As an anime fans we come across wide varieties of genre that give immense potential to characters to explore their abilities. Psychic abilities are also one of those but they often shows as supplementary abilities in most of fantasy and supernatural themes based animes. Only a few animes explore such abilities as a standalone superpowers. Mob Psycho 100 is one of them. Psycho is not used here as in a negative tone but just a pun for a psychic guy that possess psychic ability but those powers sometimes turn psycho as our protagonist reaches its limit potential.
Mob Pyscho 100 has 3 seasons, aired during July-Sep (2016), January-April ( 2019), and Oct-Dec (2022) respectively. Originally based on the web Manga series of the same name, written & illustrated by One – known for One Punch Man. Mob Pyscho 100 also has a live-action adaptation in 2018 starring Tatsuomi Hamada as Mob and Kazuki Namioka as Arataka Reigen covering the S1 of anime.
A Little Intro of Mob
The story revolves around a high school student named Shigeo Kageyama, who possess enormous psychic powers. He represses this enormous powers by suppressing his emotions so not to harm anybody around him and to live a normal life. Moreover, he don’t wanna solely rely on his powers and wants to live as good human being so he, along with his mentor Reigen Arataka uses his powers only to fight evil spirits.
But sometimes when he reaches to the limits of his emotional capacity, like 100% or more, his powers would break free and take over his body that causes harm to everything around him.
Being very conscious of using his power around people since a very young age made him little hesitant & shy, moreover his unathletic body made him less popular among girl especially around his crush Tsubomi. That’s sometimes made him envy of his younger brother Ritsu.
Despite all this, our Mob is very clueless in his day to day life and putting his best efforts’ to live an ordinary high school life by following the teachings of his Shisho Reigen Arataka and his so-called green hovering spirit friend named Dimple.
Season 1 : 12 Episodes
The series start slow and I’m not fond of such animation style ( but my views changes after finishing this masterpiece) so I find first few episodes a little boring but as an intro episodes, these are quite essential to explore the world of Mob Psycho. As a teen protagonist, Shigeo, despite being the powerful, struggle a lot in school like any other teen and that’s make him very relatable characters. Moreover, as the S1 of series, we see that it’s quite packed with incredible and strong Espers who think of themselves above any human being and wishes to take over world someday. But as the series progress, we witness, all these Espers have their inner demons and trauma, and are struggling to have their way in life.
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Despite being quite supernatural in theme, it deals with the emotional psyche of characters and heavily rely on the fact that Psychic powers are also a trait like any other trait of human being and making this your sole personality won’t help you in society at all. It strongly try to cultivate the ideas of good human being in society more than a senseless psychic who doesn’t bring any good to the table but destruction. Mob take this philosophy very seriously in life and stick to it till the very end.
Season 2 : 13 Episodes
The transition from S1 to S2 carryforwards the legacy of simple theme and its clueless characters but with more bright colors and energy that makes the S2 a great watch with its characters, great animation, soundtrack. The theme is more focused on character development as Mob getting more serious with its goal of getting an athletics body with the help of his Body Improvement Club brothers. Reigen and Dimple both becoming mature enough to respect & care enough for Mob despite their selfish agendas. S2 bring the best of Bones Studio and ONE’s writing with its characters is a cherry on the top.
Mob Psycho II despite having an action-packed esper elements explore the moral values, sincerity and consequences of choices one make in their life. The characters are given chance to explore themselves & their choices in contrasting scenarios , hence giving them a space for growth. Although it doesn’t focus much of evilness as a theme as it always the case in larger than life scenario in animes but they rather choose to focus on the ground, & that somehow is quite a real thing.
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Overall S2 overpower S1 both in terms of the arcs (Mogami arc, Reigen arc) and the animation and characters.
Season 3 : 12 Episodes
The final season of Mob Psycho is quite satisfying given the overall impression of this anime, not an epic climatic showdown but doing justice to its overall theme . As S2 already gave impression that Mob Psycho is more concerned with its moral themes, ordinary life of an Esper that giving his best given the circumstance around him and going through the ground realities where there no one is pure evil and they’re just humans. Humor and slice of life element underneath all action-packed drama is backbone of Mob Psycho so I never expected larger than life ending as the case maybe in more heroic animes, so it was quite a happy ending suited to the high school psychic boy’s life and people around him who were equally important to our Mob.
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S3 metaphorically conveys the ideas that no matter how mighty the one is, at the end of the day, they’re just human and bound to face realities of real world. So, instead of letting your emotions run into rampant, we need to introspect and accept the real of us without going into existential crisis.
S3 put an end to Mob’s struggle to suppress his emotion which he was doing since S1 and he accept the fact that burying them won’t help him in his life but acknowledging them is what should be the way of his life that would help him to give more better control to his mighty power.
Overall Mob Psycho 100 Universe
Mob Psycho 100 proves us that a action packed story doesn’t always need to be complex, sad and laced with childhood trauma, and ONE’s story proves it to be true. Studio bones amazing direction blends the story perfectly with stellar animation work. It doesn’t depend on typical Shonen clichés to grab the attention of audience but smartly executes itself as a subtle satire of the Shōnen genre.
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The bright colors and rough sketch-like linework to exaggerate its visuals somehow proved to be its strength that makes it visually overpowering series that fits into the overall characters design and comical elements of the story.
Mob Psycho 100 is an anime which is more focused on its characters growth as they living their ordinary life in supernatural world and in this world, no one is actually portrayed as evil characters or villian of the story. Similar to real world where strict demarcation between good and evil is almost impossible. It’s not a show about a godly powerful boy who can achieve anything just by lifting his fingers but a conscious high school kid with enormous power who is struggling to not making his powers his only identity. He is very much follows the teaching of his mentor Reigen that, having talent does not make you special but the way you choose to use this talent makes you special.
These are the saying of real world, making this as a relatable anime where Mob can be anyone as long as they face existence crisis and suppressing their emotions only to be exploded when confronted with extreme situation. So, don’t bottled up your emotions and acknowledge them and work on them to be the human that you proud of. After all having a healthy mind in these fast-forwarded life is also a superpower!
As I started to watch all three season in last week of December 2023, it ended just few hours before New Year. What a great watch for the last days of the year 2023, making it more special for me. With this I’m gonna wrap up here and Happy New Year to all of you. Wishing you health , wealth and lots of happiness in your life!
Do check out “and GALLERY” collaboration with cafes. Read more on neotokyo2099 article by THE SPY!CREW
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