relationship-literally same eye level- contrasts with Touichirou and Serizawa's relationship and is similar to Reigen and Mob's relationship.

later, Mob has to fill out a future prospects form. at first Reigen tells him not to worry as he can just keep working at spirits and such.

Reigen had grown because of his separation arc experience. when Serizawa and Mob talk about their worries about their future, Reigen assures Mob that he doesn't have to keep working for him. And Serizawa was there for this conversation.

soon after, Serizawa tells Reigen he will start taking night classes so that he doesn't have to rely on Reigen all the time. He has the courage to do so after dealing with the client who worried he wasted his life and after seeing Reigen support Mob's choice even if he leaves spirits and such.

he is also taking Touichirou's advice, because if he has different things going for him it would be harder for him to get taken advantage of. he's not putting all his eggs in one basket, if he's going to keep working for spirits and such, it'll be because he wants to and not because he's trapped there as he has no qualifications for anywhere else.

and Reigen isn't offended or threatened by this. he recognizes that Serizawa is improving himself, is supportive, and adjusts the work schedule even though its inconvenient. he doesn't brush him off or tells him that he already has a job, the same way he used to brush off Mob thinking about joining a club or wanting to hang out with friends.

When Serizawa and mob talk about their lives....Reigen feels lonely, but he's not going to lean into old habits to pressure or guilt them into spending more time at spirits and such just because he's lonely. but instead, he uses an I statement, acknowledging that he feels bored instead of telling them to spend more time in the office, dissmissing their lives and trying to keep them from growing so that they stay close to him. My guy went to therapy!

he does regret it immediately because Mob tells him he's getting popular and Reigen is like "okay that's cool thanks for telling me you can leave now no I'm not jealous or anything" but baby steps lol

broccoli arc happens, and we Reigen relapses, in the anime, it happens with similar framing as separation arc.

and like Reigen putting Mob down is separation arc saying he's just being taken advantage of and doesn't have friends, here Reigen is putting Mob down by pointing out that psycho helmet is doing something Mob can't do, leading people- a jab at him thinking he's getting popular.

Reigen tells Mob he's not going with him to the divine tree, expecting Mob won't go where he doesn't, assuming that he can hold Mob back.

Because broccoli arc is about how someone can get carried away and about empty relationship through brainwashing/idolization/worship and inability to be honest with someone and call them out on them getting carried away.

on that note there's Reigen wanted to be special but getting carried away in isolating mob and not accepting that Mob has his own life, Touichirou saw himself as main character and put down Serizawa (shoutout to Dimple calling Serizawa's dependency on Touichirou brainwashing), and finally Dimple controlling everyone to believe in him as a god.

though the theme applies to all of them the story focuses on Dimple and Mob in this arc and how you can't have a genuine relationship with the idolization power dynamic and that's lonely.

Mob can and had already called Reigen out back in separation arc. Serizawa was less direct about it but he stood up to Touichirou too when he had protected Reigen.

It's interesting how we don't see Serizawa in broccoli arc....

after that in alien arc, Reigen asks Serizawa to go out together for drinks. Serizawa refuses saying he has plans with friends.

I know this scene is famous as a serirei rejection BUT It's important that Serizawa can say no without worrying about Reigen's reaction. the point is that Reigen doesn't brush off Serizawa's choice to go out with friends. because that was a character flaw of his that was called out when he had brushed off Mob's friends in separation arc. It's a test and Reigen passed.

luckily for Reigen he does end up not spending new years alone cause Mob and his friends needed a ride, funny how that worked out.

in confession arc, after gave advice and Serizawa gave love advice to Mob (noting that Serizawa told him than his feelings are true if they'rethe same no matter what anyone tells him, and Reigen's advice is to be honest to her), Reigen asks Serizawa about relationships and Serizawa says he'd never been interested in anyone. Reigen tells Serizawa that he hopes to be a partner in a relationship where one doesn't distort the other.

IT'S ABOUT THEM. this whole time they've been subtly establishing their boundaries and figuring out how not to fall into their past mistakes and they can be partners in a healthy relationship where they don't distort each other.

Finally here's a translation note about Serizawa saying he drifted towards this job in the REIGEN manga

#mp100 #mob psycho 100 #reigen arataka #serizawa katsuya #serirei #mp100 meta #mp100 analysis #mine #kageyama shigeo #suzuki touichirou #reached image limit