Anime Profile: Mob Psycho 100

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Shigeo Kageyama is one of the most powerful psychics alive. He can bend metal, levitate buildings, exorcise spirits, and disintegrate matter, all with a flick of expression. He is also a flat-haired middle-schooler in a tracksuit who is desperately, painfully average at everything else. He's bad at sports, bad at school, terrible at talking to girls, and so emotionally suppressed that classmates have nicknamed him "Mob," the Japanese term for a background extra. Mob Psycho 100 is the story of what happens when an unstoppable internal force is locked inside a kid who just wants to belong.

To keep his powers under control, Mob works after school as the apprentice of Arataka Reigen, the proprietor of "Spirits and Such Consultation Office," a one-room exorcism business whose proprietor is a charming, unrepentant con artist with zero psychic ability of his own. Reigen pockets the client fees, sends Mob to do the actual exorcisms for 300 yen and lunch, and lectures him about life with the unearned confidence of a man who has never once been right but somehow keeps saying the right thing anyway. Their relationship is the warm beating heart of the series.

Around them assemble a cast that the show treats with surprising tenderness: Dimple, an evil cult-leader spirit who slowly becomes Mob's reluctant friend; Ritsu, Mob's younger brother, brilliant where Mob is plain and secretly bitter about his own powerlessness; Teruki "Teru" Hanazawa, a vain rival who learns humility the hard way; and Tome Kurata, the president of the school's nearly defunct Telepathy Club, who Mob joins not because he believes in psychic powers but because he has a crush on her. Across three seasons the story builds from goofy spirit-of-the-week episodes into a complicated meditation on power, on the difference between being strong and being good, and on what Mob will choose to do with his abilities when he is finally pushed past 100% and his suppressed emotions explode.

Bones' adaptation is one of the great visual achievements of modern anime. Director Yuzuru Tachikawa (Seasons 1-2) and Takahiro Hasui (Season 3) lean on chunky hand-drawn aesthetics, paint-splatter dream sequences, and breathtaking action set pieces that mix flat 2D with sudden bursts of three-dimensional motion. Kenji Kawai's pounding score and the show's earworm openings ("99," "99.9," and "1") became instantly iconic. Three seasons span 37 episodes plus the brilliant REIGEN OVA recap special, ending in 2022 with what many critics called the most emotionally satisfying shonen finale in years.

Based on ONE's webcomic and manga (the same creator behind One-Punch Man), Mob Psycho 100 is funnier, scarier, sweeter, and more heartfelt than its premise suggests. For viewers tired of overpowered protagonists who never have to grow up, Mob's slow, awkward path to self-acceptance is one of the best stories anime has told this decade.