Thanks To @jellyana For Posting Some Of Teru’s Dialogue

I made an analysis breaking down the S3 MP100 OP! Thank you @russenoire for the translation and guiding me with them, I can’t thank you enough.

Also, please keep in mind that I am in no way a professional at this, I’m just a kid who likes mob psycho. It’s around 15 pages long and includes insight into the lyrics and visuals, though it might be a bit messy.

But anyways, please enjoy! This was super fun to make.

Google Docs

MP100 season 3 OP analysis-breakdown

MP100 S3 OP Analysis-breakdown Before we start, I’d like to give a big thank you to @russenoire for the translation of the season three OP

Day 10: Static

a broadly applicable extended metaphor for the kageyama brothers: 

mob is round and ritsu is sharp. 

this applies to LOTS of things about both of them– least of all, but most noticeably, their hair.

mob is round. he’s blunt, socially dull, tangential to the lives of his peers. he’s like a firm ball of clay rolled between two hands. when he learns new things, it’s like, first he has to make them stick, then he has to re-roll himself back into shape without them falling out. ideally, the things he learns become a part of him. overall, it’s a clumsy process, so he’s not the best learner, but neither is he the worst. and he’s good when it comes to learning about (and improving) himself, because he can reshape himself, being clay. he is also relatively easily influenced by others, who may try to shape him to their own liking. still, roundness is the most comfortable shape for him, so he always returns to it. 

ritsu is sharp. sharp-tongued, sharp-eyed, sharp-witted. he’s like a mass of thorns or shards of glass. when he learns new things, they stick easily, becoming impaled on his jagged surface, and he understands them intimately, though they remain separate from his self. ritsu is a very good learner. but he’s not very good at learning about himself, because when he tries to delve deeper, he gets poked by his own spikes. he is also more brittle than mob, so it’s harder to improve himself; things need to break before they can change shape. likewise, ritsu is less easily influenced, being more solid and thus less permeable. he wishes he was a more organic shape, like his brother, despite the many clear advantages afforded to him by his sharpness.

mob’s psychic power is also based on roundness– his aura in the anime consists of overlapping circles. his power, tied directly to his emotions, is round like a coiled spring. as his explosion meter slowly ticks up, the spring is compressed bit by bit. when he hits 100%, it releases all that potential energy at once, then slowly collapses back to normal. 

ritsu’s psychic power is also based on sharpness– his aura in the anime looks like jagged shreds. where mob’s aura flows like ripples in a pond, ritsu’s cracks and crinkles along fault lines, like paper or tin foil that’s been folded before. the uneven structure means he can’t store emotions as psychic energy in the same way as his brother; emotions just create more faults and fissures, making it harder to direct his power anywhere else.

ritsu is certainly sharp by nature, but much of his jaggedness is a result of having parts of him shattered by trauma. i can’t help but wonder how different he would be had he never met ???%.

a mask of my own face (i’d wear that)

I was going over the scene in ep.07 where Reigen is reflecting before telling Mob he has grown, and I finally noticed that Reigen has his clothes torn in his thoughts…exactly like they were torn by the sword when fighting Claw last season. Which was intially weird to me because Reigen’s words here are as negative as possible, despite that moment where he took the hit being one of his best towards Mob.

And then it hit me, Reigen probably doesn’t know he helped Mob. Reigen likely remembers his involvement as a failure.

The audience knows that it was Reigen telling Mob that he could run away that saved Mob, to the point of him becoming 100% grateful and accidently transferring his powers. But the audience knows because the narration told us so, Reigen was never told this.

For Reigen, that whole mess was one where he went to help some kids in danger, tried to put sense into the villains’ minds and it backfired into pissing them off. He failed so badly Mob was terrified and Reigen had to tell him to run away. And then unknowingly began using up Mob’s powers to little success, needing Shou to step in to save them in the very end.

Perhaps Reigen has come to the conclusion Mob gave him powers to protect him due to being slashed in the back. So as far as Reigen ever knew, he turned out to be another liability Mob had to protect, and nearly doomed them by taking Mob’s powers rather than have Mob deal with it all himself.

He was never aware of how much he saved Mob, and now he considers his involvement in that moment a failure where he held Mob back by being there.

Hear me out.

The family talk was revenge.

thanks, ritsu!

seeing @gittetj’s post (sorry, hope you dont mind the ping! also everyone should check it out) is really making me think about ritsu and shous relationship again. how shous taken on the gargantuan responsibility to put his own dad in jail. how hes run away from home, taken his own lackeys, stored psychic power into a fuck-off bomb for two months, sent hot spring tickets to ritsus parents so ritsu can go and help shou beat up touichirou without worrying them. he puts a lot of effort into all the little details of his plans to improve on it - you know, setting fire to ritsus home so mob could become motivated to fight, stuff like that.

but, hes not that great at it! the biggest oversight ofc is that he didnt anticipate his dad doing what he did, but for twenty years. hell, shou had no idea what sort of esper power touichirou had and it kind of ended up being important. him trying to motivate mob into action knocked mob out for like. a day.

this omake is a pretty good example of what kind of guy shou is. hes good at thinking a few steps ahead, but ultimately gets help from ritsu to fill out the blind spots.

ritsu, who’s crazy good at being studious and polite and responsible, but has only done out of obligation. the kid who had his whole arc revolve around breaking down from the burden of being the perfect student, the perfect child, the perfect brother. ritsu, who only went along with shous hot springs plan because he figured whatever was happening this was the safest way they would be out of harm’s way, then gradually gained admiration Shou Suzuki, Warrior of Justice, who proudly wore responsibility like a badge.

ritsu makes it very clear that he wants to see what someone else in his position could do against something that is seemingly insurmountable (and again, his first response to shous questions is his sense of responsibility). its only a bit later duing ritsus fight with shimazaki that ritsu finds a proper answer - that he will try with all his might to live happily, and that will be his responsibility to himself. between shou, who’s lost the burden of the responsibility he carried, and ritsu, who finally finds a goal he can wholeheartedly strive to achieve, i can tell you that these two could develop a deeper relationship post-claw arc.

if u have some spare time and u don’t mind, I would love to see Roy actually well dressed for once. Maybe a tuxedo? Who knows?

listen…. I’m actually reeeeally fond of his black coat… it’s just…… so…… good

ⵜⴰⵍⵡⵉⵜ ⴷ ⵜⴰⵢⵔⵉ

Edit: Print now available here.