Mob Psycho 100 S1E8: "The Older Brother Bows ~Destructive Intent~" (continued)

Mob reaches 100% stress level, and does the big white glowy flash and intimidating shadowy glowy-eyed silhouette thing. And then...proceeds to do exactly what he was already doing before. Just while talking in a more collected, arrested voice and making more intense facial expressions. Yeah, same problem as before, but we'll see how this goes. Hoodie moves to knock Mob down once again, but this time it's his own energy constructs that get collapsed on contact with Mob's sheer force. Mob sternly tells him to never, ever, ever show his face where anyone in his family or anyone who knows his family can see him again, while grabbing him by the face and scouring his body against the pavement.

Okay, maybe I spoke too soon. It looks like Mob might actually be doing lasting bodily harm to Hoodie now, unless he has a healing factor or something. It also looks like he's denying him the use of both his nostrils AND his mouth, which...can psionics protect you from suffocation? Maybe they can, but also maybe they can't.

When the guy keeps weakly struggling, Mob flies him up at least a hundred feet or so into the air and then piledrives him back downward so hard that the air combusts around them in their descent and leaves a fire trail as if from a meteorite. When they hit the roof of a building next to the alley they took off from, the shockwave blows out all the windows in that entire half of the structure. Hoodie is smashed through multiple floors, and then driven into the foundations, much of the structure coming down around them.

Alright. Yeah, okay, things are getting serious now. That looks like a relatively well-maintained building, and at this time of day there have got to be people in it. We didn't see any when Mob was body-slamming Hoodie down through the middle, but each floor streaked by so fast that they could have just not been visible. That's going to cause some severe injuries, at the very least. Guaranteed.

As the smoke clears, we see the delinquents and Ritsu looking through the space that used to be one of that building's walls to see Mob standing in a crater whose center has Hoodie's body embedded in it. The glow in Mob's eyes and the waving of his hair are dying down again, but still visible. The thugs now all realize that they had the wrong guy: THIS is White T. Poison, his younger brother isn't nearly as powerful (at least not when the going really gets tough). And, he defended them, even though they gave him every reason not to.

Also, apparently "White T Poison" is derived from the person legendarily wearing a white T-shirt. Which is lol. Half the cast have been seen wearing white T-shirts, which I think is part of the intended joke.

Anyway, if Mob is feeling any glow from this, I suspect it will end pretty quickly after he turns back around and realizes that Hoodie is dea...

Nevermind, actually. Hoodie stands back up and muses to himself that it's time to use his ace in the hold.

And, come to think of it there don't seem to be any bodies in the ruined building. Or injured people. Or any people at all.

...

Sigh...

Third time, show. Third time. At this point, I've been pretty strongly trained to not expect any negative consequences whatsoever for Mob reaching 100%.

Hell, even when he broke passed that and reached beyond 100% and into ??? territory against Teru, and seemed to get possessed by a demon or something, there weren't any serious consequences. Everything he destroyed, he put back together again flawlessly afterward (which he had both the power AND THE INCLINATION to do). Nobody died, or even received permanent injuries. So even that's been heavily neutered as a potential "real" threat that the 100% thing is just a warning sign of.

Mob "filling up" isn't a Dr. Hyde situation, or an Incredible Hulk situation, or even a wild magic sorcerer situation. It's the Avatar State. It's literally just the Avatar State. It makes him more powerful for a little while with absolutely zero downsides or drawbacks. If any character makes a statement about Mob losing control and becoming dangerous at 100%, I will assume that that character is either lying or stupid. If the author retcons the story to make 100% Mob actually dangerous, then I will recognize it AS a retcon and hold it against the story accordingly.

...

Hoodie charges Mob with another Street Fighter magic-melee attack. Mob deflects it. One of the punks shouts a warning that he's got a knife. Because apparently knives are a threat to people who can shatter buildings with their minds amirite? Goddamn those punks are dumb. Hoodie can't manage to get his knife through Mob's TK field, and bemoans this fact aloud - before grinning and revealing that the "knife' is actually an aerosal can. Which he uses to spray...erm...something? at Mob.

The cloud of red spray surrounds Mob's head, and he loses consciousness almost instantly.

That was um. Bat Anti-Psionics Spray? I guess?

It couldn't just be a chemical that inhibits psychic activity in the people who inhale it, because first it would have to *get* into Mob's body. If a thrown or hurled knife wouldn't have been able to get through, would aerosolized particles have faired any better just by virtue of being tiny? If so, it seems like the best way to capture a psychic would just be to throw a gas grenade as your opening move. If not, then the stuff in that can is more inherently magical, because it no-sold Mob's defences before knocking him out.

Hmm. That crimson color is also very suggestive. And Hoodie did mutter about being reluctant to resort to this before he used it, and he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to care about honor or the like, which means it's probably a valuable commodity. The blood of someone or something super powerful, perhaps? That would check all the boxes.

Anyway, Mob is knocked out by whatever Hoodie has in that can. Hoodie moves to kill all the witnesses, since they've seen too much of him by now and could compromise his civilian identity. But then, Mob gets back up to his feet behind him, making Hoodie panic.

No longer having time to kill the witnesses (understandable; that would take at least five minutes of concentrated fire apiece, and leave the entire neighbourhood in ruins just from the tremors), Hoodie just quickly grabs Ritsu and parkour-levitates away. Mob does not pursue him. Just stands there.

Even when everyone crowds around him to thank him, Mob just stands there.

It isn't too long before they realize that he hasn't actually regained consciousness. It's more like sleepwalking.

Ah. Looks like we're at ???. It's taking a bit longer to go on the offensive than last time, though. Maybe the spray is giving even ??? a hard time. That spray must be the literal blood of Jesus recovered from Golgotha or something, idefk.

Teru enters the alley, and warns everyone to stand back. He's seen Mob sleepwalk like this before, and it's a sign of something (theoretically, at least ) very dangerous. Was Teru just watching this entire time? Dude, you might have been able to make a difference if you'd intervened during the actual fight; you, Ritsu, and Mob attacking the guy all at once might well have overwhelmed him. Ah well. Interestingly, Dimple - who had earlier noped away from this whole fight - is hovering over Teru's shoulder. Gotten over his fear of him, perhaps?

Oh, right. Teru left when he saw it was a sibling matter. That means that he either came back in response to the noise and tremors, or Dimple went and got him. I have trouble believing the latter, but if Dimple really did that then, well, good for him? Probably the least selfish thing we've ever seen him do. Taking that kind of risk just to save a potential future host is less likely than him, well, actually starting to maybe kind of care.

Mob still just keeps standing there, as if catatonic. Either that spray shorted ??? out much worse than I thought, or there's something else preventing it from acting.

Cut to Spirits And Such, where Arataka is grifting away as usual. This time, the client says that an evil spirit has been latching onto her shoulders and not letting go, and the psychic who diagnosed the cause of her pain wasn't able to exorcise it. Arataka muses, the innocent half aloud and the incriminating half to himself, about how sleazy it was for this "psychic" to take her money and then not even solve the problem that brought her to him. Almost as if he wasn't actually a psychic at all. Meanwhile, he starts grinding salt on her shoulders, buying himself time to think of how to approach this.

Then, after thinking for a bit, he takes her coat off and presses the salt crystal directly against her shoulder blades and neck, and asks her if she's starting to feel the demon withdraw. When she tells him that she does, he uses the salt crystal to slowly ease her into a full massage session, complete with lotion, scented candles, and hot towels. He appears to actually be an experienced masseur. Like, professionally skilled, to the point where I wonder why he even does the sham-psychic grift when he has such a readily marketable skill. Since he *is* grifting though, he needs to justify each step of the massage as part of an exorcism ritual, which is exactly as hilarious as it sounds.

Did he screw that client over in the end, or not? I guess it depends on how much he charges for an exorcism, and how much a masseur of his ability typically charges for upper body tension relief. He may have actually done honest work for honest pay this time. Sort of.

He was lucky this one wasn't an actual spirit, though. He carefully schedules the cases that he thinks might be legitimately supernatural for times when he's confident he can get ahold of Mob, and today Mob mysteriously hasn't shown up and isn't answering calls.

If that lady's possession had in fact been legit, Arataka would have been fucked. Where the hell is Mob? Arataka will have to lecture him about this next time he sees him.

Arataka is hilarious, but he is also the worst.

Cut to a...hospital? Mob is laid out on a bed all bandaged up and stuff, and it doesn't look like his own bedroom, but it doesn't look like a hospital ward either. Where is he? Wherever he is, the unconscious Mob dreams about a series of interactions with his brother. Ritsu may have been telling the truth about living in fear of Mob, but it appears that Mob was also correct in his assessment that Ritsu was overstating it, or at the very least omitting the positive side of their relationship. Still, Mob realizes that he should have seen the hidden problem a long time ago, and now it may be too late.

Mob wakes up. Turns out, he's in Teru's apartment. Huh. Wonder why he decided to bring him here instead of calling an ambulance or whatever? Anyway, Teru is standing over him, and Dimple is also floating around the room. Teru confirms that it was indeed Dimple who alerted him to the situation in the alley, and that he hurried back as fast as he could when he heard about the mystery attacker. So yeah, Dimple actually did something helpful without any immediately-obvious selfish motive. That's a watershed moment for him.

...

If the main theme of this series is power, I think an important secondary one is redemption. Or at least reconciliation. It seems to be happening to a lot of minor antagonists. The majority of them, in fact.

In Teru's case it was kiiiiiiind of the cliched shonen "good punchy-man beats up evil punchy-man, which means that evil punchy-man is now a good guy and can join the party," but the story put a lot of work into justifying it and creating a situation where this can make psychological sense. The others that are undergoing or have undergone such transformations - Dimple,* Ritsu, and Oginawara - do not fall into this pattern, though, so I think it's safe to call this an intended theme of the work instead of just a genre convention.

*Mob did have to beat him up first, but he only started to become less of a dick long after the fact, in response to later circumstances. No direct causal relationship there afaict.

...

Seeing Dimple, Mob asks him what he was doing hanging around his brother. When the spirit has trouble quickly answering that question, Mob's expression becomes colder and more dangerous, and he asks Dimple if he knows anything about that kidnapper. Dimple panics and insists that he had nothing to do with that, and that he has no idea who the interloper was. He seems to be telling the truth.

Teru, however, claims that he does know who the hooded man was. Well, that's certainly a surprise. He also says that...hmm.

...

Thiiiiis kind of feels like another retcon. If not, then I suspect that it's a clumsy bit of adaptation that makes it seem like a retcon.

In his introductory arc, Teru's whole "thing" was that he thought his powers made him unique and above the entire rest of the world. That was also why he melted down and lost his shit when he realized that Mob was at least as powerful as himself, and then broke down and rebuilt his worldview entirely when he realized that Mob's ??? aspect was in fact much stronger. If Teru's been aware of the existence of other powerful espers for that long, then that whole character arc gets called into question.

There are other ways Teru could have ended up with that maniacal main character syndrome, of course, but the story seemed to be, but the story seemed to be signaling that particular one pretty hard. Additionally, as this scene continues, Teru explains that Hoodie's organization routinely hunts psychically powerful espers for forced recruitment, and that he's had to evade them in the past. Honestly, that last detail makes this feel even more like a retcon. If Teru was trying to lay low and hide from these bad guys, he wouldn't have also been drawing attention to himself by flaunting his "unusual strength" all the time and actively building a reputation that could lead investigators to him. He also should have had a very, very different reaction to seeing Mob's powers, because - as he's also about to explain - this villainous organization can and does use psychic child soldiers on occasion. He had no reason not to think Mob was one of them.

Between one thing and another, it's more than I can reconcile. Either the show really mangled Teru's introductory episode to make it suggest a completely different backstory than he's supposed to have, or it was like this in the comic and the author just completely retconned him between that arc and this one. Irritating, in either case.

...

Anyway. The baddies are an international criminal organization called the Claw. Lol, most generic supervillain name ever. Basically a secret mafia of powerful espers. In addition to their core membership, they've mastered cult-like brainwashing techniques that they use impress captives into their ranks. Children are easier to both capture and to indoctrinate, so their agents are always especially eager to pounce of psychic kids like Mob, Ritsu, and Teru.

They also, Teru explains, make a point of either co-opting or destroying any other esper association they learn about, and are especially aggressive toward psionic research programs that look like they might actually be getting somewhere. More alarmingly still, as a consequence of accumulating all this stolen research, the Claws themselves have managed to figure out how to induce powers in mundane children. Their artificial espers aren't as powerful as natural ones like Teru, Mob, etc, but they're also significantly stronger than the nooblets at the Awakening Lab. Teru has successfully outfought their artificial espers at least once, but they have a lot of them. Their natural esper membership, meanwhile, have access to professional combat training designed by psychics for psychics, which makes them more than a match for someone like Teru even if they don't necessarily have more raw power.

The way Teru describes the comparative power levels seems to support my "common ceiling" hypothesis, but I guess he could also just mean "on average."

Anyway, the reason Teru lives by himself, rents his own apartment, etc is at least in part because these guys are chasing him. Teru...lives by himself, huh? How is this supposed to work? He doesn't have mind control powers, so the only way I could imagine him doing this is by stealing enough money to bribe the landlords etc into keeping their mouths shut and also threatening them with telekinetic violence if they don't. I guess?

I remember there was a character in Madoka Magica who had a similar living situation to this, but in her case there was outright reality-warping going on to enable it, and the story framed this in an appropriately disconcerting and creepy manner. Mob Psycho 100 is not selling the concept nearly as well. Also, don't expect me to say anything nice about Gen Urobuchi for a long time after this now.

Also...isn't Teru supposed to be a student at that rival middle school? Maybe he's not actually a student, but just hangs out in the neighborhood and is thought of as "one of ours" by the local delinquents. I have trouble seeing him attending school of his own volition, and even if he wanted to for some reason I'm not sure HOW he could do so without drawing government attention (and probably Claw attention) to his living situation.

Maybe I'm just trying to read too much sense into MP100's world. The show's setting is pretty goddamned surreal on all fronts, so maybe you're just not supposed to think about stuff like this. IDK.

Mob wants to go try to rescue Ritsu, of course, but Teru tells him that the reason he's explaining all this is so that Mob doesn't attempt that. Basically, you just DON'T pick a fight with the Claw on their own turf.

Mob and Teru wonder what brought them down on Ritsu, in particular. Which seems like an extremely stupid question to me. Mob and Teru have not been anything close to careful with their displays of power, and Ritsu just went off and did a reckless display of his own. It would be implausible for an organization like the Claw to not be nosing around in their neighbourhood after all this shit. Well, sufficient though that explanation should be, Dimple suddenly remembers Ritsu telling him about the Awakening Lab he visited a week or so ago.

Dimple also says that he can lead them there. Hmm. He didn't just hear about it from Ritsu, then, he actually saw the place himself. That suggests he had been following Ritsu long before Ritsu became able to see him. Wonder why he was doing that? It didn't seem like Dimple expected him to be a good host or the like before he knew he had powers, and he seemed surprised when Ritsu could see him.

This whole setup feels clumsy and forced. Characters knowing things they shouldn't, having relevant backstory elements that don't fit them, etc. Hopefully things will get better once this Claw plot gets into full swing and we've put the poorly-considered transition behind us.

They go to the lab, finding it trashed and littered with the bodies (either unconscious or dead) of the researchers. Dimple wonders aloud how they could possibly do this to powerless civilians. Lol, Dimple himself did that to powerless civilians when he was a cult leader. Which was like a month ago, tops. Ghostblob's hypocrisy aside, they discover that the crew isn't dead, just knocked out. Including the rich dude himself.

-____-

Well, there goes any perception I might have had of the Claw being this ruthless clandestine criminal organization. They don't even kill the witnesses? Or even CAPTURE the witnesses? Come the fuck on. Like, what, was Hoodie just completely bluffing when he said he was going to kill those middle schoolers before? Kinda seems like it now.

A story doesn't need to have life or death stakes to get me on the edge of my seat. What annoys me is when a story pretends to have those, but then won't follow through.

Anyway. They wake up the bossman and interrogate him. They quickly determine that he didn't intentionally make his project or his teenaged test subjects known to the Claw. In fact, he had no idea such an organization existed until its agents stormed his facility.

They also realize, after talking to him, that Ritsu visited the facility using Mob's name. Huh, forgot about that detail. I'm sure it was established back in episode whatever. Anyway. Deciding that richdude is innocent of wrongdoing in this sequence of events, they untie him and make him part of the discussion on what to do next. When he realizes that bringing those psychic kids together and tying them to his laboratory is probably what made them targets for the Claw, he seems really guilt-ridden and sorrowful.

Okay, sorry, suspension of disbelief broken. Retcons are one thing. Psychedellic worlds where buildings can get launched into the stratosphere and pulled down again without anyone seeming to notice, whatever. But...a billionaire actually caring if he got a bunch of children killed-

Ah, okay, that's more like it. Suspension of disbelief restored. :V

Teru asks how powerful the kidnapped children were. In his own words, he wants to know exactly what they're up against here. Erm...wasn't Teru the one insisting they NOT try to rescue the Claw's captives? What changed between that scene and this one? I don't...eh. This bridge into the Claw plot is really, really weak, for so many damned reasons. Great setup, but the actual launch sucks. Richguy asks them who the hell they even are. Teru answers, in a sense, by levitating Mob into the air.

I guess we're a proper superhero team now. Two powerhouses, a dorky rogueish sidekick who might become a better person over time and who also might betray them at the worst possible moment, and a wealthy patron.

Roll credits. We see Hoodie - still all scratched and bruised - and his superior dragging the captives into a furutistic-looking hidden base somewhere in the woods. Something I didn't notice before is that both of them have very noticeable wedge-shaped scars on their faces.

When I saw it on Hoodie after his de-hoodining, I assumed it was supposed to be a bad scratch or burn that he'd just gotten from Mob. If they both have those marks, though, then that means the Claw has some kind of ritual scarification thing going on. Sort of like a gang tattoo, suggesting a claw mark. Makes sense. Anyway, that's episode eight. The "older brother bows" title ended up being a bit misleading, I think, even if he did technically bow to someone at one point in the episode, heh.

The knife analogy was twisted a little bit...or rather, curved. It's a claw now. Part of the body, not just an external tool. Not something you can put away. At best, you can file the points flat, but that's only a temporary measure. And sure, claws can be used for climbing, digging, and building nests, but when you hear the word "claw" there's really one action that comes to mind first. An action that suggests a certain type of animal. The fact that the same word is both a noun and a verb is a part of that.

It's still an incredibly generic and overused name for evil organizations in fiction, but in this case it at least means something. Probably. I might be giving the story a little too much credit here, but I don't think I am.

I like where this seems to be going, but unfortunately I can't say that I liked this episode all that much. The first half was stronger, with Hoodie making his charismatic villain intro and raising the story's stakes, but even it had problems. The fight was too long and had at least one tide-turn too many. The story being indecisive about what (and who, for that matter) will actually meaningfully hurt a person makes it hard to care about the outcomes of some battles, or to consider people making death threats to be anything more than a few sneaky frames of filler. The second half, meanwhile, just felt like it was desperately trying to push passed a bunch of plot oversights that had crept up on the author.

As I've said in some previous projects, I have a real weakness for younger siblings being threatened. That's usually an easy way to grab my heartstrings and force me to get invested in a story. When Ritsu and Mob were having their confrontational heart-to-heart at the beginning, I really felt that. Ritsu getting captured later in the same episode, though, is one of the few times I've read or watched a younger sibling get put in danger and not felt anything. Frankly, I was just glad that the fight scene was finally over by that point. The fact that Arataka's massage interlude right afterward was so entertaining is a credit to the episode, but also highlights how weak some other parts of it were.

To repeat though, despite the unusually high concentration of jank, I do like where this seems to be going.