12 × 24-min episodes
Studio: Bones
Kageyama Shigeo, a.k.a. Mob (as in generic-looking people in background crowds/mobs), is something of a reverse chuunibyou case: he’s a humble second-year middle-schooler born with strong psychic powers, but feels they aren’t much use to him and struggles to stand out at school. He envies, but doesn’t resent, his younger brother, Ritsu, who doesn’t have the same powers, yet is popular and on the student council.
He also works part-time doing exorcisms for Reigen Arataka, the world’s greatest psychic (self-proclaimed) and all-around man you can trust (not verbatim self-proclaimed, but it’s what he tries to put across). An excellent influence on Shigeo, I truly believe.
But whenever Shigeo’s emotional intensity reaches 100%, he’s overwhelmed by his powers and ‘explodes’ (non-fatally). Luckily for everyone around him, he’s a nice kid who tries to restrain his emotions and powers. But not everyone is so kind, and all bottled-up feelings must eventually overflow. He gets dragged into a middle-school gang turf war, and things escalate from there.
No, he doesn’t fight all those delinquent leaders one by one. That would be kind of boring.
Minor spoiler: this has a relatively ‘soft’, but not inconclusive, ending. No points for guessing the manga continued beyond it, but it tied things up well. The climax of the major arc in the final two episodes was spectacular and kept in the spirit of the series, and the aftermath gave some closure for major characters’ developments. But it looks like season 2 should be a question of when, not if. And even if it is an if, I’d still be happy with these great 12 episodes.
I can clearly imagine how Mob Psycho 100 could have been a much lesser adaptation. All I’ve seen of the original webcomic were whatever came up in the 15 seconds I spent looking at Google image results and the images in articles linked below, and to me it seems there’s not much to work from in terms of the atmosphere/environment. But this anime has textured backgrounds, camera angle variation, paint-on-glass scenes and effects, expressive action sequences, bold reaction stills – just impressive work in general.
And I don’t know how the manga pacing compares or what was left out (other than what was mentioned in the articles linked below), but a story with a premise like this is exactly the kind of thing I’d much rather watch than read, because it can fully make use of the additional room for expression through colour, motion, and sound. I was surprised Shigeo’s VA only had one other project credited on MAL before this, and Reigen’s VA’s delivery is gold. Basically, my uninformed opinion is that it deserved an anime, and probably got the anime it deserved.
The people behind this didn’t have to do all that. If they phoned it in completely, viewers would have compared it to One Punch Man, the first anime adaptation of a work by ONE, and complained about the quality gap. But they didn’t have to go, well, 100%.
Why include things like paint-on-glass animation? What justifies the effort of using any non-standard process? Could the effects be approximated digitally from scratch? I don’t know, but I’d guess so, and I’d still appreciate the look. I’m for computer-generated stuff that wants to look like it’s not computer-generated, I don’t care as long as it looks good. Point is, I’m impressed by both the process behind it and how this anime was able to showcase it.
Obviously, I don’t know exactly what the staff behind the series thought when they made the decisions they did. But a distinct visual style and willingness to optimise source material for the screen instead of doing little more than reproducing it set Mob Psycho 100 apart – hopefully enough for it to continue being recognised for its strengths long after Summer 2016.
And there’s yet another reason people might do such things: sheer artistry.
Including con artistry.
Meanwhile, elsewhere:
Video (major staff credits and general animation explainer), article (fight scene analysis), article (interview with paint-on-glass animator Satou Miyo), articles (differences from manga)
OP/ED:
The English opening lyrics in the OP song took a while to get used to because they’re a bit on the nose, but overall the OP and ED were the most impressive and enjoyable ones I’ve seen to date.
Other comments:
This is such a positive post, idek.
[ETA: My comments even partially spilled over into another post.]
Popcorn By Proxy 