If You Put Them Together They Almost Form One(1) Functional Adult.

[Image ID: A page from the Reigen manga. Panel 1: Reigen stands in a forest looking exhausted. He says, “At least I bought bug spray this time …” Panel 2: He sprays himself down. Panel 3: A closeup of his face. He’s dripping with sweat and his eyes are sunken. He says, “Preparations complete.” Panel 4: Reigen loosens his tie as he staggers towards the viewer. His face is sweaty and he has a haggard expression. He says, “All right then …” End ID.]

Okay listen it’s been a month since i read this and i CANNOT stop thinking about “At least I bought bug spray this time…” It’s just. It’s so Reigen.

This man is dying. He is being eaten alive by a curse that will kill him in less than 3 hours–probably closer to 2 by this point because this place is pretty far outside of Seasoning City. Since Serizawa couldn’t destroy the curse, he knows that Mob is the only person who could get rid of it–and he doesn’t think that he’ll get there in time, if he comes at all. Reigen’s last-ditch plan is to try to trudge into the most haunted forbidden evil woods he knows about in the hope that he can make the curse that’s killing him fight a different, worse curse, and if that doesn’t work at least he’ll die in a place far away from other people and the curse will be prevented from victimizing anyone else.

And what does he say when he arrives at the Evil Death Woods? “At least I brought bug spray.”

One of the things that makes Reigen’s character work is that he is Just Some Guy. A deeply bewildering, paradoxical guy who lies for a living, but still just a guy. Different characters in MP100 are trying to exist in slightly different genres, and for all his absurdity Reigen is the character who is the most grounded in the real world. He worries about his fire insurance during a psychic terrorist attack. He’s the one who goes “Hey, this is illegal?” and “Kids should not be dealing with this” and “You’re supposed to be adults, what is your PROBLEM?” when he’s introduced to the shonen-anime-villain Scars.

And he’s the sort of person who thinks, yeah, dying of a horrible curse in the woods would be bad, but you know what would be worse? That and bug bites. And he’s not … wrong, but it’s not something that anyone else in the series is going to think of. It’s such a normal worry in such an abnormal situation. It’s so grounded.

And it’s also … weirdly hopeful? I feel like a lot of people talk about this part of the manga like Reigen’s given up and is just marching to his death, but he really isn’t. Yes, he was willing to take on the curse to save Tome, and he’s well aware that he might die, but he’s still trying to get out of it with everything he’s got. He doesn’t have powers, but he’s really clever! He goes into a place with a time distortion effect in the hope that it will buy him more time! He manipulates the curse into turning around so that it gets attacked by the Mimic spirit but he doesn’t! If it had been a more even match between them like he’d hoped, he might have been able to get out of the woods even without Mob coming to save him.

He’s aware of the danger and how much the odds are stacked against him, but he hasn’t given up! And the bug spray feels indicative of this. He thinks he might succeed in getting rid of the curse. He thinks he might need to get out of the woods on his own. And if that happens, he’s going to be so happy about not getting covered in bug bites this time.

The Same People (1/5)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

Drive folder - AO3

In which Mob asks Tsubomi out and then some other things happen. Four of sixteen twenty total pages. Click to make the images bigger/more legible. ID in description.

i haint even fucking seen the finale, i wanted to finish this bit first. sortof tryna emulate ONE's busted no-taper fixed-width inking style. id follows

ID: Four black and white comics pages about characters from Mob Psycho 100.

Page 1:

A park bench sits along a trail in front of a wall of trees with black trunks and white, vague foliage. Tsubomi pushes herself off of it, smiling, and says "Oh--you made it!"

Mob approaches her along a trail. The same black trunks surround him, but a few are broken--one lies across the trail in front of him. He steps over it and says, "Hey, Tsubomi."

Tsubomi and Mob stand across from each other, maintaining eye contact across a blank gap. Tall vertical trees stand behind Tsubomi while those behind Mob are broken and bent. Tsubomi's expression is vaguely demure, her hands folded in front of her, while Mob is smiling and leans forward. He carries the sunflower in his right hand.

Page 2:

Tsubomi's face is large in this empty panel. She has an odd expression on. There is a smirk; her eyebrows are slightly folded and one is raised higher than the other. One eye squints a little. She says, "I guess the, uh. The storm has passed."

Mob looks down, makes himself anonymous, two eyes and some black shapes. "Yes."

Then he looks up, and there he is in full detail. One side of his collar is damaged and torn. He smiles widely, his upper lip curled. "Yeah. It has."

Tsubomi points with two fingers and takes a step along the trail, looking back at him. "Great. Let's take a walk, I'm tired of sitting here." She's smiling widely, clearly relaxed. Mob, staying where he is, gently holds out a hand and says, "Oh, yeah, but, uh, if I could--" His shoulders hunch. The sunflower is visible in his grip.

Mob is in an empty panel in exaggerated perspective so the top of his head is huge and his feet are tiny, far below him. Only his wobbly eyes are visible, looking down at the sunflower that he's holding diagonally across his chest now. He says "--ask you to stay here one more minute. So I can..." Tsubomi interrupts across a panel border, "Right."

Now Tsubomi's head and shoulders are in the empty square, and this time we're looking up at her from below. "You wanted to tell me something." She again looks mildly concerned in her eyebrows; there is a dimple in her cheek but otherwise her mouth betrays no happiness.

Off-panel Mob says, "Yes." Tsubomi, in close-up, squints and looks down.

Page 3:

In a tiny little panel Tsubomi is just her hair, a black oval, facing Mob, who looks up from his head tilted down.

Mob faces the reader, the otherwise empty panel framing his head, shoulders, and upper torso. He looks straight at the reader and says, a calm smile on his face, "Tsubomi, I like you. A lot."

This view is maintained as Mob looks away and shrugs one shoulder, still smiling. "Always have. Ever since we were little. You never treated me any different because of..."

A smaller panel just shows his head and shoulders as Mob looks back at the reader and traces a small circle by his head with his finger, to indicate him, his brain, something.

Another smaller panel just shows his shoulders and upper torso as Mob once again holds the sunflower diagonally across his chest. He fidgets with the head of the flower. "So if you would--uh, I was wondering..."

The same view of Mob returns, now with a few of the bent trees half-visible, highlighting his form. He holds the sunflower out in front of him. The flower is large and has its own little highlight. He has one of those smiles that's so strong that the front of it gets pushed down by your upper lip. He says, "Would you like to go out. With me."

Page 4:

Tsubomi stands, head, shoulders, and upper torso highlighted by the vertical trees behind her, looking right at the reader. She has a mild smile on and leans to the right.

The same views but the trees are gone, so it's just her as she leans farther, her shoulders slump, her mouth flattens out of the smile, her eyebrows crinkle together. She stares right at the reader.

The same view of her in an empty panel now twice as wide as the others, so she looks smaller though her size doesn't change. One arm has goes up to hold her hip. She drops her head down so her partially-visible face is a silhouette surrounded by the black shape of her hair and collar, just a nose, an ear, and a closed eye.

End ID.

yall already know what it is. sad tsubomi hour. this comic will answer two questions: one, what did the rejection actually look like?? two, how did mob get tsubomis number later???

I need a minute

Okay to elaborate on that last tag rant:

When Reigen tells Serizawa to get him as close to Mob as possible, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he gets there. This isn’t surprising. Reigen very seldom knows what he’s going to do until he’s actually doing it. He thrives under pressure. He’ll dance at the edge of a precipice and come out unscathed. He doesn’t need a plan! He’s been thrown into wilder situations before!

He doesn’t crucially, really understand what’s going on. He doesn’t know what the problem is. He knows that Mob’s involved, but he thinks he can fix it the same way he’s fixed things before: with some quick thinking and off-the-cuff advice and half-truths papered over with offers of ramen.

And then he sees Mob. (Check out the last post by @exilepurify for a fantastic analysis of this moment!) That’s when he realizes what Mob’s been dealing with and the scale of his struggles and the harm he’s capable of causing. And it’s also when Reigen realizes how much harm his lies have caused, because he promised to help but he didn’t, he couldn’t, he has no freaking idea how any of this works, but he let Mob believe him.

And after the moment of shocked, horrified realization, he knows what he has to say. And it says so much about Reigen that he’s right! He’s able to figure out what Mob needs! He’s able to pinpoint the thing that will undo this giant knot of insecurities at the center of Mob’s heart! He sees what looks like a monster inside his kid and he immediately understands!

(It’s because he sees a monster inside of himself, too.)

The thing that Reigen gets wrong is in thinking that once he makes his confession, that will be the end of his and Mob’s relationship. It makes sense that he’d assume that! He hurt this kid, and it would be totally justified for Mob to cut him off. But this isn’t that kind of story.

But while he’s running through the tornado, while he’s screaming for Mob to please listen to him, while he’s looking up at the sky and trembling, he’s steeling himself for this to be their final conversation. I’ve seen all the posts about the shoes, and while I’m not disputing a more literal interpretation, to me it feels much more like an acknowledgment of “There’s no coming back from this.” He can’t talk his way out. He can’t cover it up. He’s laying bare the worst parts of himself and ready to suffer the consequences. Whether Mob kills him or decides never to speak to him again almost doesn’t matter; they feel equally final and equally painful. But he doesn’t care, because his confession is what Mob needs.

i seriously hate that one of the main symbols of reigen's kindness and selflessness is his goddamn feet

[id: four pages of the mob psycho manga.

toichiro says "you understand? ...i can't sense a thing from you. maybe you're related to this boy..." reigen looks at him angrily as he continues to say, "but you should stay back if you hold dear to your life."

a closeup of reigen's feet as he steps toward toichiro

mob says "i will stop you." shigeo looks over his shoulder and says "no one can stop me." another closeup of reigen's feet stepping forward

???% stares forward intensely, reigen looks scared, and then a panel of reigen holding his shoes in a trembling hand

a closeup of reigen's feet with the sound effect "shwoo." tome looks up in horror as reigen faces away with rusty-sama attached to him.

end id]

His Battlefield Once More

Book in Figure: BLUE

Translation: “Ah, that reminds me, Shishou. Happy birthday.”

I was reading through my copy of the mp100 manga with the separation arc, and I saw that this was included on the very last page of the book, after all of the omake pages.

The version I read online never included this (this was probably added for the print version, there’s some other slight differences from what I read online). It always made me sad thinking that even though everything was resolved, Mob never wished Reigen happy birthday, but he did!

[id: part of the reigen spinoff manga. first panel shows roshuuto walking while on the phone with rusty-sama attached to his body. photos of jodo and his other connections are in the background. second panel shows only his phone and says "no one else would help me. all of my personal connections were for naught." end id]

something something uhh people need other people

Saw a tweet about an interview article of the anime, apparently Ritsu asking Mob if he's Ok isn't only because Ritsu is afraid/overprotective, but Ritsu himself has a problem and (unconsciously) wanted Mob to ask back. But Mob can't take any hints & solves stuff by other means, isolating him. Which is why, after he tells Mob his real feelings in edgy mode, he immediately becomes normal. ONE said he was unable to express this completely in the manga. Thoughts? (tryin to find the tweet again :/)

i have had the feeling in the past (though i don’t think i’ve said so anywhere public) that ritsu wants mob to ask him how HE’S doing for once ;m; dear ritsu… i mean, it’s a normal polite sorta thing to return a “let me know if you ever wanna talk” sentiment to the person who offers it, but i totally understand how that failed to occur to mob. 

i’d really like to see that tweet/interview if you can find it? i don’t think tumblr lets you put links in an ask, but you can reply to this post or maybe submit it or just message me on here with the link.

Reigen Arataka ~