Mob Psycho 100 S1E7: "Exaltation ~I've Obtained Loss~"

This review was comissioned by @Alitur.

Mob Psycho 100 has had such a weird presence in the last four years of my life. I covered the pilot as my third-ever commissioned review in spring of 2019. I did a couple more episodes over the course of the following year and a half. Then, randomly, one more episode in 2021 that left off on a really dramatic cliffhanger that seemed like it was about to flip the entire story on its head and turn it into a fundamentally different kind of show. Then, nothing for almost two years until now.

The really surprising part of this is that whenever I review more Mob Psycho, people seem really excited about it. It generates a ton of discussion. And yet, unlike other popular review subjects of mine, there are these very, very long stretches that go by without any more MP getting commissioned. Contrast this with Fate/Zero; that also took a long time with lots of fallow periods, but that entire two-cour series still got covered in less time than it's taken me to reach MP100's seventh episode.

Well, in any case, there are another six episodes coming all in a row now, which is certainly a change of pace.

It's been long enough since I saw episode six that I felt the need to rewatch it, because other than the dramatic final scene I really couldn't remember what else had happened in it so long after the fact. In summary:

- Our main character, incredibly powerful psychic and maybe-the-host-of-an-eldritch-abomination Mob was dealing with the social and emotional fallout of his dramatic battle with a rival psychic, Teru, in the episode before that.

- Mob had a brief, passing encounter with an ominous hooded figure that he detected a horrific, inhuman psychic signature from, but whose role in the story has yet to be played.

- Mob's brother Ritsu was scouted by an eccentric billionaire with an interest in psychic powers who wanted to test him, to see if he shared his brother's abilities. No success. He also was recruited into this deranged plot by a deranged school council president to get a problematic delinquents expelled, even though he had just started trying to turn his life around. Full success, which Ritsu now feels terrible about.

- At the very end of the episode, a confused, frustrated Ritsu suddenly developed the ability to percieve and communicate with ghosts and spirits just like his brother. He has just had a meeting with Dimple, a manipulative, malevolent spectre that Mob defeated and reduced to a helpless state earlier in the series and then appeared to have been fully destroyed by Teru during his battle with Mob in episode 5.

So. Let's go on from there.

The teaser for this episode doesn't advance Ritsu's perilous adventure in self-discovery, or Mob's concerns about the creepy hooded entity. Rather, it introduces yet another consequence of Mob's wizard duel in episode 5; every gang of juvenile delinquents in Mob's entire city has now heard some version of the story, and they all want to beat up the victor of that battle to prove how hard they are. Somehow, Mob has been given the nickname "White T. Poison" in the rumors, as a consequence of no one knowing his actual name.

Also, the trend of everyone in the delinquent subplot looking and acting like a Jojo character doesn't seem to be letting up any time soon.

Hopefully they won't be able to figure out who they're even after. But, odds are they'll figure out a way to pressure Mob into showing himself and obliterating them.

Roll OP. I forgot how fun this intro is, it's really a visual spectacle and the song is a bop. Afterward, we return to Ritsu having his first ever meeting with a spirit, Dimple. After getting over his initial anxiety (and inappropriately violent first reflex, which honestly makes me think much less of him), Ritsu lets Dimple engage him in conversation. Dimple claims to be a former mentor of Mob's in the way of the mystical arts, and that he's happy to see that he might have a new student from the same family if Ritsu is interested. To his credit, Ritsu sees through Dimple's oily salesman persona and retains a cold distrust of him. However, he also is feeling all the despair and disappointment of years weighing down on him and pulling him in the other direction. Ritsu is a star student, a school council member, and (more recently) a perfect tool for anyone who can convincingly invoke authority and propriety. He became all of these things almost entirely to compensate for not being special the way his older brother is. That's the wound that his whole teenaged life has been spent scabbing over.

So, even though he knows Dimple is lying about at least some of these details, and even though he has a feeling he's planning to screw him over somehow, Ritsu can't turn him down. This is his first supernatural experience that wasn't catalyzed directly and exclusively by his brother. He has to cling on to this and try to get something, anything, out of it.

The really sad part is that just by being able to see Dimple, Ritsu has already demonstrated that he doesn't need him. Unfortunately, he himself has no way of knowing this.

His initial attempts are unsuccessful. Focusing on the spoon as hard as he can, trying to bend it. Nothing. He's starting to give in to that old despair that's been awakened in him now that he thought he had a reprieve from its cause...but Dimple just grins, and points to the rest of the silverware pile that Ritsu wasn't concentrating on.

Interesting. His powers seem to be...almost contrarian, in their nature. Or maybe he just wasn't concentrating in quite the correct way.

Dimple says that with the right training, he thinks Ritsu could even gain power surpassing that of his brother. Ritsu stammers the words back, as if this is a fantasy he's been afraid to even acknowledge for fear of how disappointingly impossible it is. As ominous music plays, Dimpel tells him that it is indeed possible, but - and here his face contorts into something along the line of the Tim Curry pollution demon from Ferngully - he'll need to let Dimpel fuse with his body in order to fully unlock those powers.

For context, Mob initially encountered this thing when it was using a possessed human victim to build a cult around itself. It's also been implied (though not explicitly stated) that Dimpel is a ghost, and that he led another cult in his mortal life even before then. After Mob exorcised him from his most recent host and reduced him to a helpless little spectre, he tried to figure out a way to possess Mob and turn him into a new, more powerful, host, until he disappeared after getting blasted by Teru.

Basically, Dimple has a well-established history of completely hijacking the bodies of people he "helps" by entering, and that ability to manipulate and control other people is strongly reflective of who he probably was in life.

Cut to Mob and parents at dinner. They're all wondering out loud what's up with Ritsu. He seemed unusually excited and distracted when he came home this afternoon, and now he won't come out of his room for dinner. Just told them he'd be down in a bit, over and over again, until they gave up. Flash back to Ritsu's room, where Dimple has coazed him into relaxing his body, shutting his eyes, and slipping into a meditative state that he's vulnerable to possession in.

Well, let's hope Mob can figure out what happened and get his brother free before Dimple can do too much damage with him or to him.

Or...huh. Apparently things didn't go quite how Dimple planned.

Aside from manifesting the same clown-dimples on his face that Dimple's previous host also had, Ritsu is still himself. Dimple was so weakened by that last near-annihilating attack from Teru that he can't control people anymore, and he's now trapped inside of Ritsu's nervous system, passively facilitating his spiritual senses without exerting any influence. He unintentionally did exactly what he promised he'd do, even though he was lying when he promised to.

Jump ahead to the next day at school, with Ritsu - Dimple still stuck in his brain acting as an unwilling conduit for the flow of Ritsu's own psychic power - accompanying the SBA president through the halls. The president has a creepy grin on his dead-eyed face, and I only just now noticed that his uniform has this red armband that pretty much *has* to be meant to evoke an SS officer. As they march through the halls, there's whispered conversation - or perhaps just private thoughts that Ritsu is "hearing" with his new telepathic senses - about how the head honcho of the resident delinquent clique just got expelled, and how thankful they are to the student council for catching him at his last-straw misdeed. Ritsu continues to bottle in his guilt, and marches on alongside President Tokugawa. Yes, his name is actually Tokugawa, I'm not doing a bit here, the author is the one doing the bit. Eventually, they come upon another delinquent, a former minion of the guy who just got expelled. Tokugawa interdicts him, and starts accusing him of being an accessory to the crime that wasn't actually committed.

He says he'll keep this quiet as long as he's willing to name names of the other boys involved. Basically pressuring this kid to give them more "evidence" for this big frame-up scheme to purge the school of undesirables.

As this conversation goes on, Ritsu looks more torn than ever. Then, a flash back to his "lesson" with Dimple. After fusing with him and trying in vain to possess him, Dimple decided to play it cool for now and keep pretending that this is all working as he intended to benevolently aid Ritsu in developing his powers. As Ritsu practices some basic telekinesis by picking up a soda bottle from across the room, Dimple muses that the emotional state Ritsu needs to draw upon his psionics is different from most espers. For him, the trigger isn't stress, or fear, or a meditative serenity. Rather, it's shame. Disappointment in himself.

Ah, so that's why his powers manifested when they did. He had that old shame and disappointment at not sharing his brother's powers dredged up and thrown at him again, and that, ironically, was what he needed to activate the powers.

So, back to the present, here Ritsu is, participating in something he knows is wrong and feels terrible about taking part in. And it's making him sooo much more powerful. Powerful enough that he can't pass it up. It's the only way for him to finally be like his brother.

Holy shit this subplot is getting dark.

Also, President Tokugawa's visual depiction has been getting more and more warped since he first started this scheme a couple episodes ago. He used to look like a strict, smart, well-groomed boy who always seems to be done up for a class photo. Now, he looks like this:

Yeah.

By that evening, after stewing in self hatred, guilt, and regret for hours, Ritsu is literally glowing with psionic energy, and Dimple is cheering him on. Hmm. I wonder if Dimple is hoping he can scrounge a little of that energy as it flows and slowly strengthen himself off of it like a parasite until he's strong enough for possession? I'm starting to get that impression, from how genuinely he seems to be pleased by this.

Then, Ritsu muses out loud that he's annoyed by Dimple's never shutting up, and wonders if perhaps if he gets powerful enough he'll be able to force him to do so. Dimple wonders if the powers are effecting Ritsu's personality for the worse. I don't think so, personally; Ritsu had this violent streak in him from the beginning, based on his initial reaction to seeing Dimple, and keeping himself in such a dark, self-loathing emotional state is NOT going to make him stabler and more controlled. It's not the powers, it's what he's doing to himself to get the powers.

Cut to...the next day? Some time later, at any rate. Ritsu is walking down the street when he's accosted by a group of his (ex?)schoolmates. Some have been expelled, others have just been suspended with black marks on their records and zero wiggle room for future misbehavior. Anyway, they've come to the (accurate) conclusion that Ritsu helped Tokugawa frame them, and they're here to confront him over it. Ritsu, either because he wants to keep doing bad things for himself to regret or because he's just that frustrated and angry at this point, decides not to try de-escalating. Instead, he asks Dimple to fuse with him again, which he's only too happy to do. He goads them into attacking, and then independently reinvents Teru's old trick of using touch-telekinesis to supplement his own strength and resilience without it being obvious he's using magic.

Literal Joker moment.​

After cackling over the comatose bodies for a bit, Ritsu starts to go on along with way. However, an unfamiliar voice calls out to him. He turns and sees Teru, looking calm and confident, the hair that got torn out in his battle against Mob replaced by a ridiculous wig that makes his head look three times taller than it really is.

Dimple, still merged with Ritsu's brain, recognizes this as the guy who came within millimetres of destroying him last time they met, and urges Ritsu to run the fuck away. Ritsu doesn't run the fuck away, though. And Teru...pleasantly surprises me.

It's only been a few weeks, at most, since Teru's battle with Mob, but the humiliating defeat he suffers seems to have done him a world of good and incurred some immense self-reflection and personal growth over a very short period. Teru says that it's lucky that Ritsu has run into another powerful esper so shortly after manifesting his own powers; Teru himself went for years thinking he was the only one with these powers, and as a consequence he came to believe that he was the only real person in a world full of props and puppets. The thing is, once you start falling into that mindset, your powers become your entire personality, and you end up with no sense of worth when you hit a problem they can't solve, and then you start realizing how horribly alone you've been this entire time. It's not just bad for other people; in the longrun, it's bad for you as well. It has only been a short time since Teru was like this, but seeing someone else who acts the way he used to is already painful and embarassing for him. So, he would really appreciate it if Ritsu stopped acting that way.

Holy fuck. That, um. That's a pleasant SURPRISE alright. I'd have thought it would take months or years for Teru to make this much progress, but apparently all that self-awareness he wasn't using gathered interest over the years and now he has a real lot of it. Mob seriously turned this punk's life around back there.

Also, I'm pretty sure Teru has no idea that this is the brother of the guy who taught him his own sorely needed lesson in humility. Wonder if he'd behave any differently if he knew?

Well, anyway. Ritsu unfortunately isn't in a place where mere words can reach him. Not even Dimple's words as he frantically warns Ritsu to run, that this isn't someone he can pick a fight with. Unfortunately, the only other espers Ritsu has met so far - besides his brother - were the much, much weaker wild talents that that rich guy was studying in his lab.

Of course, Ritsu just assuming that this person is more like the latter than the former is extremely stupid of him, and indeed is exactly wrong; the battle between Teru and Mob made it clear that the two were exactly evenly matched in terms of power, with "Mob" only winning in the end because of the eldritch abomination hibernating in his soul being momentarily awoken. There seems to be two different categories of psychics, from what we've seen so far. The minor wild talent types, and then the very rare and powerful ones like Mob and Teru who seem to quickly hit a common ceiling in their abilities after practicing them a bit and ending up perfectly equal. From what we've seen so far, Ritsu is one of the latter, but is still in his short lived "practicing until they hit the common ceiling" period. Of course, he may also be something different; the power scale for human espers might be more complicated than it's appeared thus far.

Ritsu lifts a hand, but Teru intercepts it with his own. A little bit of Teru's old smug, sneering self shows itself, for just a moment, as he quips at Ritsu and then collapses his touch-tk field and sends him stumbling backward. Fortunately, a strong wind blows by just then, making Teru panic and grab his stupid wig before it can fly away. Ritsu takes this opportunity to heed Dimple's advice, now that he's seen a glimpse of what Teru can do, and gtfo.

Hilariously, after he's run away, Ritsu wonders to himself if the reason Teru had such immense power is because his brain was so gigantic. Dimple has to explain to him that was just a wig that's too big on Teru. Lol.

Ritsu could use this as an opportunity to seriously consider Teru's words to him and skip the psychopathic power-tripping stage, saving himself and others a lot of physical and emotional suffering and danger in the process. Unfortunately, that is not what Ritsu's takeaway from the encounter ends up being.

Ritsu has no doubt that Mob would have defeated Teru if the two fought, and he won't rest until he's at least as powerful as Mob. Lol, he's right, but for the wrong reason. Mob was only ever evenly matched with Teru, it was something else taking over Mob's body that actually defeated him. I don't think Ritsu wants that, but the way he's going he might just end up getting it in the form of Dimple wearing him like a suit for the rest of his life.

Then, completely out of fucking nowhere, we cut to Mob being ambushed by an antiques dealer who wants to get him to get his parents to buy some expensive vase.

I seriously have no idea why this is happening. There was nothing in the previous episode foreshadowing this, I don't think, and I'm not sure why this lady just randomly decided to pick a random kid off the street to attempt this sleazy sales technique with.

Well, turns out the technique she's actually employing is even sleazier than the one I thought she was. She lured Mob into this dealership place, and then - when he inspects the vase - she surreptitiously jerks it forward so it falls off the table, hoping he'll think he broke it somehow. She's stimmied when he uses his telekinesis to catch it before it hits the floor, but then manages to bang its underside against the table while he's putting it back again and crack it a little. He saw her do it, but she just glares at him with very convincing adult authority and angrily insists that what he just saw isn't what actually happened, counting on his apparent shyness and nervousness and trying to basically gaslight him into accepting her own version. She's quickly joined by another adult, allegedly the owner of the place, who backs her up and demands that Mob call his parents this instant. Man, these people really are scum. Mob tries to pretend he doesn't have a cell phone, but it picks that exact moment to ring.

The person calling him, however, is Arataka, his equally scummy employer who's been exploiting his powers and paying him a pittance. However, while Arataka is a terrible person, he is a terrible person who knows better than to shit where he eats, and thus does his best to keep Mob as generally healthy and happy as he can while still exploiting him. Mob tells him about the situation, and Arataka comes over immediately, which...honestly? Best possible way this could have gone. Arataka is exactly the kind of guy you want to deal with this pair; you can't bullshit a bullshitter.

Arataka baits the other conman into grabbing him by the shirt collar, at which point he immediately feigns a neck injury that pulling on his collar aggravated and says he'll need a hospital visit again and the other guy will have to pay for it. He paints it up a little more, assigning arbitrary monetary values to the physical and emotional harm he's allegedly just suffered, until it equals the supposed value of the vase. Arataka then declares them to be even, and leads Mob away while giving the pair an expression that silently, but very clearly, just dares the pair to call him on his bullshit when their own is equally transparent.

Seemingly indignant at having been called out and trying to save face, they make some poorly veiled threats. Talking about how there's supposedly a superstition that anyone who breaks that vase is bound to have something bad happen to them. Maybe at night. Maybe while their back is turned. Who knows. I doubt they actually are being all that serious here; just empty bluster. Arataka doesn't have much patience for it, though, and tells them that he happens to be an exorcist, so curses and ghosts don't scare him. They do, however, tend to follow him around, and there's sometimes collateral damage because of it. They laugh, but then either Arataka gives a subtle little signal to Mob, or Mob suddenly manages to develop a rudimentary notochord on his own and plays his part without needing to be told.

With the two conmen now sincere believers in ghosts (which I mean...ghosts are real in this world, so that's actually good for them lol), Arataka and Mob go to a restaurant. Arataka congratulates Mob on his timing there with the darkness and the telekinesis, only for Mob to...huh. I guess that wasn't him developing a backbone after all.

Hmm. Or else Mob has finally started getting smart as well as standing up for himself, and he's testing Arataka here. Hmm.

Arataka manages to save it, but it's not his most convincing save. As they continue eating, Mob muses aloud about what utter scum con-artists are. Arataka nervously agrees, before quickly changing the subject. Mob's expression is...considerably harder and less vulnerable-looking than usual. Huh, I think he actually is getting smart. I hope so.

If that ISN'T what's going on, then that means there actually was another supernatural force involved in that scene. Probably related to the creepy hooded figure Mob briefly encountered before. We'll see. I think it's more likely that that was Mob though, and that he's now on to Arataka or at least strongly suspicious of him.

School the next day! Ritsu and the president's celebrity has turned to fear, as with the delinquents purged they begin to crack down ever harder on ever smaller infractions and improprieties in a veritable teenaged reign of terror. The...oh wait, hold on, I seem to have made a mistake. It's been a long time since he appeared, so, okay, yeah. The student council president is a guy named Kamuro. The vice president is the super military-looking guy with the appropriate surname of Tokugawa. The two of them haven't shared an episode together, and we haven't seen Tokugawa at all in quite a few episodes, so I thought they were the same person and that he'd just really let go of his previously well-groomed appearance as his sanity declined. Okay, no, vice-president-shogun is still all smart and sharp, and he's starting to have serious doubts about president Kamuro.

Time to get this shit in order and move the capital to Edo.

Cue a brief scene of President Kamuro and Ritsu having a rooftop conversation, the former looking more unhinged and ungroomed than ever. Ritsu is starting to think that it's time to stop this. Kamuro doesn't. It's tense. Very tense. Then, we jump to the little room that the weightlifting club and the technically-defunct-but-still-extant-in-practice telepathy club share. The delinquent gang leader kid with a long name I'm not going to bother remembering because he looks just like Higashikata Josuke anyway, is taking refuge here. Apparently he's not actually expelled, at least not yet; the process may be underway, but for now he's still attending school. Well, "attending." He hasn't been going to classes, and only barely letting himself be seen in the halls. He bears the signs of one or more recent fights, which is at least part of the reason why he doesn't want to be seen. Frankly, I'm not sure why he IS still showing up at school in the first place, at this point. Anyway, he's hiding in the bodybuilder/telepathy club room when Kamuro and Ritsu come in after completing their Final Fantasy villain dialogue on the roof.

The gym bros try to vouch for Josuke, but El Presidente isn't hearing it, and threatens to investigate them all as well; if they're the kinds of people who would be friends with Josuke, then certainly he'll be able to find something if he looks. Ritsu just stands silently beside him. Just then though, another student council person hurries over and says that there's "this weird guy" at the school gate demanding to talk to someone in charge.

And, um. Apparently this is something that the student council needs to handle. Rather than a teacher, or a secretary, or any other adult. Because reasons, I guess. Anyway, Kamuro and Ritsu head out there, and it's one of the many youth gang leaders who wants to challenge White T. Poison. And...apparently thinks the way to do that is by walking up to the door during the school day and demanding a duel.

Okaaaaay then.

Kamuro isn't sure how to deal with this. Even he isn't insane enough to be on this guy's wavelength. Ritsu calmly tells Kamuro that that's okay, he'll handle this. And, of course, the thug is laid out senseless in a matter of seconds.

Late that afternoon, Kamuro is walking home, marvelling to himself at how Ritsu was both that willing to get into a fistfight and that good at winning one. He really never thought of Ritsu that way, and he isn't sure what to make of this revelation. As he walks, he finds himself approached by another bunch of delinquents from a different school. They know that he was one of the people who met that last guy at the gate, somehow, which means that he knows who White T. Poison is. Kamuro still has no idea what that means. They don't believe him. It does not end well for Kamuro.

Holy shit is that a crow pecking at him? Is he actually dead?​

When we see Kamuro the next day, he's grotesquely beaten and injured, his face swollen, his everything bandaged. I guess he's not dead at least...though, as I think I've mused in previous episodes, I'm not sure if death is actually a thing that exists in MP100. I mean, there are ghosts, so I guess people must die at least occasionally, but there doesn't seem to be anything that can actually kill a person, so I don't know how it supposedly happens. Anyway, he tells Ritsu that maybe they went too far with persecuting their school's ne'er-do-wells, because it seems to be causing severe and dangerous backlash. It actually has nothing to do with that, but neither he nor Ritsu know this. Anyway, he tells Ritsu that they need to stop, just look at what happened to him yesterday.

Ritsu tells him that he deserves it.

Kamuro asks him what the fuck that's supposed to mean. Ritsu tells him that he doesn't feel the need to explain himself. That afternoon, Kamuro is assaulted again, by a different youth gang. God, beaten!Kamuro really is drawn hideously.

The day after this, Kamuro doesn't come to school. When Vice President Tokugawa goes to his house to ask after him, Kamuro's parents politely turn him away. Cut to Kamuro's room; he's coiled up in a corner, holding his ragged, bruised face and hyperventilating. The room is a disaster, filled with garbage, full on hoarder cave. It's a mess that couldn't possibly have happened in just a couple days, so he must have been letting it slip in the weeks preceding these assaults even if it's gotten worse now.

Why isn't he in the hospital? Physically and psychologically, he's completely nonfunctional at this point.

...

Mob Psycho 100 sits in this weird in-between place when it comes to genre assumptions.

In particular, I'm thinking about the role played (or not played) by adults. Half of the time (for everything related to the delinquents plot in particular) it seems to work on "Ed, Edd & Eddy" rules. Adults just plain don't exist. They're alluded to in nonspecific terms sometimes, and every once in a while a character will say something about their parents, but they're never onscreen and for the most part the kids don't act as if they exist just offscreen either. The closest thing we get is Kamuro's father's voice sending Tokugawa away from their door over the intercom.

But then, the other half of the time, we see the role Mob's parents play for him and his brother. We see Mob doing his part-time job with Arataka. We see the adults dealing with the various monsters of the week, including police, teachers, and all the other people who SHOULD be getting involved in the high school stuff once it escalates to the point it's escalated to.

The adults' role in the series is one example. It's not the only example. Anyway, it makes the story hard for me to keep up with, because I can never tell when I'm supposed to shift gears when it comes to expectations and stakes.

...

Kamuro looks up, suddenly, and sees Ritsu in his room with no sign of how he could have gotten in. Has he figured out a teleport or phasing trick? Maybe. Perhaps he also just decided he didn't give a shit and walked up to the bedroom window and opened it, not caring if anyone tried to stop him. With a cold sneer, he comments about how for all that Kamuro seemed to care about "cleaning up the trash" from their school, he sure has a lot of trash piled up in his bedroom. Something something clean your room bucko, something something chaos dragon lobster. When Kamuro begs him for help, Ritsu shrugs and tells him that there's no salvation for either of them. They've done something truly unforgivable. And if it happens to be that Ritsu can weather the consequences and Kamuro can't, well, Ritsu not caring is just another thing to not be forgiven for added to the pile, whatever. Kamuro screams in despair.

We then flash to Ritsu standing on a high rooftop, alone, much as we saw Teru doing in his own introductory scene as a full-on villain. Now that Kamuro is removed from it, Ritsu says, the school really is clean. The other youth gangs are likely to start targeting Ritsu eventually, but he has little reason to take that threat seriously. Dimple congratulates him, but the ghost may have spoken a bit too soon in doing so.

The context makes that very normal looking smile incredibly sinister.

Dimple manages to wheedle his way out of suspicion for now, but his position is very clearly not secure. Does Ritsu still need him to catalyse his own powers? If so, I doubt it'll stay that way for long. If not, it's only a matter of time before Ritsu finishes the process that Mob and Teru started and completely exorcises Dimple.

The next scene has Ritsu walking home and surrounded by four or five different youth gangs from four or five different schools. Teru is also here, watching uneasily from around a corner. Seeing what's about to happen, Teru leaves, whispering to himself that it might be time to go get Mob; he seems to have figured out that the thugs are attacking this person because they think he's Mob, so Mob should probably be informed. Heh, Teru's willing to go ahead and approach Mob asking for help with this? That's pretty big of him, once again.

Meanwhile, as Ritsu prepares to wreak havoc, the creepy hooded figure watches from a rooftop, and reports to someone by cell phone.

The hand looks human, but Mob earlier detected a genuinely inhuman psionic signature coming from this person. I'm guessing it's a human being possessed by a very alien spirit-being, possibly one that was never human itself. Wonder who it's reporting to, though? Not the rich guy, if he already had a supernatural contact this powerful he wouldn't be wasting his time poking at those nooblets in his lab.

Ritsu tells Dimple that he's going to go all out, so be ready to conduct a lot of energy, and then lays out the first few to charge him. Notably, unlike Teru, and even unlike himself in previous fight scenes, he isn't bothering to stick to plausibly-deniable things like touch telekinesis and skintight repulsion fields. Instead, he's just blatantly lifting and throwing people around from multiple meters away. Flashes of light. Explosions. Not even paying the weakest of lip service to any kind of masquerade. Completely and utterly heedless and uncaring of any longterm consequences. Drunk on power and dazed by self-loathing.

Before engaging the main body of thugs (who for some reason didn't run the fuck away even after learning that their opponent has literal magic), Ritsu gives a little villain speech.

He informs his opponents that he doesn't judge them. He always assumed that people like them - the thugs, the cheats, the abusers - had a reason for behaving as they did. That they were either victims of society, or else had something wrong with them internally. But, he now understands that that's not true. People just do what they want. All people, all the time. There's no rhyme or reason to who desires what. Anyone could do anything at any time, and it doesn't mean anything about who they are.

Just look at himself, after all.

So, Ritsu wipes out the whole group. I'd say that it looks like he might have actually killed some of them, with how he seems to have bashed them through brick walls and into craters in the pavement underfoot, but we've seen this before without it being lethal. Like I said, I don't know if it's actually possible to kill a person in MP100. Still fused with Dimple, he stands over the field of (unconscious? dead?) bodies, and proclaims that he finally found what he was looking for. LOSS. The act of falling off the pedestal. Removing himself from his niche. That also freed himself of his limitations. He's free now. Perfectly, completely free.

Then, Mob comes up behind him and asks what he's doing.

Teru managed to find him pretty quickly, it seems. Well, you know, telepathy and so forth. End episode.

This show is certainly getting heavier than I expected it to. Much moreso than OPM ever did by a longshot.

I feel like my analytical ability here is suffering from it having been so long since I saw the previous episodes. I rewatched episode six, but not any of the ones before that, so there could be any number of things set up back then that are now getting their payoff that I just plain have no chance of remembering. Unfortunate.

Speaking of OPM though, the common theme between this story and that one is becoming more apparent, even if it's being given a much more serious exploration in MP100. Power. What power does to a person. What being powerful means. I'm not entirely sure what its thesis is yet, aside from the literal text of Teru's warning to Ritsu, but I'm interested to find out. With half a dozen of these up in queue, I'll hopefully be able to find out.