This Is Hell To Upload

recurring elements of ONE’s art style, from what i have gathered

most characters have unique eyes/eyebrows/eyelashes (even if they also have other distinguishing features)

small mouth (even when it’s open) (with exceptions)

ONE’s patented technique: the perfectly executed Tiny-Ass Grin. it’s impossible not to grin back.

black hair is usually solid black, no texture

lots of solid-fill black inking in general

chiaroscuro for dramatic effect, varying in degree from minor to intense (usually blocky, but sometimes shaded, and rarely both) 

higher tension = higher level of detail/shading (and the body improvement club is at max tension 90% of the time)

ONE’s art often emphasizes the dichotomy between simple and complex and uses it to reflect the complexity of a situation

thick, blunt lines are the default; as tension builds, the lines get scratchier. (very blunt or very scratchy lines may also be used for jokes)

strong sense of movement, via lots of motion lines, smoke/dust/wind, and impact splashes

big, J-shaped sweat drips (seriously these things are omnipresent)

that one texture he just loooves to draw

in the foreground, hands that were clearly drawn from a reference 

visually complex panorama of an action scene

most common: a panorama of broken rubble and fractures. all of the rubble is shaded.

make the panel’s background black and/or make all the black parts of a character white, for dramatic effect

The Dot

varied and dynamic gestures, poses, and body language

you can tell that ONE is always challenging himself to draw faces, poses, and perspectives just as he envisions them, as needed to tell the story. keep on giving it your all, ONE-sensei!

it’s a little too late where I am to gather all my thoughts on this tonight, but Reigen is such a tragic character. I’m talking Shakespearean, “road to hell paved in good intentions” type of tragic. fatal flaw and all.

he’s so earnest and he has such a beautiful heart, but the tragedy is that it is often not enough. if you’ve read the manga you probably have a better idea of what i mean.

Hear me out.

The family talk was revenge.

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.

It’s heartbreaking but Mob was not at all happy to see Reigen arrive with the gun.

He knew there was nothing Reigen could do. They were apart and he couldn’t transfer his powers to him. More importantly, he couldn’t protect him.

And Reigen knew his presence wasn’t soothing Mob.

Asking him obvious questions, putting the whole blame for the situation on himself and taking it from Mob (it’s not that Mob told everyone he’d do it alone, it’s that Reigen let him go), and then even suggesting things will be fine… Reigen said all of that in a very calm and collected voice, despite the look on his face. He was doing it for Mob’s benefit. 

And since Mob was so fucked up, hearing it worked a bit, and it calmed him enough for I’m to finally faint from all the pain. His head knew Reigen wasn’t going to win, but his heart still believed him. 

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.

To return a hug

It just kinda sunk in that separation arc happens right after the Mogami incident. Do you think Reigen’s words landed twice as hard because of that? “Your friends aren’t really your friends, they’re just having fun mocking someone as wimpy as you.” I can see that being a very sore spot for Mob after the six months of bullying and torment he endured. Mob’s having fun with his friends after being alone and in pain for so long and now Reigen’s suggesting that it’s all a lie and that Mogami’s words are actually real, albeit completely unintentionally. Because Mob got very serious in that moment. He should have and had every right to, but you can tell he double-meant it because he purposefully missed Reigen’s birthday.

Ramalama (Bang Bang)

I need a minute