Mob Psycho S2E1: "Ripped Apart ~Someone is Watching~"

This review was fast lane comissioned by @Bernkastel

I've heard around the net that MP100's second season is its high point. Which is reassuring, because - aside from dragging in the Claw arc - season one was pretty dang good to begin with. @Bernkastel has comissioned the first two episodes of the cour.

Where things left off, the story established a new status quo. At least in most ways, it's an improvement for the characters. Mob has a slightly better sense of what his powers mean to him and what kind of world he lives in, even if he still has a long way to go. His relationship with his brother Ritsu is better, and he finally has other non-fake espers to relate to in the form of both Ritsu and former enemy Teru. For their own parts, Teru has learned a lesson/been retconned into a better adjusted person, and Ritsu has had the weight of the world taken off his shoulders after finding empowerment and humility in quick succession and also being freed from the insane student council president. The minor characters have also, for the most part, reached a better place than they were at in the early episodes. The biggest interpersonal conflict left at this point is Arataka's exploitation of Mob; a relationship that's becoming increasingly difficult to maintain due to changing power dynamics and conflicting emotions.

Dimple is still potentially a danger, and Claw Prime will probably start probing into the fate of Division 7 eventually, but there aren't any immediate threats for now.

In short, everyone is being given a breather. I'm sure it won't last long, though.

Much like the season one pilot, this one opens on Arataka bargaining with one of his marks. In this case, a farmer whose crops are being blighted by a shadowy nocturnal entity. Unlike most of Arataka's customers, this guy is portrayed sympathetically. While he pretends to have only gotten into farming as a hobby, it's pretty clear that it's his livelihood, and that the last few years of blighted crops have impoverished him. His son is starting school this year, and he can't afford Arataka's usual prices.

Either having a rare empathetic moment, or just musing on a new way of doing business, Arataka agrees to take a percentage of the year's crops in lieu of up front payment. Which, well. That's probably closer to being honest than how Arataka usually does things, since this way Arataka doesn't get anything if the farmer doesn't.

Arataka takes the time to test the soil, look at neighbouring plots of land, and look over the farmer's fertilizer and water usage to see if he can find any evil spirits within his power to exorcise. He doesn't find any, so he's forced to call Mob. Mob is, once again, irritated at Arataka for summoning him on such short notice and with such little patience.

Speaking of little patience though, Mob seems much more acerbic than usual in how he voices his complaints. The look he gives Arataka, likewise, is visibly more irritable than it's been in the past. Not quite resentful, not yet, but sort of starting to lean that way, a little. In a way that makes me wonder if perhaps that mind merge trick back at the Claw base, even though Mob did it involuntarily, communicated something up through Mob's subconscious. Like he has a sense of the truth, even though he doesn't know it.

Anyway, Arataka does his usual bullshit where he asks Mob if he senses any ghostly auras here in a way that makes it sound like a mentor testing a pupil, and also babbles out some nonsense about "daikon fairies." Mob actually starts to verbally call Arataka on the daikon fairies thing, but stops himself before he can get more than a few syllables in. It's progress though. It's definitely progress. Anyway, Mob detects a psionic aura in the field, but it's a weak one. Probably just a minor spirit. I guess it doesn't take much power to do a lot of economic damage, if said power can effect plantlife.

I guess this minor spirit is also pretty good at recognizing radar pings, because as soon as it's detected it starts speaking to the intruders via a nearby scarecrow. And also making the scarecrow spin and thrash around violently, hoping to intimidate them. Mob disintegrates the scarecrow easily, but there's no little technicolor specter emerging from the debris to shake its amorpheous little fist at them this time. Instead, a massive construct formed from tree roots, soil, and mutant plant stems erupts out of the ground, tearing much of the field asunder, and seizes Mob and Arataka in its tendrils. Not a minor spirit, then. A major one, whose major powers include "making itself seem less powerful when you try to aura-scan it."

The entity tells them that this is its land, and it has the rights to anything that grow there. Regardless of how little effort it put into the farming and how much effort the farmer does. From the way it describes things, it's been systematically harvesting life force from the crops that it blights, essentially converting all the work put into them into more power for itself, and it clearly has a lot to show for that by now.

Mob starts TK-ing its plant body apart. It fights back, trying to pull Mob and Arataka underground and crush them. It also says out loud that it can feel that Arataka is powerless, and even tries to negotiate with Mob by threatening the life of his "helpless friend." Mob doesn't appear to register this, but even if he tells himself the demon is just trying to fuck with him this has to be another crack in that mental wall. Anyway, the fight goes on for a while. The animation is pretty, and the action is insanely over-the-top in MP100's usual way. Eventually, Mob realizes that the reason he only felt a weak aura is because the spirit isn't directly possessing this mass of vines and roots; it's manipulating them via a form of touch-telekinesis, using its more distant real host as a vector. So, Mob shifts from anti-material blasts to TK-tug-o-war, and the entire monster collapses back into mundane earth and plantlife.

At the far end of the massive furrow the battle tore open across the field, the true vessel of the entity is revealed.

This is one of, if not the, most inhuman-seeming spirits encountered so far, but the fact that it's latched onto a skull of all things suggests that it really is just another souped-up human ghost. At this point, I think it's as good as confirmed that all "demons" in this world are just unusually hostile and powerful ghosts. One of those very anthropocentric fantasy settings, where all the weird stuff is ultimately human in origin. Not a criticism, just an observation.

With the shattering of the skull, the ghost is laid to rest. Well, seemingly laid to rest. We know from Dimple's example that some of these ultra-warped spirits can sneak away and play dead when they get dropped into single-digit hp, so there's a chance this guy might be back eventually. Still, he's gone for now at least. Cut to the next day in Arataka's office. This year's crop is a bust, on account of the need to repair the field before replanting, so the farmer just gave Arataka an equivalent portion of the seeds he was planning to use. Heh, well played farmer. Arataka is gonna try and start a couple of window gardens or something.

Of course, Arataka is never going to not take the disappointment out on Mob when he can, so he consoles himself by paying him a share of the seeds instead of his usual rate in turn.

Arataka showed us his best in the Claw arc. I guess it's time to make up for that by denying Mob his already meager pay right after Mob has saved his life.

When Mob explains what it was like to wrest control of those mostly-living plants away from the parasitic ghost, Arataka starts wondering how else Mob's powers can interact with plantlife. He tries planting a tomato seed in one of his new flowerpots and telling Mob to see if he can accelerate its growth. It turns out that he very, very much can; he just never tried to do anything like this before.

Arataka immediately starts planning to exploit this and make himself a multibillionaire agri-tycoon, but then he actually eats one of the cherry tomatoes and learns that there are some side-effects of accelerated growth. Ah well.

The season 2 OP rolls, and it's both very similar and very different from its predecessor. The song is much less frenetic and more thoughtful, lacking the first theme's sense of escalating tension (both musically and lyrically; the last one literally had a chorus counting up from one to one hundred in the background, heh). The animation is about as whacky as the season one OP's, but trades grandiosity in for diversity. No brain-melting fractal vistas of cartoon psychedelia this time, just an eclectic sequence of very different-looking portraits of cartoon psychedelia. The range of animation styles it runs through is damned impressive.

Both OP's also have a starkly presented English phrase toward their ends, and these say a lot about where the main character arc is headed. In season one, the line was "Mob, Mob, what do you want?" In season two, it's "Your life is your own." Pretty clear progression, though Mob still has a lot of work to do in this season if he's to catch up with the proscription.

Also, while I really liked the count-up's effect in the first OP, the fact that the "Mob stress levels" ended up being such a red herring for the story made me resent its presence. There aren't any artifacts of it in OP2 at all, that I can see. I'm starting to think that the "100" in the story's title is just a conceptual artifact, at this point. Like the stress levels thing WERE going to be important at one point, but ONE ended up moving away from that idea over time.

On balance, I think I like the new OP better. Both as a piece of standalone art, and as an accessory for the series.

The episode resumes (or...begins? I guess the whole thing with the plant monster was just a skit) with the founding priesthood of the Psycho Helmet Religion meeting at a fast food place to decide where and how to build themselves a proper temple. Presumably, buying out the fast food place and then continuing business is usual is out of the question. Additionally, they'd like to recover their missing prophet if they can. It turns out that the Psycho Helmet Religion is made up of former Dimple cultists who, after Dimple's fall, have taken to worshipping Mob as their new god. Sort of the other side of the White T. Poison coin.

I'd forgotten that one of the laughter-cultists was a girl in Mob's school. Had to look back at some earlier reviews to remember who this girl was. Her name's Mezato, she works for their school newspaper, and - like most of the minor characters in this story - she has much more courage than brains. Anyway, after taking some time to mentally recover, this splinter-sect is ready to supplicate their newer truer god for his leadership and blessings, and Mezato promises to get him in touch with them.

When we hear her internal monologue though, it's clear that she's not a believer at all. She's actually been downplaying her own knowledge of Mob, pretending that she only "got a closer look at his face" rather than actually recognizing him from school. She's dragging this out to build up everyone's expectations and excitement, and to get it all concentrated on herself. She also wants to wait until she thinks she can get some kind of emotional leverage on Mob before she lets them have their god.

In short, she liked what she saw at Dimple's cult rally, and decided she wants to be him when she grows up. Lovely.

Mezato's quest to become L. Ron Hubbard would be much easier, of course, if Mob himself was less...Mobish. On one hand, his lack of ego and ambition make it unlikely for him to actually rule himself, so there IS room for a power behind the throne. On the other hand, his lack of ego and ambition make him unlikely to take any interest in any part of leading a cult in the first place. The way she sees the problem before her is...interesting.

She sees his disinterest in power and adulation as something he needs to grow out of. So, she wants to encourage him to grow, though not too much for her to control.

The parallels with Arataka are self-explanatory. She's just a hell of a lot dumber than him.

Cut to the next day at school. The student council president has confessed to all his black ops bullshit, and is stepping down from his position voluntarily instead of waiting for the school to force him. He's likely looking at a significant suspension, if not an expulsion. At any rate, there's going to be a surprise student council election because of this. Mezato thinks she sees an opportunity in this election to stimulate the kind of character development she wants from Mob, but she still need some kind of hook to get his interest.

The obvious answer, of course, is to try and get at Mob through his brother. Ritsu wasn't implicated in the former president's misdeeds, so he's probably going to be - if not a candidate himself - at least involved in someone else's campaign. It's also probably obvious to everyone around them that Mob and Ritsu have just had a major reconciliation and are being seen happily in each other's company now rather than acting like strangers as they used to. However, as previously noted, Mezato is dumb.

Not as dumb as whatsername's friends, I guess, since her head doesn't literally read as plant matter to Mob's senses. But still, dumb enough to go this much more circuitous route instead of the obvious easier one.

As Mob stares longingly after whatsername (Tsubomi! Right, her name is Tsubomi!) in the hall, Mezato sneaks up on him and starts needling him about being so obvious about his crush. Mob, of course, had no idea that he was giving any external signs of having a crush on anyone, and panics at the realization that other people can tell. D'awwwww.

Cue Mezato sucking Mob into a prolonged private conversation about Tsubomi, his interest in her, and their social context. Mezato is surprised to learn that Mob and Tsubomi were actually childhood friends before Mob's psi-related alienation caused them to grow apart. Mob, for his own part, is surprised to learn that Tsubomi is the "school idol" who everyone and their dog is crushing on; he's just that disconnected from the local gossip. Learning that Tsubomi is in such high demand visibly saddens him, as he realizes that competition would be another major barrier to him ever possibly being with her. Good start, Mob. Acknowledging that you have a problem is the first step toward solving it, and by "you" in this case I mean "everyone," and by "problem" I mean "the default assumption of monogamy." I'm very sure that the show will be about that, the "Mob destroys dumb romantic norms with his mind lasers" arc will start any episode now, it's canon.

After gathering as much information and gaining as much trust as she thinks she needs to do her thing, Mezato does her thing and tells Mob that if he were the student council president he'd have *vastly* better odds of dating Tsubomi. The concept being proposed is so far outside of Mob's frame of reference that he's virtually paralyzed just trying to imagine it, much less apply it to any vision of his real life.

Mending bridges with his brother must have gotten Mob at least a *little* less alienated from student life and school politics, but I guess it's still a recent development. Mob sees Ritsu as someone who is part of his life now rather than an immovable part of the distant scenery, and he knows that the school politics are part of Ritsu's life, but he's still working to connect these two things.

Mezato offers to help Mob out, if he wants to try running for student council president. She's got some kind of position in the school newspaper, so she might be a good campaign manager. Mob looks even more shocked, and starts visibly sweating. We never actually see him agree to her offer. It's just sort of implied that she took his silence for agreement, and walked him through the process from that point on while he was too confused and socially anxious to resist.

This continues throughout the week-long training process she puts him through. Someone as socially awkward and politically disconnected as Mob obviously needs a lot of work before he could even think about getting votes, so she has a lot of work to put him through. We see him reading atlases, doing pushups, meditating under waterfalls, and fighting bears naked in the woods to develop the needed skills as quickly as possible.

The classic social skills grindset.

The week elapses, and another assembly is held for the candidates to announce their candidacies. To the surprise of most, disgraced ex-president Kamuro is among them. Apparently, his resignation was intended to give the student body a chance to decide if he's still worthy of his position or not, rather than a decisive action of his own (in fact, it turns out to have been vice-president Tokugawa's idea. Not sure why he proposed this, but sure). I'm surprised he isn't too busy being suspended to even run, but then, at this point, it's starting to seem like this school doesn't have any adult authorities (including teachers) whatsoever, so that might be a moot point.

Finally, it's Mob's turn to stand up and give his campaign announcement speech. Most of the students are at least moderately surprised to see him up there, and aren't sure what to make of it. The bodybuilding and telepathy clubs, of course, are cheering for him. Onigawara ponders darkly on the reasons White T. Poison might have for moving his shadow-rule out into the open like this. Ritsu, who had been planning to support Kamuro out of solidarity (Kamuro honorably left out the fact that he'd roped Ritsu into his abuses of power when he confessed, so Ritsu feels somewhat indebted), but if his own brother is running then that changes things.

...did Mob not tell Ritsu that he was planning to run, at any point in the last week? Even with their relationship being supposedly mended? Well, I guess old habits die hard, and it's been a long time since they've proactively told each other about what's going on in their lives? Maybe? Still, it feels a little off for how that arc was presented and concluded.

Mob gets on stage and stands behind the podium. He mentally runs through the speech that Mezato wrote for him. He opens his mouth.

Each candidate is given a maximum of five minutes to talk. It's much more time than most of them actually need to deliver their speeches. For Mob, however, it isn't even enough time to start his first syllable.

He stands still at the podium, mouth open, for five full minutes. Only moving at all when he's told that his time is elapsed and he needs to make way for someone else.

It turns out that fighting bears and sitting under waterfalls doesn't actually make you any better at public speaking. Weird, I know.

Mezato is disappointed, to say the least. Not only because of her own wasted effort, but also because she's less sure than ever that Mob could ever be placed in a leadership position even as someone else's puppet. The bodybuilding club members try to cheer Mob up, when he shows up to the club after school looking completely dejected and traumatized, but he can't be cheered. Eventually, they decide to tell him to just take the day off and head home, he clearly needs some time to himself.

On the way to do that, though, Mob stops at his locker, and finds a note tucked into it.

Huh? What's this now? Some new trick of Mezato's?

Nope! It's from some random girl in Mob's school who we've never met before. Mob's attempt to go beyond his comfort zone wasn't a success, but it was a move that got her attention, and she thought he might be interesting. Her name is Emi, and she's wondering if he'd mind walking home from school with her.

Huh. Well. I'll be damned.

I'm not sure if this is realistic, per se, but it's a good message. Just engaging with the social world around you - however, wherever, it doesn't matter - really is the best way to escape loneliness.

Splitting it here.