#1-cour anime adaptations are summaries and should be appraised as such

[russenoire]

here, i'm gonna spill some more ink over studio bones' decisions adapting ???% in mob psycho 100's confession arc... in a lighter color, perhaps.

some manga readers are upset at the lack of separation between '???%' and 'mob' in the anime vs the clear separation in the manga. that separation doesn't exist in the original japanese.

mob's 声優 (seiyuu) setsuo itō's voice acting in this scene from MP100's first season is by turns startling and visceral (tbh, most of the VA work in this scene is amazing, but i'm only referring to mob here).

given the above, i expected a voice come up from the depths of hell for ???% in the confession arc, but bones and itō-san did not indulge my whims here. what they gave us instead...

...actually reflects the source material.

while there is an audible distinction between ???%'s nonchalant contempt and mob's considerably-more-animated (thanks to all that emotional growth we've seen over the course of the story!) upset, they sound like the same person in the anime... because they are. i thought this a tidy way to convey that fact, and this subtle distinction is not that different in feel from what we see on the page in the original language.

inside the teenager's mind, shigeo (???%) and mob quarrel in the same font. tails on their speech bubbles eventually disappear as they continue to argue with each other. i found this pointed lack of separation a little confusing on first read, but eventually became used to it.

(for a breakdown of this full conversation in the manga, check out @exilepurify's awesome translation post.)

shigeo chafes at the thought of considering others' needs. he scorns mob for bending himself into a shape he thinks will suit tsubomi, mocks mob's desire to blend into the background and somehow escape notice. his own wish for tsubomi to accept him in all his explosive vainglory doesn't take her wishes into account, either.

and yet. his desires are subordinate to mob's.

he wants what mob wants -- only without that whole pesky 'consideration for other people' thing -- and he wants to keep mob alive. their full conversation reveals just how much shigeo actually loves mob.

for all practical purposes, any distinctions between shigeo and mob -- private vs public, subconscious vs conscious -- only exist in the boy's head. even then, they have been unfairly imposed... by mob himself.

the teenager laying waste to seasoning city? the teenager his friends and family love? one and the same.

his loved ones and allies address him with the names by which they know him; they assume he's the same person, just experiencing an involuntary loss of control and in need of some help. it's important to emphasize that. drastically different voices for shigeo and mob would have drawn a hard line between them where there is none.

studio bones removed and/or internalized ???%'s lines, apparently robbing him of speech. but ???% is talking to himself, and no one else can hear him.

in the manga, shigeo seizes control of the boy's speech centers and speaks out loud as ???%, in a scratchy, rough font meant to evoke a harsh voice. (it's the same font used for ???%'s last brief, conscious takeover when mob discovers the crispy fried corpses of his family in their merrily crackling home! you can hear itō-san's delightful interpretation of it in episode 9 from the second season.)

he says:

｢僕の好きにやらせてもらう。」 boku no s'ki ni yarasete morau. 'i'll be free to do whatever i want.' or more literally: 'i will take [from you] the allowance to do as i please.' his use of 貰う here emphasizes that he is forcing mob's hand.

this line and the shift in viewpoint serve to highlight the exact moment where shigeo gains the advantage in his argument with mob.

mob and shigeo squabble for external control for a while; ONE shows this by letting them both speak aloud in this same rough voice. both sides of the fight between the two (at least after 'i'll be free to do whatever i want') can actually be heard from the outside. we only get a few small panels of this as it's happening, but it's unnerving.

shigeo, who is winning this battle, not only gets far more lines as seen from without, but his harsh rasp even colors mob's external speech. this is mob's only line the mangaka lets us see in that font, and it's heartbreaking:

｢だって… もしこれが本当の僕の姿だっていうなら…」 datte... mosh' kore ga hontou no boku no sugata datte iu nara... 'because... if this [???%] is what i really am, as you say...

the line continues within:

｢本当の僕になんて誰も近寄らない。誰も…　誰も助けてくれない。そんなの嫌いだ。」 hontou no boku ni nante daremo ch'kayoranai. daremo... daremo tas'kete kurenai. sonna no kirai da. 'no one will come anywhere near the real me. no one... no one will be there for me. i won't have that.'

the full takeover, which happens a bit later, is marked by:

shigeo's dissolution of and absorption of mob's consciousness into himself;

reigen's ｢すまない｣ (sumanai, 'i'm sorry') for not knowing the nature of what his deshi was struggling to contain;

???%'s last glance back at the man before pressing on towards his goal... as reigen begs him to wait, running after him.

thereafter, we see ???% from without. we get two short glimpses of shigeo's internal perspective before dimple's reappearance, then rejoin him inside for his last explosion with mob.

the anime depicts the moment of full takeover thusly:

shigeo's dissolution of and absorption of mob's consciousness into himself;

a ｢すまない｣ from reigen, who senses something has gone even more wrong with the boy and renews his pursuit... begging him to wait;

shigeo's turning his back on reigen and walking on. we see him spurning his mentor from the inside, his face hardening against a stark black backdrop.

the outward shift happens on-screen too. while it eventually returns to an internal view just as the manga does, it largely stays there, owing to a serious expansion of the scene where shigeo indulges his thirst for revenge on reigen.

except for an audible sigh when teru remarks on how normal his friend's losing control of himself actually makes him, anime shigeo speaks to no one.

???% is alone when he speaks in the manga; reigen is nowhere within earshot and shigeo is only addressing mob. in other words, he's talking to himself. shigeo never utters a word to anyone else in either manga or anime, as if he owes no one an explanation for the choice to sack his hometown or injure his friends.

as bone-chilling and unsettling as ???% speaking out loud is on the page, as much as it enhances the reading experience... in my opinion, it adds nothing new to our understanding of this situation on the screen. viewers can see for themselves that:

an internal takeover has occurred in this boy's mind,

???% is sentient and human and ever so divinely enraged at having been chained up for so long;

???% is finally free.

so why should studio bones belabor this point by having him shout, in the middle of a tornado, to no one in particular? if a boy speaks in a tornado, and there is no one around to hear it, does he make a sound... ?

i also don't know that this would translate well to film. in real life, talking to oneself like that usually carries connotations of psychosis, and resolving it as is done here would honestly be an insult to real-life sufferers. i love it to pieces in the manga but understand why this was cut.

the only things removing ???%'s outward speech loses for me are:

one last opportunity for itō-san to flex that audible jump-scare STOMACH-TWISTING SNARL (oh, i will miss it so);

a slightly-less-vague sense of how shigeo might make his wishes known to tsubomi, were he to present himself to her like this... he wants her approval so badly, and is terrified of not getting it. would he be able to speak to her at all? in the manga the question becomes what would he even say to her?