The third and ultimate season of Mob Psycho 100 picks up at some extent the place another collection would have ended. Protagonist Shigeo Kageyama, aka Mob, has already defeated a worldwide conspiracy of evil psychics and seemingly saved the Earth from domination. What extra is there to do? For Mob Psycho 100, that is only the start — our hero has to determine what he desires to do with the remainder of his life.

Shonen, the style of manga and anime usually marketed to younger boys, has escalation constructed into its formal DNA. The nature of serialized, weekly chapter releases supposed to convey on common readers, lengthy anime seasons supposed to convey on weekly viewers, and increasing merchandise alternatives supposed to feed into the manga and anime implies that shonen tales are incentivized to lean into common cliffhangers. Protagonists begin with a selected, seemingly inconceivable objective — Naruto’s quest to grow to be the strongest ninja in his village, Luffy trying to find the One Piece, and so forth — and spiral outward. Each new foe is deadlier, cooler, and extra fascinating than the final.

Accordingly, whereas loads of shonen collection have deep, long-established character benches, it may also be a basically individualist style. The protagonist, whether or not it’s Izuku Midoriya, Naruto Uzumaki, or Son Goku, depends on others and builds relationships. Ultimately, their success and development is expressed by particular person power, typically in single fight. Your buddies can provide the emotional power to punch good, however on the finish of the day, it’s your fist.

ONE, the pseudonymous mangaka behind Mob Psycho 100, flips this script on its head. His work tends to ask, “What if you already had all the power you could possibly need… and it didn’t make you happy?”

ONE’s breakout collection One Punch Man is, in essence, a single joke repeated advert nauseam: Protagonist Saitama can defeat any enemy with a single punch, and, with none actual problem or adversity, struggles to seek out that means in his life. One Punch Man incessantly devolves right into a riff on drawn-out shonen collection the place the protagonist’s victory is a foregone conclusion (particularly Dragon Ball), however essentially the most compelling elements of the collection pit Saitama up towards an opponent he can’t beat with brute power — paperwork and workplace politics.

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Though the individuals round him are cyborgs, psychics, and geniuses, Saitama is a totally extraordinary one who merely turned robust via sheer effort and power of will. (Not for nothing, essentially the most purely sympathetic character within the collection is Mumen Rider, a completely regular man who makes use of his bicycle to avoid wasting individuals.) Saitama struggles to advance within the rankings of the Hero Association as different heroes take credit score for his escapades and the general public incessantly mocks him for his look. He additionally clashes with the opposite members of the Hero Association over what it means to be a hero — although the opposite characters all have particular, flowery beliefs, Saitama simply desires to be a hero for enjoyable, one thing ONE underlines time and again. He isn’t indifferent from actuality, however his invincibility leaves him perpetually aloof, bored, and put-upon.

Mob Psycho takes the fundamental concept of a protagonist who’s definitionally omnipotent and offers it extra emotional heft and seriousness, leaning into the concept there are some issues you’ll be able to’t remedy by punching them. Our hero, 14-year-old Shigeo Kageyama, might be essentially the most {powerful} psychic on the planet. But Shigeo (nicknamed “Mob” as a result of he seamlessly blends into the background) avoids utilizing his powers as a lot as attainable. Instead, Mob desires to be widespread, and to win the center of his childhood crush, Tsubomi-chan. It’s not simply that he desires different issues moreover being a robust psychic; his powers aren’t even fascinating to him.

This central irony is closely underlined early within the collection, when Mob is about as much as be a part of his faculty’s flailing Telepathy Club, which ostensibly exists to research the potential existence of aliens and psychic powers. Joining the Telepathy Club would match the logic of a extra conventional shonen narrative, and provides Mob a spot to discover his items. Instead, Mob decides to hitch the Body Improvement Club, a gaggle initially launched as intimidating jocks threatening to take over the Telepathy membership room. The Body Improvement Club members shortly grow to be a number of the most adorable characters within the collection, relentlessly supporting Mob as he gasps and wheezes his means via stamina coaching and weight lifting.

Instead of utilizing his powers to profit himself, Mob works part-time at Spirits and Such, a psychic company run by con man Reigen Arataka. (If you haven’t seen the present earlier than, there are two essential issues to find out about Reigen: He’s principally a barely extra lighthearted anime model of Better Call Saul’s Jimmy McGill, and he’s an web intercourse image.) Mob performs exorcisms for Reigen, who claims to be a robust psychic however has no religious powers to talk of.

Reigen is an informal liar who exploits Mob for his personal ends, however he’s additionally incessantly the ethical middle of the collection — he teaches Mob the significance of not utilizing psychic powers towards individuals, and is keen on noting that folks have all types of items, whether or not it’s educational expertise, bodily prowess, a means with phrases, or, sure, psychic energy. Via Reigen, Mob Psycho 100 is a collection that dares to look at Syndrome from The Incredibles sneer that “when everyone’s super, no one will be” and reply, “Yeah, dude, that sounds cool as hell.” (The opening lyrics of the collection’ first intro track are “If everyone is not special, maybe you can be what you want to be.”) Where different anime characters’ lives are incessantly outlined by their items — Goku by his Saiyan combating power, Naruto by his ninja abilities, and so forth — Reigen exists to remind Mob that he doesn’t have to pursue one thing simply because he’s good at it, and he doesn’t want to think about himself as being higher than anybody else. Mob’s life is his personal. (Except for the time he’s at work — then his life is Reigen’s.) There’s some extratextual irony in the truth that Kyle McCarley, who performed the closely exploited Mob within the English dub in seasons 1 and a couple of, was changed in season 3 as a result of he tried to barter a union contract on behalf of his fellow actors.)

Image: Bones/Crunchyroll

While Mob could obtain this lesson in nearly each episode, ONE’s work is in truth populated by villains who have to think about themselves as particular — individuals who need to be anime protagonists. More or much less each antagonist in Mob Psycho 100 has a debilitating case of Main Character Syndrome: They’re individuals born with psychic powers who assume that having that reward doesn’t simply imply they’re particular, it additionally means they’re extra essential than everybody else round them. This is a basically infantile perception that defines a slew of manga and anime characters, each villains and heroes, in addition to loads of individuals in the true world. Mob Psycho 100 is simply surprisingly deft at, primarily, telling its villains (and, maybe, a few of its readers and viewers) that they’re overgrown infants who have to go contact grass. Each time he confronts an opponent, Mob is ready to apply his personal expertise to attach with them, as a result of he is aware of what it’s wish to really feel disconnected from all the things and everybody besides your personal thoughts. “Enemies becoming friends” is a traditional anime trope, however within the case of Mob Psycho the trope has a selected thematic goal: scratch a megalomaniacal, power-tripping boss, reveal an alienated loner combating isolation.

For Mob, the everyday anime exercise of defeating enemies turns into a means of constructing a group. Some of his former foes grow to be rivals. Others use Mob as an inspiration as they wrestle to construct a traditional life and relationships. One finds his place by working for Reigen at Spirits and Such, giving Mob the chance to go away the company with out worrying about leaving his mentor on the mercy of evil spirits. The third-season premiere of Mob Psycho 100 is dedicated to exploring this dynamic. We the viewers may wish to see Mob and Reigen experience off into the sundown as colleagues and buddies who proceed to work collectively after the tip of the collection, performing out the identical dynamic we’ve come to know and love. But there’s no world the place Mob has a satisfying grownup life working for Reigen. Now, he has the liberty to actually determine what he desires to do together with his life.

Of course, subverting and reflecting on simple energy fantasies isn’t precisely new: Being ambivalent about energy has been a central theme of anime since, on the absolute newest, the sixth episode of the unique 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam, the place protagonist Amuro Ray makes an attempt to run away from being an ace (learn: mass-murdering) pilot.

In explicit, Yoshihiro Togashi, the enormously profitable mangaka finest recognized for creating Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter, regularly engages with the bounds of particular person energy, and the way in which that pursuing “power” can bump towards the extra essential calling of being a cool and good man with buddies and family members. At varied factors throughout his collection, characters like Yusuke Urameshi — singularly gifted, enormously {powerful} heroes — determine to go away the combat so as to deal with one thing even scarier than demons: having a life.

I don’t have direct proof to show this, nevertheless it feels fairly clear to me that Togashi is a significant affect on ONE. There are loads of characters in Mob Psycho who pay visible homage to Togashi’s characters, some with comparable talents. The picture of Mob, a slack-faced boy confronting incomprehensible, supernatural evil, evokes the backstory of Yu Yu Hakusho antagonist Shinobu Sensui, a prodigiously gifted baby psychic who had the misfortune of changing into deputized as a cop as a substitute of assembly Reigen. Both Mob and Reigen are put via the wringer, realizing slowly that supernatural creatures and spirits aren’t inherently evil simply because they’re not human.

The murky water between proper and flawed ultimately breaks Sensui when he sees a cabal of wealthy, {powerful} people torturing demons for sport, and he embarks on the trail to villainy after being functionally deserted by the callous, uncaring Spirit World. After defeating Sensui, Yu Yu Hakusho’s protagonist Yusuke Urameshi rejects Spirit World himself, and begins asking a number of the similar questions that plague Mob: What does it imply to carry on to your personal sense of justice? Why even combat within the first place? And what would it not imply to place your items apart for the second and lead a traditional life?

Togashi’s work explores the failings of supposedly benevolent establishments, the ethical ambiguity of heroism, and the connection between energy, craft, and that means, setting a template for a way ONE engages with the identical subjects. But in Yu Yu Hakusho (and Togashi’s ongoing collection Hunter x Hunter), these questions emerge from the construction of a extra conventional shonen collection, with protagonists who begin with a objective however begin to query themselves after reaching it. ONE’s work is ready to concurrently ignore that construction and take it as a right, placing these questions entrance and middle from the very starting of the story. Yusuke has to undergo brutal coaching, numerous battles, and escalating energy ranges earlier than he realizes that there may be extra to life. ONE’s protagonists are capable of begin from that place, and subsequently spend the majority of their time attempting to return to their very own solutions.

Mob Psycho transforms these tensions right into a literal psychic toll: The collection makes use of a share tracker to indicate how shut Mob is to dropping management of his repressed feelings, stemming from a childhood incident when he by chance harm his brother. Once he hits 100%, he “explodes” right into a show of uncooked, damaging energy. Without spoiling something for individuals who haven’t learn the manga, this repression is itself the ultimate boss of the collection, as Mob is lastly compelled to confront the character of his personal energy, how he makes use of it, and his personal discomfort with being able to vary the world.

Image: Bones/Crunchyroll

Image: Bones/Crunchyroll

Image: Bones/Crunchyroll

It is smart that Mob himself is the final word impediment he has to confront, as a result of by the start of the ultimate season, Mob actually has gotten stronger. He may not be a champion athlete, however his stamina is noticeably enhancing. He has numerous buddies, together with members of the Body Improvement Club, former enemy psychics, and even the Telepathy Club. And, in surprising distinction to the wallflower we met at first of the collection, he’s capable of type his personal opinions, voice them to others, and remedy issues collectively. (The second episode of the season finds Mob attempting to tackle a problem scarier than any psychic: a gaggle undertaking for the varsity cultural honest.) He nonetheless doesn’t fairly know what he desires to do together with his life, however he is aware of he desires to determine it out for himself. Shonen protagonists typically construct group over the course of their journey, however these communities are usually centered round their items, particularly in school-focused settings like My Hero Academia, Food Wars, and even Naruto. But once more, ONE’s work feels distinct; although Mob’s psychic powers are ostensibly the explanation for the present, they’re nearly utterly incidental to his precise development.

Mob is dedicated to doing the onerous work of enhancing, even ranging from a pitiful starting — not simply because he desires the tip objective of being widespread, however as a result of the work is rewarding in itself. This high quality is formally mirrored in Mob Psycho 100 itself: By typical requirements, ONE’s artwork seems to be coarse and infantile, particularly within the authentic webcomic model of each Mob and One Punch Man. But after a number of years (and, admittedly, with assist from assistants), ONE’s artwork has grow to be expressive and particular, capturing the distinction between the goofy indignities of on a regular basis life and the cosmic-level stakes of psychic battle.

Image: Bones/Crunchyroll

The anime collection is profitable largely as a result of animation studio Bones has latched onto these seemingly sloppier components of ONE’s work. In Bones’ palms, easy character designs and off-putting expressions grow to be visually gorgeous Silly Putty. Throughout the collection’ large, pyrotechnic combat scenes, Mob is usually rendered as a comparatively static, unmoving blob, and his lack of response or curiosity within the combat heightens the absurdity of the proceedings with out deflating any of the spectacle. As a lot as he may wish to be someplace, wherever else, he can’t fairly escape being in the course of a battle.

In these sequences, Mob stays remoted and alone within the face of no matter enemy he’s combating. And whereas Mob Psycho 100 successfully makes the case for selecting to spend one’s life in group with others, it does nonetheless in the end posit that that alternative is as much as the person. Mob may not endure from Main Character Syndrome, however he’s nonetheless, in truth, the primary character. ONE’s work is so good at exploring this thematic materials that it raises extra questions. Like, what would occur if a narrative merely began with the belief that particular person energy isn’t the be-all and end-all, and that we’ve to wrestle communally? Where would we go from there?

Ironically, followers searching for solutions to those questions may solely have to look behind the scenes. Mob Psycho convincingly argues that everybody ought to have the sense of freedom Mob struggles to acquire, and the power to construct the life they need for themselves. It’s a special vantage level than lots of his fellow shonen protagonists have, and one which units up potential new and compelling instructions for the style alongside different compelling, subversive collection, like Jujutsu Kaisen. Mob Psycho 100 season 3 begins after most different collection would finish, however there’s nonetheless loads of room for ONE to maintain doing one thing new. Rather than having to determine what to do with the remainder of his life, perhaps sometime we’ll see Mob truly put within the work of dwelling.

Mob Psycho 100 and One-Punch Man at the moment are streaming on Crunchyroll.