Mob Psycho 100 S1E3: An Invite to a Meeting ~Simply Put, I Just Want To Be Popular~

It's been a very, very long time, but now I'm finally doing two more episodes of ONE's Mob Psycho 100. Where we left off, Mob was still being mercilessly exploited by charlatan Arataka, who is using Mob's genuine psychic powers to make a name for himself as an exorcist. Thing were starting to go better at school, though; Mob had bent the knee to the Tokugawa Bakufu and joined the bodybuilding club, leaving the fake psychics to lose their dumb club due to insufficient membership.

So, let's see what happens now!

The bodybuilding club are as gung-ho as they look, and while they seem to be decent guys in general, they're also not going to sacrifice their own workouts so that Mob can keep up with him. He lags far behind them during the running section of their workout, eventually collapsing on the school walking trail and making them come back to help him up.

Cue OP, with its amusing song and its high-energy nonsense visuals. Then, the bodybuilders carry Mob back to the room they were given, where the members of the telepathy club ritualistically express their gratitude to these newly titled samurai for letting them remain on their land.

The bodybuilders insist that it's no big deal. They only needed a room to store their weights and stuff in, so it costs them nothing to let the fake psychics keep larping in here as long as there's enough room. Anyway, Mob is just barely conscious, but they're pretty sure he's not going to die or anything (presumably they got him water offscreen), so they're going to leave him in here while they get back to their workout.

The telepathy club's (now unofficial) president, Kurata, is still whinging at Mob for abandoning her merry band of posers to join the bodybuilders. While also spinning around in place and climbing around on the chairs, because that's still her thing. Mob explains that his psychic powers have never made him happy, while his physical strength and appearance are things he thinks improving on would actually help his quality of life. She (and the other club members) demands to actually see these powers he claims to have. Of course, he's too shy and submissive to remind them of the fact that they haven't demonstrated jack shit themselves, so instead he just levitates some weights and flies them around the room. To everyone's total shock and awe.

Then, as if to emphasize his own point, he tries to hold one of the weights with his hand without using his powers, and is unable to hold it up.

After she's recovered enough to speak, Kurata goes back to her meguka-twirling, and asks Mob to please use his powers to help her achieve her lifelong dream. Which is, apparently, making telepathic contact with aliens.

That's an understandable, if very tall, order. Telepathy with that kind of range would be something even by Mob's standards.

Also, Mob isn't interested. Now that he's recovered, he wants to go rejoin his fellow body builders, having learned an important lesson about pacing himself. When asked why, he nervously explains that he wants to be more masculine and physically attractive.

Kurata is both sympathetic and encouraging.

: (

She assures him that if he wants to be attractive, the only path ahead for him is to develop better telepathy so that he can read girls' minds and rebuild his entire personality and presentation to appeal to whoever he's currently trying to get with. Ethically sound, and emotionally healthy. I like the way this girl thinks. Totally selfless advice for her to give, too.

Speaking of ethics, health, and selflessness, we cut to Mob meeting with Arataka. When asked, Arataka tells him that human telepathy is not an ability of his own either (neither is spirit telepathy, or anything else for that matter, but for once he's being honest about not being able to do something). However, he doesn't need psychic powers to intuit that Mob is trying to figure out how to girls. He tells him that every boy wants to be popular, at Mob's age.

Cut to Mob walking home from Arataka's office, and thinking to himself that he doesn't really want to be popular. He just wants the attention of one specific girl (right, Tsubomi, her name was Tsubomi).

He is then confronted by a woman in a hijab and a creepy smiley face mask. She asks him what has him so downtrodden, and impresses him by guessing correctly after four or five complete failures. Impressing Mob is not difficult.

She tells him that she can make him popular if he just follows her to an unspecified location, and he follows her. I guess that's not as bad of an idea for Mob than it would be for most kids, since he can easily defend himself from just about any sort of foul play, but still, it isn't a good idea.

She takes him to a high rise, the lowest sub-basement of which is the meeting place for the latest in Japan's never-ending parade of entertaining and colorful cults. This one is all about laughter and smiles, all the way down to being called "LOL" and its leader going by "Dimple-sama." Supposedly, he has a mystical power that can make absolutely anyone laugh. When Mob asks her how this is relevant to him getting girls to like him, she just deflects. Predictable.

So, this episode is "in which Mob joins a cult." Okay, sure.

The cult meeting sub basement is packed to the brim with other smijab wearers, several of whom ask Mob if he's new here. He's told to get up on the stage with the couple of other prospective new members.

On that stage, he recognizes Mezato, a girl from his class. We've never seen her before, but he has. Sort of a clumsy introduction, but meh. He's never talked to her before, but they know each other by appearance. She whispers to him that she's infiltrating this place, but before she can explain why the cultists announce Dimple-sama's entrance.

Somewhat predictably, he reminds me of Boss Smiley from "Prez."

Dimple-sama tells everyone to laugh, and the masked cultists all howl uproariously. The newbies up on stage with him, not so much.

After a minute, Dimple tells everyone to take off their masks, which they do. Aside from all having grotesquely wide smiles in their religious laughter-trance, they all look like pretty normal cross section of urban Japan. Dimple himself is a middle aged man who looks kinda like Shigeru Miyamoto with clown makeup.

The new recruits (which include Mob, Mezato, and an older guy) aren't impressed by anything they've seen so far, and starting to get visibly uncomfortable. Unperturbed by their reactions, Dimple explains that laughter is the key to happiness. If you force yourself to smile and laugh, even if you're feeling miserable, it will cause some endorphins to be released. This makes you happier, which improves your attitude, which can eventually lead to your life materially improving.

That's actually all true, at least to an extent. If it didn't come in such a personality cult-y package, this guy's advice wouldn't be bad.

The older guy says that he doesn't see how a non-genuine smile is actually going to make him feel better, or improve his life. He's apparently a victim of recent economic downturn, and was recruited by a cultist from the park bench he was sleeping on. And that's where Dimple goes full crazy, and explains that wearing a mask with a smiley face on the front will be enough to start the process. The crowd promptly begin forcing a smijab onto the man's head.

...

You know, this is probably supposed to be comedy of the absurd. But considering that there are quite a few New Agey types who believe that writing happy messages on the side of a cup of water before freezing it will cause prettier ice to form, it's not really much of a stretch.

...

They put one of the masks on Mob as well. He barely reacts. However, when Dimple orders the cultists to put a mask on Mezato, she makes the panicked and very foolish decision of telling him not only that she's not planning to join, but also why not. She heard rumors about this organization, and found it incredibly suspicious that Dimple was able to go from zero to several hundred disciples in just a month. You see, she works for the press. Specifically, her and Mob's middle school newspaper. Because um...this is school business, I guess.

She then goes on to accuse Dimple of using some kind of hypnosis to accrue and control his followers.

Dimple's inner monologue points out how stupid it is for her to be doing this, and how even more stupid it is to then expose herself and make accusations in the middle of his congregation with no one to back her up. Yeah, what he said. Even for a middle schooler, this girl is not the brightest. However, rather than resort to force, he decides to try and talk her over first. As a demonstration that his methods really do cure unhappiness, he instructs some cultists to pull off the homeless guy's mask, to reveal that he is now laughing hysterically.

Hmm. Some sort of narcotic drug sprayed inside of the masks? A really funny joke written on the back of the faceplates? Actual magic? Could be any of the above.

We pointedly aren't being shown what's up with Mob, meanwhile. That's probably important.

Mezato isn't sure what to think now. She tells Dimple that she'll think about what she's seen, and in the meantime she promises not to tell anyone or write anything about what she's seen. That's not enough for Dimple, though. She gets a mask stuffed over her head as well and becomes a vampire starts grinning and laughing, even as her internal monologue screams and struggles against the impulse to laugh, smile, and obey.

Just then, Mob cuts in. He asks if they're ever going to teach him anything about being popular and attractive. He's not really interested in laughing just for its own sake, and if that's all that this group is good for then that's false advertising and he'll just go now.

Dimple is surprised, and alarmed, by Mob's resistance to whatever the smijabs have been doing to the others. He leaps off of his stage and chases after the boy, calling out that he's walking away from happiness and that he's going to miss out on life. Mob retorts that his father says the same thing about people who don't smoke cigarettes, and that he doesn't buy it from Dimple either.

Dimple is really worried now. If this random kid can resist his methods, then who knows how many other people might be able to as well. And, as he thinks to himself, this could ruin his ultimate plans of world domination via evangelism. He tells Mob that before he goes, he'll challenge him to a contest. He'll have a staring contest with three of his "smile leaders." They'll each hold a mouthful of milk, and the first one to spit it out loses.

Sure? Okay, I guess? I'm not sure if not being able to hold milk in your mouth is really the most reliable way to gauge laughter. Also, there are a bunch of other things that can make you spit out milk. And also, why would he have his own people hold milk in their mouths too, instead of just giving them a time limit? Mob isn't going to be trying to make them laugh, is he?

Behind her forced grin, Mezato silently implores Mob not to do it. Mob doesn't have anything better to do apparently, though, so he does. Also, he's at 58% of the way to a psychic explosion now.

Mob has the three staring contests, with the increasingly shonen villain-esque procession of cult champions.

He wins all three.

Dimple realizes that he may have shot himself in the foot here by conditioning his own minions to laugh constantly. Why did he make them hold the milk in their mouths as well, again?

Finally, Dimple-sama challenges Mob himself. Only he tries to cheat by putting something in Mob's milk that makes him spit it out. Um...how does doing this actually help him? Making Mob spit out milk by means other than laughter doesn't bring him any closer to being able to control him, does it? Is he afraid of losing face with the rest of his followers? That seems odd, as they're pretty deeply under his sway and seem like they'd believe any bullshit explanation he provided them with.

After the fact, he tries to convince Mob that he just made him laugh. Mob doesn't buy it, though, and his expression makes it obvious that his claims about there being something wrong with the milk are true. And, in his frustration at being talked over, Mob sends out a psychic pulse that wipes the smiles off of everyone's faces and leaves them wondering where they are and what they're doing.

Aha! Mob actually IS starting to develop empathic (if not telepathic) powers to go with his telekinetic ones now. It just took the right situation to force it.

Dimple-Sama retaliates by sending out a psychic pulse of his own that makes the cultists (including the other two new recruits) start grinning again. Looks like we've finally encountered another genuine psychic. He's weaker than Mob, and his powers obviously have a different focus, but still, up until now it's just been Mob and a bunch of wannabes and charlatans.

Mob is still staring him down, though. So finally, Dimple-sama tries his last resort and performs a legendary Ishvalan stand up comedy technique.

Predictably, it doesn't work. In his mind, Mob is just tormented by hallucinations (or actual memories? I think the former, but I'm not sure) of his childhood friends and crush trying to shame or pressure him into laughing with them. Because that's how Dimple's power actually works. He doesn't actually make you happy, or entertained; he makes you feel pressured into acting as if you were.

So, basically, like a lot of actual cult leaders. Only he uses his psychic powers to put people through this instead of prolonged isolation and social pressure. Hence, his operation looks and acts like a mundane cult, but has been growing much faster. Rather clever on the writer's part.

Mob and Dimple acknowledge each other's psychic powers. And Dimple, rather foolishly, suspects that the reason Mob is immune to his laughter powers is because of Mob's extreme emotional repression. Mob tells him that he doesn't laugh in general; it's nothing personal, he just doesn't. Dimple figures out that Mob keeps almost all his emotions under total wraps, and thinks that if he can just provoke him enough to break down and let them loose, he'll be able to control him.

So, he starts verbally tormenting Mob. Telling him he's less than human. That he'll be lifeless and lonely forever. Etc.

And, after a while, he succeeds. However, this doesn't allow him to control Mob. It wasn't Mob's repression that was protecting him against that after all, but rather his sheer psychic power. He's letting loose now, but the emotion that comes forth isn't anything that Dimple can reshape into laughter and faux-happiness.

Mob levitates all the cultists into the air, swirling them around near the ceiling in a neon colored human maelstrom. Shit. Shit. He also, with a cold sneer, remarks that he's figured out that Dimple isn't actually human, and that he doesn't intend to treat him as such.

So, the evil spirit of Dimple sheds the zombified husk of Shigeru Miyamoto and emerges as a big green hulk thing. I'd show it, but honestly, all the evil spirits in this show look pretty similar and I'm already near my image limit. I'm kind of disappointing, honestly. An evil psychic seemed like a fresh new addition to the story's milieu, but it turns out it's just another ghost or demon. They fight in the usual manner, and Mob destroys it in the usual manner. More memorable music than usual, though, so there's that.

Then the people who he levitated and flung around the room get up and try to figure out what's been happening with them. And...Mob resets to 0%.

...

Okay. This? This is a problem.

We've been told repeatedly that Mob's psisplosion-meter is important, and that it reaching 100% means serious repercussions. It's in the title. It's in the OP. We're reminded of it multiple times every episode.

Now we've seen it happen, and it resulted in him doing...the exact same thing that Arataka has had him do many times in the past. No loss of control, really; I was sure that he'd killed those cultists when was flinging them around in the air and that we were about to start a very dark arc of him dealing with having done that, but nope, he was apparently super careful with them. So, what does the "explosion" actually mean? As far as I can tell, nothing. Just, this time when Mob killed a demon and saved a bunch of people he looked angry, and the other times that he did that he looked bored.

So, there aren't really any stakes to the psisplosion meter at all? Why does it exist, then? Why is it eating up so much time and attention?

...

Mob has a conversation with Arataka about his own inability to laugh, and his doubts about whether he actually did the right thing by freeing the LOL cult from Dimple's influence. Arataka does belittle Mob as usual, but he also - for the first time thus far - gives him some actually good advice when he tells him that it's good that he's started to at least take initiative and explore things.

He also remarks that Mob, thanks to his emotional detachment, might have been the only person who ever COULD have saved Dimple's victims. Unusually humble coming from Arataka, even if he phrases it more condescendingly than I'm making it sound, and well...he's right. Mob was the hero here, and Arataka has no way to try to steal the credit for this one, so he doesn't try to.

We see that Mob's psisplosion meter is still at 0% after this conversation, indicating that for once Arataka isn't stressing him out. We've just learned that the consequences of the meter reaching max are basically a nothingburger, but still, in this case this glimpse of it at least tells us something about Mob's improving self-perception.

Then a tiny little remnant of Dimple is waiting for him at home, and his meter rises to 20%.

Back at the half-ruined basement cult compound, the confused ex-LOLites decide to start worshiping Mob now. The end.

Pretty disappointing return to MP100. It wasn't as funny as the first two, the attempts at pathos were too arcane for me to really feel much about, and the incredibly anticlimactic "100" event takes away a lot of points and makes me less interested in the series as a whole.

Well, I've got another MP100 episode next. Maybe it'll be better.