Day 10: Static

thanks, ritsu!

Things I love about this exchange:

1. It’s really funny.

2. Reigen refers to being the bodyguard and right hand man of a megalomaniacal esper terrorist as “Serizawa’s last job” which is a perfect example of his attitude towards everything. “Yes I know you kidnapped the prime minister but have you, personally, got any customer service experience?”

3. It’s clear from this scene that Serizawa’s job interview was saving Reigen from a giant ball of psychic power and at no point did either of them discuss what he’d be doing there.

4. “Smack them with my umbrella.” Obviously this is a translated work and I don’t know if this nuance was in the original line at all, but I love the phrasing here. I don’t believe for a second Toichiro told him to “smack” people with his umbrella so much as "eliminate them without hesitation or mercy" and the fact that Serizawa would frame it in such an innocuous way speaks to the level of denial he was in.

5. Reigen, who recently had to knock out a client that pulled a knife on him: Yeah, things aren’t that different here.

there is a lot of talk (rightfully so) about ???% and how mob has been invalidating and repressing him pretty much his whole life, and how ???% feels about that - i really recommend this excellent post by user luciferstit (I'm not able to @ them for some reason), which really hits the nail on the head imo. no matter how much mob wishes they'd disappear, his powers have saved him countless times, and to reject that idea is to live in denial.

but somehow it never occurred to me until this episode how much the reverse is also true. it's not like the show was trying to be subtle about it, but for some reason i never properly thought about it. ???% wishes mob would disappear because he feels that he's only been holding both of them back, but... mob is the reason they have friends and other people in their life. mob is the one who's been reaching out, over and over, and forging connections. the anime really drove the point home by having this shot of mob extending his hand to ???%.

how many times have we seen mob reach out to people just like this? i've lost count at this point. the side of shigeo that believes in other people's ability to improve themselves and change, the side of him that forgives those who have done wrong in the past and gives them an opportunity to grow, the side of him that shapes others and is shaped in return... that's all mob.

???% says (in the manga) that he doesn't trust anyone and that he doesn't care if no one will come near them, and maybe that'd be true at first, but. people need other people. that's one of the key messages in the show. without mob, living life the way ???% wants to, they'd be completely alone.

???% may (rightly) feel like mob has been invalidating him, but repressing mob in return and making him disappear isn't the answer either. it's like reigen said, everyone has multiple sides to them, but it's because of each of those sides that we are who we are. we just have to accept them.

???% has saved both himself and mob, multiple times, so they survive. but mob has given them connections with other people, so they can live. both are equally important.

about suzuki shou and his parents

most of the parents in mp100 seem to be competent, if somewhat distant. the suzuki family is an exception to that trend. when considering shou’s relationship with his parents, the first question to arise was this: why didn’t shou’s mom take her son with her when she left touichirou? this question is fundamental to the suzuki family dynamic.

i mean, we know why she left touichirou, and her decision to dump him was perfectly justified, but she seems to have had a good relationship with shou, so why would she leave him behind? at first, i thought that maybe she was so desperate to get away that she prioritized “disappearing from touichirou’s life” over “raising her son” and viewed the abandonment of shou as an unavoidable consequence of her departure. but from what we’ve seen of shou’s mom, she seemed to be a compassionate person with a strong sense of morality, so it wouldn’t make sense for her to decide to fully remove herself from her son’s life.

could it be that young shou just admired his dad so much that he refused to go with his mother when she left? it’s true that it would be pretty easy to get a little kid to admire you if you showed off some telekinetic tricks, so young shou probably did admire his father, at least for his psychic powers. well, shou’s custody probably wasn’t determined by his own preference, but i do think psychic powers are at the heart of the matter.

we know from that one omake that shou had already awakened his psychic powers before his mom left. i suspect she was crying at that time because she knew how psychic power could corrupt a person and was worried that shou might end up like his father. as a (presumed) non-esper, maybe she had hoped that shou would be like her; after all, he was a kind boy, and you don’t need psychic power to be kind.

so maybe… she left shou with touichirou because she knew that she alone wouldn’t be able to teach shou how to control his psychic powers. only his father, an esper, could do that. but she kept in contact with shou and retained an influence on him in order to teach him good morals and make sure that touichirou wouldn’t be able to manipulate shou to suit his own selfish needs. shou’s mom is the reason shou decided to revolt against his father in the first place.

i also have a hypothesis as to the relationship between shou and his father after his mother moved away. before shou confronted his dad at the top of the tower in chapter 88.1, touichirou had been planning to let shou inherit the world from him (after world domination, of course). that means he felt that shou was more or less on his side, or at least, he thought that shou still had the potential to become a worthy heir. and before that confrontation, shou was not afraid of his father. his behavior makes this clear; for example, he talked cheeky to his dad on the phone after the 7th branch incident. if you’re afraid of someone, you don’t sass them like that. plus, his reaction to his dad’s “i’m taking over the world” TV broadcast was embarrassment rather than dread. shou didn’t see his father as a truly threatening figure.

thus, i hypothesize that before their big confrontation, shou thought of his dad as “a dumb idiot dad who doesn’t understand that taking over the world is impossible and pointless and needs to be taught a lesson (by me),” and touichirou thought of shou as “a teen son who is causing some mischief since he’s in a rebellious phase but can ultimately still be molded to my liking.” their relationship was tense, but not abusive, and touichirou probably gave shou anything he asked for (e.g. underlings) because he didn’t see shou as a threat.

i’m not saying that they had a healthy relationship by any means. there was probably plenty of neglect, but like, a Rich Dad type of neglect, like “i’m not coming home tonight (for the 8th night in a row) so here’s 5000 yen, have your subordinates order takeout or something.” he was almost certainly not being a good dad, but i don’t think touichirou was openly hostile or directly emotionally/physically abusive to shou. touichirou was trying to raise a respectable heir; he was just much more focused on the task at hand, so much so that he failed to take heed of how seriously his son opposed him. the two of them probably didn’t communicate much at all, other than perhaps the father talking At the son and the son responding with impudence. 

that’s why things really came to a head when they met in the tower: because each thought he understood the other perfectly when, in fact, they didn’t understand each other at all. touichirou had underestimated shou’s desire to oppose him, but that misunderstanding didn’t afford shou any kind of advantage. actually, shou already had a huge disadvantage as a result of his own misunderstanding: he had greatly underestimated the true extent of his father’s power, selfishness, and cruelty. 

touichirou physically and emotionally abused shou. the abuse was severe, almost sickening. it’s just that he didn’t start inflicting it until shou directly challenged him that day, at which point all the trauma happened at once. that was when shou was forced to realize how frightening and merciless his father really was. it must have been a painful shock. no wonder shou was prepared to let him go without a word.

Save him!

Some studies/redraws from the last ep turned into a comic.

And this right here is why we stan Reigen. He’s the best Master. And this is character development.

Best Master, not a failure:

No one thought Reigen should go up the tower. He has no powers and -after ep07- he knows that Mob knows, so there’s no excuse to expect that. Not only that, but for once Mob went out of his way to tell everyone to stay out of it, that they’d be in the way.

It wasn’t Reigen’s fight, or his fault for not going.

But he doesn’t see it that way.

He doesn’t treat Mob like an overpowered gun at his disposal, he treats him like the child he is, and sees it as a failure when he forgets to treat Mob as such. 

(He let Mob take the decision of what to do instead helping him through a plan as the adult he is, and now Mob is on the ground with his face all swollen and boy does Reigen regret it.)

He’s the best because when he realized his mistake, he didn’t hesitate to rush to the top to save him even though it’s obvious anything that beats Mob is likely not going to lose to some punches and an esper gun, but he has to try.

And he tried while making sure it’s clear to Mob that whatever happens next -his possible death- and whatever happened until now -Mob losing- is not Mob’s fault at all but his own. 

It was Mob who insisted everyone stay behind, but Reigen rewrites it like he was the one that allowed it to happen. He even goes as far as to praise Mob for what he’s done up to now, despite, again, anyone looking at the scene thinking Mob failed, and then tries to reassure him by promising they’d go eat like normal later.

And of course, the whole dialogue fight between Mob and Serizawa was a conflict of Masters, and Mob winning the way he did was proof of Reigen’s success as a Master (and a comparison to Toichiro’s shit exploitation of people)

(But Reigen doesn’t know about that and likely never will)

Character Development: 

Reigen said he made a mistake and called himself a bad Master. 

While that’s not a good development for his issues of self worth, it shows development in his willingness to be more forthcoming and sincere with Mob. 

He could have tried to make up an excuse where Mob isn’t at fault for the current state of affairs but neither is he. Instead he chose to admit his belief that’s he’s failed as a Master (even though his worst fear is Mob not needing him anymore, and between him knowing Reigen has no powers, and reigen failing to protect him, the chances of him leaving Reigen are higher, in Reigen’s mind)

Hear me out.

The family talk was revenge.

I really love how Teruki’s hair acts as a barometer to his personal development. It’s so true-to-life for teenagers (guilty of this).

His hair drastically changes whenever something big happens that affects his outlook on life or his sense of self, and it’s exactly the same as when your friend would show up to school one day with an extremely different hairstyle, maybe even dyed a different color, and you’d think like, “Something must have fundamentally changed in your life’s trajectory and your personal understanding of it”. (Honestly, being a teenager is just a series of these moments strung together by homework and video games.)

And every single time his hair changes, it’s against his will. Sure, he usually chooses how to style it afterwards, but both of the Kageyama Scalping Incidents, Sakurai’s hair chop, etc. were against his will. But without fail, it always happens at a major emotional turning point in Teruki’s life. Him being snapped out of his superiority complex (mostly), him being influenced by Reigen’s 1000% and finding a passion for teaching, Mob breaking his own pedestal with the Confession accident, etc.

Teru’s gonna walk into a room at some point in the future with a totally different hairstyle that he chose for no real reason at all, just to shake it up, and everyone’s going to be like Oh My God Teru What Happened and he’s gonna be like, “????? Does it look that bad???? 🥺”

Looks like someone needs to call in "???" to school

ritsu and shou take everything they do seriously to a comedic extent they wouldn’t just write a grocery list they would map out where every product is in the grocery store and optimize the route so their grocery trips can be as efficient as possible