Reigen: I Want To Be Famous And Powerful And Respected But Not For Who I Am As A Person, Only So My Talents

MP100 Theory: Mob’s Power

(This post only uses manga caps for convenience’s sake,)

One of the main plot points of MP100 is Mob’s aversion to using his powers. This was due to a number of things, but that main two being Tsubomi and a tragic event where he accidentally hurt his brother.

This, of course, eventually leads to Mob’s explosions or “100%.” But in theory, these explosions wouldn’t be nearly as bad if Mob wasn’t as powerful. Which begs the question - where did all of Mob’s psychic power come from? 

We know he’s a natural born psychic. He’s had his powers since he was young - Ritsu confirmed as much.

But obviously being able to float dogs since birth doesn’t give you godly powers. There are at least four other natural born psychics in the show, and their abilities all differ.

We also already know that Mob hasn’t been “training” his powers or anything. He’s avoided using them at all cost. So why the strength if he’s not even training? Well, the answer is simple.

Holding back his emotions.

We already know from Dimple that emotions can affect your psychic powers, and from Ritsu’s “experiments,” we know it can increase said power.

So it’s safe to say that after years of stress and other floods of emotions (that Mob has been holding back,) his power naturally increased because of all his turmoil. However, this wouldn’t be bad if he were also using his powers freely like Ritsu did. But since Mob is still too afraid to do such, he was accidentally saving energy.

Saving energy is something that we know is possible due to both of the Suzukis doing it. You can still use part of your energy and save the rest. Kind of like eating one slice of pizza instead of the entire thing.

These two things are what makes Mob so overpowered. Whenever Mob goes 100%, he is using part of 10+ years of held back emotions.

But keep in mind that this energy isn’t being immediately replaced. When you eat a slice of pizza, another one doesn’t magically take it’s place. You either have to cook more or buy another slice. Both of which takes time.

So when Mob goes 100%, he is depleting part of the energy he has saved for so long.

This leads you to believe “Wouldn’t Mob eventually run out of stored energy?”

Yes, but when he uses ???%, this energy is replaced.

During his fight with Teruki, he absorbed the other’s power. (Along with everything else in the atmosphere.)

Luckily, ???% is much rarer than 100%, otherwise Mob would eventually take in more energy than he got rid of.

TLDR: Mob’s power is due to him holding in his emotions and if not for his 100% explosions, he could eventually kill us with a sneeze.

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.

Thinking about how the kids use their powers. these are the vibes i get from them

Heart to heart

oct. 3 pt 2.

also:

if teru’s new hair has 100 fans, i am one of them.

Losing my god damn mind over the eye symbolism and hand symbolism in Mob psycho 100 and how they reveal true feeling vs intent

watching the emi episode makes me kick and giggle my feet