Welcome everyone, to a very late episode of Mob Psycho 100! Apologies for the wait on this one, busy week of work and grad school has slowed me down and I prioritized Throwback Thursday going out on… well Thursday. Excuses aside though, let’s dive into this weeks episode!
As usual, lets start with the production. This is going to be a bit of a controversial statement, but I think Mob Psycho was rather subdued this week. It was good, obviously. I’m not saying it was bad, Mob Psycho’s baseline consistency is great and puts most shows highs to shame. It just hasn’t given us anything incredible yet. Nothing that has pushed or exceeded my expectations for the show. Maybe this is a consequence of hype though. How to much can lead to unattainable expectations, sort of like how the Chainsaw Man fandom is at war with itself right now over it’s own visual production (Which I’ve enjoyed so far, to be clear). For Mob Psycho, after 2 seasons of pushing that envelope I, and others, have come to expect that once again. Will we get it? Probably, eventually. But we haven’t yet, despite being beautiful otherwise.
Getting into the episode itself, the main topic of the week is Dimple. I think Mob Psycho did a great job here. We know he isn’t strong enough to take Mob in a fight, and Dimple knows it to. So they have him pulling out all the stops, everything he’s seen and learned across the past 2 seasons, to try and take him down. Mental warfare, tempting him with Tsubomi, playing to his ego, then trying to tear that ego down. All the while luring him into a tree draining his power and slowly wearing him down from a far, even admitting he probably showed himself a bit to soon when he goes in to finish it. As viewers, we already know Mob is going to win. It’s just how the show goes. But this all goes a long way towards presenting Dimple as a legitimate threat he normally isn’t.
At the same time though, Mob Psycho also makes us question how into this he really is. Mob mentions multiple times how Dimple seems to be holding back, that this isn’t the real him. But you have to wonder, is that just Mob trying to talk down someone he views as a friend? Is he holding back as best he can trying to give Dimple an out so they can go back to how they were? Or is he maybe being controlled by the tree himself, thus lead to believe this is all his idea like how Teru “thinks” he wants to defend it? We really don’t know. And that puts us in much the same headspace as Mob during this fight, where we aren’t sure if we even want Dimple to be exorcised. Personally though, I’m hoping this is all Dimple, and that Mob will have to face reality.
Meanwhile Mob’s side we have this interesting conflict between what he says and how he actually feels. It seemed pretty clear to me that Mob’s anger in all of this was really just a mask for his disappointment and sadness. Like Dimple, he also tried to talk his opponent down. Never going for the kill he could easily have achieved at any time, even trying to literally slap some sense into him. It felt like two friends fighting, neither wanting to admit they were wrong but neither willing to back down either. Only this time it was over the fate of the city and everyone in it and not who ate the last cannoli in the fridge.
The only truly negative thing about the episode for me was the final shirt gag. I just… I wasn’t into it. Mob getting his last 1% triggered off of Dimple being the first person to insult it was amusing, I’ll give. But it stopping the fight felt like an extreme tonal break. They were having this super serious conversation, preparing to really go at it with both of them about to stop holding back… only for this shirt to show up and complete destroy any tension in the scene. I get that Mob Psycho is a show that doesn’t take itself all that seriously. These kinds of jokes are all throughout the series. But there’s a time and a place for them I feel, and the major climax of your first big arc is not one of them.
So yeah, all in all I think this was another decent Mob Psycho episode. Of course decent for Mob Psycho is still a step above most shows, but I can’t help but think that it’s starting to suffer from hype. After 2 incredible seasons, everyone (including myself) are expecting and looking forward to some kind of season-shattering event. And so far that isn’t what we’ve gotten. Is it still good? Obviously so, it’s my favorite thing of the season. Make no mistake, Mob Psycho is a great show. It just hasn’t broken my expectations yet, because it’s spent the last two seasons raising those expectations to unreasonable levels. Part of that’s my and the anime communities fault, we need to tone it down a bit and touch some grass. But it’s also on Mob Psycho to give it its best shot to meet those. Hopefully it will next week.
This is a weird take IMO, I never got the sense that Mob was being ‘compelled’ to hold back by mind control or that Dimple doesn’t think he can win, hell Dimple explicitly worries at one point that he seriously hurt Mob.
Rather what I saw in this was Mob utterly mortified by what his friend has become, desperately trying to find a solution that doesn’t end in exorcising a member of his found family. Meanwhile Dimple, high on his own delusion, thinks he actually stands a chance against Mob. As the audience we know he doesn’t, even without 100% its evident Mob knows he could kill him. And that’s the point, we get to be a mortified as mob is, watching a beloved character destroy himself with delusions of grandeur and horrified that Mob might have to do the unthinkable.
Visually this might not have the same power as the fight with Mogami, but for narrative states it might be the strongest episode in the series.
Oh I think I miscommunicated. I didn’t mean that Mob is being compelled to hold back, I meant that he is actively doing it himself. Mob himself doesn’t want to exorcise his best friend, just as Dimple himself probably doesn’t want to kill Mob.
I think we are in complete agreement here, I just flubbed how to communicate that. The only control I can see is the question of whether or not Dimple is being affected by the tree the same way Teru was. Or at the very least the Mob is hoping Dimple is being affected by the tree. Any excuse for him to not have to exorcise Dimple basically.