A review of the original season was published and can be found here, after watching all three seasons in a condensed time frame I thought it would be good to do a more comprehensive review of this anime.
Middle school student Kageyama Shigeo is has psychic powers, incredibly powerful abilities that sometimes are beyond his control. Due to the danger he recognizes he does everything he can to approach everyday life as a normal kid, refusing to use his abilities for his own gain. As a grade school student he approached 'professional psychic' Arataka Reigen for advice. Teigen, who harbors zero mystical abilities, is surprised when the meek child demonstrates his abilities during an accident in his office. What Reigen lacks in special abilities he makes up for in quick thinking and unnatural self confidence. He runs a psychic business but is in no way capable of actually performing real services. He see's an opportunity with Shigeo and offers to be his mentor and employer, working hard to keep up appearances that he is also a psychic. Through Reigens guidance Shigeo, nicknamed Mob, establishes his credence to not use his abilities against humans and to do his best to live as a normal person.
Mob is a quiet, awkward and subpar student who just wants to have what every other teenage boy wants; friends and a love life. Mob decides to improve himself by joining the body improvement club in school, struggling to keep up with the overly athletic club mates in jogging and weight lifting, but he is determined to improve himself on his own. All the while Reigen calls him again and again to banish spirits and face off against an increasing number of enemy psychics. Before he knows it, Mob has begun to gain the friends he has sought after, through nothing more than his resilience and dedication to improvement. The friends will start to come in handy as a shadowy organization of power physics makes their appearance, bent on world domination. Mob finds himself facing them to protect his loved ones and his own desire to not use his powers to get ahead in life. How much danger can he face though before he breaks down and unleashes his contained strength?
As with One's other series, One Punch Man, Mob Psycho starts out as a self referential lambast of psychic combat manga/anime. But over time the humor and unexpected resolutions begin to mirror those tropes and patterns of the stories it starts out poking fun at. Both stories have entertained me up to the point where it stops poking fun at the genres they mimic. But with Mob Psycho I was able to push through the rote stories and finish the series, unlike One Punch Man. This is mostly due to the love of Mob as a character and the enjoyment of seeing his growth. Not as a powerful badass, which is pretty much the only semblance of character arcs in any shonen battle anime, but his growth as a normal kid. If you get rid of all of the psychic powers stuff and just make an anime about Mob's increasing self confidence and self acceptance you are left with a really nice story about a lonely kid finding a place among his peers and its really enjoyable. Unfortunately much of the story in season two is overshadowed with the distractions of world domination and fighting for the survival of mankind. Season three however pulls it back and makes the threat the only real danger to Mob...himself and the catalyst was worth the terrible and contrived battles that lead to its conclusion.
Aside from my well documented and boring dislike of anything shonen, the great thing about Mob over One Punch Man is the artwork and how it went with Ones art style instead of going with the cleaner more professional redo.. An endearing thing with One's stories is his artwork, with its goofy simplicity and awkwardness. Its enjoyable to have that meshed with high quality direction and action to complete a project that might seem at odds with its self on paper, but works quite well in motion. It makes me wonder how better of a product One Piece would be if it followed the same formula. Artwork aside, Mob does have an enjoyable cast of characters that remain relevant through out the story. This would be a significantly more enjoyable show if it remained a caricature of this genre instead of forgetting its self half of the time. It is also great that the story chose to end at a point instead of needlessly dragging its self out into oblivion, with the hope of more seasons in the future. From start to end its really about Mobs growth as an adolescent boy and we receive a very satisfying story about that growth, more is not needed.
This anime is available in sub and dub formats on multiple platforms.
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