It is a remarkably cheap tactic to pull a fake death right before the climax but that aside this acted as a decent finale to Mob Psycho. Through it’s clear that a second season is needed as the story does set up for one and sadly I doubt this has as high a chance of getting one. Well the show gave us the illusion that Reigan was hiding tremendous power only to have it be him borrowing Mob’s power for a moment. This gave Reigan the perfect method to combat the Claw members as with their powers rendered useless Reigan was able to make use of his greatest asset, his ability to talk anyone down. The members of claw that were presented as entities of dark ambition we stripped down and shown how childish their motives were. Even the gas masked leader was reduced to a whining baby in face of Reigans logic.
The battle here was explosive but ultimately Reigan beat claw by breaking down their entire being and showing them just how fragile it really was. In typical shounen it’s par for the course for heroes to force their logic on someone by beating them up. Even Touma from the certain magical index series literally punches his logic into villains until they agree with him.(Made all the more hypocritical when you consider this boy has the life experience of a pillbug) Here Reigan isn’t truly fighting the enemy but rather making them realise just what they are doing. Ultimately it’s the more mature manner of dealing with the problem and a real solution. Enemies beaten up can easily stand by up and continue fighting another day. Enemies stripped of all reason to fight have no reason to return. Batman maybe should start taking notes. I find it strange that the series decided to include a small story about Reigan and Mob hunting a UMA in it’s final minutes but I suppose it shows that life goes on for Mob.
My overall feelings on Mob Psycho are lukewarm personally. I see that it has merit, it certainly has impressive animation and a interesting story. However I find that it didn’t quite grab me as I thought it should. Perhaps this is how some people felt when watching One Punch Man and it not hitting them as hard as it did with others. Though it that is the case perhaps something like Mob Psycho is more to their tastes? The story isn’t exactly what I would call deep but it holds some interesting food for thought while being entertaining. It subverts a viewer’s expectations bring a more interesting turn of events to stereotypical shounen plotlines. Characters go through some interesting arcs like some side character previously acting niferous only to come to terms with themselves and become better people. Humor was a hit and miss aspect as usual for me but in this case I think Mob Psycho 100 fell short of the bar when compared to it’s brother. Despite efforts from the team to essentially one up OPM I think Mob Psycho is doomed to live in the shadow cast from it’s more popular sibling. But even then it does stand out when compared to other anime. When checking out ONEs work in the future, Mob will likely be a secondary choice but none the less it will still be a worthwhile watch.
