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There is no narrative basis for what Teru is saying here. Shimazaki was winning the fight before he sensed Mob approaching. Shimazaki gauged the situation, determined he was outclassed, gave a flippant reason for surrendering, got spooked when Mob’s anger/powers flared, and teleported away. At no point do we see him showing any signs of being traumatized, contrite or having changed for the better.

Teru is absolutely projecting his own trauma from the ???% encounter onto Shimazaki. It’s obvious Teru sees his past self in Shimazaki when the man declared himself the world’s greatest after Toichiro, and we know Teru is talking specifically about Mob when he says “there are people in this world with powers you can’t even fathom”. 

Teru interpreted Shimazaki’s situation based on his personal experience, namely: person has delusions of grandeur –> encounters the nonpareil greatness that is Kageyama-kun –> sees the error of his ways. He’s “pretty sure” about his conclusion. He can’t imagine having any other kind of reaction after being the target of Kageyama-kun’s wrath.  

This is the second time in the anime we’ve heard Teru acknowledge the lasting negative effects of his encounter with ???% (the part about nightmares for three days and nights wasn’t in the manga). I think it’s moments like these that can add nuance to discussions surrounding Mob vs Teru Part 1- a fight and its aftermath whose comedic elements (the ochimusha, heel-face turn, wig) have already, though well-deservedly, been repeatedly explored. 

Enami on pixiv

Spoilers for REIGEN spinoff.

Start your day right with my favorite shot of Tome Kurata from the Reigen manga.

I swear I just wanted to talk about how much I love Tsubomi and then it turned into a 4,000+ word dissertation on her, Mob and why I think Tsubomi is so important to mp100’s narrative despite, or maybe because of, being a very minor character.

I haven’t counted, but I think Tsubomi shows up in less than 30 pages throughout the entire comic, plus a single omake. That’s really not much, especially considering half of those appearances are just to point out that she’s present in the given scene.

In other words we never get to know much about her and she has no character development to speak of (unless you want to call her remembering that Mob exists character development). Normally that would annoy me to no end - Love interests that only exist to be love interests and the “guy gets the girl in the end (as a reward)” trope is boring at best and offensive at worst.

I was apprehensive while first reading through the comic because right off the bat it looks like mp100 sets itself up to follow the “guy gets the girl” narrative. However, ONE did a pretty clever thing with the trope by both taking advantage of the expectations we have for it and completely discarding them.

“Middle school boy tries to impress the girl he’s in love with” isn’t exactly an adequate description of mp100’s plot. Anyone can see from very early on that that isn’t what the story is about at all. But to Mob? To Mob that’s exactly what it’s about. Everything Mob does that doesn’t involve people being in immediate danger, everything Mob wants to change about himself, is to some degree motivated by Tsubomi. In his mind Tsubomi is the end goal and he’s doing his best to make his life a “guy gets the girl” kind of story.

But, by thinking like that, even after years of never actually talking to her, he has put her on a pedestal where she has become an ideal and no longer a person. Mob never really talks about Tsubomi or gives any explanation as to why he likes her so much, and I guess because she’s the school idol and lots of boys are interested in her, no one really questions it either. Of course he would like Tsubomi, right? Everyone likes Tsubomi.

Tsubomi gets to stay on her pedestal, silent and with almost no sign of a personality, for almost the entire comic. It isn’t until chapter 94 that we get to see her as an actual person, because that’s when Mob, for the first time within the comic’s timeframe, treats her as an actual person by doing something as mundane as handing her a paper tissue because she sneezed. Even Takane Tsubomi sneezes you know.

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seeing @gittetj’s post (sorry, hope you dont mind the ping! also everyone should check it out) is really making me think about ritsu and shous relationship again. how shous taken on the gargantuan responsibility to put his own dad in jail. how hes run away from home, taken his own lackeys, stored psychic power into a fuck-off bomb for two months, sent hot spring tickets to ritsus parents so ritsu can go and help shou beat up touichirou without worrying them. he puts a lot of effort into all the little details of his plans to improve on it - you know, setting fire to ritsus home so mob could become motivated to fight, stuff like that.

but, hes not that great at it! the biggest oversight ofc is that he didnt anticipate his dad doing what he did, but for twenty years. hell, shou had no idea what sort of esper power touichirou had and it kind of ended up being important. him trying to motivate mob into action knocked mob out for like. a day.

this omake is a pretty good example of what kind of guy shou is. hes good at thinking a few steps ahead, but ultimately gets help from ritsu to fill out the blind spots.

ritsu, who’s crazy good at being studious and polite and responsible, but has only done out of obligation. the kid who had his whole arc revolve around breaking down from the burden of being the perfect student, the perfect child, the perfect brother. ritsu, who only went along with shous hot springs plan because he figured whatever was happening this was the safest way they would be out of harm’s way, then gradually gained admiration Shou Suzuki, Warrior of Justice, who proudly wore responsibility like a badge.

ritsu makes it very clear that he wants to see what someone else in his position could do against something that is seemingly insurmountable (and again, his first response to shous questions is his sense of responsibility). its only a bit later duing ritsus fight with shimazaki that ritsu finds a proper answer - that he will try with all his might to live happily, and that will be his responsibility to himself. between shou, who’s lost the burden of the responsibility he carried, and ritsu, who finally finds a goal he can wholeheartedly strive to achieve, i can tell you that these two could develop a deeper relationship post-claw arc.

transparent flexing gif for all ur flexing needs

I’ve seen comments elsewhere complaining about Reigen yet again lying to Mob and regressing but I really didnt see this scene that way.

a) Reigen didn’t pull a “I am your master and my powers tell me they’re fine”. He said he thought they were safe and told Mob a legitimate reason to assume so. The only ‘lie’ would be his utter calm and certainty as he said it, since he isn’t sure. But he had to act like that so Mob could calm down in turn. But ultimately, he didn’t lie or trick Mob into it, he made no certain statement and gave him an explanation;

b) Despite the fact that he didnt lie, if his supposition turns out wrong, Mob is likely not going to react well anyway. Reigen knows this. He said to Dimple Mob might hate him forever, and that’s something Reigen is also risking. Considering the face he made after Mob passed out, his gamble wasn’t to make his own life easier by not dealing with angry Mob, but a gamble for Mob’s sake. And he knows what he’s risking for it.

Alright I gotta talk about a thing.

I’ve seen a lot of posts about Mob bringing light and happiness into Reigen’s life. I’ve reblogged a lot of them, because they’re great and adorable. You see it all over. Reigen in a dark place, borderline depressed, Mob shows up, needs guidance, actually saves Reigen.

And then one day I was scrolling through and I thought. Does that really happen? Sure, Reigen is a conman and doesn’t have a ton of friends and is kinda wandering in his life but is he really in such a dark place?

On the one hand, I had the option to say that people were projecting, or that everyone just loves that “I was a broken boy and you fixed me” trope (I’m begging you to read Artemis Fowl, which is where that quote comes from). And that would have been fine.

But then I thought back to my own experiences, and I thought back to every time a friend or a family member looked me in the eye and said “hey, I just really get the feeling you’re going in a bad direction, do you need something?” and it hit me that this is exactly what happens to Reigen.

The common use of this trope is that character A appears put together but then is revealed to have a tragic backstory where they fell apart as a person and have been putting up a front, and character B helped them put the pieces together. But this isn’t what happens to Reigen. Reigen get snatched up in the canon timeline metaphorical moments before his crash-and-burn event.

We never see Reigen think about what a dumpster fire his life was before Mob because it wasn’t a dumpster fire. It was approaching one, yes, but it never got there. Mob stepped in and gave Reigen direction, and re-lit the flame of motivation that Reigen had lost when he forgot that he wanted to “be someone.” Reigen was 100% heading in the direction of falling apart, but Mob came in at the last second and picked him up before he actually got there.

I think that’s one of the main pulls in their relationship to me, because a lot about their dynamic couldn’t be possible without it. The entire separation arc relies on the fact that Reigen doesn’t understand Mob’s effect on his life, or the emotional maturity that Mob has shown, which he probably would have noticed if he’d known the whole time that Mob fundamentally improved his whole disastrous life. Even the fact that Reigen is still a con artist relies on this. If Mob had “saved” Reigen from his lifestyle, Reigen would have been given the chance to re-work his life entirely, abandoning the more negative parts of his personality that he says later on that he hates.

Anyway I have a lot of feelings about this and I really respect ONE for taking this angle.

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) 

Brain slowly recovering enough that I can hopefully get back to working on End of the World, but I have totally lost my overview, so today I'm just reminding myself of basic thematic stuff, like...

Mob Psycho 100 is about kindness, which is a great and refreshing theme for a shonen manga, and one I appreciate very much. But on a personal level I just can't help but want to prod at it. And Shou is so very different from Mob that he and many of the people in his life make a great vehicle for that.

What if you aren't kind? What if you aren't empathetic? What if you haven't been given the tools to understand other people or yourself? What if reaching out or trying to help has backfired more times than not? What if the people who were supposed to take care of you have hurt and abandoned and taken advantage of you over and over? What if it isn't forgivable?

What if it isn't forgivable...?