#confession arc

[chellustrates]

misc mobble stuff based on season three

[exilepurify]

I see people everywhere all the time raving about how flawless and satisfying MP100’s ending episode is, and I agree. But sometimes it kinda takes me aback exactly how well-planned the entire story is, especially because it began as a webcomic.

The individual relationships Mob has with the “Big Three” (Reigen, Teru, Ritsu) each follow their respective themes from start to finish, with the application of each theme to the story changing as it progresses but the major idea remaining the same—until the final arc, which is broadly split into three episodes, each featuring the culmination of the respective relationship.

Teru’s theme is strength, Ritsu’s theme is communication, and Reigen’s is acceptance.

More under the cut bc this got a little long.

We find each of the Big Three struggling with these concepts throughout the series. Teru grapples with what it really means to be strong, Ritsu struggles to open up and communicate his feelings with his brother (garnering resentment), and Reigen refuses to accept the self he hates, opting instead to build his career and his relationships out of lies to hide this despised identity.

These are also, coincidentally, things Mob is struggling most with. Mob’s terrified of his strength, he’s unwilling to open up about his guilt and self-hatred, and he outright refuses to accept his powers and his repressed self on many occasions throughout the story.

But the finale is structured to not only perfectly demonstrate and polish off the ways in which the Big Three have overcome the struggles of their themes, but also how that growth powers their love for Mob, subsequently helping Mob achieve the same growth.

In S3E10, Teru finds true strength by enduring pain and humiliation in order to save people and forge connections with others. Not only does he rescue Shigeo’s victims, but it’s his love and strength that allows him to push through Shigeo’s powers at any cost to wake Mob up internally and begin the process of ending the disaster. It’s because of Teru that Mob wakes up and realizes what he’s done, in much the same way that Mob helped Teru realize what he’d done at Black Vinegar.

In S3E11, Ritsu manages to communicate his unfiltered feelings to Shigeo for the first time and ends the tentative, repressive resentment boiling between them (both Ritsu and Mob harboring resentment for “Shigeo” specifically). He talks about how he hates this destructive side of him and how scared he’s always been, but this honest communication is what allows Ritsu to see the situation clearly beyond the scope of his repressed resentment and accept Shigeo as a part of his brother that’s not to be feared. It also opens the door from Shigeo’s end, finally knowing how his brother feels and not having to tiptoe ineffectually around the issue. Ritsu’s open and honest communication allows Mob to locate where Shigeo is being held in his psyche, opening up a channel of communication between him and his repressed self. This communication is what allows Mob to be confronted with the truth of the disaster he’s created, and this ability to talk it out with himself is crucial to ending his suffering.

Finally, in S3E12, the finale, Reigen is confronted with the ways in which he’s inadvertently worsened Mob’s condition with his inability to be genuine and makes the decision to drop the smoke screen and come clean about everything. The fear and gravity of it brings him to tears, but he bares his true self to Mob, admitting the things he’s done wrong and confronting the side of himself that he hates. He has to come to terms with this aspect of himself, even if it hurts him, and even if it hurts Mob. Self-acceptance is, in this moment, non-negotiable. Seeing Reigen’s true self in its entirety for the first time leads Mob to realize that everyone has flaws and a darker side to them, and it doesn’t make you a bad person to mess up, but you have to embrace it all unconditionally and own up to it honestly and without hesitation. Reigen, and everyone else, saw this ugly and angry side of Mob and continued to love him unhesitatingly and unfalteringly. And so, Reigen’s acceptance inspires Mob to accept Shigeo, ending the disaster and finally making Shigeo whole and happy again, unfettered.

It’s honestly fucking masterful. It makes my chest tight. ONE is genuinely something else.

[ygodmyy20]

I knew I would be needed.

[badlydrawnmeulin]

its official, y'all

[leyza-haide]

Love? Love? Just like Mob!

[russenoire]

in response to this post:

ONE-sensei is a bit of a troll, not gonna lie.

but... i actually like this ending, at least for comedy's sake. the stark juxtaposition of

'boy gets hit by a truck and his unexamined jungian shadow self flattens a city before he finally makes peace with it'

with

'and everything was just fine six months later'

is funnier than spelling out exactly how we get from point A to point B, because we KNOW — as the audience — that it wasn't 'just fine'. after everything we saw, how could it be?

subverted expectations underpin a lot of comedy, even dark comedy, especially absurdist comedy. MP100 is practically built on both. this story wrings a lot of humor out of sad, if not tragic, situations: witness shigeo's 'who told you you could pass out?!' after his home has been reduced to kindling. or ritsu's admission that he only recently stopped crying himself to sleep at night over his inability to bend spoons like his big brother. while he's letting shigeo know just how much he supposedly hates him in that alley.

not expanding upon the real-life consequences of said city-flattening is funny precisely because dropping 'i wrecked my hometown after nearly dying in a car accident on the way to ask out my crush when i was a teenager' in a conversation and just... leaving it there? would be fucking horrifying in real life. here, in the elastic magical-realist context of MP100, it's more darkly absurd than anything else...

more to your point, OP: in this particular series, ONE-sensei tells so much of this story by implication. the answers to some of your questions are in the text, only... alluded to.

this might get long. bear with me:

the fact that joseph from the government exists? and that he's an esper working in secret? implies that the knowledge of destructive espers might need to be concealed from the public at large, perhaps to prevent wide-scale panic or ostracism of espers themselves. i doubt the government was forthright with its citizens about the confession arc disaster or the actual cause, for the same reasons.

that suzuki's broadcast-hijacking world domination announcement is met with public disdain and ridicule, especially over social media? outside of our cast, no one actually takes his threat seriously until it happens. reigen's trash-talking claw's seventh division down to earth also shows how little respect espers who don't make themselves useful to society actually get here. he is, after all, just another member of the public.

that reigen agrees to take on haruaki amakusa as a client after the world domination arc in part because he's worried about losing business? people have begun to move away from seasoning city in the aftermath; whatever the threat amakusa's hyakki present, neutralizing them as soon as possible is best for reigen's continued financial health. i can see even more residents deciding they've had enough and leaving after shigeo's last brush with death. would you stay?

how many people know shigeo is connected to reigen, apart from the people they both know? out of his own inflated and fragile ego, reigen presents himself as a sole proprietor on his website; it doesn't seem his business or its reputation would be directly affected at all.

and the injuries caused? possible deaths? we get a taste: early on in chapter 100, several people are trapped and unable to move in a 地盤沈下 (jibánchinka, literally: 'land subsidence', which can apply to a sinkhole, a landslide...) shigeo has left in his wake. we only find out because a cop is being briefed on this and its cause while trying to detain the suspect for questioning.

but like all other bodily harm caused in this story, we aren't treated to the fallout. did the elderly ishiguro survive shou plowing him into the earth? did miyagawa die after teruki flipped his barrier onto him and broiled him in his own flames? did those high school bully boys live after shigeo cracked their heads open on the pavement like eggs? like, these are good questions. (i'm inclined to believe that all these people died, but many would call me harsh for saying that about an otherwise kind story. we never see them again, either way.)

shigeo actually has a healing factor of sorts; his jungian shadow self keeps plucking him from death's arms. we have no way of knowing if this is true for anyone else, because that isn't the story ONE wanted to tell. if nothing else, the mangaka's lack of desire to engage with this question of lethal consequences is at least consistent across MP100.

any questions that aren't answered either directly or that can't be answered by easy extrapolation can foster continued engagement with the material.

for example: we don't know what shigeo's parents think about much of anything in this story, besides how little they expect from him and how ritsu sets a standard they feel shigeo should live up to. this boy goes through hell multiple times and is never shown to confide in either of his parents about it, instead suffering in silence for some time until he finds someone he feels safe enough to talk to. all this gives me the distinct impression that shigeo just isn't that close to his mother or his father. i can understand why. it's actually kind of sad, even as readers' frustrated expectations of real-life parental involvement with — and confusion over — his and his brother's shenanigans also generate some dark humor.

this also establishes a precedent: since we never check in with them, by the time the confession arc rolls around, their opinion hardly matters. (but i'm sure someone has written a fic fleshing that out! i'm somewhat curious myself.)

[bandtrees]

🩸🐖 HELL IN THE HALLWAYS - A MP100 AMV 🐖🩸

first ever amv!!! it's the most onbrand thing it could be - an edgy mob psycho amv to an ice nine kills song about carrie... but! i'm very pleased with it regardless :]] enjoy!!

also on youtube!

[nesbiter]

I need some hyper-analyser to analyse all images of the destroyed Seasoning City in season 3 and compare it to a similar disaster in order to get the grand total of deaths Mob caused.

[fuyuu-suru-uzuki]

out of the 90 or so panels that ONE devotes to the mental fight between shigeo and mob in mob psycho 100's confession arc -- from mob's conscious awareness of shigeo's presence to shigeo's eventual dissolution and assimilation of mob -- just seven show us that the child can actually be heard arguing with himself from the outside.

since the anime concluded its run last year, i've had those panels on my mind. studio bones only animated the largest one and relegated shigeo's speech on it to internal dialogue (much more on that decision here). they're so compelling that i decided to redraw them in my own style.

this is the seventh and last of them. it occurs just before shigeo smacks reigen in the head with a chunk of fallen city in hopes of scaring him off (it doesn't work).

its text reads:

｢他人が”僕”を飼い慣らすことはできない。モブの本当の姿を知ればあの人は僕を開放するよ。」 tanin ga boku wo kainarasu koto wa dekinai. mobu no hontou no sugata wo shireba ano hito wa boku wo kaihou suru yo. 'no one else will be able to tame me. now that he knows mob's true form, that man will set me free.'

ONE's original panel below the cut.

この一連の他の絵 kono ichiren no hoka no e other drawings in this series panel 2｜panel 3｜panel 5｜panel 6

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

"🎶You can make it different 🎶"

"🎶You can make it right 🎶"

[this is a reference to the Steven Universe movie- the song being "Change", i think is what it's called :P]

[spoonbenders-archive]

had an idea this morning. king of the confession arc

SEVERE flashing lights warning

[exilepurify]

A small but crucial detail I really love about S3e12 and Reigen’s whole encounter with ??? is the fact that Reigen doesn’t break down until he lays eyes on Mob.

Reigen is calm and collected throughout the “earthquakes”, realizing that Mob’s causing the disaster, running after him, and braving his way through the tornado. He’s determined to reach Mob at all costs and never wavers or hesitates.

Reigen calls out to Mob when he sees his silhouette in the distance, but it’s not until Reigen struggles close enough to Mob to actually see the state he’s in that his composure crumbles.

And it crumbles. It’s the first time the audience has ever seen Reigen so openly upset. I am not exaggerating by saying that Reigen is genuinely desperate and distraught, and it happened the moment Reigen made visual contact with Mob.

And this isn’t even taking into account him breaking down into tears talking with Mob. This is just the start of the encounter.

I like this little detail so much because it accentuates the fact that Reigen truly didn’t have any idea what Mob was dealing with or holding inside. All of the evidence pointed to Mob being the cause of the disaster. Reigen knew on a logical level that this was Mob’s power at work (“But Mob’s in the center of that tornado, right?”). But I think Reigen still refused to believe it on a more emotional level. To Reigen, Mob can do no wrong. Reigen sees Mob with such a favorable tint, I’m sure in that moment everything seemed so unreal to Reigen that he couldn’t make himself believe Mob was capable of this.

But when he finally catches a visual of Mob in his ??? form, he sees Mob wrapped in a sinister red energy and absolutely monstrous, his shape blurry and poorly defined from his raw power distorting it into charcoal-like smudges, his face stuck in a pained grimace. ??? looks so out of place in the normal animation style that he seems otherworldly, like he belongs in a different dimension.

The only thing keeping Reigen in denial was not directly seeing Mob rampaging around the city. So when Reigen saw ???, the realizations and the gravity of the situation just hit him all at once and he flew into a desperate panic.

It just seems so like Reigen to downplay Mob’s ability to hurt, both himself and others.

I hope this makes sense lol i’m so tired

[ygodmyy20]

Your beauty never, ever, scared me.

I came across this AMV and it never got out of my head. I fell in love with the song and I just kept listening and listening and I knew I had to draw it at some point. I just kept thinking about it. Singing it. It never left me.

Would love to tag whoever made it but can't find them on Tumblr. Here is the Terumob edit:

Not gonna post the timelapse as it is like....4 mins long. Because it took me for fucking ever to paint Teru's face. I kept running into a lot of blockers.

[badlydrawnmeulin]

Here's a yarn ball, play with it, trust me it'll win Araneas affection

[eldragon-x]

"This isn't a separate, scary version of you. It's a part of you."

[theinternetisaweboflies]

Self-Destruction with Collateral Damage Chapter 1

Everything was dark.

Teru felt himself rising towards consciousness, like a diver coming up from deep underwater, but everything was still dark.

His hands flew to his face, where they met soft cloth and a metric ton of pain. Teru couldn't suppress the sound he made, but he couldn't hear it either. The ringing in his head was only drowned out by the beeping sound that seemed to be coming from all around him.

It took him a moment to register that someone else was talking. The patter sounded family, but he couldn't make out the actual words.

Larger hands covered his, lowering them, and Teru probably would have put up a barrier if he had any psychic energy left. He was completely depleted. Not even the usual yellow glow made it through his blindfold.

Teru was about to start biting when he smelled the familiar combination of sweat, nicotine, and MobDonald's.

"Reigen?" he choked out.

The patter finally resolved into words. "Yes! Yes, it's Reigen. You're safe. Okay, kid? You're safe now."

Teru took another tentative sniff.

"Why do you smell like flowers?"

Reigen snorted. "It's not me. The biggest bouquet is from your class, but there's also a lovely selection of weeds from Tome, a sunflower from Mob, and-"

Teru sat up straight. He didn't even notice the pain until Reigen relieved it by clicking something that raised the bed up to meet him.

"Is he okay?"

Reigen hesitated.

"Is he alive?" Teru could barely get the word out, and not just because his throat felt like dried squid.

"Jesus Christ! Of course he's alive! He's just a little… out of sorts. Turns out he got a love tap from a Subaru right before his big moment, which was at least partially responsible for the whole..." There was a pause while Reigen must have been gesturing. "I'll let him tell you the rest."

"He got hit by a car?" asked Teru. The beeping increased in tempo.

"He's fine," said Reigen. "The doctors released him after one night of observation, which is more than I can say for you, young man."

"Thank god," Teru couldn't help the words, which were almost more of a sigh.

"Stop being relieved. You're in trouble." Reigen sounded exhausted. Teru wondered vaguely if he should budge up and make room. "Confronting Mob on your own… What were you thinking? Sure, he wasn't exactly acting like himself, but you must have caught on after the first broken rib. You do know he's stronger than you, right? Of course all you kids want to be the very best like no one ever was, but Mob is seriously overpowered."

"I know," mumbled Teru, who had no idea what he was being lectured about but definitely knew that much.

Reigen didn't seem to hear him. "You've been to the the office. Mob told me you can even teleport now! So what exactly is your excuse?"

Teru started giggling, which turned out to be a very bad idea indeed. He clutched his stomach, but he couldn't stop. He felt giddy. Shigeo was going to be okay. Everything else was filler. Even Reigen's monologuing seemed funny for some reason.

It occurred to Teru that he was probably on the good stuff.

"I don't know," he finally got out, wiping away a tear that was only sort of from the laughter. "What am I in trouble for?"

"Why didn't you ask for help?" There was a shuffling of fabric, and Teru could easily imagine the finger being wagged in his face. He felt like he was on Ace Attorney.

Teru tried to stop giggling, if only for the sake of his image. "Ask for… help?"

"Yes!"

"I didn't think of it?"

It came out sounding more like a question, but it was technically true. All he had been thinking about was Shigeo.

Reigen heaved a sigh, sounding more exhausted than ever.

"The nurses can't get ahold of your parents."

Teru's brain, which had been processing things so slowly, suddenly caught up to speed.

The blindfold was a bandage. The bed was remote controlled. The beeping was Teru's own suddenly erratic heartbeat.

He was in a hospital.

It was probably Seasoning General, and they probably still had the Seasoning City Child Guidance Center on speed dial. The hospital staff would be busy dealing with the aftermath of Shigeo's explosion, but not as busy as they could be, thanks to Teru. It was only a matter of time.

"Yeah, they work a lot," he said, hoping his even tone would balance out the air raid siren coming from the heart monitor. "I'm sure they'll get the message soon. Thanks for hanging out in the meantime, but you can take off now. I'm sure you have a lot to deal with, and visiting hours are probably almost over anyway."

"Oh, crap, what am I doing?" There was another shuffling sound followed by a light thud, which might have been Reigen smacking himself in the head. Then he clicked something else. Almost immediately, Teru could make out the sound of approaching footsteps. The door opened and Teru tried not to tense up again.

"Hey Ifukube-san," said Reigen. "He woke up. Can you get the doctor to do a concussion check and go over the prognosis?"

"Yes, Reigen-san."

"I can't believe that wasn't your first question, kid." This seemed to be directed at Teru, as the footsteps had receded into the distance again. "You took a hell of a beating."

"How long have I got?" Teru managed to drawl.

"Don't joke like that with Mob," Reigen said, with rare seriousness. "I'll let Honda-sensei give you the gory details, but it wasn't pretty. Lots of contusions and lacerations. Some broken ribs. They got those wrapped up, which is about all they can do, so you'll be on bed rest for a while. The patches are just to keep light out while your eyes are healing. They applied some sort of topical directly to your eyeballs, which was super disgusting, but it's supposed to keep them from hurting too much or scarring."

That was going to complicate things. Teru would be able to sense his surroundings well enough with his powers once they returned, but he had always resented the lessons that he'd learned from Shimazaki.

"They were pretty worried about the head injury at first," said Reigen. "There was some swelling, and they couldn't tell how bad it would be until it went down or you woke up. Maybe both. Either way, Honda-sensei is going to want a game of Twenty Questions, and that'll put you to sleep if the painkillers don't."

Teru nodded. He would have to find a way to stay awake.

"I'll be back in the morning, and Mob- Oh, yeah. He wanted me to ask if he can visit you tomorrow." Reigen hesitated again, only noticeable because it was so unusual for him. "It's okay if you don't want to see him."

"I want to see him."

“Alright.” Reigen patted the top of Teru’s bandages. "Just don’t be surprised if he starts crying.”