It a beginning of a dark path for Ritsu as his own inadequacies are pushing him in a direction that won’t end well for him. Part of the problem is the student council president whom is called Shinji. He happens to remind me of another Shinji in another series who had an equally punchable face and crushing superiority complex. But while Mob is depressed over losing control last episode, his brother is becoming more frustrated as his abilities fail to meet his expectations. Mob may be the main reason for this as when he was a child he foolishly promised his brother that someday he too would have psychic powers which unfortunately didn’t turn out to be the case. Perhaps a testament that relation does not equal skill, nor should people expect a person to inherit the qualities of their family. In fact expectation may be the subtitle of this episodes theme as we see it presented throughout. Ritsu is frustrated because people have great expectations of him when he himself feel inadequate. The student council president is expected to match the level set by his older brother. Finally a innocent person is framed of a crime simply because it is something they expected him to do.
Under the grounds of removing delinquency from the school, Shinji and Ritsu frame Tenga by placing girls recorders in his desk and bag. The rest follows suit as mob mentality takes hold and he is left unable to defend himself simply because no one actually believes he wouldn’t do it. It’s more tragic when you see that Tenga may not be as bad a person as first thought when he has a perfect attendance record up to this point and even tries to awkwardly apologize to Mob for tricking him into getting kidnapped by Black Vinegar delinquents. Not to mention him starting to run with the body improvement club and actually starting to enjoy it. But after this he will likly be mistakenly labeled as a prevert for the rest of his school life. It really goes to show the level of cruelty people can display if given the opportunity and shield of anonymity.
Seigan is back fooling the gullible but I find his antics much more fun when his clients are far more reprehensible than he is. One thing quite amusing about the scene though was that when the client was threatening Seigan to reveal a 13 letter password, Seigan responded with “GetAJobYouBum” which actually is 13 letters exactly. In other wannabe esper territory Ritsu paid a visit to a lab dedicated to researching psychic powers. Besides him being greatly underwhelmed by the level of power of the subjects, it did reveal that he manages to unknowingly twist a spoon when he threw it away which does suggest that Ritsu has a level of psychic power that he’s not aware of. Looks like things plan to get more troublesome as DImple is back and looks to have taken an interest in Ritsu. Perhaps the next foe Mob will have to face is his own brother?
