Mob Psycho S1E12: "Mob and Reigen ~A Giant Tsuchinoko Appears~" (continued)

The next morning (or maybe a couple mornings later? I can't imagine the boys were able to wake up in time for school the next morning), Mob and Ritsu head to school. They're walking TOGETHER this time, which is something they haven't done in years.

It took a hell of a lot of work, but now they're finally brothers again.

...

I have mixed feelings about how effective this arc was in terms of framing Ritsu's character development.

On one hand, the whole message - hammered home in as many words by Arataka in that last scene - was that power doesn't define a person, and a person who tries to define themselves by it basically loses their personhood. Thus, by fixating on his brother's power and striving to match it, Ritsu ruined their ability to have anything like a human family relationship, and only after learning that Mob really tries to separate himself from his own power (and that this is preferable to the alternative) is Ritsu able to get passed it.

On the other hand...Ritsu wasn't wrong. Before, when he lived in fear and resentment of his brother, Mob had powers and Ritsu didn't. Ritsu was only able to undergo this arc and end up in a better place because he got powers himself. He didn't have powers, and their relationship was bad. Now they both have powers, and - after a brief rocky period - their relationship is good. While Mob is still much STRONGER than Ritsu, they're at least on the same playing field now, whereaas before they weren't. That is a reality that you can bury under as much philosophy as you want, but you can never hide it entirely.

It's just like how Mob had the "option" of not fighting and letting an adult do the work back then. It's just an illusion plastered over the much more uncomfortable reality. They won because Mob had bigger psi-muscles than the bad guys. If he hadn't had them, Arataka wouldn't have been able to give them that armor-piercing speech and have them heed it. If Ritsu didn't have powers of his own now, he wouldn't have been able to make peace with Mob.

I *think* the story is aware of this. I'd be very disappointed if it turns out to not be.

...

At school, Mob catches sight of that girl he has a crush on who hasn't been seen or mentioned for like 8 episodes. Right, he has a crush on a girl. I'd have had trouble remembering this even if it hadn't been literal years since I saw her, lol.

Mob helpfully reminds me that her name is Tsubomi. Thank you Mob.

His telepathy club friend jumps on him again, interrupting his shy staring session. Back to business as usual.

Cut to Ritsu talking with whatsisname, the douchebag student council president. He's been thinking about things himself. Now that Ritsu isn't in power tripping lunatic mode, he helps him work through said things. He decides to come clean and confess his misdeeds to both the school and to his classmates, even though it will mean the end of his own reputation and his tenure as president. Ritsu approves, and agrees to take a proportional amount of responsibility.

The first person they go to with the confession, naturally, is Onigawara, the Josuke-lookalike who they initially framed.

He's not thrilled with them, of course, but at the same time he says that he's not going to blame all of his recent troubles on them. He's been doing some soul searching, and the fact is...they *aren't* responsible for the situation he's in. At least, not mostly. He spent his entire adolescence being a total piece of shit to everyone except his own little delinquent clique. As soon as an accusation was made against him, everyone immediately believed it, and moved to act on that belief as soon as they possibly could. Because he had made himself the sort of person who you CAN readily believe something like that about. It's something that *wouldn't have been too out-of-character* for him to have done. If the school wanted to be rid of him and was just looking for an excuse, well, he's the one who piled all that dry straw in that unkempt wooden shed and left the lamps burning; does it really matter if someone else came by and knocked one of them over? Would the same thing not have happened anyway, sooner or later?

Damn. EVERYONE has been doing a lot of introspection and growing up between scene cuts, these last few episodes.

He's not going to forgive them, exactly. But he isn't going to hold a gigantic grudge or anything either. Either way, he's no longer about to be expelled, so he can keep on trying to turn his life around with schoolwork and his new extracurriculars. The latter including the weightlifting club, which he needs to get back to from his water break.

As Ritsu and the president whatever his name was watch Josuke get back to lifting, pleasantly surprised at how well that went, they see Mob finishing the laps he was just running. Well, "finishing." He sort of collapses on the asphalt from exhaustion a few meters shy of the finish line.

Before getting back to lifting, Josuke said that he's trying to learn to shrug things off and keep improving himself, just like White T. Poison taught him. Ritsu watches his brother, the actual White T. Poison, collapsed on the ground after refusing to use his psi-powers to augment his strength or endurance, gettting up only after his fellow bodybuilders bring him water. Ritsu knows not to be worried, though.

...

Hmm. This seems like a reminder of the point I made earlier. Mob can always fall back on his powers to save him if his life is *really* in danger. Most people don't have that privilege. For him, all struggle is voluntary. That fundamentally makes life a different game for people like Mob, no matter what he tries to live like. Just having an "I win" button means you need to constantly choose not to press it, and that makes you very, very far from most human experience.

...

The montage continues. The telepathy club keeps slacking away playing video games at their now-unofficial meetings. The *actual* telepathy club being led by Richguy, meanwhile, is back in business. Richguy has improved both his research methods and his security by adding a new hire to the Awakening Lab's staff roster.

...I was sure it was going to be Arataka, and was about to laugh uproariously, but no! Fortunately for everyone involved, it's Teru.

They only caught brief glimpses of each other during the rescue/escape sequence, so it's time for proper introductions now. Additionally, Teru tells them, they have a new purpose now; the Claw is still out there, and it's only a matter of time before they decide to look into the mysterious enemies who destroyed Division 7. The kids can try and get their families to move away and change their names, or they can start recieving training from a real esper and hopefully learn to defend themselves better. They unanimously opt for the latter.

In his office, Arataka is approached by Dimple. Mob apparently told him to tell Arataka that Mob is too exhausted from weightlifting to come to work today, so from now on he's going to have Dimple fill in for him whenever he can't show up.

"Anemia?" Not sure if that's the translators screwing up, or Dimple being extremely melodramatic.

Arataka tells Dimple that it's going to be tough, handling spirits without Mob. Arataka did gain some very minor persistent powers in the aftermath of Mob's mind merge buff, but so far they seem to be limited to just the ability to see and hear entities like Dimple, not to interact with them beyond that.

Hmm. If they DO beat any more ghosts, Dimple is going to eat and absorb them. This is going to get ugly, eventually.

In the ruins of the Division 7 base, the Wunderkind picks up a cell phone he dropped and accepts a call from Claw Prime. He reports that his mission was a failure, on account of Division 7 proving itself holistically unworthy; an outside enemy pruned it for them. It looks like the Claw is going to need to make some major changes to how they do things, or the rot that allowed Division 7 to fall might start showing up in their other cells too.

Claw Prime takes this in stride, and tells him that he'll be coming to Japan soon regardless. Either they have another cell operating in Japan, or he has other reasons to still want to go there. Maybe just to find out more about these outside aggressors.

Also, we finally get a look at Claw Prime.

Pretty forgettable, compared to his outlandish-looking underlings. Well, we'll see more of him eventually, and maybe he'll have a chance to make more of an impression.

Then, finally, in the last three minutes or so of the episode, we get to the thing the episode is named after. Some time later, when Mob isn't exhausted anymore, Arataka sees a local newscast about a string of alleged tsuchinoko sightings. The city has offered a bounty on the cryptid in an attempt to boost tourism.

What follows is a bizarre little self-contained vignette about Arataka dragging Mob off on a tsuchinoko hunt, but then not believing in the tsuchinoko even after they encounter it, alleging that the giant snake monster is a spirit, not a cryptid, obviously cryptids don't actually exist. Even after Mob beats it up and causes it to shrink back into literally exactly what a tsuchinoko is supposed to look like.

They just go home with some matsutaki mushrooms Arataka found. Not sure what the point of any of that was, or why Arataka even wanted to do that so much. I feel like this whole minisode just existed as a prank on the audience, so the episode could take it's name from something totally unrelated to anything. End episode. End season.


So, that was season one of Mob Psycho 100. To be honest, it was all over the place. Most (though not all) of the places it went were interesting and fun, but I'm not sure if they all fit together as well as the creator intended. Certainly, there was plenty of flailing to get from plot point to plot point. Thematically...moooost things worked as a leadup to the Claw and its (for now) defeat, but again, not all.

There's definitely questions to be answered, beyond just the obvious mystery of "what even is Mob, and does he actually have some other entity residing in his soul?" Mostly along the lines of whether or not the show knows what it's been saying and showing about the nature of power. Arataka is probably the most interesting character of the lot, through this lens. On one hand, his egalitarian rhetoric is really inspirational. On the other, he absolutely does not practice anything he preaches, which calls into question whether he believes it himself or if he just thinks it's something he can manipulate suckers with. Is he actually any different from the leaders of the Claw, philosophically speaking?

He also sort of literalizes his own metaphor of power just being a tool rather than a part of the self; ALL of his power is borrowed, or stolen, or just outright faked. For him, power really is just a knife you can pick up and use for your workday; that's exactly how he uses Mob. He doesn't say this part out loud, but his relationship with Mob is sort of a refutation of the advice he gives him; he says power isn't what makes you yourself, but he treats Mob like he really is a living power source; his power coming before his personhood.

I kind of feel like Arataka might just break down under his own cognitive dissonance by the end. It'll be interesting to see where Mob goes as his own person from there.