Repost Of This Lovely Boy

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 ???%.

Sketchy manga redraw, I'll probably color it when I have more free time ^^

Original panels here !!

if u have some spare time and u don’t mind, I would love to see Roy actually well dressed for once. Maybe a tuxedo? Who knows?

listen…. I’m actually reeeeally fond of his black coat… it’s just…… so…… good

anyway, some reigen observations

Ed is … a misandrist

to say the same thing that i've been saying for YEARS once again, mob and reigen's relationship is so bonkers crazy insane, like... here's mob, 14 years old, and reigen's been lying to him since he was 11. to reigen, it was a white lie, even a kindness. to mob, it was not so inconsequential -- it was proof that he was not alone in the world and that he could be okay as an adult. and of course mob believed him fully at first. why wouldn't he? but over the years, the cracks started to form. if things didn't quite add up, mob tried not to think about them. and reigen kept digging the hole deeper; he never thought it would go this far. now mob's 14 and the truth is seeping in around the edges of his consciousness but he refuses to speak it, even after the press conference, when reigen all but begs him to. reigen wants him to say it. i know you've been lying to me. just say it. but mob won't and reigen can't, and they settle back into this weird holding pattern for a while longer. when things finally bubble over for mob, this is at the heart of it. the repression, insecurity, anger, doubt -- mob learned a lot from his master, including: we don't talk about it. so reigen, finally, SHOUTING the truth at him -- it doesn't matter that mob already knew. there's power in the confession, reigen's humility to finally admit it, the vulnerability of saying it out loud instead of leaving it unspoken. it takes all the air out of the conflict, the tension almost immediately evaporates... mob just needed to hear it. to be shown that it was okay to be honest, vulnerable... then when he returns from his long-built-up confession to tsubomi, mob breaks down in tears but it doesn't destroy the city. he just cries and reigen awkwardly pats his back and it's okay.

anyway SCREAMS at the top of my lungs, i love mob psycho 100

I really love how Teruki’s hair acts as a barometer to his personal development. It’s so true-to-life for teenagers (guilty of this).

His hair drastically changes whenever something big happens that affects his outlook on life or his sense of self, and it’s exactly the same as when your friend would show up to school one day with an extremely different hairstyle, maybe even dyed a different color, and you’d think like, “Something must have fundamentally changed in your life’s trajectory and your personal understanding of it”. (Honestly, being a teenager is just a series of these moments strung together by homework and video games.)

And every single time his hair changes, it’s against his will. Sure, he usually chooses how to style it afterwards, but both of the Kageyama Scalping Incidents, Sakurai’s hair chop, etc. were against his will. But without fail, it always happens at a major emotional turning point in Teruki’s life. Him being snapped out of his superiority complex (mostly), him being influenced by Reigen’s 1000% and finding a passion for teaching, Mob breaking his own pedestal with the Confession accident, etc.

Teru’s gonna walk into a room at some point in the future with a totally different hairstyle that he chose for no real reason at all, just to shake it up, and everyone’s going to be like Oh My God Teru What Happened and he’s gonna be like, “????? Does it look that bad???? 🥺”

reigen and his army of middle schoolers

Friends, once again :’)

mobdonalds (more below the cut)

Can it be considered fanart if it involves the collective effort of 4 almost-uni-students spending 1.5h at a local mcdonalds cutting up nori, arranging fries and artfully using ketchup packets to recreate the faces of mp100 characters?

Further info on our reasoning behind the type of food used for each character:

(All in good fun, we were just goofing around with our food)

Mob is a double cheeseburger while Ritsu is a normal cheeseburger - this is due to Ritsu's feelings of inferiority

Haystack Teru gets some nice fries for his hair for that golden crispy look

Reigen is the plumpest juiciest burger with the nicest bun because. You know.

Shou... I'm so sorry Shou you deserved better (ignore how it looks like a crime scene)