The-strangest-thing-happened - It's Brute Force!

I dont think Mob is naive as much as he's socially unaware, like the reason why he trusts Reigen so blindly is a bit more complex than just him being naive

Cause Mob reached out to Reigen because he was desperate to find someone like him, someone who understood his psychic specific issues, someone that could truly know what he's feeling and going through and give him guidance and support

Post incident Mob's thinking process was something along the lines of my powers hurt people -> my powers are bad -> my powers (my emotions, my instincts, myself) cannot be trusted

So he lost all confidence and trust in his own actions, resigning to being as passive as possible to avoid any further damage to anyone else, thus he started doubting his own perception of reality too

He's a kid already struggling with being ostracised for being socially inept, who just got traumatised and all of his insecurity increased by the tenfold, he doesn't know how to process what he's going through. He needs help.

And here comes Reigen, seemingly reliable, a responsible adult in a child's eyes, someone who claims he can understand him

Even tho Reigen doesnt. But it doesn't matter, because Mob finds comfort in his words and takes them to heart

Even if Reigen doesn't fully get it, even if he doesn't see the bigger picture, even if his advice isn't always the best

Eventually, Mob grows up, realises Reigen isn't as honest as he seemed through his 11 year old perspective, but like most things, he refuses to acknowledge it on a deeper level

Mob knows, but never tells Reigen, never thinks about what all those lies mean to him (ofc until he forces himself to face those doubts regarding Reigen, to properly acknowledge both of their flaws and accept them as they are, I should scream into the void about Confession Arc more God)

Due to his lack of trust in himself, Mob has relied on Reigen for years now to shape his moral compass, his thoughts, his decisions

Because well, Reigen lies, sure, but he isnt a bad person. When he hurts Mob, it isn't intentional or with ill intent, he still wants the best for him, what's the issue?

Except that it stunts Mob's growth. He doesn't develop as a person, doesn't have goals or wishes or ambitions, can't make choices on his own, he doesn't even let himself acknowledge his own emotions, he refuses to let himself exist

But Mob realises in time that he wants more than that, he wants to become better and be independent and feel again

Still, he puts the acknowledgement of the lies on hold for as long as he can, unwilling to question the way things are

This can make him feel a little naive, he constantly relies on Reigen and trusts his decisions and raises questions rarely until separation arc when he finally puts his foot down

And I do think that moment is the most resounding proof we have that Mob knows and allows himself to be used by Reigen, not wanting to shake the status quo, until he gets fed up

I mentioned the social ineptitude at the beggining but idk if I should even elaborate on that, you've watched the show, you know what I mean

He's blunt and can't read social cues or tonality that well and can't speak in front of crowds and is overall pretty awkward and I do think some people conflate that with naivety

Mob is still a child, he doesnt fully understand how the world works at the ripe age of 14 years old, but some folks take that as him being inherently naive/innocent/whatever which I don't find true

Aftermath (part 1)

I offer… a post-canon comic i decided to start on a whim. will i finish it? hopefully. Part 1 - You are here! | Part 2 - coming soon..?

mob choirさんの「exist」の大まかな歌訳と、この歌から語彙、その１：Ａメロ❶

mob choir's 'exist' in rough translation + vocabulary, part 1: verse 1

translator's note: i am a singer. it is not my aim to write singable lyrics in my native tongue; i translate for those who want a sense of what is being sung, to help me better commit lyrics to memory, and to aid my own study of the japanese language (and hopefully yours as well, kind reader!).

multiple translation passes are necessary to produce a poem that preserves as much of the song's meaning as possible while matching its rhythms, so i would hesitate to call what i am doing 'translation'. i think 'rough' is appropriate here.

learning songs in one's target language is a particularly active and participatory kind of immersion! i would much rather sing this in the original japanese, anyway.

vocab + lyrics below the cut.

この歌から語彙 words from this song

目を閉じる　〖 こまっちまう・me wo tojìru 〗　to close one's eyes.

浮遊（する）〖 こまっちまう・fuyuu 〗　floating, drifting. also meant 'wandering about, meandering, difficult to pin down' in an archaic sense.

うずき　〖 疼き・uzùki 〗　usually translated in JP-EN dictionaries as 'ache' or 'twinge'. to my surprise, when i looked 疼き up in a monolingual dictionary, i found that it actually refers to a 'throbbing pain'; 'ache' is off by at least an order of magnitude. related words are うずく (the verb form) and ズキズキ (the mimetic word).

失う　〖 うしなう・ushinàu 〗　to lose (something or someone), to miss out on something.

焼き付く　〖 やきつく・yakìts'ku 〗　lit. or fig. to be seared into, to leave a strong impression, to be etched into.

今際　〖 いまわ・imawa 〗　one's last moments, hour of dying.

惜別　〖 せきべつ・sekíbetsu 〗　a reluctance to or regret at parting.

迫る　〖 せまる・semàru 〗　here to approach, to be imminent.

無常　〖 むじょう・mujou 〗　the japanese buddhist equivalent of anitya; uncertainty, impermanence, change as a force.

つかむ　〖 掴む・ts'kàmu 〗　to seize, grasp, grab, hold...

歌詞 lyrics

Ａメロ

目を閉じても　浮遊する疼き even when i close my eyes a throbbing pain i can't quite pin down 失うほどに　焼き付く shape the more i lose, the stronger the impression left behind-shape 今際の惜別に　迫ってく無常 in my last moments on earth, i don't want to leave the uncertainty that lies ahead fast approaches この手で掴む missing piece the missing piece i'll seize with my hands

part 1｜part 2｜part 3｜part 4

I love it when teru goes :D

During the Seperate Ways arc, we also see how he went 100% commitment (to the point of insanity) to solve the case of the "Player Killer"

Of course this is partly because he was trying to prove that he doesn't need Mob that much. However, what I find most intriguing about this bit is that while the majority was hellbent on the theory of spiritual interference, Reigen placed his entire bet on common sense. The fact that he really elevated himself to the point of standing as equal with that "player" is crazy. (Not even to mention that he actually managed to win).

Reig lives and breathes common sense, he is the embodiment of common sense. So normal that is equal to insane. He regards himself as a con, yet his business's essence is the relieving and debunking of people's blind life perception. When something seems to pose a threat on this balance, Reig will willingly throw himself on the line to restore it, his way of life, his truth.

The Reigen Arataka Deranged NormalMan Review

Do you ever think about how Reigen has like. A really strange belief in The System and How Things Should Be. Like REALLY strange. Whatever he's got going on is so much weirder than "scammer with a heart of gold".

I think it all comes together if you read the 10th Season 3 omake like, seriously interrogate this:

This is normal, if comedically thoughtful and realistic for a shounen character. This guy talks like a mandatory reporter. What's strange is what immediately follows:

"AS A SPIRITUAL SPECIALIST" DOING A LOT OF HEAVY LIFTING HERE REIGEN

Not only did he hunt down the families of the children bullying his client (insane. where did he get that info), he also contacted the school as if he were representing his own son in order to get justice, and then hunted down a source of complaints when the school fell through.

This is like a genuinely bizarre level of commitment to the bit, and the bit is "the system works, and if it doesn't work, we will find a system that does work, and if we cannot, hell or high water it is my PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY to make the system stop slouching so it works again".

Long thread on the manga with this reading⬇️

Before I start. Reigen adopting Teru is more IC than you think but I don't think it is IC in the way people think it is. I think about this a lot and I think people who do it because they like Reigen aren't understanding how into his bit he is. Guy who talks to social services

So remember the arc that won people over to Reigen despite the fact he's an asshole who takes advantage of Mob and derides him constantly in order to keep him complacent?

He has Mob's phone on his GPS. This makes sense; he's been taking him out and about since he was 11. Very responsible!

Reigen dismisses the "Boss" mistake thinking well, it's a misunderstanding, but it got me in. Yet as soon as he heard they're committing crimes, he VISIBLY puts on his Boss Pants to chastise them. Again, normal so far. I think any scammer with a heart of gold would do this. (And foreshadowing for why he retried reprimanding the Claw Cadres a second time after getting power.)

Again. He's a scumbag. So he leaves Mob to beat their asses using his previous rhetoric. But then!

Reigen's shady morality is more like "people who can take care of things should take care of things". To him, Mob is the Authority on Espers, and can handle conflict like this. Immediately upon becoming aware he can't, Reigen thinks "oh, okay, so the only person who can take care of things is someone who can deescalate". (Pictured: Deescalation)

Okay. Besides the fact this is insufferable as a general concept - YOU just told him to handle it YOU are the source of his stress - his first step in deescalation is to force Mob to back down. Rather than asking him not to fight, he reestablishes "rules" in order to convince Mob he must back down - the same way he tried using what he said to worm his way out of dealing with this shit - and then sets himself up as the authority figure to which the others must obviously defer in matters of His Boy, like a parent accepting criticism at a PTA meeting. This isn't Reigen claiming Mob so much as "in order for them to not attack Mob, they must view me as a representative for Mob".

And like a good authority figure:

Continuing with his phrasing:

If you think about it, this is like...an objectively very strange and incredibly bold approach to this situation. They're homicidal. Reigen is a DERANGED level of Normal Man. He has this image in his head of normalcy, of the world at standard operating procedures, and reinforces it right through an entire conflict. Carceral beliefs don't even factor into this, simply expressing his principles and expecting them to fold.

And they do lol. I keep wondering how Shou must have felt listening to him talk like that

We see a little more of his good side in work; when he was getting so little work it was affecting his grocery bills, this moneygrubbing scammer still asked for like $200 to clear an entire city of hauntings. (His regular exorcisms are around $30). Fair prices are part of his principles of how the business should be. He operates basically at-cost. He mentions he wanted to come out here because he's bored. He's killing time as a career.

Aside:

Just realized he called Mob in last minute so Mob didn't know he accepted crops instead of money. Shigeo didn't like that

So consider that he never got caught here and there was a call on the news to hunt him down at the end of this bit: for the average viewer of the anime, it's just funny, but this is part of the Mogami pre-arc so we've gotten a hold of him by now; he probably holds an inherent belief that the police will intercept him and not Mob. Why wouldn't they? Why would an adult man want to dress up in a highschool girl's uniform? The System will understand.

Not relevant to my point but I like how he realizes what's wrong with Mob way before the final arc, just not why it's happening. Also he doesn't say anything.

With the way his principles are, you really get the feeling that Reigen does his best to avoid culpability specifically because if something happened that was his fault, he'd have to step up to the plate to compensate for that, which is troublesome to him who is a career time-killer. It does not occur to him that an actual bad person and scammer would not step up to the plate as a matter of course. This is his way

What I find really interesting is that this Militant Insane NormalMan does have a sense of wanting something "special", but rather than whip Mob up the way Dimple did Ritsu, he ended up projecting his own values onto Mob, as if he could recreate a special "self" within him. He's always deriding him and baiting him and lying to him in hopes of creating a superb person that a special individual like Mob finds admirable, as if Mob is the authority on his quality of character. Sad! lol

Anyway, it adds a lot more kick to this famous line. Reigen genuinely believes in Authority

Authority works!

And if Mob (the authority on espers) doesn't work, who's the person who MUST step up to the plate [common sense]? You guessed it.

There are other aspects of Reigen's character that everyone and their dog has already picked up on (his self-loathing is the entire reason the way he talked to Mob in Confession arc hit so hard), but this one's my favourite. He's insane

ground me ground you

I’ve been screaming about this for a whole hour he really was just going to beat the fuck out of roy for no reason

If ??? are Mob's supressed emotions and desires, when he talks about Reigen those could be his intrusive thoughts? Deep down Mob already knew the deal with Reigen but he denied it/didn't want to think about it. Like he refused to believe that his master could be that type of person after everything he's done for Mob.

Deep down Mob did already know the truth about Reigen, while also knowing he's a 'good person' at heart too. (The Separation Arc showed this.) But ???% takes that to those raw, unfiltered extremes of thinking, like 'that person treats me the most different out of everyone; he only lies and uses me for my powers, he never actually cared for me.' Which is pretty whoa (Mob would rationalize how all of that can't be true), so in a way yes, they are some of his most negative opinions + repressed intrusive thoughts. Especially when Reigen himself does what ???% doesn't expect, by showing how much he truly cares for him as a person and honestly coming clean to him about everything. :')

Reigen loves dogs + dogs love Reigen = happy Reigen. Please consider:“) 

i love how reigen specifically picks on mob for being gullible and for letting himself be used by others – which is a BOLD MOVE for someone who is lying to and using him, but it’s such a realistic character trait that reveals so much of his inner turmoil. he resents how easy it’s been to use mob, he wishes mob would make things easier for his OWN conscience by calling him out on it, and of course he’s full of self-disgust over how he’s been taking advantage of mob’s good nature. he could alleviate the guilt by being honest, but he thinks that their relationship will end the moment he does, so he’d rather force mob’s hand than have to confess himself. and part of mob’s reluctance to accept the obvious truth – that reigen has been lying to him – has to be some shame over realizing that he bought the lie, hook line and sinker, for years! so hearing reigen constantly belittle him for being gullible? ouch! reigen is inadvertently pushing mob deeper into repression.