Mob Psycho 100 II – 09

「見せてみろ ～集合～」 (Misete miro ~ shuugou ~)
“Show Me What You’ve Got ~Band Together~”

Just the sheer volume of seiyuu talent on display tonight was pretty insane between Dororo and Mob Psycho 100. BONES isn’t exactly known for cutting corners when it comes to casting, but the whole legion of Claw and its various (and seemingly endless) internal factions was a veritable who’s who of big anime names. I almost can’t wrap my head around Ohtsuka Akio, Inoue Kazuhiko and Miki Shinichirou all appearing in the same episode of the same series – it’s like my speakers were going to explode from the Godly glow.

If there’s anything that concerns me a bit about the episode, in fact, it’s that there really is too much packed into a small space. It’s all great – great acting, great animation, great plot – it’s just a lot to take in over only 22 minutes. I can’t speak to the pacing in this part of the manga because I haven’t read it, but there have definitely been a couple of times this season (the second half of the Mogami arc being the other main instance) when I’ve felt that things seemed to be moving very quickly (which, as it happens, I don’t ever remember thinking about the first season).

In any event we are where we are, which is squarely in the middle of the World Domination Arc – one which I’m assuming is going to take us to the end of the season. There are a lot of players moving about on the chessboard here, but we have to start with the incident at Mob’s house. Here – yet again – Ekubo really steps up in a big way. Seeing just how fucked everyone is (including himself of course) if Mob really loses it, Dimple thinks on his feet (if he had them) and convinces Mob that the bodies in the house aren’t real – that they’re psychically-created dummies, and that his parents and Ritsu are safely evacuated.

As it turns out that was true (I suspected something along those lines) but Ekubo was bluffing in the moment – or at least, acting a lot more confident than he really felt because he had no choice. Mob seems to be evolving at an alarming speed (remember what Mogami said about negative emotions being much more powerful catalysts than positive, and that Mob is a 14 year-old boy), and he follows the psychic trace of the ones who burned his house and teleports to their location. But they don’t give him the information he wants, and he’s eventually picked up by some familiar faces – Scar, the ex-Claw members hiding out in Seasoning City, waiting for their old organization to come after them.

This is a bit of a jumble – but then, it seems like Claw is an organization that’s perpetually on the verge of total internal chaos (which perhaps makes it a prequel of sorts to Shin Sekai Yori). Claw’s head, Suzuki Touichirou, is in town to put his plan for world domination into action. He’s surrounded by the “Ultimate 5“, who do seem to be the strongest Claw members we’ve met (notably, we’ve never seen Suzuki’s powers in action). But the Claw “Foreigner Squad” is in rebellion – apparently incited by a government plant in their midst. That rebellion is crushed easily enough by the Ultimate 5, but none of this has anything to do with Mob. Remember him?

It seems it was Suzuki Shou who was responsible for what happened with Mob’s family – though just what exactly his endgame is I don’t quite get yet, though it’s clear he’s acting independently of his father. He’s got Ritsu willingly supporting him, and the parents have been sent off to an onsen out of harm’s way – but Ritsu is unaware of what’s happened to the house, and I can’t imagine he’ll be pleased when he finds out. And speaking of Mob, neither he nor anyone at the hideout the Scar members take him too knows any of this – including Reigen, who they’ve recruited to be their new leader after seeing Mob’s impressive performance at the press conference and attributing it to Reigen.

For now, Mob is out like a light – and it was pretty touching to see how his absolute trust in Reigen’s wisdom allowed him to finally come down off his adrenaline high and pass out. Once again we see Mob has been dealt a good hand in the friend department – both Ekubo and Reigen especially. But what happens when he wakes up, I wonder? The immediate crisis for the moment is that Teruki has taken it on himself to go off and try and prevent the kidnapping of the prime minister after seeing it on TV, and proved no match for one of the Ultimate 5, but the big wild card remains Shou and what role he’s chosen to play in all this. The showdown with Claw that ended the first season was incredibly epic in the action department, but I fully expect Mob Psycho 100 to top it with this rematch against the A team.

Preview