Welcome everyone, to another week of Mob Psycho! This was an interesting week, a rather contentious one in fact. Looking around I seem to be the only person with a lukewarm impression of it. Why am I not super hyped? What could possibly have hurt it for me? Lets dive in and talk about it.
Starting off, this episode really isn’t what I was expecting. Now that doesn’t have to be a bad thing! Surprises can be very good in fact. If everything goes the way the audience suspects all the time, you will start to lose their interest. The issue here is more that Mob Psycho surprised me not by tackling something in a completely different way, but by avoiding it all together. What does that mean? Well we’ve known Mob was going to explode, it’s in the previews, the title of the show, it was obvious. The question was only ever why. I expected, and hoped, it would be because of Tsubomi. And that his final emotional hurdle would be dealing with rejection when he has faced acceptance by the rest of the cast across the season. I thought that would be really poignant. Instead? Instead he gets hit by a car.
Instead of Mob’s explosion being one generated by extreme frustration or rejection, it’s instead an unconscious reaction. To me, it takes a lot of agency out of Mob’s hands and kind of… absolves him of what is happening. Sure, Mob doesn’t see it that way. This is his inner self that he’s always fought against, the manifestation of the psychic power that he has denied and tried to downplay for years. He no doubt blames himself for everything that’s happening and views it as him being unable to change. That’s why the entire episode is framed around him and Teru, mimicking the same thing back in Season 1 Episode 5. And that’s all good! As far as alternative routes for the story to go, this is a fine one. I actually really like the callback and Teru’s growth. I just don’t like the agency being taken out of Mob’s hands.
As for Teru, he at least was great. I thought Mob Psycho showed off his character development really well, especially with all of the parallels back to Season 1. His constant attempts to talk Mob down, recognizing this as the same mysterious force that annihilated him before, pushing past it knowing that Mob wouldn’t want what is happening, and finally prioritizing saving civilians because he knows that would weight on Mob’s conscious more than anything else. Frankly, Teru was the MVP of the episode. It felt almost more like his than Mob’s, which makes sense considering the title. I just wish Mob had been in a state where he could have responded more, had some kind of conversation, silent or otherwise, rather than a rampage caused by getting hit by a car. And that’s all it really comes down to for me really, Mob’s agency.
Moving on to the end, and what’s going to happen next episode, a lot of stuff is in there air. The big one of course is the return of Toichiro, the Scar boss. This guy was the end goal, the big kahuna, of Season 2. But with the way Mob is now I can’t help but feel he’s going to get stomped. Like a show of “Look how much trouble he was before, this is super serious”. At the very least I don’t expect him to be the one to get Mob out of his slump, most likely that’s going to be Tsubomi. What this is though is a nice callback, like we are walking our way through all of Mob’s past experiences. There was Teru, the toy gun and helix guy, now Toichiro. It’s like the show itself is trying to wake Mob up via these memories.
So yeah, all in all while this was definitely an interesting episode of Mob Psycho, I personally felt a tad disappointed in it’s direction. I was a big fan of Mob’s growth and agency as the seasons went on, how he took more and more control of his life and his emotions. So to see him lose a lot of that agency, even if it turned into a metaphorical battle against the part of himself that he hates most, really hurt. Episode looked good, sounded good, Teru was good, the episode was good. It’s Mob Psycho, the episode is always good. But it wasn’t great. Not for me at least.
That said, I would love to hear your interpretations. Maybe there’s a detail I’m missing that could turn this around for me, some idea or way of looking at it that could really up my experience. Let me know below how it was for you!
I loved the Teru part of the episode, no arguments there.
It may be a bit petty, but having last season’s big boss come in doesn’t make any sense considering that his power seemed to be so great because he had been sucking up other people’s energy for decades. Didn’t he use that all up last time? Am I nuts?
Besides that, seeing Mob-level power used for evil (or at least chaotic neutral) actually got me a bit nervous, in a good, unforeseen way. If he had to be taken to near-death via a truck to get there, it might be a bit lame—literally deus ex machina–but fine.
PS. So… do we all just forget that aliens exist now? Or like… what?
For the big boss, no, I get you. Having him come in seems really weird and he’s probably just showing up to job against Mob so we can see just how serious an event this is. He’s currently the 2nd strongest person in the series, so if HE can’t deal with Mob then who can, you know? It’s weird but maybe it can work?
I get ya on the evil power thing. It is nice having him be the last big bad in a way, because no one else can compete with him. I just sort of wish it had come from Tsubomi rejecting him, or some other circumstances that he was aware of, you know? It’s still good, the episode was good. Just not my favorite route.
And yes. Lets forget the aliens and forget that Inukawa got date raped in space. Didn’t happen. Don’t worry about it or the giant Broccoli that flew off into space to.
i like what they did. Explosion after rejection would be obvious choice and in sequence of the events, but they decided to do something different for a reason i think.
My POV is that while Mob is about taking control over your life and we see mob’s growth in this regard, there are unforeseen events in life, the big external factors that will happen, that will change your life, that will make your plans go awry. So far mob’s growth was in a very controlled environment where he battled himself to gain the agency you have written of.
But what happens when a major external event dissolves your dreams? How one should react when it’s not one’s fault? That it’s independent of your consciousness and you cannot do anything about it? The grates hurdle imho for self growth is being accepting of reality and flexible enough to change your plans.
“Grown up” people in case of emergency would just call, reschedule, describe why they are rescheduling, even when it’s a meeting later at another location. He could have asked his parents to drive him to the “gurl”.
This is for me tackling the last stage of personal growth (the all-acceptance of reality) and shows clearly that Mob does not have that.
I like this choice very much, it adds another perspective to look at.
Thats a good perspective on it, I hadn’t considered all of this. I’ll have to think on it a bit more before I get to the final review, thanks for the contribution.
The more i think about it the more apparent it is for me that his outburst is the representation of emotional state of “i will do this no matter the costs” and its also the first time that Mob is really really wanting to do something serious for him by himself; and as usual real life gets in the way of these serious things very often… im even more keen now to see the confrontation with his girl if it even happens at all.
I can as easily see a turn where he is late, she goes home, they never meet, and some sort of conclusion like “few months/years later” or whatever, showing and pointing out that this outburst was absolutely meaningless – that would be a cherry on the top for me; as this would conclude mob’s growth and realisation beyond just his inner self improvement, he would really be stepping into mental maturity, accepting life as it is, and growing to be more flexible instead of applying “unstoppable force” to move “unmovable object”.