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

This brings us to the Mob Psycho 100 season one finale. Apparently, a tsuchinoko is a folkloric creature that looks like a flattened snake and can roll itself into a wheel shape to move downhill quickly. According to some stories, they're intelligent and can talk. According to others, they're just weird snakes. Either way, they're consistently said to be just a couple feet long at most, so a "giant" one would be exceptional even in mythological context.

What does that have to do with this episode? Literally no idea. Let's find out!


A little teaser shows us the end of the previous episode again, with Arataka trying to get Mob to abandon his friend and brother and run until Glasses cuts him down with a brutal sword slash. It continues past this for just a moment, showing Mob staring dumbfound at his mentor's motionless body. Then, Ritsu realizes that Mob is about to hit a threshold he hasn't before, and we get a "100%" indicator preceded by this foreboding shot:

Hmm. Just the visual coding here makes me start to lean back toward the "Mob is playing host to an eldritch abomination" camp. We'll see I guess. Roll OP.

Mob's eyes might be going all glowy and his face all shadowy, but he's also torn. He understands, now, that the frog wasn't lying about violence being inescapable. On the other hand, his master also told him to run, and that he - the adult - would handle it.

Mob wants more than anything to run and let an adult handle it. It's his nature. But. Arataka was just cut down before his eyes.

As he stands there, confused and glowing-eyed, Arataka gets back up and irritably tells Glasses that he had him going there for a second. He really thought that he HAD somehow turned that plastic katana into a deadly psionic weapon. But no, it's just hard plastic after all; it just barely was able to cut his clothes, and did virtually nothing to his skin. Glasses must have used some other trick to break the walls with that toy, earlier.

Glasses tries to finish the job, but his sword just rebounds off Arataka's neck like a normal toy plastic sword. It's as if his powers have been switched off, leaving his "weapon" just the useless prop it was before he empowered it.

Is Mob doing this? Or did something else happen? Maybe the psi-suppressing chamber that they had the boys in earlier was damaged in the implosion, and it's now randomly dampening powers all over the building?

In any case, Arataka seems to think that all the displays of power he just witnessed were just special effects and trickery after all. Not sure how he thinks the building got destroyed; maybe he's decided that Mob must have done it now, idk. Anyway, he takes Glasses' toy sword and breaks it in his hands, to the latter's absolute shock. Ritsu thinks that Arataka is doing this himself, and finishes concluding that yes, he really was wrong, Arataka wasn't just a conman like Ritsu suspected. Teru, of course, takes what he's seeing in stride; he has no reason to expect that the super-powerful Mob's psychic mentor wouldn't also be super-powerful. That's also fairly close to Mob's own reaction, of course.

The big monster released by the pokemon trainer finally remembers it exists and lunges forward. Arataka shouts in alarm when he sees it, and tells Mob that this must be one of the spirits he often has him exorcise, do something, hurry! Arataka can SEE this thing now. Okay, damn. The spirit gets close, Arataka reflexively lashes out when Mob doesn't come to his rescue, and...the spirit dissipates like smoke. Arataka concludes it must have been some kind of hologram or AR trick that counted on him retreating from it before the illusion became obvious. Pokemon Trainer now really does have nothing left to throw. Astral projection guy's avatars fair no better.

Ishiguro declares that Arataka really is an existential threat to the Claw; for a moment there he was starting to think he was just some kind of charlatan. Arataka chuckles and advances on him, and asks what kind of tricks and machinery he used to make those "black holes" of his seem to actually have a gravitational pull a moment ago, wholly convinced now that Ishiguro and his buddies ARE just some kind of charlatans.

Then, disappointingly, we get a narrative-breaking narrator giving us an exposition dump about what just happened instead of the story having to do the work of telling itself. Mob had one of his 100% fugues and used his power unconsciously. However, rather than just an uncontrolled outburst (not that the show has done even a remotely good job of making those seem uncontrolled :/ ), this time his powers acted on his desire for a trusted adult to solve the problem for him and save him from having to fight for serious.

Arataka has all of Mob's power coursing through him right now, but doesn't know it. Additionally, since Mob isn't conscious of what he's doing here, his mental limiters that he normally imposes on himself - even during his 100+% incidents - aren't in play. As far as Mob's conscious OR subconscious mind is concerned, nothing that Arataka does is Mob's own fault. No inhibitions when it comes to juicing him up. We are now, through Arataka, seeing what Mob would be capable of if he placed no leashes on himself whatsoever.

I just wish the story had managed to communicate this to the audience without needing to hire a sports commentator.

Ishiguro shoots his gravity vortexes at Arataka, who bats them away easily. So easily, in fact, that he surmises that they're actually just coloured soap bubbles, and that Ishiguro was using some kind of hidden aerodium setup to throw him around earlier. So, Ishiguro goes all-out himself. He demonstrates how powerful a Claw division leader really is as he hurls Arataka into the sky and follows him up there to deliver an aerial beating similar to the one Mob performed on Koyuma back in the alley. The difference being that, unlike Koyuma, Arataka isn't really being hurt by any of it. Thrown around, but not reacting in pain or shock so much as just comically understated surprise.

Ishiguro even reprises the air-to-ground piledriver finisher that Mob used. However, unlike Koyuma who was at least stunned for a few minutes, Arataka is only silenced for as long as it takes him to spit out the dust that got in his mouth. Ishiguro was already starting to give a bombastic villain speech about the nature of power by the time Arataka does this; he really should have waited a minute to make sure first.

This is, once again, a little too close to just being a repeat of some One Punch Man gags for my preference. On the other hand, if I hadn't already seen OPM, I'd probably find this pretty funny.

Ishiguro refuses to back down, so Arataka decides it's time to pull that mask off and see if that makes him any easier to get through to. Before Ishiguro can tell Arataka how painful that would be for him, Arataka shakes the mask off of him with so much force that Ishiguro is thrown through one of the few remaining indoor walls.

The mask that came off in Arataka's hand notably appears to be a rubber costume store mask, not a real gas mask. Lol. Looks like Glasses isn't the only one who got his supervillain accessories at Toys R Us.

Arataka finally seems to realize that no, it isn't them who lack power, it's himself who has an abundance of it at present. He knows he's not strong enough to throw a man through a wall, after all, and he can't think of how you could simulate that with special effects, much less WHY they would do that. He pretty quickly figures out that Mob must be empowering him.

But, he decides to play along. After all, he started this confrontation by telling the Scars that he was a powerful esper and that Mob was his acolyte. So, he decides to play off his underwhelming immediate follow up as a lighthearted attempt at deescalation, and now resumes the role of confident superhero.

The other remaining Scars keep coming at him. Arataka keeps shutting them down using Mob's unfettered power. When he tells Glasses that he's acting like a child, Glasses decides to inflict his tragic backstory on him. Physical attacks aren't working, so painful cliches might be worth a try, after all.

It's nothing surprising for the genre. He was abandoned by his parents as a baby, raised in an orphanage where he was bullied relentlessly, and clung to fantasies of revenge focused on these toy weapons he managed to pick up and hoard until suddenly he manifested the power to make them hurt people for real. He escaped and murderhoboed his way across Japan until he found the Claw and made for a natural convert to their ideology.

Arataka tells him that he understands how he feels. He says it so seriously, with such armor-piercing empathy, that it artstyle shifts him all realistic.

Well, except the eyes and bangs, but close enough.​

Just like him, Arataka says, he had to endure pain and loneliness as a child. Okay, there's a 90% chance this is going to be bullshit - Arataka is a conman, making up fake stories about himself probably comes more naturally to him than telling the damned truth at this point - but there's still a slim possibility that we're going to learn some factual info...

oh lol.

Arataka tells Glasses about that one time that his parents didn't get the memo about a field trip, which meant that Arataka was the only one in his class who didn't have a lunch to bring with him. He was so ashamed, and everyone else was eating while he felt hungry and alone. He can certainly empathize with Glasses, on account of this.

Okay, well, that *is* probably a true story, so I guess I technically got my wish.

Needless to say, Glasses flips his actual shit at this and goes wild on Arataka. He pulls out a gun (from his babbled descriptions, I think this is another toy that he souped up, but I'm not sure) and tries shooting him. No dice. Finally, he pulls out the anti-psionic spray (which he refers to as "cursed cologne." Not sure what to make of that...), and this time even that has no effect. Which either means that Mob could have shrugged that stuff off earlier if he'd really wanted to, or that it just isn't working because Arataka is only a recipient of the psi power rather than its source.

Astral projection guy tries to attack again too, but Arataka no-sells him once again, and then starts pointing out how ridiculous and impractical his costume is. Just like Ishiguro. Just like Glasses. It's all kids playing dress-up, only with real powers and unquenched malice. And, finally, after demonstrating enough superior power, Arataka figures out an angle that works.

The Scars - all the Claw members, really - can never shut up about how powerful they think they are. They each surround themselves in a bubble of self-admiration, thinking themselves superior to one another as individuals, superior to other espers as an organization, and superior to most humans as espers. But here's the thing; psychic powers are just like happening to own a useful tool. Like a knife. They're not special. They just are people who have access to a certain thing.

The Claws protest that that isn't true. The Claw is a noble organization, in the historical sense of the term. They are conquerors. Rulers. Is Arataka telling them to go back to being commoners? No, Arataka says, he isn't telling them to go back to being commoners. That would be redundant. If they really are DETERMINED to sort people into classes based on personal power, then consider: Arataka, himself, is a commoner, and he just no sold everything they had and beat their leader to a pulp. So, in that case...

Glasses and Astralguy break. It's over for them, now. They're done.

Ritsu and Teru are awed at Arataka's charisma and insight, as well as "his" power. Mob smiles and agrees, fully believing this as well. Lol.

The nearby rubble shifts, and Ishiguro pulls himself out from under it with an anguished roar. I was expecting him to be a kid. One of the other Scars, apparently, was expecting him to be a her. But no. He's just a very small, very old man. If he has the same arrested development thing going on as his underlings, then it's been arrested for a very long time. Also, he's got scars all over his face.

I didn't quite understand the whole process of scarification, for the Claw. It has something to do with ritual combat, but the details seemed kinda garbled in translation. Anyway, he has a lot of them, which seems like it might be impressive, but then again he also chooses to hide them with a mask so maybe not.

Additionally, without the mask, his voice sounds...normal. Just normal. In fact, all the Scars are being drawn as slightly less weird looking now, as well, to reinforce Arataka's point.

Ishiguro refuses to hear this. Refuses to tolerate this. The world needs to recognize that HE, PERSONALLY, is the greatest. He's going to take over the Claw. He's going to take over the world. He doesn't care about any of this social stuff. When Arataka asks him why he even bothers to surround himself with a hierarchical system of underlings if he really cares about other people so little, he just fruitlessly tries to crush them all again. Arataka's power boost seems to be wearing off now, prompting him to ask Mob to soup him up again. Huh, he's sort of admitting his powerlessness to Mob here, wonder if Mob is going to be able to remember this and think through the implications. Well, regardless, it's unneccessary. Ishiguro is suddenly attacked by that wunderkind from Claw HQ.

He's seen Ishiguro embarrass their organization enough. His minions are easily turned. He himself turns into a flailing, crying weakling in response to adversity. None of his measures were sufficient to win a battle against serious opposition. Wunderkind came here to assess Division 7 and see if anyone was worthy of being promoted to Claw Prime's entourage. Turns out that good old natural selection did his work for him; Division 7 was, in total, unworthy.

I'd assume Ishiguro is dead now, but this show has taught me better than to make such assumptions.​

He thanks Arataka and the boys for helping the Claw by weeding out the unworthy, and expresses his disappointment that none of them are interested in joining. Oh well. He then teleports away. Looks like the Claw as an organization will remain a recurring antagonist, but with the local cell eliminated they might be out of the story for a good while.

Honestly? Good. This subplot had some great moments, and it ended on a very high note, but for most of its screentime it was just a chore to get through. Hopefully Claw will be more interesting or at least more concise in its next appearance.

Well, one last thing. After whatsisface teleports away, the Pokemon trainer guy still hasn't quite gotten the memo on this being over. Even when Glasses and Astral tell him that it is, in fact, over. He declares that he still has one spirit left in the jar, and he will unleash it now. It has devoured many others inside of the vessel, and must therefore be powerful indeed now. He lets Dimple out, and is promptly clonked over the head by him and falls unconscious.

Dimple has gotten visibly bigger and more intimidating-looking again since he went in, though he's still relatively small. Nowhere near his original, pre-Mob self. But still, he's recovered at least part of that strength. Which of course means he might be much more dangerous again, if this means he's better at possessing people against their will now.

For the moment though, he's mostly just disappointed to have missed the entire battle. He was really looking forward to getting to use his recovered strength for something. Oh well.

So, Pokemon Trainer gives up too. Watching Arataka and the boys walk away to regroup with the other kidnappees, the Scars wonder if perhaps other espers like these ones might be able to outcompete the Claw after all. Maybe there is hope for the world, rather than the brutal eventuality they'd all resigned themselves to taking part in.


Splitting it here.