Losing My God Damn Mind Over The Eye Symbolism And Hand Symbolism In Mob Psycho 100 And How They Reveal

#tomeweek2023 Day 3: Birthday + Friends

come on tome. be cool

here’s proof that serizawa’s new umbrella is supposed to be transparent (or at the very least translucent), btw. it’s a consistent detail in the manga and it’s obvious in every panel in this multi-page sequence. i only picked a few where i thought it was most obvious. it’s a great detail emblematic of serizawa’s growth. the umbrella is no longer a tool used to shelter or block out the rest of the world; he can see through it now and it ties in well with its use in this chapter as a tool to protect as opposed to attack.

aaaand here’s the preview pic for next week’s episode. solid white umbrella, just like his old one. i’m pretty pissed that the anime is doing this; maybe it was to save on the animation budget or something? i don’t know but i sure as hell don’t like it. so i’m speaking my truth as a transparent umbrella stan now. spread the word! let the truth be known!!!

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..?

Grief in art

Grief is an interesting subject for depiction, because it isn't ever really just one feeling. It's a cluster of feelings, an array of very different, sometimes almost contradictory emotional states, which collectively we understand as expressions of that one underlying condition, which is grieving.

So how do you show that? How do you take that and make it visible to an audience? Many, many artists have tried, and their attempts are varied, fascinating, and very occasionally heartbreaking.

Let's take a little non-comprehensive walking tour of grief in art history, from the 1400s to the 2020s, from the religious to the cartoony, and get in our feelings a bit.

I was thinking about how Bradley would know how much Roy cares about all of his subordinates. Than I remember the time right after Roy burned Lust to death. You can say that Bradley saw everything, including how Riza was still crying even after the end of the battle and how Roy cared about her and Havoc more then for himself. And I believe that's one of the reasons why Bradley took Riza as a hostage and his assistant. He just already saw their feelings for each other. What you think about it?

oh, aaaabsolutely! that was the first time we saw bradley really paying attention to roy

and bradley being the one to witness this scene is so monumentally important. he was supposed to kill roy/riza/al but after witnessing roy’s Intensely Awesome murder of his sister, bradley lets em go and then uses his newfound knowledge of roy’s pathetic love for his friends against him. its beautiful.

i wonder if bradley watched roy struggle his way over to where lust was. like just grab some popcorn and watch roy burn himself and limp around the corridors

Throughout the series, we see that Teru is hypersensitive to dangers and quick to resort to violence, not to mention the whole stuff about his favourite torture method.

Another intriguing thing about Teru is his incredible adaptability, how he turns other people's to his own, as if he wants to gain control of everything in his life, same with his idea about "hierarchy" in a particular earlier arc.

All of this can very be attributed to Teru's constant fear of being caught and used for his power.

(Despite not knowing about his true power, Teru's Black Vinegar fellows seem to be heavily reliant on him. This results in a paradox situation where Teru wants to gain control yet also be afraid of being used, probably explains his "shadow leader" status)

Teru can use psychic power to protect himself, but wasn't psychic power the thing that pushed him to this way? Because of it, he could not live a regular life, and was constantly afraid of being alienated, rejected and hurt. And then Mob - another esper like him - showed up and told him that psychic power doesn't make him any different. That he is just as much of a commoner as everybody else, while also able to pursue the charm within himself without relying on psychic abilities. Of course, the issue with psychic power runs deeper than this but it's another can of worms (and once again, a parallel to Mob). For the time being, those were words Teru had desperately wanted to hear. "Commoner" later on became the mantra, the belief he fights tooth and nail to adhere to, showing the strength of his inner desire to change, or more accurately, to convince himself that he can really be normal.

Teru's redemption is often joked about for being speedran over. Still, I really like the concept of it happening as a swift phase rather than a long and tedious journey because most of his problems had somewhat been solved during the fight with Mob.

People can change if you just push the right button.

last night i woke up at 4 am with the inexplicable need to write meta abt how what little we know of teru’s backstory parallels mob’s life in mogamiland and how depriving them both of a support system/familial relationships/friendships leads each of them down the path of violence and eventually even to the same action  (strangling someone) 

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

reigen and manga translations: so what is the truth?

so for a while now i’ve been thinking about dialogue in the mob psycho 100 manga vs the anime. obviously it’s disappointing when something significant is changed or cut out, but in two specific cases, i couldn’t help but wonder if it was an actual dialogue change or just a mistranslation on the manga’s part, considering there’s basically only one online translation. one of the most important things to remember when it comes to consuming non-romance-language media is that our languages are fundamentally different in terms of structure and word meaning. there is never a true one-to-one translation and trying to do a literal translation is rarely a good idea. that means that in a lot of cases, the exact meaning can be up to interpretation. considering this, having only one translation means it’s only one person’s take. i find looking at these differences to be really interesting, so i went to reddit (i KNOW i know) to ask for help because i couldn’t find manga raws for these particular lines or any alternate translations (also i don’t know japanese lol). here’s what i found out (a HUGE thank you to reddit user NostalgiaWitch for all the info!):

scene 1: chapter 65.1/s2e5 - reigen and trust here’s a comparison:

pretty different, right? there’s a post from a little while ago i liked analyzing these differences; you can read it here. here’s what i found out on reddit:

so in this case, it’s really up to interpretation. the anime seems to go with the former, portraying reigen as disinterested in the situation, while the manga seems to frame it more as the latter, especially considering that later on, in the separation arc, reigen says that he doesn’t trust anyone but himself. personally i prefer the latter because it seems more in-character, but like i said, it’s up to interpretation.

scene 2: chapter 73/s2e7 - reigen and curiosity a side-by-side comparison:

these two translations are literal opposites. here’s what i found out on reddit:

in this case it’s definitely an error on the manga translator’s part (no shade to them though; they’ve done so much). in my opinion it has a huge impact on reigen’s whole mindset before starting his business. it wasn’t just boredom that drove him to make the change, it was that inner desire to be someone important bursting through. 

- reigen arataka, 2008 over time, he fell into depression and lost that drive. however we still see moments of that curiosity coming through sometimes, like in the urban legends mini-arc, when he’s suddenly super excited about the dragger:

he also has an innate compulsion to find out the truth and often does extensive research to help his clients (learning about farming, running background checks, etc.), so we can see how even if it lay dormant, that desire to do well and follow through kept him going, even through his complacency and depression.

wow i got ranty. anyway like i said i just find this sort of thing really interesting because by hearing multiple opinions you get to form your own conclusions. i hope people see this and are also inspired to look into these differences! again, a huge thanks to reddit user NostalgiaWitch.

idol worship

didn't in make it in time for tsubomi day, so mezato day it is!