Mob Psycho S2E2: "Urban Legends ~Encountering Rumors~"

Open on Arataka's office. Mob is reading a comic book. Arataka is worrying about how few clients he's had recently. I guess that last job only netting him a few packs of seeds didn't leave him in a good financial situation. The OP rolls, and Arataka and Mob are now on a train to a neighbouring town, presumably chasing business opportunities.

Arataka makes it clear that he doesn't believe in the cryptid that people are claiming to see all over the town they're headed to. However, if there are people seeing things that aren't there, then there are probably a lot of people who will think they have need of exorcisms. Surprisingly, Mob doesn't comment on Arataka basically admitting that they're going to scam people. In the past, Arataka's been at least somewhat careful to disguise this, but no he isn't, and seemingly without consequences.

Hmm. Mob just caring less and less about Arataka and his bullshit? Translation hiccup that makes Arataka's line sound more incriminating than it was supposed to be? Not sure.

They get off the train and set up an...exorcism lemonade stand?

Arataka wishes he had a taller table to bring with them. Unfortunately, this was the best he could do at short notice.

So, they squat there on the sidewalk and wait for bites. Nobody seems interested. Just lots of cold, unfriendly looks from passerby. Suddenly, an angry voice demands that they stop panhandling in the public space and harrassing bystanders...but it's not a cop. It's the competition.

And uh...apparently he has "jurisdiction" in these particular public spaces, for faux-psychic panhandling purposes.

Shinra and Arataka growl and posture at each other for a while, subtextually daring each other to go to the police for panhandling or intimidation respectively while both knowing that neither of them want the law looking their way. Their spat is interrupted when a woman with an unsettling voice walks up to them and says she's looking for some supernatural help. It looks like Shinra's business isn't doing any better than Arataka's lately, because he's just as desperate to snap this one up.

So. They take the client to a restaurant, where they continue to step on each other in their feeding frenzy for her money. The woman with the spooky voice manages to get in a word edgewise and tells them that she's always been very sensitive to spiritual presences, and lately she's been outright tormented by the amount of psychic activity in the area. She thinks that...hmm. This might be another translation misstep.

Is she saying that the amount of superstition in the area is causing her problems, and that she wants the psychics to get everyone to stop believing in these urban legends? I'm not sure why you'd go to psychics for help with that.

It would make more sense if she's saying that she herself believes in the cryptids, and that it is their presence that's causing her problems. I can see how "urban legend" and "cryptid" might easily get switched around by a less-than-competent translator.

Anyway, the other local fraud(?) is reluctant to take such a far-reaching assignment, but Arataka isn't, which means that Shinra can't let himself be outdone. So, they agree to share the mission and split the fee. A fee that Shinra thinks Arataka is seriously lowballing.

Arataka's low quote is yet another factor in Shinra's reluctance to work with this new upstart competitor, but he knows he can't afford such a hit to his clout. So, after flexing emptily at each other a bit more, the two agree to "split up and do some investigating." Whatever the hell that even means in this context, heh. When Shinra walks away to do his own "investigation," Arataka has Mob summon Dimple over and bid him to keep an eye on Shinra. I'm not sure what he's afraid that he'll do, but for whatever reason he wants eyes on him. It...sounds like they're worried about something happening to him, and Arataka maybe getting blamed for it? Maybe? I don't know. This episode's subtitles are really feeling like a game of telephone so far, maybe I should switch to the dub. Well, anyway. Dimple is annoyed at being ordered around all the time, and reminds them that they're going to have to do him a favor in return one of these days, but he acquiesces.

Dimple may be having a slow redemption arc, or he may not be. It's really hard to tell at this point. The fact that he IS slowly regaining strength over the course of their adventures could spell trouble in the long run, if not.

As Dimple flies off to tail Shinra, Mob looks up at the stormy sky and muses that he doesn't think this town is just suffering from excessive credulity or hysteria. There's something here. He's not sure what, but something.

As they speak, one of the "urban legends" that they've mentioned in passing, a spectre known as the Red Raincoat, peers out at them from around a corner.

Granted, with the character design in this show being as batshit as it is this might actually be a perfectly normal human who just happens to have oversized bloodshot eyes that glow in the dark. But I don't think so.

Arataka and Mob start by doing some online research. Most of the sightings have been from children, and Arataka doesn't want to come up to random children and start interrogating them on the street. You'd think he'd just get Mob to do this part, since a middle schooler approaching random children is a hell of a lot less suspicious than a middle aged man doing so, but whatever. Shinra, on the other hand, is apparently completely unused to dealing with normal people who aren't marks, because he goes straight to the playground and starts haranguing children so shadily that he might as well have pulled up in a windowless van.

I just noticed that the sandbox has statues of giant human fingers in it.​

Weirdly, the way Shinra was interrogating the children made it seem like he himself actually believes in (or at least, is open to the possibility of) these apparitions' existence. Like, what would he be seeking to accomplish here, otherwise? Is this guy supposed to be a fraud or not, after all?

Regardless, the children and parents start mobbing Shinra, and the pair of little girls he had been trying to interview run away. Which...prompts a guy in a red raincoat and nothing under it who'd been watching from the bushes to swear at Shinra for scaring off the girls, and then go running after them.

Shinra runs after the pedo, and manages to knock him down. A silly gag-fight happens that I didn't find as funny as I think I was meant to. Anyway, Shinra kinda-sorta exonerates himself in the eyes of the locals (or at least, they're tickled by a pervert duel). The nonce gets away in the end, but his face has been seen now, so he probably won't last long.

Looks like the Red Raincoat, at least, isn't a supernatural entity. Or, well. I guess there could be another Red Raincoat wholly unrelated to this one, haunting the same town by coincidence. Or...I guess maybe the guy could be possessed or something? Okay, MAYBE there actually is a Red Raincoat spirit, but most likely it was just a mundane pedo in a spooky outfit.

Back to Arataka and Mob. They've managed to isolate the location of another apparition, the Human-Faced-Dog. It turns out it's just a dog with creepy ink marks drawn all over its face.

The dog belongs to an old man with failing vision, who lets it run around outside more than he should. Some local middle schoolers drew the creepy marks on its face to freak out their classmates with. Arataka scolds the guilty parties (well, actually he beats them over the head. Which is not a good thing to do to middle schoolers, but whatever, it's Mob Psycho), and then bathes the dog, taking before and after photos to show to the customer as proof that he's exorcised the possessing demon from this otherwise mundane animal. The old man who owns the dog appreciates them bathing him.

...

Let me guess, all the local apparitions are going to be fake besides the last one they investigate, who is a superpowerful megaghost.

...

Back to Shinra. He's still chasing the Red Raincoat, for some reason. He's also still the ONLY person chasing him, for some reason. I'm not sure what either he or the other adults at the playground are thinking, but okay. Anyway, he chases RR out into the woods and tells him that he's going to make a citizen's arrest. RR grins, and tells him that that's not likely. You see, he led his pursuer into the woods on purpose. Now there's just two of them, and oh look, one of them happens to have a taser concealed under his raincoat.

Yeah, chasing an able-bodied criminal into the woods alone when you're not armed or even in particularly good shape is...like I said, I really don't know what Shinra was thinking.

As Shinra twitches in the dirt, RR starts a monologue. To begin with, yeah, he was just getting his rocks off exposing himself to children. Once rumors of a supernatural being obviously based on him started spreading around the local rumor mill and gathering a significant amount of interest online, though, he's been doing this as much for the attention as anything else. So many children, so irrationally scared of him, it's a rush like he never could have imagined. Of course, he might have to skip town now that he knows people are really hunting for him.

His face grows even more sadistic as he leans over the semiconscious Shinra and tases him again. He doesn't say in as many words that he's planning to torture the witness and interloper to death and hide his body in the woods, but he implies it.

...

On one hand, I've been through the whole rigamarole with Mob Psycho 100's treatment of violence and the threat of death before.

On the other hand, the context here is different enough that I think we might be following different rules. The Claw stuff was all fantastical PG-rated cartoon supervillainy. This scene isn't.

The different layers of existence in this show seem to interact with each other in a complicated way. The JoJo-ish stuff with the middle schoolers exists as a sort of heightened reality (I think I made a comparison to Scott Pilgrim a while back). Most of the psychic stuff is like...this complete fantasy world that's sort of accessible through the middle school melodrama layer. Then, very rarely, there's the real world, with real stakes and real consequences. Arataka is kind of an anomaly who exists at the intersection of all three.

So, for this scene? I don't know.

...

Before RR can finish doing whatever he plans to do to Shinra, be that murder or just severe punitive maiming, it starts to rain. A thick, eerie fog rolls across the woods. RR is well dressed for this weather, but he's much less prepared for the bedraggled, fang-toothed woman who comes shambling out of the mist dragging a chain of disfigured wooden dolls after her and asking in an inhuman voice if he's "thirsty."

Are we meeting the superpowerful megaghost already? It's earlier in the episode than I expected, if so.

Thinking her another witness, RR tases her. The electricity has no effect on her whatsoever. She still conducts the electricity just fine, though, which RR learns the hard way when she grabs him and pulls his body against hers, keeping his finger pressed down on the taser trigger all the while. Once he's unconscious, she ties him up with the same red string she uses to pull her doll collection around, and starts dragging him into a nearby lake.

Huh. So. Talking about the layers of reality before, I think we're coming full circle now. The supernatural stuff interacting directly with "real" adult stuff, and being treated as serious horror elements with serious (deadly) repercussions. The way this is being framed, even after my earlier frustrations, I have absolutely no doubt that the kiddy diddler WILL drown if this revenant pulls him under.

This show really does a number on one's gearbox.

Probably the biggest surprise of the episode comes when Shinra recovers, gets to his feet, and uses his psychic powers to attempt to restrain the apparition.

He actually has powers. He's not a fraud like Arataka, despite doing everything possible to make himself seem like one.

That...reframes everything about Shinra in his appearances so far. All the way down to him getting on Arataka for panhandling; it seems like he has something of a compulsion to do something about criminal activity when he sees it, even when it's dangerous for him to do so. And he is not a criminal himself.

He throws the string of beads he wears on his neck at the creature, and causes it to constrict around her undead body, using a "spirit bind" to prevent her from escaping. Unfortunately, while Shinra's powers are real, they apparently aren't up to the task at hand (or perhaps he's just still disoriented from being tased, which is what he himself concludes). With some visible effort, the revenant breaks free of the bind and gives Shinra an irritable growl before disappearing the rest of the way underwater, her latest victim in hand.

Pretty heroic of Shinra to try and save the life of the child molester who had just tortured and possibly tried to kill him. I suppose he might have been more motivated by the desire to exorcise the spirit and get money and recognition for doing so, but still, the timing.

The entity isn't satisfied with just Little Red Riding Nonce, as it turns out. Or perhaps she would have been, had Shinra not provoked her with the attempted entangling. Mere seconds after vanishing into the water with her first victim, she erupts back out of the ground at Shinra's feet, subduing him almost immediately and dragging him into the water as well to join the pedo.

Hopefully Dimple was doing his job and is about to come back with Mob.

Or...hah, well, he actually does one better! As she pulls Shinra into the water, the man's eyes suddenly shoot open again and he thrashes free of her grip with superhuman strength. A pair of red circles have materialized on his cheeks, and Dimple's sickly multicolored aura is shimmering around him.

That's probably the right tactical choice for this situation. Bringing Mob here would take time, after all. Additionally, since Shinra is a genuine esper, Dimple can do a lot more with his body than he can with an average person's, so he might be able to outfight the other ghost or at least hold her off.

Of course, now that he has a psychic host body that he's able to fully control, is Dimple going to stay loyal? This might also just be his cue to depart from the story and rebuild his cult somewhere on the far side of the country. Moment of truth!

Dimple's first order of business is to put some distance between himself and the entity he names as "the Dragger" and use Shinra's phone. Either they exchanged numbers earlier, or else Dimple just remembers Arataka's digits.

He then tries to engage Dragger in battle, but it doesn't go so well for him. Either Shinra's mind and body aren't up to the task, or it's just Dimple himself who isn't strong enough. When she encounters real resistance, the Dragger grows a set of massive claws, and twists her body into something that looks less like a ghostly woman and more like the Beast from "Over The Garden Wall," and Dimple/Shinra start getting hurt. Badly hurt. She's cleaving trees out of her way with her claws, tearing up the land, cutting gash after bloody gash whenever she manages to close the distance.

As he changes tac from fighting to fleeing, Dimple wonders if perhaps Dragger is being empowered by people's fear and belief in her. That...doesn't seem to be how any other supernatural entity in this show has worked, but I guess Dimple might know something I don't about why this one is different.

Also, notably, Dimple's internal monologue explains that the reason he's going through with his assignment here and trying to keep Shinra safe as ordered is because he wants to gain Mob's trust. It seems like he might still be planning to possess him after all, and is turning up other espers who he *could* use because he knows he can have something even stronger in the long run if he bides time and builds strength for long enough. Not such a moment of truth after all, then.

Also, as animu fight scenes go this one is decent, but it's another sort of clash of reality-tiers. Well. Anyway.

Mob and Arataka naturally arrive just barely in time to stop Dragger from landing a killing blow. Mob quickly knocks her down, though not out.

They try to get some photos of the stunned Dragger, but she doesn't show up on film. I guess she might be much more ghost and less zombie than the taser thing led me to believe, heh. She recovers sooner than expected, and vanishes back into the water. Presumably to prepare her next attack.

Dimple uses this break in the action to exit his host (Shinra is left conscious again, but dazed) and volunteer some information that changes my understanding of some things. Assuming that Dimple knows what he's talking about, of course, but in this case I'm pretty sure that he does.

I was wrong earlier, about all the spirits being the ghosts of dead people. They're all of human origin, but some of them aren't from specific individual people. Urban legends that get enough circulation can bring an entity to life, fuelled by the fear that they inspire. The Dragger, we are now told, isn't just some local tall tale that popped up in the last year. She's actually been a popular boogeyman figure all around Japan for at least a couple of decades. Arataka himself remembers being afraid of her when he walked home from elementary school on rainy days.

...

We doing the "American Gods thing?" Hmm. Well, if it's only FEAR that can actually create collective tulpas like this, then the show might manage to avoid opening a can of theological worms that it might have trouble handling. If things like awe and worship can also do that, then...yeah, we've got a can of worms on our hands.

...

Also, apparently Shinra himself knows some of this stuff too. He's able to add more details, and Dimple is no longer inhabiting him at present.

This feels clumsy. Like the exposition is just continuing unbroken and unmodulated from one character after the next. Meh. But anyway, what he adds to the conversation is that because the Dragger is a fear elemental, fighting against her will be extremely difficult. Any fear felt by her opponents - even rational fear of the realistic possibility of death or injury - will fuel her. Any psychic powers wielded against her will be contaminated by the fear of their users, enabling her to absorb them.

...

So, if non-ghost spirits exist, is Dimple one of them?

He's said some things that sort of vaguely implied he was a cult leader in a previous human life as well, but nothing definite. I could have been misinterpreting him. What is he, really?

...

When Dragger emerges again, this time as a towering hulk of mud, water, and plant-roots with a vaguely human face and tries to drown them all in her mass, things look grim. That is, until Mob starts dissasembling her.

Mob has no fear of her whatsoever. None. This might be down to him never having had to actually confront the possibility of real personal danger in his life, because of his powers. More likely though, Arataka thinks aloud, Mob is benefitting from his own social isolation right now. Urban legends and myths fly right passed him without him ever noticing. Cultural zeitgeists bounce off of Mob like nerfballs off a battleship hull.

With psionics as his sword and autism as his shield, Mob disintegrates the Dragger. This town, seemingly the epicenter of her zeitgeist contamination, is freed of the malign aura it had been building over the decades. The clouds clear. The sun comes out. Arataka and Mob have a silly little argument over whether or not Mob was right or wrong to not be scared of Dragger, regardless of how it worked out for them, which pretty clearly comes down to Arataka being butthurt at the idea that Mob is braver than him.

It turns out that the Crimson Pedo survived after all. On one hand, it's made explicit now that Dragger dropped him when she got aggro'd by Shinra, and he happened to float to the edge of the pond before he could drown, which is entirely realistic. On the other hand...I think having him die would have been better for the story, just to show that sometimes things really do get serious. I dunno, maybe I'm still expecting something from MP100 that I shouldn't be. At any rate, he's still not going to be diddling any more kiddies.

Arataka and Shinra part ways, now on friendly terms. Shinra is badly injured, but he looks like he'll recover. Poor guy.

Before leaving this town, Arataka and Mob have one last urban legend to investigate, the Dash Granny. The spirit of an old woman who dashes through a nearby abandoned tunnel at breakneck speeds and strangles anyone who gets in her way. Turns out it's just an old lady who's a really, really fast runner and likes to practice in that tunnel, with the strangling being anecdotal. Mob is traumatized.

He's been running track with the bodybuilding team every day since the beginning of the schoolyear, but he still got bodied by an eighty year old. It actually drives him to tears.

End episode.

That was a weird one. Not sure if I have much to say about it.

So far, the season 2 episodes have been both extremely different from everything before them, and extremely different from one another.

Enjoyable despite the weirdness, and a decent vehicle for exposition and worldbuilding. Shinra the non-fraud was an enjoyable surprise twist; I hope he shows up again. Mob is showing more and more signs of no longer believing Arataka's shit and just playing along with it, but he hasn't done anything to make that undeniable yet.

We know now that Dimple is still just playing a long con. Not surprised, but it's good to be sure.