Mob Psycho S1E11: "Master ~Leader~" (continued)

Mob deflects Ishiguro's attack (I guess Ishiguro actually is psychic himself then. Heh, was really kind of hoping he'd turn out to be alt-Arataka, but no). This doesn't deter the division leader so much as make him even more determined; the way he sees it, if Arataka is a powerful esper collecting powerful esper minions to his own banner, then he's a rival, and the Claw cannot tolerate the existence of rivals.

As Ishiguro and the Scars he has with him prepare their final round of attacks, the mooks warn that any more blasting is liable to hit them as well as the enemy. In response to this, unsurprisingly, Ishiguro shrugs and tells them that if they were stupid enough to think Arataka was their boss, then you know what, fine, he IS there boss. Stand behind him and fight for his cause, you're useless enough that I really don't care.

Arataka tells them they had better run, which they gladly do. Not sure why they needed to be told, heh. Old habits of mindless obedience drilled into them I guess. Nice of Arataka to give them the last kick they needed; it doesn't help or hinder him either way what happens to them, so this might be a rare moment of genuine compassion from Arataka.

Then Arataka tries to leave too, only for Ishiguro to collapse the hallway in front of him. Prompting this reaction:

Ah, I see. That initial blast that Mob deflected was too fast and too confusing, and Arataka still hadn't gotten it through his head that the Claw elites actually had real power until just now. That casts his sending the mooks away in a different light, heh. Just trying to get rid of them before they changed their minds again, not realizing Ishiguro actually had the means to hurt them (unless he pulled a gun or something I guess).

With Mob now being the closest one to the baddies, and Ishiguro sensing the most powerful aura coming from him, the latter decides to try taking him out first. He uses some kind of gravity-amplifying power to crush Mob downward into the floor, and compress the floor under him itself into something like a crater. Mob is retaining his bodily integrity, but it's taking him visible effort to do so.

Also, for some reason none of the three Scars who Ishiguro brought with him are paying the slightest amount of attention to what's going on directly in front of them. This is evidenced by Arataka somehow managing to run back up passed Ritsu and Teru, swerve around the gravity vortex Mob is struggling in, close the distance with the bad guys, and hit Ishiguro with his "anti-esper drop kick" power.

As the narrator helpfully informs us, this is a special power of Arataka's. He runs up to an esper who's distracted with a concentration spell and drop kicks them.

It's funny, but like... why didn't the other three stop him?

With Ishiguro unconscious, Mob is freed from the gravity trap. Arataka tries to salvage his most recent bluff, and gently scolds Mob for using his powers against other human beings like he told him not to. That isn't a nice thing to do; even if the other people are mean and stress Mob out, he should know better than to use his powers so irresponsibly. Just back off now, and let Arataka the responsible adult deal with this situation by whatever means prove appropriate and necessary.

Okay. It's a longshot at this point, especially since he just used a drop-kick without any obvious psychic enhancements in front of the people he's trying to fool. If it works, the day is saved. If it doesn't work, he's not going to be able to use any further bluffs, because now the bad guys will be sure of what he really is.

Unfortunately for Arataka and the children, the three Scars don't buy it. A noble effort, but no dice. He TRIES to cling onto hope of salvaging this, going on at length about what a cinnamon bun Mob is and how hard it is to confront aggressors, let alone adults like them, and how Arataka is really sorry for what he's about to do but they're leaving him no choice. But nope. They're not budging. He needs to actually make a show of force to sell this, and - due to his own actions - Mob doesn't think he needs any serreptitious help to pull one of those off.

In other words, Arataka might have to come clean to Mob right now to save his own life.

Or, well. He would, if it were possible to kill a person in this universe. You know what I mean.

So, seemingly just as an attempt to buy time, Arataka starts swinging a coin back and forth on a string and tells the baddies he's hypnotizing them.

Some of the Scars continue to be unimpressed by this. Others, like Glasses, start getting worried again; he's not detecting any psychic signature at all from Arataka, and surely no one would be stupid enough to try to fake psychic powers against a squad of real espers, so it's much more likely that he's extremely powerful and somehow masking his aura.

Ritsu, meanwhile, is watching with as much curiosity as trepidation. He always got the sense that Arataka was a fraud, though it's not clear if he ever voiced his suspicions to Mob or their parents. Now he's wondering what the story actually is. I wonder which impression he'll end up walking away with?

In any case, for a second time in as many minutes, the Scars are stupid enough to let Arataka saunter casually up to one of them and use one of his special abilities.

This isn't nearly as funny the second time. Or rather, if it is, it's funny because the joke is "look how stupid and inept the bad guys are," in a scene that's otherwise trying to play them as legitimately dangerous.

The episode is staaaarting to tilt back in the tiresome direction. Hopefully it won't go too far.

Ritsu realizes that there was nothing supernatural going on there with that bunch. Frankly, if I were in his place I might have inferred that Arataka WAS using some supernatural ability to keep the bad guys paralyzed while he walked up and bunched, because that would be more believable to me then them just not repelling him after they saw him do that to their leader. Bleh.

Well, Glasses isn't letting himself get sucker punched, at least. He'd definitely the closes thing Division 7 has to a straight/saneman. He dashes behind Arataka and tries to cut him in half, only being stopped at the last second when Mob TK-pushes Arataka out of the way. The sword cuts halfway into the wall where Arataka used to be. In the way of fighty anime characters, Glasses explains how his power specialty works.

That katana is actually a plastic toy. In the hands of anyone besides himself, it would remain a plastic toy.

If he painted it red, would it have a faster swing? I think it might.

Meanwhile, the other Scar still standing - the necromancer - releases his full army of ghastly pokemon and has them assume attack positions. The guy that Arataka punched seems to NOT be down and out, meanwhile, and starts astrally projecting himself to attack from multiple angles. Finally, Ishiguro himself picks himself up off the floor, finally recovering from the drop-kick, and claims that his patience has now been worn exceedingly thin. Aratak realizes, finally, that he's run himself out of chances. His tricks and manipulations can only get him so far against people as powerful and persistent as the Claws.

Once again, this is sort of a refutation of Teru's earlier sentiment, about overfocus on psychic powers being a weakness. Hmm.

Arataka realizes, too late, that he was trying to deal with the Claw elites as if they were adults with an adult sense of risk and reward. They're not, though. The audience already knew that, from watching them these last few episodes, but Arataka is only learning it now.

He turns and tries to run, but Ishiguro is even less inclined to let that happen than he was before he got drop-kicked. He starts sucking Arataka into a mini-black hole (that specifically targets him and not anyone else? Somehow?) Mob and Teru pull back at him with their TK, while also doing their best to keep him from being torn in half. Ishiguro yanks a little harder, and ends up half-imploding the damned building around them. He aknowledges this as a mistake with an almost literal "oopsie."

Outside, the escaped Awakening Lab nooblet kids watch in alarm.

I feel like those kids should have put some more distance between the building and themselves by now. I guess they were feeling lucky. For some reason.

The implosion and resulting power failure doesn't stun the Scars for long, though. After just a second of wincing and cringing at their leader's carelessness, they press the attack. The astral projection guy spams shadow clones at them; Mob with his experience at exorcising ghosts can readily neutralize them, but Teru and Ritsu take some painful knocks. While Mob tries to keep up with the whack-a-mole avatars, Teru is also being targeted by Glasses with his +6 plastic sword of sharpness. Refreshingly, the baddies also stop acting like typical shonen fighty characters with exclusive powersets, and start combining their specialties with more general telekinesis and the like. Teru is just barely able to keep up with Glasses, and hurriedly calls for Mob to stop just playing defence and blast these assholes away before he gets overwhelmed. All while more of the other guy's astral projections keep running harrassment from the peripheries.

The battle between Teru and Glasses is possibly the best animated and choreographed battle in the series up until now, btw. Strongly recommend looking it up. The telekinetic blasts tearing the buitlind apart around them as Teru dodges sword-charge after sword-charge from Glasses is a hell of a lot more impressive than I can make it sound through description, and I'm *not* someone who is easily wowed by visual spectacle in fiction.

Also, at one point Teru has a narrow enough miss to lose the upper two thirds of his wig, leaving him looking more or less like his normal, pre-Mob self.

I kinda wonder why he didn't do this himself, honestly, if the wig can hold itself together after that kind of butchering. Also, show? Please don't remind me of Teru 1.0 at the same time that you're trying to convince me that Teru 1.0 never existed.

That detail aside, though, the duel between Teru and Glasses really is pretty great.

Meanwhile, the necromancer tries to sic his ghosts at Mob and Arataka. Mob uses a break in the astral projection spam to vaporize all the ghosts, leaving our pokemon trainer friend standing around uselessly. Lol. I guess he *doesn't* have general telekinesis, unlike Glasses and presumably the other Scars. He actually is what Arataka pretends to be, hah. Well, it looks like he isn't TOTALLY out of Pokemon. He has one left, but it's pretty uncontrollable, so he only lets it out when he's in really desperate situations. Mob can probably still handle it, but for some reason Arataka tells him that now is the time to try running away again. No idea why.

Teru, still struggling against Glasses, tells Mob to hurry up and end this battle. Ritsu, who has managed to close the distance with the astral projection guy and force him into a telekinetic tug-o-war match to defend his real body, seconds that notion, and says that they CAN'T retreat without getting torn apart by the Scars' attacks. Arataka, however, just keeps on repeating the instruction to run away. Telling Mob that he's too good for this, he mustn't ever fight humans, he'll end up regretting it if he does, this is a situation for an adult like himself to handle.

-____-

I really do not get where Arataka is coming from in this scene. He notably isn't lending any consideration at all to Ritsu or Teru's safety, just trying to tell Mob to flee. I'd take that as him hoping to survive this and take his cash cow with him while Ritsu and Teru die covering their retreat, except that Arataka is also saying that HE HIMSELF will be staying while Mob escapes.

Maybe he feels bad about exploiting Mob? I don't know. It seems like if he really is just trying to keep Mob safe though, he should be telling him to fight harder just like the other two.

Mob freezes up, trying to decide who to listen to.

That last Pokemon doesn't seem to have acted yet, weirdly. Also, did Ishiguro knock himself out again? He hasn't done anything, or even appeared in frame, since the power went out. I don't know.

Mob starts to decide that defending his brother comes before anything else and that he needs to fight, no matter what, but then Arataka literally grabs him by the face and leans in to roar at him about how he shouldn't.

Why has that Pokemon still not attacked? Maybe it was just too uncontrollable, and is currently squatting in the corner shitting ghost poop on the floor or something. Why is shonen so bad at remembering where everyone is during fight scenes? Not all shonen is this bad about it, but I've seen it recur in enough different series for it to seem like a pervasive issue.

Also, I still just do not understand what Arataka thinks he's doing here.

Suddenly, it's flashback time! Arataka is sitting back in his office, looking kind of stressed out, having a cigarette and hoping he gets some customers soon. He answers a ring at the doorbell, and finds himself looking down at a preteen boy. A boy who claims to have psychic powers he sometimes has problems controlling, and that hopefully a professional psychic like Arataka can help him learn to deal with.

Arataka's first reflex is to ask Mob who put him up to this, suspecting that someone is trying to expose his fraud or just generally mock and antagonize him. Mob insists that he came here on his own after seeing the sign over the door, though, and Arataka quickly gets the sense that the kid isn't lying.

So, deciding that this is just some suggestible kid who let his imagination run away with him, Arataka sits Mob down, offers him tea, and gives him a somewhat heartwarming (if a little overly paternalistic) pep talk about how learning to control your powers is like learning to control your physical strength, or your speed, or your body odour. It takes effort, self-awareness, and commitment to healthy routines and a mentality of restraint and self-care, but it's not fundamentally different from the challenges everyone has to face while growing up.

Mob seems somewhat reassured. Arataka feels like he's probably helped this kid deal with whatever actual problem he has that's caused him to imagine this esper fantasy, so he makes to show him out and wait for the next adult he can scam. However, he happens to spill hot tea on himself and drop his cup as a result. Mob grabs it in the air with his TK and levitates it back into his own hand before offering it back to Arataka. His nonchalant expression making it clear that he doesn't expect Arataka to be surprised by this show of power.

Arataka hides his shock quickly, and changes his demeanour.

Cut back to the present. I'm not sure what that flashback was supposed to tell us that we didn't already know, or at least that we couldn't easily infer. Maybe it'll become more apparent next episode.

And, speaking of a CUT back to the present, Arataka's incoherent admonishing of Mob is abruptly ended by this:

On one hand, despite the slash cutting all the way through the tile floor, it doesn't seem to have gone all the way through Arataka's body. Suggesting that death still isn't actually a thing. On the other, the visible slash on Arataka's clothes, and the way he slumps forward immediately afterward, suggests that this is at least supposed to be a moderately serious injury.

Anyway, Mob already killed the Very Wise Frog back in the torture scene. Now he's seen the fate of Samura (which was always a lie peddled by a con man to begin with, in this case). Time to face reality and beat the shit out of some princesses. End episode.

There were some annoying moments that regressed to the tiresome generic shonen-isms of the previous episodes, but overall this really was a strong episode. I hope there's an explanation for WTF Arataka was thinking at the end there, but the role that he's playing for Mob is very well executed, and showing how useless of a respite his insincere feel-good answers actually are when something like the Claw comes a-knocking was brilliantly brutal.

Much better balance of gags to action, also. Not uniformly distributed, but there was still enough of both that it didn't seem like the show is trying to be something it's not anymore. So, I look forward to reviewing the season finale.