2023 Vs 2018 Vs The Original Manga Panel :-)

watching the emi episode makes me kick and giggle my feet

im not sure if youve answered this before (ive been scrolling back in your blog but cant find anything?) but do you have any tips on how to write mob?

hmm i have not answered this before, so let me think… writing mob…

keep in mind that i have not written mob, but i have read a lot of mob… in canon.

don’t use verbs that imply very drastic action/expression (e.g. rather than “beamed,” use “smiled,” since mob almost never smiles with enough enthusiasm to qualify as beaming). keep mob’s actions and expressions low-key unless shit is really getting serious. (and actually, re: smiling in particular, remember that he rarely doles out smiles to anyone other than ritsu.)

remember that mob is quite passive– like, he usually isn’t actively engaged in his surroundings. he’s prone to zoning out, deep in thought or just deep in the absence of thought. even when things are relatively intense, he still may feel out of place and hesitate. basically, mob’s default state when things start happening is “not knowing what he should be doing.” when things aren’t happening, he tends to be content with idleness or inactivity.

about mob’s speech: his catchphrase, according to his profile, is “i don’t really get it.” from this, we can tell that he’s not afraid to acknowledge his own ignorance or inability. (iirc he is also wont to drop this line at inopportune times, like after someone gives him a detailed explanation or emotional speech.) he’s not stupid, but he’s not especially quick-witted either. he’s a good listener. if he doesn’t know what to say and isn’t forced to answer, he won’t say anything. he doesn’t crack wise or offer witty comebacks or snark; his words may have that kind of effect at times (e.g. “shut up and eat”), but only as the result of a mistake or failure to read the atmosphere. generally, he isn’t sarcastic. he will carry on a conversation, but generally, he isn’t very talkative unless there’s something on his mind.

when something is on his mind, he usually starts by dwelling on it while zoning out (possibly while doing other things, like eating dinner). 

when he does feel strongly about something, he doesn’t hide it, and he has been known to lecture people about their wrongdoings if he gets really riled up. despite that, don’t forget that he trusts in the goodness of people in general and has plenty of faith in his fellow humans. he strongly feels the importance of things he has learned, and as a result, he wants to make sure others understand what he understands. so like… when it comes to communication, his true strength is his benevolent sincerity.

he and ritsu are on better terms than ever lately, and they may come to each other for advice, but i think they both still prefer to think things over on their own if they can. so mob wouldn’t necessarily go directly to ritsu or reigen for help with something that’s bothering him. he’ll probably have a good long think about it first. pensive boy

he has no fashion sense. i would go ahead and credit any/all of his stylish outfits to ritsu or his parents.

he is Not sassy

he is not dramatic (except unintentionally)

he’s not good at reading other people’s emotional reactions if they don’t come right out and say how they’re feeling. or at least, it takes him a while to catch on if he doesn’t know them well

he calls ritsu “ritsu.” he calls tome “tome-san.” he calls mezato “mezato-san.” he calls reigen “master” or “master reigen.” he calls teru “hanazawa-kun.” he calls tsubomi “tsubomi-chan.” generally, everyone is a -san, -kun, or -senpai according to the typical rules. so don’t have him call anyone any weird nicknames or anything overly familiar unless they ask him to call them that (e.g. he calls tome by her first name because she introduced herself as tome-chan, and even then he changed it to -san). and for the record, i don’t think mob has directly spoken to or about shou, but seeing as how ritsu calls shou “suzuki,” mob would almost certainly call him “suzuki-kun.” 

remember that mob’s default neutral facial expression usually comes off as bored, cold, or distant. it’s hard to even tell when/whether he’s deep in thought or slightly upset. even ritsu, reigen, and teru can’t decipher him especially well. (so instead of reading mob’s face… ritsu asks if anything’s bothering him, teru asks what he’s thinking about, and reigen tries to decipher his face anyway and doesn’t ask anything unless/until it becomes Very clear that mob is having problems.)

note that these points apply specifically to non-100% mob

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:

[Image ID: A page from the Reigen manga. Panel 1: Reigen stands in a forest looking exhausted. He says, “At least I bought bug spray this time …” Panel 2: He sprays himself down. Panel 3: A closeup of his face. He’s dripping with sweat and his eyes are sunken. He says, “Preparations complete.” Panel 4: Reigen loosens his tie as he staggers towards the viewer. His face is sweaty and he has a haggard expression. He says, “All right then …” End ID.]

Okay listen it’s been a month since i read this and i CANNOT stop thinking about “At least I bought bug spray this time…” It’s just. It’s so Reigen.

This man is dying. He is being eaten alive by a curse that will kill him in less than 3 hours–probably closer to 2 by this point because this place is pretty far outside of Seasoning City. Since Serizawa couldn’t destroy the curse, he knows that Mob is the only person who could get rid of it–and he doesn’t think that he’ll get there in time, if he comes at all. Reigen’s last-ditch plan is to try to trudge into the most haunted forbidden evil woods he knows about in the hope that he can make the curse that’s killing him fight a different, worse curse, and if that doesn’t work at least he’ll die in a place far away from other people and the curse will be prevented from victimizing anyone else.

And what does he say when he arrives at the Evil Death Woods? “At least I brought bug spray.”

One of the things that makes Reigen’s character work is that he is Just Some Guy. A deeply bewildering, paradoxical guy who lies for a living, but still just a guy. Different characters in MP100 are trying to exist in slightly different genres, and for all his absurdity Reigen is the character who is the most grounded in the real world. He worries about his fire insurance during a psychic terrorist attack. He’s the one who goes “Hey, this is illegal?” and “Kids should not be dealing with this” and “You’re supposed to be adults, what is your PROBLEM?” when he’s introduced to the shonen-anime-villain Scars.

And he’s the sort of person who thinks, yeah, dying of a horrible curse in the woods would be bad, but you know what would be worse? That and bug bites. And he’s not … wrong, but it’s not something that anyone else in the series is going to think of. It’s such a normal worry in such an abnormal situation. It’s so grounded.

And it’s also … weirdly hopeful? I feel like a lot of people talk about this part of the manga like Reigen’s given up and is just marching to his death, but he really isn’t. Yes, he was willing to take on the curse to save Tome, and he’s well aware that he might die, but he’s still trying to get out of it with everything he’s got. He doesn’t have powers, but he’s really clever! He goes into a place with a time distortion effect in the hope that it will buy him more time! He manipulates the curse into turning around so that it gets attacked by the Mimic spirit but he doesn’t! If it had been a more even match between them like he’d hoped, he might have been able to get out of the woods even without Mob coming to save him.

He’s aware of the danger and how much the odds are stacked against him, but he hasn’t given up! And the bug spray feels indicative of this. He thinks he might succeed in getting rid of the curse. He thinks he might need to get out of the woods on his own. And if that happens, he’s going to be so happy about not getting covered in bug bites this time.

MP100 be reiterating the importance of positive adult influence in child development.

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.

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) 

its fanbook info again! this time with all the quantitative/categorical data from the profiles. age, height (cm & ft+in), weight (kg+lbs), birthday, and blood type. this time in a neat n tidy spreadsheet instead of a tumblr post list!

Google Docs

fanbook stats

Sheet1 page,name,age,height (cm),height (ft in),weight (kg),weight (lbs),bday (mm/dd),blood type 16,mob,14,157.7,5' 2.1",44.3,97.7,05/12,O

minor MP100 brainrot relapse!

summer = campfire = ghost stories = S&S company outing

I did some Mob Psycho hand studies this week because I love how expressive and simple the studio draws them!! Most of these are.. Reigen’s hands. I want to study every Reigen frame.