huge fan of the depth of a good purple but another area that draws me is definitely around aquamarine/turquoise/seafoam. you can not go wrong once the green starts getting just a tinge more blue. a gal could certainly do worse than to pull over there and stay a while
So of all the characters in Jujutsu Kaisen Megumi has turned out to be one of the most controversial and hotly debated characters. There's nothing the internet hates more than a boy with trauma, I guess. Jujutsu Kaisen is a controversial work in general so it's not surprising that the ending wasn't super well received by the fans, especially in the way it decided to conclude Megumi's character arc.
There are many people accusing Gege of giving Megumi no character development. Of Megumi just choosing to replace Tsumiki with Yuji. Lots of complaints about Megumi never finishing his domain expansion among other things. Of Megumi being nothing more than a damsel for Yuji to rescue in the end. I'm here to say I think Megumi does have a complete character arc even if it didn't end the way I would have liked, and under the cut I'll be giving my thoughts for Megumi's ending and JJK's ending in general.
I CAN ONLY SAVE THOSE WHO ARE PREPARED TO BE SAVED
If you were to ask me what the most important arc in Jujutsu Kaisen is, it would be Hidden Inventory. Hidden Inventroy covers the inciting incident which leads to all the conflicts in the main story, Riko's death, Geto's defection, Tengen's merger failing, and Gojo's decision to adopt Megumi.
However, it also shows us what motivates Gojo in the main series, mainly his desire to raise this generation of students into strong and intelligent allies because of his inability to save his closest friend when it most counted.
If the quote that summarizes the central theme of Jujutsu Kaisen Zero is "Love is the most twisted curse of them all."
Then I put forward that the quote that summarizes the theme of the main series is what Gojo said to Yaga post Geto's defection, "Being strong isn't enough, I can only save those who are prepared to be saved."
Just like Hidden Inventory is centered around Geto and Gojo's relationship in their youth, the main manga itself centers around Megumi and Itadori's relationship. The manga itself starts with their first meeting. Yuji devours the finger in order to try to help Megumi. Megumi requests Gojo help save Yuji from execution because he didn't want to see another good person die.
Megumi and Itadori are also a deliberate parallel to Geto and Gojo's friendship in the past. To begin with Gojo tried to nurture these relatoinships in his students so they COULD get along and enjoy their youths the way he remembers doing so with Geto in his three springtime of youth.
He not only encourages Megumi to selfishly try to save Yuji even though it is against the rules of sorcery and poses a risk to other people, he also encourages them to socialize at every opportunity.
The strong and intense friendship that Megumi and Yuji enjoy is not only a clear parallel to Geto and Gojo's special connection with one another, but also the fact that a strong reocurring motif in Megumi and Yuji's friendship is their strong desire to save each other. Which is a clear parallel to Gojo's inability to save Geto in the past.
As I said for a long time Yuji and Megumi were being set up as this generation's version of the "strongest duo" except they were going to be able to break the cycle. Whether it be by Megumi saving Yuji, or Yuji saving Megumi, they wouldn't be driven apart by the corruption in the Jujutsu World the way that Geto and Gojo were.
As I said the central question of Jujutsu Kaisen especially in regards to Megumi and Yuji's friendship is if it's possible to save someone who doesn't want to be saved. Which is why Megumi and Yuji both wanting to save each other is something that happens again and again at different parts of the manga. Whether it be the ending of Origin of Obedience where Megumi and Yuji are both unable to talk to each other because they want to try to protect the other from information that might harm them. Megumi hiding the fact that he knows resonance between the Sukuna fingers awakened the curses. Yuji hiding the fact that Megumi's decision to save Yuji has caused strong curses to awaken and kill other people.
Just as often as these two try to save each other, they fail. Megumi watches Yuji die early on when Yuji takes back control from Sukuna and decides to die without a heart.
Megumi spends the entirety of the culling games clinging to Yuji's side no matter how Yuji tries to push him away because he knows Sukuna has plans for him. However, Megumi is afraid to leave Yuji alone because he knows Yuji is in a dark place after the Shibuya massacre and that if he's left alone Yuji might just find some way to off himself in a heroic sacrifice to try to atone for the people lost at Shibuya.
Only for Megumi's insistence on clinging to Yuji to backfire because Sukuna ends up taking his body from him in a critical moment. When Sukuna takes his body their circumstances swap and Megumi is the one who's body is being used to kill people by Sukuna. When Megumi has to live with the guilt of Sukuna using his body to kill both his sister and his teacher, he's not able to live with it anymore.
Then their positions swap completely and it's Megumi who wants to die to atone for the guilt, and it's Yuji who doesn't want to let go of Megumi and will do anything to save Megumi from both Sukuna and the other sorcerers even if the right thing to do is just kill both him and Sukuna and letting him live means putting the whole rest of the world at risk.
As you can see not only is saving each other a common theme of Megumi and Yuji's relationship, but at different points of the story both of them are trying to save the other even when the other doesn't value their own life.
Gojo's relationship with Geto is defined by his inability to reach his friend in time, and how he was "left behind" in the end.
Gojo explicitly waited a year after learning about Megumi being sold to the Zen'in clan to do anything, and only decided to intervene after Geto's defection. Gojo's decision to mentor Megumi was inspired by Geto leaving. He even said "Don't get left behind."
His hope in taking in students like Megumi, Yuta and Yuji was twofold first that he'd be able to handpick and raise several strong students who would eventually replace the elders and reform the Jujutsu World. The second and more personal motivation is that he wanted these students to be able to support each other and be strong allies to one another so they wouldn't end up alone like Gojo did in his youth.
Gojo's intentions were good however, Gojo has a very flawed understanding of how people and relationships work. In Gojo's books "strong=good" and almost everything can be solved by strength. Notice just one chapter ago Gojo said that being strong wasn't enough, he can only save those who are prepared to be saved and yet one chapter later he tells Megumi that he needs to get strong otherwise he'll be left behind.
So, even when Gojo knows that being strong isn't enough and didn't make a difference with Geto, that's still the only real advice he can offer Megumi.
A big theme of Jujutsu Kaisen is the failures of the past generation affecting the present. A lot of people in trying to put Gojo on a pedestal fail to realize one of the central themes of this manga is GOJO WAS WRONG. The way Gojo went about doing several things wasn't the right way. Gojo wants the next generation to succeed him and do better than him, because Gojo himself knows that he was wrong and he's a part of the past generation.
I think a big part of the reason the conclusion to Megumi's character arc is poorly received is that Megumi didn't end his arc the way that Gojo set out for him.
Scenes like this led the audience to believe that Megumi's character arc was going to be completed by him learning to be more selfish and living up to the potential that Gojo saw in him. That we were going to get a completed domain expansion. That Megumi was going to become stronger than Gojo because the ten shadows was the only technique to ever beat a wielder of the limitless and the six eyes.
I understand wanting to see Megumi living for himself, and how cool it might be to see Megumi's complete domain expansion after Gege teased us with this twice but I have to ask this.
If Gojo was the strongest sorcerer in the world, and that still wasn't good enough to save Geto. Then how would Megumi reaching his full potential as a sorcerer in any way help Megumi avoid making the same mistakes that Gojo did?
HAVEN'T WE HAD ENOUGH OF GOJO SATORU
I think a lot of dissatisfaction in Megumi's character development comes from he didn't really follow the path that Gojo set out for him. He didn't unlock his full domain expansion, he didn't learn to live more selfishly. They say that Megumi simply choosing to live for Yuji isn't him learning to stand on his own two feet because he's just hinging his self worth on someone else the same way he did with Tsumiki.
However, I have to ask.
How exactly would Megumi becoming more like Gojo or more like Sukuna be any better?
A big recurring theme in Megumi's arc is his lack of agency, and how many different adult figures have tried to mould him to their own selfish ends.
In the same chapter where Megumi has the flashback where Gojo encourages him to become more selfish, Sukuna has his hands wrapped around Megumi's neck in the colored page. Sukuna was never actually trying to mentor Megumi.
He only had an interest in Megumi because his ten shadows techniques was a way to bypass Gojo's infinity. Henever actually cared about Megumi reaching his full potential. He was grooming Megumi in the long term so he could snatch his body and turn him into a weapon against Gojo Satoru. The same way that Gojo only decided to take Megumi in and mentor him in the first place because his technique meant he had great potential as a sorcerer and a future ally in Gojo's crusade against the elders.
Megumi's life is defined by every adult in his life trying to mould him or use him selfishly for his own gains. His father sold him to the Zen'in clan for gambling money and abandoned him. Gojo only was interested in a strong ally against the elders. Sukuna is just one in a long line of people who are trying to shape Megumi into something he's not for their own selfish desires.
Ngl, the fushiguro girlies are kinda onto something with their characterization of Sukuna’s possession as the physical embodiment of his lifelong struggle for self determination and autonomy and how others have always pupeteered his fate for their own devices and he’s thusly never put himself first ─ his selfishness functioning ultimately as platitudes which still center others and his consideration for them. [SOURCE]
So if all of Megumi's various abusers have tried to make Megumi into something he's not and robbed him of his agency in the process, then is the best ending for Megumi really to become more selfish like Gojo or Sukuna?
If Megumi ended his character arc by using a complete domain expansion, and reaching Gojo's level of power wouldn't that be validating the way Gojo stole Megumi's entire childhood from him in order to make him a strong sorcerer. Wouldn't it look like the narrative was going, yeah, it was wrong for Gojo to groom Megumi like that, but look how strong it made him!
We already have a version of Megumi who learned to live only for himself, someone who broke the chains of fate and became entirely free.
Toji shows us a version of Megumi who lived up to his full potential as a sorcerer, became someone strong enough to threaten Satoru Gojo, and who put himself above everyone else and... Toji's fucking miserable.
Toji is the bad ending of Megumi. He's strong but that's all he is. The narration refers to him as a puppet of carnage, only living to fight the strongest around. In fact, Toji dies BECAUSE he wanted to feel validated as the strongest. The decision to say and fight against Gojo when Gojo unlocks reverse cursed technique leads to his death. Being the strongest and his desire to be validated as someone strong is nothing more than a curse for Toji and what allows him to escape the cycle is not strength, but rather seeing that his son has succesfully escaped the abuse of the Zen'in clan.
So having Megumi live up to his full potential as a sorcerer, or living selfishly the way that Gojo or Sukuna wanted him to wouldn't really be breaking the cycle, because it'd be Megumi acting the way his abusers wanted him to act. If anything it' be Gojo's long term grooming of Megumi finally succeeding.
I understand that Megumi fighting back on Sukuna from within with one use of ten shadows to create a puddle underneath Sukuna's feet isn't the most dramatic way to signal his journey of self-realization, but sometimes the flashy, dramatic, and satisfying thing isn't always the right thing.
if the central relationship of the series is Megumi and Yuji, and the central question of that relationship was "is it possible to save someone who doesn't want to be saved-" then resolving both Megumi and Yuji's character arcs requires answering that question. That's the most important part. How are we going to break the cycle and have Megumi and Yuji save each other in a way that Geto and Gojo weren't be able to.
Yes, I understand wanting Megumi to be his own person and stand on his own two feet, but before he's a person Megumi is a fictional character. Megumi and Yuji are characters intentionally designed to be each other's other half. The same way that Geto is designed to be the other half of Gojo. They both represent a yin / yang pair. They both represent the shadow and the light, the sun and the moon.
People also talk about wanting Gojo to learn to be his own person outside of Geto, but that's also missing the point. Gojo isn't a person to begin with he's a character designed to be the other half of Geto. All of those parallels that exist between them, both of them getting their bodies stolen from them, both of them becoming monsters (geto slaughtering the village, Gojo slaughtering the elders), both of them dying on the same day. Those are intentional, because they're fictional characters meant to represent the concept of yin and yang and balance. Gojo cannot exist without Geto, Geto's body causes Gojo to get boxed, Gojo dies within a year of killing Geto, because they're meant to represent the taoist concept of BALANCE in a manga that's about BALANCE. Gojo cannot achieve balance with the character that symbolizes his yin. Whereas, Megumi's way of achieving balance is to find a way to make things work with his other half Yuji in a way that Geto and Gojo failed to.
As someone who used to be the biggest Megumi Corruption Arc truther, I've come around in my thinking and I can at least understand why Gege didn't go that direction. Megumi learning to be selfish like Gojo would be changing too much of Megumi's inner nature, because as much as Megumi pretends to be selfish as an excuse he still is someone who wants to help people.
There's nothing wrong with Megumi wanting to help people, or wanting to be a team player. It was Megumi deciding to hinge his entire self worth on just his ability to help one person. It's why he couldn't go on when Tsumiki died, not just because he was grieving his sister, but because he decided to make protecting his sister his entire reason to live and genuinely saw no other reason to keep on living.
A lot of people say that Megumi is just deciding to make Yuji into an emotional crutch the same way he once did with Tsumiki, however, I don't think these lines of dialogue really indicate that.
"The world is full of people besides myself. Once more I think I'll live for others."
To begin with, Megumi says that the world is filled with lots of people. Megumi didn't want to go on because he didn't think he'd ever love someone as much as he loved his sister. That there was nothing in the world worth living for if his sister was gone.
However, now Megumi is acknowledging that there are more people in the world than just Tsumiki. That he might come to love them the same way that he loved her. That he shouldn't give up on life just because he lost one person, no matter how important that person was.
Megumi's words run contrary to the idea that he's just going to use Yuji as his next living emotional crutch, because he says the world is full of people. There's more people than just him, there's more people than just Yuji, as long as Megumi makes the choice to continue living then he can go out into the world and meet them.
Jujutsu Kaisen is a very individualist manga, and I understand we also exist in an individualist society so we want to see Megumi stand on his own two feet and live for himself, but I don't think Megumi deciding he'll live for others is a bad thing. This is just a few chapters after Yuji said that what makes life meaningful is the memories you leave behind with other people. Which is the exact same sentiment.
Yuji is able to break free from the cog mindset when he realizes that all the people he connected to in his life gave his life meaning, even if they died tragically, even if he only knew them for a short time. Choso's final words are "Thank you for being my little brother" and that connection was incredibly important even though they only knew each other for about a month. Yuji's life became meaningful because he went out into the world and made all these important connections.
Now Megumi is doing the same thing. He's resolved that even though his sister is dead the world is full of people he can connect with. That he can come to love other people the same way that he did. That his life is still worth living because he can find new people to love. Is Megumi deciding he can try to live for the other people in his life and his connection to those people even after the loss of his sister made him feel like his life is worthless and he'll never love anybody that way again, really that different from Yuji deciding that the people he made connections too gave his life value?
Jujutsu Kaisen lifts from other manga, this is pretty common knowledge. Killua and Shinji Ikari are probably the two biggest inspirations for Megumi and both are two very passive characters who are entirely reactive. They don't decide, they don't act, they react to the decisions of people around him.
Killua's ultimate moment of character development isn't beating his abusive big brother, or his abusive parents in a physical fight after getting a power up. Killua's greatest moment of character development is accepting Nanika as a part of Alluka. Something he was too afraid to do because it would mean that his family would continue to try to exploit Alluka for her wish granting abilities.
Killua finishes his arc with the resolution to protect both Alluka and Nanika from the rest of his family. Considering that Killua has been centering his entire self worth around his usefulness to Gon by this point you could call it Killua is just replacing Alluka with Gon as a crutch if you were cynical. Or you could just say that Killua, like Megumi is someone who lives for their loved ones and finds value in the bonds he makes with other people.
Shinji Ikari spends the entire 26 episode run of Neon Genesis Evangelion not making a single decision, and his final moment of character development isn't really that much character development. He simply makes the decision to reject instrumentality and try again. To go back to the real world and try to be a person in the world again, because as long as you're alive there's still a chance to be happy.
Megumi like Killua, never really changes. It's in Megumi and Killua's nature to be a protector / a nurturer. They want to take care of the loved ones in their lives. Megumi and Shinji both have an arc where it takes the entire anime / manga to take the very first step. Their arc is there to depict how hard it can be to take that first step on the journey to change when you're as traumatized as someone like Shinji or Megumi.
Megumi's arc especially is about him making his very first decision in the whole manga. As I said the central question of Megumi and Yuji's relationship is can you save someone who doesn't want to be saved and Yuji eventually finds you that you can't.
Yuji's greatest moment of character development and empathy for Fushiguro is realizing he can't force savlation on Fushiguro if Megumi doesn't want it. He can't force Megumi to live. He can't just tell Megumi to be stronger.
In doing so Yuji does something that no one has ever done to Megumi in his life, and offered him a choice. Gojo expected Megumi to be as strong as him and saw him as a mini-gojo never once taking his opinion into the matter. As I said above Gojo sees being strong as the soliution to all of life's problems. His adivce to Megumi was don't be weak, otherwise you'll be left behind.
Yuji allows Megumi to be weak. He says that Megumi doesn't have to be strong and suck it all up. The metaphor of Yuji and his grandfather works well to show how Yuji truly understood Megumi in a way Gojo never did. Gojo expected Megumi to be as strong as him. Gojo encouraged Megumi to grow up into another Gojo. Gojo failed to understand Megumi in many ways because he wasn't Gojo, and enjoy Jujutsu and being a sorcerer the way that Gojo did.
Yuji relates the story of his grandfather rejecting chemo treatment. At the time he didn't understand why his father would refuse the treatment just because it was painful, because Yuji being young would have been very easily able to handle the pain. However, after Yuji went through trauma and started dealing with suicidal ideation in the aftermath of Shibuya he understood why some people wouldn't want to keep fighting.
Yuji knows what it's like to be weak and want to give up so he doesn't want to force Megumi to be strong. Gojo projected himself onto Megumi and expected Megumi to always be strong and to love Jujutsu like he did, and didn't understand the ways Megumi was different than him. Yuji on the other hand accepted Megumi for who he was with those words, even though Megumi was weak and didn't want to continue living Yuji didn't crticize him he accepted that Megumi was different from him. He accepted the fact he didn't really understand Megumi's pain. He validated Megumi's pain and didn't try to dismiss it.
This parallel to Gojo and Megumi's first meeting is so important, because Gojo showed up in that child's life only to exploit him. While Yuji gave Megumi a choice. Even if it meant that Yuji would be lonely and heartbroken, he still gave Megumi a choice on whether or not he wanted to live.
In the end Yuji gave Megumi a choice, and Megumi made that choice to keep living. Just like Shinji, Megumi's entire character arc was just leading him up to taking the first step on his journey. Just like Shinji, Megumi's entire arc is defined by his choices being taken away from him but the very first choice he makes is his most important one: the choice to live.
So yes, a Megumi corruption arc would have been really cool but I think the answer of "You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved, but you can still love them" is a beautiful one.
weird question: do you have a recommended reading list or formative books/works that you return to as a writer? i admire your proses and how you set up scenes so much!
hi anon! not a weird ask at all (i love talking about writing, i miss teaching it!) and therefore a long answer incoming. thank you for your compliment, that means a lot to me.
i will give you some of the works of writing i either return to often or feel have influenced me (separated into short fiction & novels/novellas). this won't be an exhaustive list, and some of these i haven't revisited within the last year. i have not included writing craft books or poetry collections this time, but i recommend reading those as well (though craft books are tricky).
before the list i think there are some helpful things to consider:
oftentimes i read a work, and it touches me deeply. rarely do i know immediately what it is i want to learn from it. i try to do a read through for "enjoyment" and one for "craft." learning to pick out what you like about a piece of writing is a skill and of itself. during grad school, the book recommended to me to help me do so was reading like a writer by francine prose. however, reading that book will do nothing if we don't put it into practice, of course. i have even done this in the past with fanfiction authors i like! if you have specific parts of my writing that have compelled you (this sounds very self-absorbed but since this is the basis of your ask...) i am more than happy to answer questions about how i approach those personally, as well.
typically when i read a book and it stands out to me, it's for one of these reasons:
- "good prose" usually attributed to a great sense of rhythm, immersive detail work, "this just fucking sounds good" and some myriad of other things
- "point of view" or doing anything with it that is interesting and unusual, such as the collective "we", etc. pov that reinforces something about the story
- "structure" such as fiction in verse, short scenes versus long, how a work approaches chapters/sections, epistolary works
- "voice" the definition of which can be argued over and has been for decades. the way i think of voice is--how do all these things, such as diction and point of view and structure, sound together? does the author have specific trends within their writing? how close or far removed is the voice of the narrator (not necessarily the same as the author) to the point of view character? does the writing shift along with pov change?
- i don't like the terms "show versus tell," however, i think there's something to say about "restraint" and authors who know what to include in greater detail, and what can be "summarized" and find a balance between these that helps the story not feel stale or slow.
- "character work" the author is capable of creating characters that feel real and nuanced and make me care.
- and the "something about this compels me, it's just that good" cop out
with all of that said, here is a (incomplete) list of works which i feel have taught me something about writing in the last few years. some of these are available online for free, but not all of them. listed in no particular order. some are translated works.
short/flash fiction
dog days by judy budnitz
silver spaceships by mary o'connell
exotics by dantiel w moniz, but also milk blood heat
the hunter's wife by anthony doerr
the axe handle remembers the tree by emily hancock
playing metal gear solid v by jamil jan kochai
house of cicadas by gabriela lee
good, brother by peter markus
my mother rearranges strangers’ lives in the dark by samanta schweblin
the red fox fur coat by teolinda gersão
blood by zdravka evtimova
story of your life by ted chiang
song for the unraveling of the world by brian evenson
novels/novellas
autobiography of red by anne carson
aura by carlos fuentes
folding beijing by hao jingfang
anil's ghost by michael ondaatje
mongrels by stephen graham jones
someone who isn't me by geoff rickly
my year of meats by ruth ozeki
beartown by fredrik backman
a man called ove by fredrik backman
star by yukio mishima
out stealing horses by per petterson
the clan of the cave bear by jean m. auel
the buddha in the attic by julie otsuka
the hungry tide by amitav ghosh
the salt grows heavy by cassandra khaw
the saint of bright doors by vajra chandrasekera
i gave you eyes and you looked toward darkness by irene solà
it lasts forever and then it's over by anne de marcken
our wives under the sea by julia armfield
collections which include some of the short stories mentioned, but that are also good in their entirety:
the best american short stories 2023 edited by min jin lee (also check out the one from 2022! i tend to buy these every year)
new sudden fiction edited by robert shapard & james thomas
like i said, not at all comprehensive, but i have read every work on here at least once. if people have books or stories they like, please send them my way. i could go on but i am exercising some "restraint" here.
i have about 150 unread books at home (trophies from working at a bookstore) i am also slowly making my way through; many of those i expect to end up on this list, even if only for a few years. they have compelled me in the first few pages or chapters, so here is a list of "soon to be reads" which might intrigue you, too. some new, some old:
- ghost roots by pemi aguda
- terrestrial history by joe mungo reed
- the road by cormac mccarthy
- lake like a mirror by ho sok fong
- in the absence of men by philippe besson
- dogs at the perimeter by madeleine thien
- convenience store woman by sayaka murata
- ghachar ghochar by vivek shanbhag
- whereabouts by jhumpa lahiri
- the emissary by yoko tawada
- oh god, the sun goes by david connor
i read a lot of short stories, specifically in online literary magazines. you might notice i am very fond of short stories. books are expensive and we can't always buy all the ones we want, but there is excellent writing available for free, and if you are able to donate to keep those magazines running, even better. some places i turn to frequently when looking for inspiration is: the adroit journal, uncanny magazine, electric literature, and clarkesworld.
why is lake superior so dangerous? i cant find anything online that will give my access (not american!)
it's the largest freshwater lake on the planet by surface area, you could lose a couple of smaller countries in there and not even notice. (vs Europe)
on top of that, it's a Northern lake, so the water never really gets warmer than 50 F (10 C) even in the heat of summer, and it's famous for sudden violent storms that destroy ships and buildings alike. this thing has a MASSIVE body count because it's also a major shipping thoroughfare.
She is also over 1,300ft/400m deep at her deepest. Once she has eaten you, she will not give you back. Lake Superior doesn't give up her dead.
And when Bunjy says "the largest by surface are" what that means is: Lake Superior is a whopping 31,700 square miles (82,103 square km) of water. The only reason she is not an inland sea is because she is freshwater.
She has tides. She has rip currents, like an ocean does. You don't even have to go out on a boat to get got by her, all you have to do is step into her icy waters in the wrong spot. She has ice formations that aren't "icebergs" on the technicality that they didn't calve from glaciers, even though they look and act the same.
(photo by Paul Berger)
She LOOKS like an ocean when you are at her shores. This is from a location on the Minnesota side shore.
(photo by George Ilstrup)
She is huge, icy, and hungry. This makes her very dangerous. Not to be fucked around with, because you WILL find out.
Superior doesn't want to kill you in the way that K2 wants to kill you. She doesn't give much thought to you at all, unless you draw her attention. Then, well, might as well start ringing the bell at Mariner's Church yourself, because she is inevitable.
So it’s clear that when Mob transferred his powers to Reigen in the Claw 7th Division arc, he did not do it intentionally. It was just the redirection of his massive energy out-pour toward Reigen out of gratitude.
Then in the World Domination arc he does, intentionally, transfer some of his power to Shou to help Shou get back up. And this is a very big deal because Touichiro is like “what the hell power transfer is MY thing.”
Where I’m going with this is the realization that Mob DOES know how to do the power transfer thing intentionally and I am picturing a post-series-finale case where Reigen calls up Mob frantic like “Sorry I know you’re not working today but this is a real case and Serizawa is at school and this thing is going to eat me please come help.”
And Mob shows up like “Okay here you go” and raises his hand but the spirit does not disappear. And Reigen is like “Mob please I don’t think that did anything.” And Mob is like “I didn’t exorcise the spirit Shishou. I’m off work today. I gave you some of my powers though. Please use them responsibly.”
And Reigen is just standing there staring at his fingers in crisis going wait holy shit, my whole body is buzzing, I can move shit with my mind, oh shit I have powers (temporarily) (Mob’s powers), wait I’M still supposed to exorcise the spirit?
And Mob is like “have fun Shishou bye” and Reigen is like “Mob wait I want an instruction manual” and Mob is like “that would look bad to the client” who is currently cowering in the corner.
Anyway I think Mob continues to do this and now Reigen has to deal with the consequences of becoming actually sometimes psychic after so long pretending to be psychic.
Teru "can copy any ability he's seen one time" Hanazawa is hanging around the S&S office one day and ends up bearing witness to this. ("Mob I told you to stop giving me your powers when I didn't ask. You're still an employee of Spirits and Such so when I ask you to do a task you should do it." "But Hanazawa is in the middle of explaining this math problem to me." -Reigen telekinetically confiscates math book from them- "I'm not paying you to do math.")
And Teru who's been trying for 8+ months to rationalize why he's never seen Mob's great Shishou use his powers even once since taking down the Claw 7th Division (despite clearly needing them many times) (despite running a psychic agency) (Teru kept rationalizing this as some kind of enlightened psychic ascetism from Reigen) finally has every single neuron click into place as he realizes the Claw 7th Division display was just Reigen using Mob's powers.
And he snaps his head to Mob like "Kageyama does Reigen-Shishou not have powers?!" and Mob's like "Well right now he does."
And Reigen goes "Hey" and Teru falls into a really deep contemplative silence for several seconds before he raises his hand and copies Mob's technique and also gives Reigen his powers. To which Reigen says "Hey."
Mob Psycho takes place during peak Poke Your Friends On Facebook era which does open the possibility of Teru and Mob doing this regularly to Reigen for the same inane and pointless reason. Which is to say absolutely no reason. And Reigen can’t “poke” them back because he is not a real psychic and has no idea what he’s doing.
Ritsu alone doesn’t do it which Reigen is grateful for. Ritsu alone doesn’t do it because he is not like Teru and cannot copy powers effortlessly and can’t figure out how to do it.
Which puts him in the absolutely torturous situation of Reigen thinking Ritsu is being nice to him and Ritsu’s only two options are “admit he can’t actually do it” or “let Reigen believe Ritsu likes him.”
annaxmalina
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
discoholicmusic
areudirty
dailybridgerton
blakekathryn
