MP100 Theory: Mob’s Power

100 - happy birthday reigen arataka (thank you)

I like how MP100 fully sidesteps the "But Who Deserves Redemption?" question bc honestly it's a bad framing that gets extremely bogged down in philosophical debates about Good and Evil and who gets to make the call and becomes an awful quagmire and is also not necessary. the better questions are:

Is this person capable of change? (Answer: Yes, always.)

Are they actually going to change? (Answer: That's up to them.)

Do you want them in your life? (Answer: That's up to you.)

if teru’s new hair has 100 fans, i am one of them.

Had riza ever tried to train ed with a gun, u think? How do u think roy felt about this

Mama Hawk just wants to keep her boy safe. She, more than anyone, knows that you can’t always rely on alchemy to fix all your problems :’)

Bonus:

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!!!

idol worship

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

[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

a broadly applicable extended metaphor for the kageyama brothers: 

mob is round and ritsu is sharp. 

this applies to LOTS of things about both of them– least of all, but most noticeably, their hair.

mob is round. he’s blunt, socially dull, tangential to the lives of his peers. he’s like a firm ball of clay rolled between two hands. when he learns new things, it’s like, first he has to make them stick, then he has to re-roll himself back into shape without them falling out. ideally, the things he learns become a part of him. overall, it’s a clumsy process, so he’s not the best learner, but neither is he the worst. and he’s good when it comes to learning about (and improving) himself, because he can reshape himself, being clay. he is also relatively easily influenced by others, who may try to shape him to their own liking. still, roundness is the most comfortable shape for him, so he always returns to it. 

ritsu is sharp. sharp-tongued, sharp-eyed, sharp-witted. he’s like a mass of thorns or shards of glass. when he learns new things, they stick easily, becoming impaled on his jagged surface, and he understands them intimately, though they remain separate from his self. ritsu is a very good learner. but he’s not very good at learning about himself, because when he tries to delve deeper, he gets poked by his own spikes. he is also more brittle than mob, so it’s harder to improve himself; things need to break before they can change shape. likewise, ritsu is less easily influenced, being more solid and thus less permeable. he wishes he was a more organic shape, like his brother, despite the many clear advantages afforded to him by his sharpness.

mob’s psychic power is also based on roundness– his aura in the anime consists of overlapping circles. his power, tied directly to his emotions, is round like a coiled spring. as his explosion meter slowly ticks up, the spring is compressed bit by bit. when he hits 100%, it releases all that potential energy at once, then slowly collapses back to normal. 

ritsu’s psychic power is also based on sharpness– his aura in the anime looks like jagged shreds. where mob’s aura flows like ripples in a pond, ritsu’s cracks and crinkles along fault lines, like paper or tin foil that’s been folded before. the uneven structure means he can’t store emotions as psychic energy in the same way as his brother; emotions just create more faults and fissures, making it harder to direct his power anywhere else.

ritsu is certainly sharp by nature, but much of his jaggedness is a result of having parts of him shattered by trauma. i can’t help but wonder how different he would be had he never met ???%.

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..?